Pathway to Japanese Literature

Professor Umeki grabbed the sixty-yen change and rushed out of the Chinese restaurant.
He had eaten two bowls of Chinese soba.
He felt like it had been delicious.
However, it wasn’t a matter of taste.
Professor Umeki had come to want to kill himself.
To think that eating in this age of inflation could be this humiliating.
Even as he handed over money, he had been made to realize he was a beggar.

Professor Umeki did not know what backdoor business entailed.
Since the war’s end, this was the first time he had passed through a restaurant’s gate.

It was called a backdoor business, but out front hung a sign that read “Now Open.”
So what did “backdoor” even mean?
If he were to slip through the backdoor just once, how exhilarating would it feel?
At the very least, he had been thinking of trying to enter through the front entrance marked “Now Open.”

That day, Professor Umeki had made no ordinary resolution.
He would eat, no matter what.
He would slip through that entrance with the “Now Open” sign.

A tragic resolve, though perhaps born from something as mundane as taste, ultimately converged into the same disjointed frenzy and despair as a kamikaze squad’s final charge—or so it seemed.

From the moment he passed through the entrance, Professor Umeki’s resolve was no ordinary matter.
Frenzy, then confusion.

However, the restaurant’s interior was, surprisingly, an utterly ordinary restaurant interior.
In other words, it was the scenery of a Chinese soba shop from the old days that Professor Umeki also remembered.
There were three groups of customers.
Strangely, they were all women.
One group was a trio who looked like they had just graduated from girls’ school; another was a pair you might call dancers.
The last group was a quartet, also around the age of having just graduated from girls’ school.
Everyone was at their respective tables, eating Chinese soba or giggling shrilly—exactly like the old days, with not a hint of restraint.

Upon encountering a scene identical to his prewar memories, Professor Umeki did not calm down or feel nostalgic—instead, he felt as though he had entered hostile territory, became utterly agitated, and plunged into near-unconscious chaos.

At any rate, he reached an empty table and sat down.

Then one of the three women who had been cackling shrilly casually stood up, planted herself before his table, and stared him down.

Professor Umeki could not produce a sound.
Due to terror, his heart was nearly stopping.
Gathering desperate courage, he stared blankly at the woman.

The woman shouted angrily.

“What would you like to order?!”

She was a waitress.
After letting out a sigh of relief, Professor Umeki found no subsequent ideas coming to mind,

“Uh…”

All he could manage was to point wordlessly at what the group of ladies at the opposite table were eating.

The woman stood in silence but soon returned with a bowl, setting it down dismissively before walking away.

Professor Umeki wolfed down his meal.
It wasn’t bad.
However, he couldn’t tell whether it was any good.
When he tried to compare it to his past memories, those memories seemed too far removed.
In the past, this might have been called mixed Chinese soba—whatever that corresponded to. There was a slice of braised egg.
There was squid.
There was cabbage.
In his haste, Professor Umeki had forgotten to sprinkle pepper, but after finishing his meal, he noticed the condiments on the table.

The Professor’s heart quivered.
To eat another bowl, he had to call the waitress.
However, the waitresses were acting more like customers than the customers themselves, giggling shrilly at their own table.

It was no wonder he couldn’t distinguish.
Even the Professor—who walked the streets daily—was aware of women’s clothing styles; broadly speaking there seemed two categories among unmarried women: those resembling dancers and those resembling office workers who had graduated from girls’ schools—with no class distinctions like “young ladies” or “maids.”

Even after realizing they were waitresses and re-examining the trio, comparing them with the customers, he still couldn’t distinguish any difference.
Their clothing and hairstyles were the same, and the only difference was that the waitresses’ table lacked bowls of Chinese soba.

They would huddle together to talk one moment, then throw their heads back in laughter.
They leaned back so recklessly that one feared their chairs might flip over, then erupted in uproarious laughter aimed at the ceiling—guffawing and howling in a raucous explosion of mirth.
A woman being killed by Kodaira—how could such a thing happen?—the professor struggled to comprehend.

Professor Umeki resigned himself and thought about going home after just one bowl.
However, even if he were to leave after just one bowl, he still had to call out to the waitresses and ask how much it was.
If that’s what it took, he wanted to eat another bowl.
A single bowl left him without any tangible sense of having eaten.

“Excuse me… Excuse me…”

Professor Umeki called out futilely.
He repeated it several times.
Professor Umeki had to fight against the guilt that he was currently committing some terrible wrongdoing.
Because of this, he had already lost the courage to call out again; however, since their ceaseless laughter showed no sign of abating, he had no choice but to steel his resolve and see it through.

“Excuse me.”

Professor Umeki shouted desperately.
The three waitresses simultaneously turned their angry faces toward him.
He forcefully took in their glare.
He couldn’t close his eyes.
He couldn’t flee in panic.
He couldn’t burst into tears.
He had to respond to those six harsh gazes.

“Could I have another bowl, please?”

The women made faces of utter contempt, as if to say, “What now?”
They gathered their brows even more grotesquely than before, threw back their heads in brazen laughter, and flaunted their utterly unrestrained vulgarity.
Each action seemed nothing but contempt directed at him, and he resolved that if this was how he would be made to feel, he would never again pass through a restaurant’s gates in his entire life.
I am already a dropout of this modern age—even beggars and street children live off restaurant meals without ration cards—so what in the world am I?
I cannot help but feel violently abandoned by everything.

The woman once again threw down the bowl and left.
As retaliation—not only could he not bite through his tongue and die to make a point—the wretchedness of his own figure wolfing down the food like some starved creature overwhelmed Professor Umeki, bringing him to the brink of tears.
Fortunately, the pepper’s sting blurred whether these were tears of shame or mere physical reaction, letting him mask his anguish somewhat. But if enduring such humiliation meant having to call out “Ikradesu” again, he’d sooner play the dine-and-dash rogue: slip silently from the restaurant with feigned composure, let those three women—who’d surely brand him a thief—grab him by the collar while sneering… Then face whatever fresh disgrace followed, consequences be damned. Yet envisioning this ultimate degradation proved too much—his chest heaved with stifled sobs he could no longer contain.

At that moment, a group of five university students swaggered in boisterously.
Upon seeing this, the three women abruptly sprang to life with newfound vigor, exchanging words like “Welcome!” and “What’s wrong?”—precisely the same customer-waitress interactions etched in his distant memories.

Professor Umeki had no time to dwell on sentimental comparisons.
“Strike while the iron’s hot,” he resolved, standing up to call for the bill.

When the waitress turned toward Professor Umeki, she transformed into an effigy of rage—glaring him down as she took away the 200 yen and returned with 60 yen in change, thrusting it forward.

Though there was no chance he could have performed some nimble trick like declaring “Keep the change!” when she turned around clutching the 200 yen, he should have been able to spin on his heel and flee.
Yet while he wavered, the waitress came back and jabbed out the coins.
He couldn’t possibly say now that this was meant as a tip.

Professor Umeki was confused by his own stinginess.
Professor Umeki was poor, but he did not want to think of himself as stingy.
But wasn't he actually stingy?
Of course, there was no reason these spiteful women wouldn't understand—they must have utterly despised him.
However, until the professor received that change, there should have been a chance to avoid the tip by decisively turning away.
When he realized this, instead of turning away, Professor Umeki's hand trembled uncontrollably, reaching toward the money—he couldn't bear it.
Having come this far, he couldn't turn away.
At this critical juncture, setting aside a tip from the change would only invite even greater ridicule, so with reckless resolve, he accepted the change—and in that instant, involuntarily—

“Thank you.”

he found himself muttering.
Professor Umeki fainted from shame.

Professor Umeki staggered through the streets like a drowning man; each utility pole made him want to smash his skull against it and die, yet he burned with humiliation at his own frantic dodging of bicycles.

He realized he’d forgotten his hat at the restaurant, but retrieving it was beyond imagining.

★

Professor Umeki detested university students.
Yet he was a professor who taught students at the university.

The very reason Professor Umeki had steeled his resolve to slip through the doorway of that Chinese soba restaurant stemmed ultimately from his antipathy and loathing toward those students.

Professor Umeki’s salary was 650 yen. Occasionally, magazines would request contributions from him—manuscripts of ten or twenty pages. He would receive manuscript fees roughly equivalent to his salary, but this wasn’t a monthly occurrence, and even if it were, the combined amount would still fall short of what a tea-serving waitress earned.

Therefore, the professor’s livelihood depended solely on bamboo shoots; he sold off his clothes, sold his chest of drawers, and eked out a meager existence.

Professor Umeki’s household was a family of five: his mother, two children, and his wife Akiko.

Akiko thoroughly regarded her husband as a completely inept has-been.
"Since manuscripts sell if you write them, work diligently and earn money," she urged.
It was a threatening demand.
However, even if Professor Umeki’s manuscripts were diligently written and submitted, there would hardly be any buyers.
Because he understood this, Professor Umeki simply refrained from pushing himself to aggressively promote his work—yet Akiko called this very restraint proof of his being an inept has-been.

Akiko also sold her own belongings for money.
However, this was not for the livelihood of the household but for her own outings, and even buying mandarins or candy balls for the two children was something she did only rarely.

Professor Umeki cursed the university students.
Although Professor Umeki showed signs of malnutrition, the university students he saw in the classroom were all plump and ruddy-cheeked, perpetually smoking cigarettes.
Professor Umeki hadn’t had access to cigarettes for many days in a month.

Professor Umeki's youth was steeped in poverty.
For people of that era, youth generally meant poverty.
Goods existed, but people lacked the money to purchase them.
Even after graduating from university, most found no employment prospects—in essence becoming upper-class vagrants who, unable to wander as freely as true vagrants unbound by social pretense, threw themselves into their wretched livelihoods.

Current university students didn’t even know to consider notions like having the will to work but being unable to find employment. Students in the past had worked hard as tutors, delivered newspapers, and toiled earnestly to scrape together meager tuition funds, but students today knew that such earnest labor conversely didn’t pay. If they idly set out peanuts, lighters, and notebooks by the roadside, money came their way. Even polishing shoes earned money. Teaching dance, playing the trumpet, selling coffee—they all brought in cash. Selling cigarettes earned money too, and flipping someone’s goods from here to there turned a profit. Even going out to procure goods earned them money. They idly made in a single day what Professor Umeki earned in a month.

The notion of youth being some empty void was utter nonsense.
It’s the exact opposite.
They boasted grandly about rations being insufficient but showed no reflection on an era when，even with goods overflowing，people had no money to buy them and no means to work even if they wanted to earn that money.

In the past, there was no term like "black marketeer." Even if people bought up rice and circulated through back doors, no one paid any attention. The unemployed and poor littered the streets everywhere, but if you dared state the obvious—"Save the poor! Give jobs to the unemployed!"—they’d throw you in jail.

Inflation made for an era that was dementedly easy to live through. The university students inhabiting this demented age, though ostensibly scholars, remained oblivious to their era’s dementia—complacent in reality, strutting about like kings while carefreely ignorant of their proper station.

The humanities students associated with Professor Umeki might have been exceptionally carefree, but they never let their cigarette smoke dissipate, danced, got dead drunk, neglected their studies, and—setting academics aside—staged dubious student plays to earn drinking money.

When he delivered a stern lecture to the university students about this matter,

“Professor, you’re just bitter.”
“Why don’t you try making a little money yourself?”

they smirked slyly.
In the end, they presumptuously visited Professor Umeki’s home,

“Professor, how about we let you in on a cut of our black-market dealings?”
“Well, Professor, you’re quite the hoarder, aren’t you?”
“You’ve got a chest of drawers, a dressing table, and even a table.”
“If you sold all this, it’d make capital for a major black market operation. Professor, how about investing in us?”
“We’ve got nothing.”
“We’ve plowed everything into capital.”
“We’re as bare as a plucked sparrow—no textbooks, no reference books, no fountain pens.”

Then Akiko, bursting with excitement, pushed her way forward,

“That’s right, that’s right.”
“How else do you survive these days without black markets?”
“Everything’s priced on the black market these days.”
“How else are you supposed to get money if not through the black market?”
“You still have plenty of kimonos left, don’t you?”
“There are books and a morning coat too, right?”
“Because you’re a vain, stingy hoarder, you still have plenty left.”
“You don’t need formal attire these days, and as for books, you can just consider them burned.”
“Without even burning them, you’re holding onto books and such—that’s why you can’t even become a black marketeer.”

The university students clapped noisily,

“That’s right, Madam.”
“That’s right, Madam.”
“Madam’s admirable!”
“I’ve really taken a liking to you, Madam.”
“You’re quite the business magnate, Madam.”
“What a shrewd operator!”

And then, when these university students got pleased, they slackened their expressions and burst into idiotic guffaws.

From then on, they would ignore the Professor entirely and focus solely on associating with Akiko,

“Please watch our play.”
“Please come to the party.”
“Oh? You can’t dance?”
“You’re so stiff, man.”
“There’s no such thing as a business magnate like you.”

Akiko twitched her nose with glee, and on the appointed day, patted white powder onto its tip, raised funds by selling bamboo shoots, and set out.
After returning to the residence, she became engrossed in dancing quickstep, quickstep, slow waltz—raising clouds of dust in her frenzy,

“Hey, listen—they say I don’t look like a mother with children at all.”
“Twenty-two, right? Oh, how embarrassing!”

With a squeal, she blushed crimson by herself.

And then, as time passed, Akiko began staying out overnight occasionally—absences that grew more frequent.

The university students, unfazed, came to visit Akiko.

“Last night, Madam stayed over at so-and-so’s place.”

They said matter-of-factly:

“I got dumped, huh? I told her to come to my place, but she went to that guy’s instead. He’s not even handsomer than me.”

They slackened their grins and burst into raucous laughter.

In short, they were fools but not outright villains.
“Oh! How quick you are to suspect me!” Akiko retorted.
“It’s because you’re an adult.”
“It’s because your heart’s filthy that you see filth everywhere.”
“Children are pure-hearted,” she declared.
Then the university students chimed in: “Professor, that’s harsh.”
“We heard you mistreated your wife.”
“You think that way because you’re an adult.”
“We’ve never even thought about such things.”
They spoke bluntly.
Though smirking as they said it, their words lacked true edge.
No matter what, they radiated an inescapable dim-wittedness.

However, even Professor Umeki finally lost his temper.
He led the three university students who had come to his home outside and suddenly hit and kicked them.
It was the first time in his life that Professor Umeki had ever thrown a punch, but fortunately, the university students opposing him had sloppily let their guard down, and all three collapsed in a heap.

When he saw that, Professor Umeki suddenly grew bolder and began busily beating and kicking all three.

One student said, “I’m sorry, but why?” another student said, “It hurts! That’s awful! That’s terrible!” and the third said nothing.

Akiko also appeared on the street, forgot to stop him, and stood there staring blankly.
Finally, the Professor gave about twenty sharp slaps to both of Akiko’s cheeks with loud cracks, and she let out a shriek and began to cry.

“Get out.”
“Don’t come back.”

Having spat out those words, he slammed the door shut and locked it.

Although Professor Umeki rarely ever comforted the child, when he entered the room, the child wore a frightened expression. He hurriedly picked up the child. “There there,” he babbled. However, the child let out a wail and began to cry. *That’s how it is.* The old man had turned pale, his face looking ready to bite.

However, the Professor became strangely fervent—not so much comforting the child as tinkering with it using gestures akin to adjusting a wailing machine—but abruptly gave up, tossed it aside, and without a word, pulled the futon over himself and went to sleep.

This worsened the situation.

Akiko ended up staying at one of the students’ lodgings and clinging to him in cohabitation.
This student was not among those who had been beaten.

While the Professor was out, she moved out her belongings.
After several days spent transporting all her things, she came to the Professor’s place to bid farewell,

“You’re better off without someone like me.”
“It’s precisely because a woman like me is around that you’re stuck being an inept dropout.”
“Do become a respectable person, won’t you?”
“Well, goodbye.”

With that, she left.

The students who had been beaten still came to visit afterward.
They were naive simpletons.

“We can’t stand watching, y’know? They’re all over each other every day—it’s awful.”

With that, they gossiped about Akiko and the man while tilting their heads like adults,

“Being left by your wife and feeling melancholy—we just don’t get adult emotions, y’know.”
“Maybe we’re still kids because we don’t do romance.”
“But we don’t really feel like falling in love, huh.”
“But we’d like to be friends with a lovely beauty, huh?”

“What’s the difference between romance and friendship?”

“Heh,”

They laughed embarrassedly.
And then,

“However, we don’t get it.”
“I don’t think your wife is much of a beauty—you’d be wiser to find a new one, huh.”
“There’re way better women out there—any number of ’em.”
“Right? See?”

They did not sympathize with Professor Umeki in the slightest.
However，they were not envious of Akiko and her partner either．When you got down to it，it seemed like nothing at all．
And then，

“Hey，Professor．
“Come visit my place．
“I’m living with prostitutes，you know．
“They earn well，you know．”

“Are you having the prostitutes feed you？”

“That’s not it．
“It’s because we feel sorry for them—we’re letting them use our room．
“There are three of them，you know．”

“Are all three of them your girlfriends?”

“Huh, that’s strange.”
“Professor, we aren’t thinking about such things.”
“You’re such a grown-up, Professor.”
“I’m so embarrassed.”

The Professor became embarrassed and flushed.
The Professor had suddenly thought that it would be better if Akiko were like that.

The Professor was of a disposition that could not even consider consorting with prostitutes.
It wasn’t that he lacked lecherous desires; rather, he believed himself inept in the face of inflationary prosperity and lacked the emotional leeway to place himself alongside inflation’s byproducts for comparison.

He didn’t even know about backdoor business.
He didn’t even know about getting a single cup of bootleg liquor through the back door and had never bought Peace cigarettes.
Since he himself had no luck even in the lowest tier of inflationary prosperity, prostitutes were celestial beings beyond his reach, and there was no hope of an audience.

However, the Professor stirred up defiance.
It was likely due to the frustration of being looked down upon by the university students.
However, he never even considered prostitutes; his sole, desperate wish was to slip through those doorways he always saw on the streets—the ones bearing signs that read “Open for Business.”

And, having steeled his resolve, he set out.
It must have been no ordinary resolve.
And the result was as already described.

★

That day, after leaving the Chinese restaurant and returning home, the Professor caught a cold and took to bed.
He had a high fever.

When his fever spiked, he muttered:

“Let me beat them! Let me beat them!”
Beat them.
“Beat them.”

For some reason, even the Professor couldn’t quite grasp it. Aimlessly, shadows of fear raced through his mind, yet the substance of those images remained beyond even his own grasp. As he shouted, the Professor’s emotions failed to rally; instead, they turned sorrowful and grew unbearably poignant.

“Beat me! Me. Beat me! Beat me! It hurts, it hurts, it hurts! It’s awful!”

Because Professor Umeki had been absent from school for a long time, the university students came to visit him out of concern.

Since he hadn’t consulted a doctor, it was unclear, but the Professor might already have developed pneumonia.

The university students listened to the Professor’s delirious ramblings and conferred.

“The Professor caught a cold from buying a cheap prostitute, you know.”
“They’re doing their business out in the open, you know.”
“It’s bad for hygiene.”

“Looks like the Professor’s going to die.”

“Looks like the Professor’s going to die,” one of them muttered.
The three of them furtively exchanged glances.
One of them assumed a grown-up face and said calmly.

“I’ll bring our whores then.”
“It’s the whores’ fault.”
“Any whore’ll do.”
“We’ll make ’em apologize to the Professor.”
“If we tell them to beat ’em, they should let us.”
“Granting a man’s last wish is important.”
“I read that somewhere.”
“It’s real important.”
“So we—”

“Yeah, got it already.”

One of them hurriedly nodded and began scratching his head vigorously. He seemed to think it better to scratch off dandruff than to use his head to think.

They soon returned with two prostitutes.
The prostitutes both appeared to be around eighteen years old.
When they sat by the patient’s bedside, one of the university students gave a warning in a hushed voice, yet sternly.

“Listen.”
“Don’t go against the patient, got it? He’s about to die.”
“We’re letting him fulfill his wish.”
“It’s an important thing, you know.”

And then, leaning toward the Professor’s bedside,

“Professor… Professor…”

called out, but the Professor kept his eyes closed, twitching his eyelids restlessly, and only gave a look of annoyance.

“Professor, Professor...”

When they called out even louder, the Professor, annoyed, covered himself with the futon, but

“Hmph, don’t mock me.”
“Do you think I can’t do anything?”

He muttered irritably, but then his thoughts seemed to begin surging into chaotic confusion.

“Do you think my hand trembled?”

Then suddenly, the air grew thick with menace.

“Lies!”
“Shut up!”
“Beat them!”
“Beat them!”
“Beat the prostitutes!”
“Beat them to death!”

Then the screaming suddenly shifted to a plaintive tone.

“Beat me!”
“Me!”
“Beat me!”
“Beat me!”
“It hurts! It hurts! It’s awful!”
“Eeek, eeek”

One of the students, unable to endure the pathetic spectacle any longer, peeled off the Professor’s futon and,

“They’re here, Professor.”
“Please beat the prostitutes.”
“It’s the prostitutes’ fault.”
“The prostitutes are saying they want to apologize to you, Professor.”

The Professor’s eyelids twitched and his eyes opened.

“Professor, do you understand? The prostitutes have come to apologize to you, Professor. If it’s your wish, Professor, they’re saying it’s fine to be beaten.”

The Professor seemed startled again and looked around searching for the prostitutes.
The Professor had always been severely nearsighted, and to make matters worse, since he wasn’t wearing his glasses, he seemed unable to form a clear image of the prostitutes.

An unfortunate thing occurred.
The university students didn’t realize it, but the Professor must have mistaken the prostitutes for the wife who had left him.

The Professor stretched out his hand and searched the void.
The irritated face gradually grew sad and somber.

“You… so you’re a prostitute after all?”

The Professor’s groan was one of deep pain.

The university students could no longer bear to watch and grew restless.

“Professor, the prostitutes have come to apologize.”
“That’s right.”
“This is all the prostitutes’ fault.”
“Go on and act on your urges.”
“I’d say that’s what truly matters.”

And the students urged the prostitutes.
One of the prostitutes, no longer able to endure cowering, burst into raucous laughter.
One of the prostitutes also began laughing reluctantly, but being kindhearted, she suddenly put on a resolute expression, edged closer to the pitiful patient’s bedside, took his hand, brought her face close, and whispered.

“I was wrong.”
“Please forgive me.”

The patient was utterly expressionless.
The Professor’s mind had already descended into delirium.
What delusion arose in the Professor’s mind, no one could tell.

However, it was certain that the Professor was aware of a woman holding the hand.
And the Professor frantically sought and edged closer.

The Professor’s arm wrapped around the woman’s neck.
Then, a mad passion suddenly flared up.
The Professor pulled the woman’s neck closer and tried to find her lips to kiss her.

The woman let out a small yelp and turned her face away, but then, as the Professor’s other hand began writhing persistently up and down her waist and soon extended toward her crotch, she grasped his intent and let out an explosive shriek as she recoiled.
However, the force of the Professor’s arm wrapped around the woman’s neck was desperate.
The Professor, dragged by the woman’s scream, slid forward but didn’t release the arm he’d wrapped around her.

The Professor frantically tried to pull the woman closer still.
Due to the balance of their strength, a forceful yet uncanny stillness persisted for some time.

A groan—*Ugh*—escaped from the Professor’s mouth.
And that was the last.
Gradually, the Professor’s strength waned.
And the Professor was dead.

The woman who had loosened the Professor’s arm and freed her neck looked around at everyone. She was angry.

“Why are you all just watching in silence?”
“So you turned me into your little show, huh?”

“That’s not it.
Look here!
We’re all standing here, aren’t we?
We didn’t know what to do.
But look—
The Professor’s already dead, I tell you.”

“That’s a lie.
How could someone with that brute strength die so suddenly?”

“But he’s stopped moving, hasn’t he?”

The five of them stared silently at the Professor.
The Professor was indeed dead.

The woman looked startled, but her anger hadn’t subsided.

“This person is an idiot, a lunatic.”
“To do such a thing at the moment of death—I’ve never heard of anything like it since the time of Kaibyaku!”

Everyone remained solemnly silent for a while.
Another prostitute spoke with self-mockery.
There was in her words a certain fearful respect and decorum toward the deceased.

"That's not really it.
"He just forgot to make you hand over the money—that's all."

The three men exchanged looks, made understanding expressions as if to say "Yeah, that’s right," and showed them to one another.
It was the woman who had already wanted to leave.
And through their expressions, they silently inferred each other’s thoughts and noisily trooped out of the room.