Pathway to Japanese Literature

Whenever Yajima went to Kanda on business, he would browse through used bookstores as he always did. Then, a copy of Mr. Ota Ryo’s A Study of Social Organization in Ancient Japan caught his eye, so he picked it up.

It was a book he had once owned, but during his military deployment, the fires of war had completely destroyed his collection. Though reuniting with lost books was nostalgic and made it hard not to pick them up, even if he were to buy back a volume or two now, he found himself with no desire to do so. Yet parting with them was difficult, leaving behind a bittersweet ache.

When he turned the page, there on the frontispiece was the seal "Kamio's library seal." It was a familiar seal. It was undoubtedly his deceased friend’s book. His vacant home had also been destroyed in the war flames, and his widow was supposed to have returned to her parents’ home in Sendai.

Yajima bought the book out of nostalgia. When he returned to the office and opened it, a familiar sheet of stationery appeared from between the pages. It was Gyomon Library stationery. Both Yajima and Kamio had worked in its editorial department until their military deployment. On the page, only numbers were written as follows.

34 14 14

37 1 7

36 4 10

54 11 2

370 1 2

366 2 4

370 1 1

369 3 1

367 9 6

365 10 3

365 10 7

365 11 4

365 10 9

368 6 2

370 10 7

367 6 1

370 4 1

He thought it might be a memorandum noting down pages, but since identical numbers were aligned repeatedly, that didn’t seem to be the case.
It couldn’t possibly be a cipher, but with time to spare, he felt an urge to test it on a whim. When he counted to page thirty-four, line fourteen, the fourteenth character, and proceeded four characters further, he suddenly tensed up.
Because they formed words.

“We’re at the usual place, July 5th at 3:00 PM.”

The entire cipher formed these phrases.
It was clearly a cipher.

Kamio was a man of skilled penmanship, but these numbers were not written in his elegant hand—they appeared to be in a woman’s handwriting. However, even if this book had been sold off during the evacuation, since it was written on Gyomon Library stationery, there could be little doubt that this cipher was connected to Kamio.

The stationery was folded into four parts. Then it seemed to be a letter from his lover.

Yajima was Kamio's closest friend.
This was because their interests aligned—both were drawn to history, particularly ethnological research on the Age of the Gods.
They would lend each other documents, share their research findings, and frequently embark on research trips together.
Given such closeness, they knew each other's private lives intimately and shared most acquaintances, yet looking back, their companions in scholarly pursuits numbered only two—among Gyomon Library's employees, no like-minded colleagues could be found.
Not only was this book one rarely seen on the market—Yajima had owned it for some time—but he seemed to recall that Kamio had acquired it around the time Yajima was deployed.

Moreover, Yajima had not heard any talk of Kamio having a lover before his deployment.
If that had been the case, even if he had hidden it from his wife, he should have confessed it to Yajima.

Yajima had been deployed on March 2, 1944; Kamio was deployed in February of the following year and crossed over to North China, where he died in battle.

When he considered this, July 5th must have been that day in 1944 after Yajima had been deployed. Yajima had been taking the company’s stationery home and using it. The other employees had all been doing the same; since paper was unavailable in stores at the time, each of them had brought home quantities anticipating long-term stockpiling, and thus a considerable amount of this stationery must have remained at Yajima’s vacant house after his deployment.

Yajima thought about his wife Takako.
The only place among Kamio's acquaintances that kept this book was Yajima's vacant house, and there, this stationery had also been present.

Kamio was not a frivolous person.
Nor was he a womanizer.
However, humans without the capacity for infidelity do not exist, and a person devoid of that possibility cannot be found.

When Yajima returned from demobilization, Takako was blind and living at her parents’ home.
Takako, who had been struck directly at home, lost her sight on the spot and collapsed, was carried away on a stretcher and survived, but in the chaos became separated from their two children—where they died remained unknown, and all trace of them vanished.

After Takako was admitted to the hospital, contact was made with the family home. When the father came to Tokyo over two weeks after the disaster, he had the burned ruins shown to him, but not a single clue was found—or so it was said.

The burn scars on Takako’s face had healed so completely over time that one had to look closely to notice them, but the blindness in both eyes remained irreversible.

Kamio died in battle.
Takako went blind.

Realizing he himself considered this the work of divine punishment, Yajima found it despicable, yet the pain remained unbearable.

There was no proof Takako had written the cipher, and with one now blind and the other dead, there seemed no reason to dredge up the past.
Since the war had been a nightmare, he tried to steady his resolve—bringing the purchased book home only to shove it into a corner, determined not to tell Takako anything.
Yet these very efforts became an added burden; the agony of hoarding this secret within his breast alone seemed to accumulate endlessly.

Before long, Yajima suddenly noticed.
Until he was deployed, Takako had always stayed close to Yajima’s left side.
The sweet memories of their newlywed days had remained with Takako and had formed a habit.

Late at night, Yajima sat at his desk engrossed in reading.
Takako drew near.
Yajima paused his reading and kissed her.
They would tickle each other, burst into giggles, and spend their carefree newlywed days together—yet even then, Takako always kept to Yajima’s left side.
Even in the bedroom, she always prepared her pillow on her husband’s left side.

Newlywed life opens up a new world.
Yajima savored the feminine world Takako had revealed to him.
At times curiosity stirred within him, sparking investigative urges.
In that realm of fresh discovery, he found himself contemplating Takako’s unwavering habit—how she invariably clung to the left side when sitting and slept on the left, as precise as a seal imprint.
It couldn’t be instinct.
Perhaps there was some ancient custom she’d been taught that he alone didn’t know—yet after nearly twenty years studying historical texts without encountering such a tradition, he concluded this likely wasn’t the case.

When he considered this, was the man’s right hand meant to be the caressing hand? As he thought this, Takako’s left-side positioning—though not quite resembling animal instinct nor a pleasant notion—might have simply become their natural habit, arising from a realm of meaningless sensations; after all, in reality, the right side didn’t feel quite right to him either.

However, when he returned from the war, Takako would sometimes lean to his left side, other times to his right, and even when sleeping, her position had become inconsistent. Yet that too was only natural. Takako was blind. Yajima had been thinking that.

However, as he pondered over the cipher letters from one thing to another, Yajima suddenly noticed a horrifying realization and, in his confusion, was momentarily left dazed.

Kamio was left-handed.

★

After being demobilized, Yajima had served as publishing department head at a fairly prominent publisher.
As it happened, Yajima had to go to Sendai on company business to request a manuscript. Since Mrs. Kamio was evacuated there—an opportunity he ought to take regardless—he stuffed the book in question into his bag.

After completing his business duties, when he visited Mrs. Kamio’s evacuation residence, it was a house with a commanding view atop a hill that had escaped the fires, overlooking the undulating flow of the Hirose River.

Mrs. Kamio joyfully offered food and drink to celebrate their reunion, but as she too raised her glass and intoxication filled her eyes, she seemed to burn with vivid emotion, and he felt as though he were truly discovering the beauty of a woman who still possessed her sight.

Mrs. Kamio had always been a beautiful woman, but compared to Takako who lacked sight, what a vivid contrast she presented! However, when I considered that this vibrant woman was a victim betrayed by Kamio and Takako just like myself, the shabbiness of the perpetrators felt bitterly ironic, and my own reality seemed truly strange.

If Takako had not merely remained blind but had died like the children, perhaps I would have seized this opportunity today to propose and married this person.
Suddenly, I found myself thinking such things.
And when I noticed myself growing strangely lustful, my thoughts could not help being assailed by the intense conviction that Kamio and Takako had been exactly as I now was—that they too had existed in this way.

Kamio’s eldest daughter returned from school.
She was already a second-year student at girls' school.
If Yajima’s daughter had been alive, she would have been the same age.
Kamio’s eldest daughter had become a vibrant, cheerful, and beautiful schoolgirl.
Eyes even more vivid and bright than her mother’s—walking, sitting, turning away to leave, coming back, laughing, eyes that showed shyness.
Yajima thought about his wife—always sitting dejectedly; the woman who moved along the walls as if crawling; and at times, the creature that clung to his shoulder, reduced to mere dead weight, shuffling forward inch by inch.
If only his two children had lived and been walking around him as vibrantly as this girl—such thoughts suddenly came to him, and he felt an urge to break down in tears.
Suddenly his heart sank and seemed unlikely to rise again. When he could no longer bear sitting still, he finally brought up that matter.

“Actually, at a used bookstore in Kanda, I found one of Mr. Kamio’s books from his collection. I purchased it and have been treasuring it as a memento.”

He took out the book from his bag.

“Did you sell all of Mr. Kamio’s books?”

Mrs. Kamio took the book in her hands and gazed at the ownership seal on the frontispiece.

“When Kamio was deployed, he specified which books could be sold and which should not before leaving.”
“I had wanted to evacuate all of them without selling if possible, but with transportation shortages back then, we could only move a minimal portion from the categorized collection.”
“In the end I sold them off for pennies. I’d even worried that if Kamio had returned alive, he would have been heartbroken.”

“Even though they were all precious books for those who wanted them, did you sell them off in bulk to a used bookstore?”

“I sold them off in bulk to a small used bookstore nearby. The price was so low that I didn’t even want the money, but when I think of how deeply my husband loved those books—his cherished possessions—it felt as though my flesh were being torn away.”

“However, evacuating before being burned out was wise of you.”

“That alone was a blessing.”
“Since we evacuated simultaneously with his deployment—in February of Showa 20—it was still a time when Tokyo hadn’t yet suffered the great air raids.”

Considering this, there had been no instance where Kamio’s books had passed into the hands of his Gyomon Library colleagues. The July 5th of that cipher was confined to Showa 19—who could its author be other than Takako?

He thought to casually mention, “There was something like a strange cipher in that book,” but since the mood would surely turn solemn, he found himself utterly unable to broach the subject. People with eyes were such an inconvenience at times, Yajima thought.

Then Mrs. Kamio, who had been examining the book, suddenly looked up and—

“But how strange.”
“I do believe this book was brought here though.”
“I do certainly recognize it.”

“That must be a mistake in your memory.”

“Yes—this copy clearly bears the ownership seal here—it’s peculiar, but I distinctly recognize it too.”
“Let’s investigate.”

Under Mrs. Kamio’s guidance, Yajima was led to where the books were kept.
Around a hundred books were piled in the corner of the tokonoma alcove.

Immediately, Mrs. Kamio shouted.
“There it was.”
“Here, right here.”
“This one, right?”

Yajima was stunned. An undeniably unbelievable fact was unfolding. The same book was there, unmistakably. Yajima picked up the book and checked inside. The frontispiece of this book bore no library seal of Kamio's. He couldn't make sense of it. Unable to comprehend it, he absentmindedly flipped through the pages when he noticed sections here and there marked with red lines. When he skimmed through them, he suddenly realized. That was Yajima's book. There was no mistaking the vermilion lines he himself had drawn.

“I see.”
“This one here is my own book.”
“When on earth did they get switched like this?”

“It truly is a mysterious thing, isn’t it?”

Kamio and Takako had arranged to use this book for their cipher.
Could it be that during their planning sessions, they had switched them by mistake?
This was divine retribution—evidence of wrongdoing unveiled to the world—and with Kamio and Takako’s relationship now appearing irrevocably bound, the bleakness of such conclusive proof, its utter futility, overwhelmed Yajima until he collapsed into vacant-eyed desolation.

However, as a single memory surfaced, a beam of light gradually pierced through—Eureka!
Like someone who had cried out “Eureka!”, a startling discovery occurred.

It was Yajima himself who had mixed up the books. Yajima had lent this book to Kamio. Eventually, Kamio too had obtained this book. When Yajima received his draft notice and was invited to a farewell gathering at Kamio’s house, he brought back several volumes he had borrowed and meant to return—one of which was this very book. And when they went to retrieve that book, the two were already drunk and took it without proper inspection. That must have been when the mistake occurred.

Because Yajima had departed for the front in such haste without time to check inside the book, his own volume ended up remaining at Kamio’s house.

★

Yajima, nostalgic for the sole surviving volume from his own collection, left behind the book he had brought within the original owner's library and took his own book back to Tokyo instead.

However, the more he thought about it, the less sense it made.

That book—the one that should have been in his vacant house, the one that should have been reduced entirely to ashes—why had it been displayed in a bookstore?

Had they sold the collection before the disaster?
There should have been no reason for financial hardship.
Since he had inherited assets from his parents, unlike now under the blockade, there could have been no difficulty making ends meet.

When Yajima returned to Tokyo, he asked Takako.

“One volume from my collection was at a used bookstore.”

“I see.”
“That’s unusual.”
“If only everything hadn’t burned—that would’ve been better, don’t you think?”
“You bought it, didn’t you?”
“Let me see it.”

Takako placed the book on her lap and stroked it nostalgically.

“What kind of book is it?”

“It’s a book with a long-winded name.”
“It’s called *A Study of Social Organization in Ancient Japan*.”

As Yajima uttered the book’s title, his face stiffened, but Takako merely continued stroking it quietly.

“All my books should’ve burned. Why was one on display in a shop? It’s strange.”
“You didn’t sell it, did you?”

“I wouldn’t have sold it.”

“You didn’t lend it to anyone while I was away?”

“Well, if it were magazines or novels, I might’ve lent them to the neighbors—but there’s no way I’d lend out such a big, heavy book.”

“Was it stolen?”

“No, that didn’t happen either.”

A book that should have turned entirely to ashes remained and was being sold. As for the strangeness of it, Takako did not seem particularly struck by its strangeness and merely seemed oddly nostalgic for it.

“You must’ve lent it to someone, forgotten about it, and then it got sold.”

“You must’ve lent it to someone, forgotten about it, and then it got sold,” Takako said calmly.

Of course, that was impossible.
It was a book that had returned to the home just before his deployment.

Takako was blind.
While eyes form the center of expression, losing them might equate to losing all expression.
At the very least, without eyes, suppressing one’s expressions through effort must undoubtedly prove easy.
Yajima had no choice but to realize that his attempts to discern truth from Takako’s face were futile.

However, there was still a way.
Since he had come this far, he resolved to exhaust every method at his disposal.

Yajima went to the used bookstore in Kanda where he had bought the book and inquired about its seller. Although it wasn’t in the ledger, the storekeeper remembered the book—it hadn’t been brought in for sale, but rather he had proactively gone to purchase it based on a notification, and he told him it was from such-and-such a house.

The place was a Western-style house that had survived the flames, not particularly large.

The owner was absent, and there was no one who could provide information about the book’s origin, but since the workplace was located near Yajima’s company, he went there and managed to meet him. That person was a thirty-five or thirty-six-year-old man who appeared frail and was an editor at a certain academic specialty publishing company.

Their professions were similar, but as fellow bibliophiles, upon hearing Yajima’s reason for coming, the editor seemed to feel considerable sympathetic understanding toward the troubles surrounding a single book.

The man’s account went like this:

On an early summer day when Tokyo had mostly become a burnt field, as he was walking near his home, there was a man on a sparsely trafficked road who had spread out newspaper and lined up about twenty-odd books, waiting for customers. When he stopped by, they were all notable books on Japanese history that had been hard to obtain at the time, so he purchased over half of them, excluding those he already owned. Many of the books he had acquired were Kirishitan-related, and when he inquired about their titles, they clearly matched those from Yajima’s collection. He had let go of ancient-era materials for bamboo shoot funds but kept Kirishitan-related ones on hand, so it was said there were around ten volumes from Yajima’s former collection.

“Could it be that what was taken outside and survived the flames was stolen?”

said the editor.

“Probably, that’s right.”
“My wife lost her eyesight that day, and our two children were burned to death.”
“During the two weeks it took to establish contact with our hometown and for my father to come up to Tokyo, there was no one to watch over the burned ruins of my house—so by the time he went to the site, nothing remained.”
“But since my wife never mentioned having taken out any books, I couldn’t have imagined part of my collection had survived like this.”

However, now that it had become clear how Yajima’s collection had survived the flames, what remained inexplicable was why Takako’s cipher had been written inside a book that had unmistakably belonged to Yajima’s household. She must have forgotten to remove it—no, forgetting was impossible. She must have written it once, then rewritten it separately when circumstances required changes. One had to conclude she had carelessly left behind that earlier message. Even so, Kamio was dead. Yajima’s house had burned down. All household belongings had been lost to the flames, and among the mere dozen or so books that remained only to be stolen—within which Takako had left behind a single cipher note—the one volume concealing the secret’s sole clue had traversed countless paths to return to Yajima’s own hands. What a twist of fate this was.

Kamio had died, Takako had gone blind, and the secret's main players had lost their lives—yet this single surviving trace of the secret on earth had escaped the kalpic flames, slipped through thieves' fingers, and ultimately been compelled to return to the mystery's sole decipherer! Did that solitary book not contain some demonic persistence of will? It resembled nothing so much as the vengeful obsession of that specter from Yotsuya Kaidan. Even viewing this as divine will made it no less terrifying in its tenacity—a coincidence so strange it defied mortal understanding.

As Yajima sank into contemplation, the man misinterpreted [his silence].

“To tell you the truth, even though it was for bamboo shoot funds, I now deeply regret having parted with my cherished books. Precisely because I feel this way myself, I understand your feelings well—but now that these volumes have once entered my keeping, the truth is I don’t believe I can endure the anguish of relinquishing them.”

Yajima hurriedly cut off the man’s awkwardly roundabout words,

“No, no. Even if about ten volumes of my burned collection were to return to my hands now, it would only make me feel more sorrowful. I was merely reminiscing about the time my family suffered the disaster and sank into a bit of emotion, that’s all.”

With that, he thanked [him] for his kindness and bid farewell.

★

That evening, Yajima asked Takako:

“I’ve figured out how that book survived.”
“There were ten or so other books that escaped the flames too.”
“Someone took them out before the house burned down.”
“You said you didn’t take any books out, didn’t you?”
“Who could have taken them out?”
“Could you have forgotten?”
“Try to calmly remember what happened then.”

Takako, her sightless face turned toward him, seemed to be thinking.

“The air-raid siren went off, and then, what did you do?”

“That day, I already knew this area would burn down.
"That was all that remained.
Before the air-raid siren sounded, I’d already changed into my air-raid clothes—but waking the sleeping children and getting them ready took so long.
Knowing we’d burn, I rushed through preparations—but when I stepped outside, before I could look up, searchlights were swirling and anti-aircraft guns roared as flames erupted everywhere.
When I suddenly realized—the plane caught in the searchlight’s crossbeams was heading straight for us.
I went mad with fear—dragged the children by both hands into the shelter.
In that moment, terror consumed me—no thought of saving anything.
But as we huddled there holding our breath—even through the fear—wanting began to grow inside us.
Then Akio said—‘Mom—we can’t get burned out empty-handed!’
Kazuko cried—‘We’ll starve as beggars! Grab something!’
We left the shelter.
By then—the whole sky burned crimson.
Just a glimpse—
We ran wildly.
But then—my eyes still saw.
The entire sky—no gaps—all blazing red.
Yes—
Swaying—flowing toward us—that whole fiery sky.”

With the fiery sky still imprinted within them, Takako’s eyes had been sealed shut forever—and Yajima wondered whether even now, that blazing firmament alone might still be burning across her vision. It was a sorrow too piercing to endure.

Whether pursuing justice truly warranted dredging up buried secrets of the past—even if doing so meant braving cruelty that evoked a lifetime’s resentment, of eyes scorched blind by truth’s sparks until one fell—Yajima secretly posed this question to his heart. Before he could settle on an answer, Takako’s voice pressed onward.

“I’m a coward, so fear overcame me, and I don’t remember anything clearly after that.”
“We must have gone back and forth at least three times.”
“We must have carried things like food and bedding, but even though my eyes could still see then… I can no longer remember what they saw.”
“The last thing I saw wasn’t an object—it was a sound.”
“A flash with the sound—that was the last.”
“That night I made the children get ready, took their hands and ran, huddled together pressed close in the air-raid shelter—yet despite all that, I never saw their figures.”
“The last thing I saw was the burning sky—the demonic sky. The children must’ve slipped past me, carrying something, passing by—yet I never saw them.”
“Why… why couldn’t I see?”
“I couldn’t see.”
“Why… why couldn’t I see anything?”

“That’s enough.”
“Stop it.”
“I’m sorry for making you remember such sad things.”

Because there was no way Takako could have seen, Yajima covered his ears with both hands and lay down. And then he resolved to cease his pursuit any further.

However, when a different feeling arose the next day—that was one matter and this another—a suspicion also welled up within him: that veiling secrets through the sorrow of blindness might itself be one of Takako’s stratagems.
There was a single piece of evidence—not a bookmark.
The dramatic nature of how it had threaded through fire with demonic persistence to return to her husband’s hands seemed to suggest a destined fate—to break through the woman’s fiendish stratagems and lay bare the truth.

When he arrived at work that day, a call came from the owner of his books whom he had met the previous day.

“Actually, Mr. Yajima,”

The speaker reported an utterly unexpected fact.

"I should have mentioned this yesterday, but it’s only now that I’ve finally remembered."
"In your old collection of books—you see—when I opened them upon purchase, every single one had sheets of paper inserted with numbers arranged like page memos."
"From that person’s perspective, I thought they must be important records, you see. I never imagined I’d encounter their original owner, but well… I felt a certain sentiment, as if wanting to care for them, so I left them just as they were, still inserted in the books."
"If you wish, I shall deliver those records tomorrow."

Yajima hurriedly answered.

"No—those records must stay with their books or they'll become meaningless."
"Then when you return home—would you let me accompany you and retrieve them from inside the books?"

And Yajima obtained consent.

Each book had its own cipher. What could that mean? Indeed, his and Kamio’s book collections were mostly the same. They would assign numbers to books and switch volumes for each letter exchanged. Even so, in the single letter he held, there was no number corresponding to a book’s code. If they had predetermined the order of the books, the numbers would be unnecessary—yet still he couldn’t grasp why every volume contained a cipher. That they botched writing one for each book was strange enough; stranger still was how they invariably left those failures inside the books themselves.

While the mystery remained unsolved, Yajima was guided by the book’s owner and went to their house.

Having obtained permission under the pretext of needing to investigate something for about ten minutes, when he searched through his former collection of books, there were eleven volumes.
Among them were books containing two sheets, three sheets, one sheet—eighteen cipher documents in total appeared.
Yajima immediately began deciphering.

During that brief time spent deciphering, Yajima felt he had shed more tears than the total amount he had cried throughout his entire life up until that day.
His body felt hollow.
What a dear cipher this was.

The author of the cipher had not been Takako.
It was a letter that the two deceased children, Akio and Kazuko, had been exchanging.

Because there was no connection between the books, there was no connection in the surviving ciphers either.
However, the happy life of the children being recounted there tore at his heart.
The ciphers appeared to have started around summer, as there were none from before July.
We have gone to Sakini-pūru. July 10th, 3:00 PM.

This handwriting was wild, large, and uneven—it was Akio’s.

We are at the usual place.

There were also some with the same meaning as that particular letter.
Where was 'the usual place'?
It was undoubtedly a fun secret place—probably a park or something similar.
How delightful a place it must have been.

Please don’t tell Mom about the puppy under Enno. September 3rd, 7:30 PM.

Because they’re crying, I think they’ll figure it out even if we hide it.

There were several other letters about the puppy.
What had become of that puppy in the end?
That was not told in the cipher letters.

Where did the brother and sister learn such ciphers?
Since it was during the war, they must have had many opportunities to learn about cipher methods.

For them, it must have been an enjoyable script for their cipher games—so much so that even in dire emergencies, they desperately took them out and threw them into the air-raid shelter without fail.
The fact that they chose not to use their own books but instead selected particularly imposing large volumes from their father’s collection must have been because the authority of the cipher as a grave secret demanded it.

The fact that he had mistaken those ciphers for Takako’s now struck him as absurd, yet in this reality—where the ciphers alone had slipped through war’s all-consuming flames to finally meet the father’s eyes after everything else had burned away—Yajima could only conclude that some fierce tenacity had been at work.

Could it be unreasonable to think that the children’s single-minded plea—their prayer to speak one final farewell to their father—was imbued within those cipher papers?

Yajima was, however, satisfied.
He was fulfilled far more deeply than had he been able to locate his children’s remains.

We are now playing in heaven.
For he believed that the cipher had indeed come to speak to Father in this way and to comfort him inversely.