Pathway to Japanese Literature

Because ridiculing souls and passions was an exceedingly easy thing, I cannot count how many times I wavered when trying to recollect this period of my life. Am I still mocking them now? I may praise them. Because I realized they were all falsehoods yet could also be truths, I found myself utterly ridiculous.

Yada Tsuyeko died during this war.
Clutching the death notice postcard in my hand, I shed a tear or two over the span of two or three minutes.
By then, Japan’s defeat was already evident—it was only a matter of time before the homeland would become a battlefield; I too would die, most Japanese men would perish en masse, leaving only women behind who would likely be killed or toyed with by enraged soldiers—and with this thought, I felt a sense of relief, as if a weight had been lifted.

In other words, even then I still had Miren regarding Yada Tsuyeko, but I believe Yada Tsuyeko was likewise.

During the war, I was asked by Ooi Hirokatsu and became a contributor to the coterie magazine called Gendai Bungaku.
At that time, Noguchi Fujio was handling the editing and, acting on his own initiative, requested a manuscript from Yada Tsuyeko without consulting us.
When I saw that magazine, I became furious.
It was because it seemed as though I had incited Noguchi Fujio and made Ms. Yada submit a manuscript.
Indeed, Inoue Tomoichiro had misinterpreted things in that way and reportedly pestered Ooi Hirokatsu, demanding, “Where does the editor’s authority lie?”—and while Inoue’s thinking so was hardly unreasonable, it was precisely because of this that Yada Tsuyeko must have become even more convinced of the same notion, which made my fury all the more intense.

However, at that time, as I listened to Noguchi Fujio’s story—about how Ms. Yada had brought the manuscript to his house instead of mailing it, and how he remarked, “Ms. Yada is quite beautiful”—I felt a heartrending pang of sorrow.

Back when we had just met and were living in the throes of a childish passion—the kind where missing each other for a single day felt like suffocation—Yada Tsuyeko spat out, “We’re not children.”
It did not mean we were not children in matters of love and desire, but rather that we had been deceived by a man named Oshima Keiji and become involved with a dubious magazine—thus her words were an expression of anger toward Oshima. Yet strangely, I cannot forget those words.

Were you an adult?
And me?
I am utterly foolish.
Above all else, the pretentious airs of soul and passion are achingly, unbearably foolish.
That foolishness—I feel as though you understood it even more keenly than I did.
Yet despite this, you—instead of mailing it—could perform the feat of deliberately delivering the manuscript to Noguchi’s house. But whether to call that a woman’s audacity or sadness, I lack the confidence to declare all of it foolish, and so my anguish grows all the more unbearable.

From around that time, you appeared to have taken ill and been confined to bed.
And until your death was reduced to a single postcard notice, I hadn’t even known you were bedridden with tuberculosis.

My mother had believed with conviction that you and I would marry, yet she died leaving her hopes unfulfilled with this shiftless version of me.
Your mother was alive.
Because within your death notice was the name of your living mother—Chie’s mother.
Yada Chie—that name, I have not even forgotten.
Even more than my mother, she must have hoped for our marriage.
It was your mother who would narrow her eyes in delight as I was treated to meals and got drunk at your house.
Your mother would talk to me endlessly.
However, without your interpretation, I could scarcely understand a word she said.
Because it was such a thick Akita dialect.

The death notice was nothing more than a printed postcard, but the name of Yada Chie—your living mother—pierced my heart. And within those printed characters lay "barely fortunate"—it announced that Tsuyeko had died. "Barely fortunate"—I don't believe you truly thought that way. The foolishness of human existence—of clinging to life—you must have understood it all too well.

Yet your mother undoubtedly clung to this notion of "barely fortunate," and I felt her fury and curses aimed solely at me. And I wept. Two or three minutes. One or two thin tears. The only vision that came through my weeping was of you speaking with my mother in some shadowy realm of death, tending to her as though she were your own. And I wept.

I find this plausible expression of mine aching.
When written like this, it becomes nothing but this plausibility—the wretchedness of expression feels unbearably foolish.
Yet if I deny that truth, I sense myself mocking passion and soul from the very start.
Am I truly capable of writing?

★

I was twenty-seven at the time.
I was called an up-and-coming writer, and at that time, I was completely immersed in an absurd, complacent life.

The literary world at that time was arrayed with established authors and mid-career stalwarts; the times were in the rock-bottom depths of economic depression, magazines were few in number, and there were scarcely any that paid manuscript fees—thus leaving no room for newcomers to emerge.
In such an era, I had somehow become an up-and-coming writer—though I had only written about three novels in my life. I was invited into a coterie magazine, but convinced I would remain a lifelong failure regardless, I spent my days reading nothing but Molière and Voltaire, devoid of even the fundamental drive to know what I ought to write as a literary man.
It was merely because I was skilled at writing—overrated by senior writers—that I abruptly ended up being labeled an up-and-coming writer.

I wrote a novel titled *Wind Doctor* for a coterie magazine.
It was a prose farce—I had been fond of reading Poe’s nonsensical stories like *X-ing a Paragrab* and *Bon-Bon*, so I simply thought I’d try writing one myself. But even Baudelaire had excluded such foolish nonsense from his French translations of Poe, so there was no way it would ever gain mainstream acceptance.
I had given up from the very beginning.
Yet, under the guise of protesting Baudelaire, I found satisfaction in secretly ridiculing his critical eye—which prized works like *The Fall of the House of Usher* while excluding this kind of farce—all while translating Poe.
That was my literary spirit at the time: I myself had come to believe in the literature of the defeated.

However, I had no confidence.
There was no way there could be any.
It had no foundation.
All I had was my prose.
Since that prose was nothing to be conceited about, I never dreamed that such a shoddy novel would earn praise or propel me to become an up-and-coming writer.

Around that time, six or seven members of the coterie magazine would gather at someone’s house in Shimo-Ochiai and stay up all night; since we didn’t drink alcohol back then, we steamed potatoes, sprinkled them with salt, and spent the night debating literature.
At dawn, Takahashi Kouichi (now the proofreading department head at Kamakura Bunko) went out to buy food and, while at it, skimmed through *Bungei Shunju*, where he discovered that Makino Shin’ichi had written an essay titled *Wind Doctor* lavishly praising me.

There is nothing as utterly lacking as human vanity.
From that moment onward, I completely forgot my lack of confidence up until the previous day and came to believe being praised was only natural.
I was twenty-six at the time.
It was around July.
And that same month I was made to write a novel for *Bungei Shunju*, and from then on as an up-and-coming writer, my reckless vanity persisted even into my twenty-seventh year.
Around that time came *Bunka*, a semi-professional coterie magazine published by Shunyodo.
Makino Shin’ichi stood as its de facto leader with Kobayashi Hideo, Isomata Kamura, Tetsutaro Kawakami, Kenzaburo Nakajima and myself among its contributors; I believe our manuscript fee ran about fifty sen per page.
So economically depressed was that era that magazines paying even fifty sen per manuscript counted as rare treasures.
It folded after five issues.
I serialized *Bamboo Thicket House*.

There was a bar that this coterie frequented.
It was a place called Winsor Café, which had ties to Aoyama Jirou through his interior design work; Aoyama Jirou had drawn the cover for *Bunka* and seems to have been something akin to a member of the coterie.
Aoyama Jirou was on the verge of drinking away his entire fortune, yet he alone would drink champagne all night and live in great prosperity, while the rest of us were utterly destitute.
I often drank with Makino Shin'ichi, Kawakami Tetsutaro, and Nakajima Kenzaburo, and frequently joined forces with people from the old coterie magazines to drink.
I began drinking after meeting Makino Shin’ichi, and though my debut work was a nondescript memoir titled *From the Sake Storehouse in the Wintry Wind*, the truth is I hadn’t touched a single drop of alcohol at the time.
Nishida Yoshirou of *Kaizō* was also one of our drinking companions at the time, but it was at this bar that I became acquainted with Nakahara Chuuya.

One late night, Kawakami and I took two barmaids from this establishment, went bar-hopping, and ended up staying at his house.
Kawakami had ulterior motives, so he took one of the women and left for another room, but I, left behind, was greatly inconvenienced.
Because, in truth, I too had feelings for the girl Kawakami had taken away, and I didn’t care for the woman left behind.
Though I say "feelings," it was merely that between the two, I preferred her; at the time, I was inexperienced, so even though the woman left behind suggested we sleep together, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Before long, Kawakami popped his face out and asked, "You done?"
He had been rejected by the girl.
“I got rejected,” he said, laughing bashfully as he returned hand in hand with the girl.
This girl was seventeen.

The next morning, Kawakami’s wife indignantly brought us milk and bread, but since we couldn’t part ways sober, the four of us went drinking somewhere from morning onward before finally separating. At that time, when I said to the seventeen-year-old girl, “Actually, I like you more,” she replied, “Me too,” and we ended up becoming shamelessly close.

This girl was a heavy drinker.
It was rare for me to be loved this much.
Because she was the age of Yaoya Oshichi, her way of loving was reckless.
We wandered from that hotel to this inn, even staying at my house.
It was always the girl who suggested, “Let’s go stay somewhere,” or “Take me with you,” and so we would set off, seen off by our friend Kanko’s voice—but there was no physical relationship between this girl and me.
The girl had no knowledge whatsoever about the body.

"I'm not a virgin, you know," the girl said.
Despite that, this girl did not know what a virgin was.
Lovers and married couples merely kissed, shared a bed, embraced and held each other; believing solely in this, the girl was supremely intoxicated by that emotion.
She vehemently rejected any physical relations and indignantly demanded, “Why would you do such a thing?”
She knew absolutely nothing.

And yet, she simply wanted to keep embracing me forever, wanted us to go stay somewhere together; whenever I didn’t show my face at the bar, she would come to invite me—the girl, so consumed by her feelings for me, began showing signs of neurasthenia.
She staggered about, muttering incessantly, and I began to feel somewhat uneasy.
The girl couldn’t understand that I had stopped going to stay over because I found it foolish—the rejection of physical intimacy.

Nakahara Chuuya harbored some feelings for this girl.
Until then, I had not known Chuuya at all, but he—because the girl was infatuated with me—had been cursing me vehemently, and one day when I was drinking with friends, he shouted "Hey, Ango!" and lunged at me.

Though it's said he lunged at me, he was actually two or three meters away, his hair disheveled as he threw piston-like jabs, straights, uppercuts, swings, and hooks, breathlessly brawling against a shadow. Chuuya probably truly believed he was confronting me in earnest. Because I had started guffawing, he stared blankly, his hands hanging limp, and gazed at me with a puzzled look. When I invited him, saying, “Come over here and have a drink with me,” he barged in while muttering strange things like, “You’re one hell of a bastard,” and “You’re German hegemony,” and we became friends. We became very close friends, and I started bar-hopping with Chuuya more than anyone else, but afterward, he showed not even a hint of jealousy over the girl—in short, I think he hadn’t been in love with her at all but had simply wanted to become friends with me, having only wished to create the appearance of resenting me due to his supposed infatuation with her.

“Hey, how many times a week do you score with women?”
“I can only score twice.”
“I want to score once every two days.”
Chuuya constantly lamented, “Poverty’s agony,” putting up grandiose signs for private French lessons to fund his pursuits—yet with only one student paying four or five yen monthly. He’d groan when tuition money vanished during drinking sprees, bemoaned earning thirty yen for three hundred pages of translation, forever sighing in despair.
No matter how drunk he got while drinking, he always remembered exactly how many bottles he’d consumed—hoarding just enough coins for after-hours escapades. When I blew every last yen I had on drink, he’d rail: “Ango! What a goddamn waste of booze!”—voice trembling with fury and resentment.
In the end, he’d go threaten soft targets like Nakajima Kenzaburo—“Hand over cash!”—so that Kenzaburo took to fleeing whenever he spotted Chuuya.

That spring, I traveled to Kyoto for a little over a month.
Through Kawakami’s introduction, Ooka Shohei, who was still a student at Kyoto University at the time, had prepared a room for me at his boarding house, and it was then that I became friends with Katou Eirin.
He guided me every night to Kyoto’s drinking establishments, and we also traveled together to Kobe for about a week.
Katou Eirin was also a Kyoto University student, mixed-race with a Swedish mother, and possessed such striking beauty that female friends surrounded him in both Kyoto and Kobe. He was adored by Kuroda Takako, a lovely woman painter who was herself quite beautiful, but Eirin did not seem particularly fond of her; instead, he displayed an inclination toward some rather plain-faced, boorish girl from Kobe whose name I can’t recall.
It might have been just appearances.
He was a sentimental Tommy.

This is an unnecessary digression, but during this Kobe trip, I was guided to a five-story Western-style mansion on a mountainside deep in the wilderness—what people called Hermann's derelict house.
Mr. Hermann was originally a sailor or some such—a penniless drunkard—but when his brother, an immensely wealthy man, died and the inheritance came into his possession, he suddenly became a man of great fortune. Thus he built this grand mansion here, erected a tower atop its five stories, installed a searchlight within this tower, and whenever his train arrived at Nishinomiya Station, would beam the searchlight from the mountaintop tower.
Mr. Hermann would emerge into this light and board the waiting automobile.
The searchlight's beam would track the vehicle across the mountain until it entered the mansion grounds, and when I visited, this very searchlight still sat abandoned within the tower of that ruined house.
It was an absurdly grandiose contraption, exactly like those searchlights used on warships.

Another thing that left one flabbergasted was Mr. Hermann’s wine cellar.
He dug a horizontal hole into the mountainside within the garden, procured Western liquor worth eighty thousand yen at the time, and packed it into the hole.
It was an astonishingly large cellar—truly an astonishing mountain of Western liquor. Even when I visited, there remained a mountain of tightly packed empty bottles, though there might have been real ones further inside.
There, Mr. Hermann had his longtime drinking companion and sailor friend build a stylish bungalow on the adjacent plot, and the two of them would drink from morning till night and through the night. Mr. Hermann, paying no heed to appearances, kept his sailor’s pipe from his impoverished days clenched between his teeth while wearing tattered clothes, wholly consumed by nothing but liquor.

Having come under suspicion as a German spy, he was ordered to leave the country around Taisho 5, or so the story goes.
It was said to be a baseless suspicion—the searchlight’s flashing had aroused doubts—but it needlessly tormented that spirited man.
In the bungalow where his drinking companion had been, an elderly Japanese painter was living at the time; he guided us through the abandoned house and garden and shared memories of Mr. Hermann with us.
The abandoned house had a bedroom on each floor, each with its own bathroom; in short, Mr. Hermann had established a flawless system where, depending on his mood that day, he would drink while gazing at the sea below from some floor, collapse drunk, take a bath, and go to sleep.
Since he didn’t so much as glance at women, I could never measure up.
Even I was flabbergasted by this.

Yada Tsuyeko was Katou Eirin’s friend.
I returned to Tokyo.
Katou Eirin also came to Tokyo.
Wasn’t it probably his summer vacation?
I could no longer discern dates or seasons.
Anyway, Eirin and I were drinking at Winsor with someone else.
At that moment, Yada Tsuyeko arrived at Winsor accompanied by a man.
Eirin made the introductions.
Two or three days later, Eirin and Yada Tsuyeko came together to visit my house.

That was the beginning of our acquaintance.

★

Now, I had finally reached the point where I must speak.
What should I reveal, and what should I conceal?
Why must I speak at all?

During the war, I began writing chronological recollections that resembled an autobiography.
Though I only completed one piece called "Twenty-One" during those years—with magazines for publication having disappeared—the true purpose behind starting this chronicle had been twenty-seven, then thirty.
That is to say, it concerned Yada Tsuyeko.

From that time onward, I had considerable doubt as to whether I could indeed write it.
Yet through writing about Yada Tsuyeko, something would be written—something would be revealed.
Because I could believe this, I had thought that I must someday become able to write.

To state it clearly from the beginning, we had no physical relations until the very end.
However, I possessed no such singular devotion as Stendhal’s yearning for Métilde.
I simply could not muster the courage to touch a body, no matter what.
Even kissing—after we had become lovers—occurred only once, on a winter night five years later when I was thirty-one.
Her face was deathly pale, and between us loomed something colder than winter, leaving me with nothing but anguish.
It’s merely a body, I thought, but since bodies exist everywhere, I couldn’t silence that inner cry pleading to make this one an exception.

And on that night of the kiss, when I parted, I wrote a letter of severance to Yada Tsuyeko in my room late at night.
"I don’t want to see you anymore—because I’ve become terrified of your body, and because I’ve grown to loathe my own."
At that time, that may have been my true feeling.
From that time onward, I never met Yada Tsuyeko again.

She died.
And I did not go to offer condolences or visit her grave.

After that, I was like a demon exacting revenge on her body.
There were several times when I had to doubt whether I was writing novels to shame her body.
I threw down my brush and covered my face.

During the war, I had an affair with a certain married woman.
Her husband had been killed in the war.
This woman's body was the most delicate of bodies, and as might be expected from such a body's owner, she appeared devoid of any sense of chastity and seemed to have no purpose beyond play.

In her ordinary state, this woman was merely a slovenly creature who did nothing but smirk vacantly, utterly lacking in vigor; yet during intimacy, her surging passion transformed her into a fairy charged with mysterious intensity.
She could not be perceived as anything but a different person.

However, even through this special body, carnal pleasure could not satisfy the human heart.
It was from that time I came to feel fulfillment in never having known Yada Tsuyeko's body - this too, being after her death, found peace through the purity of absence.

A body imbued with allure is a forlorn thing.
Afterwards, when I came to know women who had been prostitutes yet remained strangers to bodily sensation, I grew disinclined to consort with those possessing such subtle feminine forms.

The bodies of former prostitutes who knew nothing of physical sensation were curiously clean.
At first, I found emotional detachment unsatisfying, but gradually this ceased to be the case; during our encounters, I myself would suddenly grow dazed and become lost in thought, and when I abruptly turned my attention to the woman, though my eyes must have been the same as ever, they held a resentful gaze.
It wasn’t hatred, but rather a gaze where others’ indifference and such things overlapped with the very connection between us.

“Do you hate me?”

The woman would merely shake her head listlessly, at times not responding at all—averting her eyes or turning her head away.
The very act of watching this filled me with something akin to nostalgia.
The act itself was utterly indifferent; being strangers—it carried a sensation of silence, lucidity, and soundless void.

And I rejoiced that I had never known Yada Tsuyeko’s body.
That flesh could never have held the subtle allure these two women possessed, nor could it remain tranquil and detached.
For me, the female form’s imperfect clamor—setting aside lecherous impulses—only deepened into desolation.
Lewd pleasure is sorrowful.
No—not lewd pleasure itself, but our awareness of it brings sorrow.

I mentioned Stendhal’s Métilde earlier, but that seems a terrible exaggeration and I cannot believe it was sincere.
To me, Yada Tsuyeko was no longer a special woman, and I was now haunted by a premonition that I would develop an even more foolish, dog-like infatuation with some woman somewhere.
Yet despite this, I am terribly bored with falling in love.

★

Yada Tsuyeko, who had come to visit with Eirin, forgot a book at my house.
It was some translated work by Valery Larbaud.
I suspected this forgotten book contained a riddle—an invitation demanding I return it.
That single abandoned volume forced me into such obsessive contemplation that my very mind grew numb.
For from that day onward, I was infected by love's persistent fever.
I addressed Tsuyeko Yada's essence dwelling within those pages.
Are you summoning me through this?
May I truly take this as your call?

However, before I could reach a decision, a letter arrived.
It made no mention of the book, simply asking me to come visit, but our sudden closeness had familial circumstances behind it—the S family, whose head had been president of Niigata Ironworks, were relatives of the Yada family; the S family’s home and my birthplace in Niigata were in the same neighborhood, our parents socialized closely, and I had often visited them as a child.
My mother cherished Ms. Yada due to that connection as well, and Ms. Yada’s mother loved me primarily because of that same connection.
On the first day I went to visit, surrounded by mother and daughter, I was made to drink sake and relaxed at a dining table as if I were one of the family.

That day, having returned home, I could no longer sleep a single wink due to joy.
I was astonished by this pain.
The sleepless night palely dawned.
That dawn appeared to my eyes like madness; my head felt as though it would split apart, and the dawn itself seemed about to split apart.

This anguish of reciprocated love—though it had not yet become reciprocated love, being already for me the rapture of reciprocated love—was my first experience; thus this must have been my first love.
Yet this anguish of reciprocated love—this torment of sleepless nights endured for having gained love—I would later experience with several other women too. With both women mentioned earlier, on the day I first obtained their bodies and for nights thereafter, there were nights of sleepless madness.
Reciprocated love brims with the same pain, anxiety, and madness as unrequited love.
It overflows even with jealousy identical to unrequited love.
Then, the next day came a letter.
In that joy’s wake, I again found myself unable to sleep.

Around that time, a magazine called *Sakura* was to be published.
It was a project conceived by a man named Ōshima, an utter fraud, with contributors including Inoue Tomoichirō, Hishiyama Shūzō, Tamura Taijirō, the deceased Kawata Seiichi, and Masugi Shizue; Yada Tsuyeko also joined, and it was from Yada Tsuyeko that I received an invitation to join.
I was intensely uncomfortable and loathed joining, but when I asked Yada Tsuyeko, “Why did you join such an impure magazine?” she replied, “Because it lets me meet you.”
I was happy, as if in a dream.
I joined without hesitation.

We met often.
Every three days a letter would arrive, and I would write back.
Only when we were together was I happy.
Just by looking at her face, I was filled.
When we parted, from the very moment of parting, it was agony.

*Sakura* was a sham magazine, but Inoue, Tamura, and Kawata were all people filled with goodwill—(Hishiyama had joined at my request)—and though I felt an intense temperamental affinity for Kawata in particular, it was regrettable that he died young from tuberculosis, having shown only the first signs of his talent’s blossoming.
He was an excellent poet.

Though it was a sham magazine, I believe Jiji Shimpo provided such generous support due to Editor Tora’s goodwill and the following reason I shall now relate.

One day, a drunken Mr. Tora spoke to us.
Whether he was Jiji Shimpo’s editor-in-chief or general affairs director—in any case, a top executive named W—was in a romantic relationship with Yada Tsuyeko, and one day he dropped his diary notebook within the company.
It was Mr. Tora who picked it up, containing memos written every Sunday about his clandestine meetings with Yada Tsuyeko.
When Mr. Tora returned the notebook, W panicked and stuffed it into his pocket, they said.
Mr. Tora naturally knew nothing of my love for Yada Tsuyeko.
I’ve forgotten who else was there, but everyone burst out laughing.
I should have been the one laughing.
I was cast down into hell’s pit of anguish and despair.

On the day I first met Yada Tsuyeko at Winsor, the man accompanying her was none other than W, a top executive at Jiji Shimpo.
Katou Eirin introduced me to Yada Tsuyeko, and after we parted, while I was talking with friends at my seat, Yada Tsuyeko came over and said that she wanted to introduce me to Mr. W of Jiji Shimpo—for Mr. W had taken an instant liking to me and was enthusiastically praising me from his seat as a splendid young man.
So I went to W’s seat and exchanged words.

The commemorative photo of *Sakura*'s formation was prominently published in Jiji Shimpo.
In particular, as a representative, I was made to write essays—three of them—on something new: whether it was newness itself, new morals, literature, or whatever.
This stemmed from Tora-san's goodwill toward *Sakura*, and though Tora-san had also shown me considerable kindness—(I just now recalled his real name—
he later became the writer Tora Sasamoto)—at Tora-san's words, my vision momentarily darkened as a suspicion arose: that even my being made to write for Jiji was actually directed by W's goodwill. I suspected.
I couldn't help but suspect.
Because of the impurity in having received W's goodwill, I hated myself and cursed my own being.

Tora-san's stories were only things I had already thought of.
Yada Tsuyeko had errands every Sunday; the *Sakura* meetings had made avoiding Sundays their custom for that reason, and I too had been informed she would be absent whenever I visited her on Sundays.

By what force I was somehow sustained to manage to return home—I was, in truth, a sick man.

★

I had become utterly cowardly.
The letters had continued to arrive every third day.
We met at coterie meetings and would also meet in other places.

The matter of W had become openly known even among the coterie members.
They had perceived my innermost thoughts and took care never to broach the matter in my presence, but even that consideration was painful to me.

At the roundtable discussion for the inaugural issue of the coterie magazine, I had brashly and energetically lambasted the works of our senior writers with my usual cockiness, but among all that, there was one phrase I uttered with which Yada Tsuyeko expressed agreement.
I have forgotten that phrase, but it was the kind of cloyingly sweet words used exclusively for a lover.

On the day of proofreading, all coterie members were assembled at the printing office, but precisely that day being Sunday meant only Yada Tsuyeko—having entrusted her corrections to either Masugi Shizue or Kawata—failed to appear.
What significance that Sunday held for Yada Tsuyeko was known to every member present.

When someone—whether Kawata, Tamura, or Inoue—burst into laughter at that notorious remark from the roundtable discussion ("This is outrageous! Can we really publish this uncensored?"), Masugi Shizue cut in without hesitation: "No cuts needed! She truly said those words!"
Her voice came low yet searing—though I would interact extensively with Masugi-san afterward, I never again heard such ferocity in her tone.
It carried profound hatred.

However, I ached as if it were my own flesh.
As if I were hated.
I pitied Yada Tsuyeko and rather cursed Masugi Shizue.
At the same time, the reason I felt profound gratitude toward Masugi Shizue in my heart was that I too had earnestly entreated and prayed that those words would not be excised.

For me, that single phrase was a light in the midst of despair. There exists such a thing as a sorrowful wish. May this single phrase retain its form upon the earth. At least, may this single phrase alone not be erased and vanish.

Yet regarding my desperate aspiration, I myself could not utter a single word. I merely clutched to my chest the enduring life of that phrase which had somehow remained through fortune. Ah, I shall preserve this. "This is an interesting phrase," Kawata had remarked in response—words I still cannot forget to this day.

I had already told my mother before then that I wanted to marry Ms. Yada.
My mother had also nodded immediately, but before long, as days passed, she began to ask when we would marry.
My chest tightened, rendering me unable to respond; when I finally regained my voice, I answered, "I’m done with it—I’ve given up," and rose from my seat.

However, since letters kept coming every few days, my mother took my words as nothing more than a lovers' quarrel, and once when a relative came over, she pointed at me and said, "He's going to marry Yada Tsuyeko this time."

“Lies!”
“I’ve been saying I won’t get married!”
I abruptly shouted.
The shouting was frenzied.
My blood flowed backward.
I recalled my mother’s lonely face.

It was around that time.

The aforementioned seventeen-year-old girl, as if stricken by neurasthenia, came swaying unsteadily to visit me and said, “Let’s go drink. I have money.”
It was dusk.
I lied that I had work and couldn’t drink tonight, but when I walked her partway home anyway, she rambled on like one possessed, a plaintive smile fixed to her face like a mask.
Then abruptly she said, “I know—you’re in love with Ms. Yada, aren’t you?”
Her voice held no resentment.
That plaintive smile still clung to her face.
She was a girl of tempestuous nature.
Once at Monami or Senbikiya, she’d shattered a glass bottle on a table.
The waiter came over and said, “That’ll be six yen.”
She handed him twelve yen, grabbed the vase from the next table, hurled it onto the earthen floor with a grunt—smashing it to bits—then said “Goodbye” and walked out.
Knowing this tempestuousness of hers, I felt a bleak despair at her excessive fragility toward me.

“Is it unrequited?”

The girl peered into my face.
It was a loving word spoken from a gentle heart.
There was not a shred of resentment in her heart—only a caring one.
I had no words to reply, nor any heart that wished to.

When I said we should part ways here, “Mm,” the girl nodded, took my hand, and with that plaintive smile still lingering, said, “Once your work is done, let’s drink again, okay?” Then she waved her hand and obediently vanished into the depths of darkness.
This was the final farewell between the girl and me.

I too had no heart to resent Yada Tsuyeko.
No heart to reproach.
Yada Tsuyeko turned to me and said, “Let’s travel together. I want to go mountain climbing—to stay at a hot spring in the mountains.”
I could only answer with a smiling face.
That smiling face meant: My heart is full of you, I am always thinking of you—but I cannot travel with you.
If I travel and come to know your body, I feel I would stoop to W’s level.
Not that I would degrade myself for you—but for myself, W would become my equal.
About you, I want to believe nothing of W.
I want to forget all that.
That heart which loved you without knowing—I want to keep it unchanged.
Needless to say, Yada Tsuyeko had no way to comprehend my smiling face held such meaning.

It was around that time that Kawata Seiichi visited Yada Tsuyeko—to urge why she wouldn’t marry Sakaguchi. This matter wasn’t told to me by Kawata; it was Yada Tsuyeko from whom I heard it.

This communication carried definite meaning. “Why don’t you say you want to marry me?” Meaning: “If you had only spoken up, I would have married you at any time.” All of Yada Tsuyeko’s praises—concerning the warmth of her heart, her sincerity, and the depth of her friendship—had been offered to Kawata Seiichi and were now laid out before me. This served as proof that she had accepted Kawata’s counsel to her, and as an urging directed at me. To this too, I responded with nothing but a smiling face.

My heart was stubborn.
It was bound like stone.

In short, I was not obedient to my own emotions; I had no choice but to act contrary to my true heart.
That was a kind of characteristic game of mine—it may seem self-deprecating, but in the end, it’s just a game.

Around that time at Makino Shin’ichi’s house, I had my hand read by a palmistry and fingerprint researcher named Hasegawa something-or-other, who told me, “Your personality is pure Amanojaku.” But what is Amanojaku? I think that besides meaning being perverse, Amanojaku also carries the sense of being sweetly naive. There was also a heavy dose of sentimentalism in my temperament that sought to perceive things through their atmosphere rather than the objects themselves—in short, there was not a single good thing about me. Yet I myself was surprisingly at ease with this; moreover, while I was sentimental, I was also a carefree optimist. Ah well—the thought of “let it be as it may” was always clinging to me, after all.

Yada Tsuyeko and I quit "Sakura".
Around the second issue, Hishiyama must have quit as well.
I had almost no memory of those times anymore.
The magazine. Yada Tsuyeko.
For there was a long period when I particularly tried to forget about her.

What I strangely remember vividly from that time was drinking with Nakahara Chuuya at a bar in Yoshiwara—this being during my temporary abstinence from womanizing—and when we went to Yoshiwara after drinking, he let out a “Heh-hehn” (his habitual scoffing prelude to mockery) and said, “Did you crawl back after being dumped by George Sand?” After carousing heavily in Ginza and arriving in Yoshiwara with time to kill, we drank at a bar where one of the barmaids and I immediately hit it off. Chuuya, frustrated, stripped off his suit, trousers, and shirt piece by piece until he was left in nothing but a loincloth and collapsed asleep. He had this wretched habit of getting naked when drunk, but this time—thoroughly disgruntled—he sulkily stretched out, slid off the chair in utter disarray, gaped his mouth wide open, and splayed spread-eagled on the dirt floor. The woman and I made plans to meet behind the signboard later, but first we absolutely had to deposit Chuuya in Yoshiwara—no easy feat once he’d sprawled out like that, impossible to rouse or redress. With no alternative, I grabbed naked Chuuya’s hand and hauled him outside. Even walking, he remained eighty percent asleep—stooped like an octogenarian, head lolling, nodding spasmodically as he teetered along in my grip. From behind us came the barmaid carrying his bundled clothes. We defied the cardinal rule against public nudity and triumphantly muscled our way into a brothel, though three places turned us away before Chuuya finally sobered up enough to secure lodging. Just as he barged through the entrance, Chuuya suddenly boomed,

“Hey, aren’t there any women here? Women!” he shouted, then began glancing around restlessly.

“What are you even saying? You drunkard!”

The prostitute pushed him away irritably, so Chuuya staggered and tumbled over.
After watching that, we turned back.

The apartment of the woman I was taken to had a clinic outside its window, its rooms permeated by the smell of medicine.
The woman stretched with a groan, then suddenly remarked, “Even when I feel like stretching up, sometimes I just can’t muster the will to do it.”
Her smile held neither hidden meaning nor shadow—utterly guileless.
She was kindhearted, cheerful, dim-witted, and completely without artifice.
Mornings would find her waking with a start, leaping from bed to inflate paper balloons before scampering about the tiny room squealing in solitary delight, doing naked calisthenics only to suddenly cling to me with boisterous laughter—and because none of that brothel’s morning gloom lingered here, I found myself growing fond of this artless creature.

When I opened the window and looked at the blue sky, I suddenly wanted to go on a trip.
The woman was also fully in agreement, and as for the watch I had received from someone just three days prior—a luxury item that seemed so utterly fated to have no connection to me—she took great initiative, springing into action: summoning pawnbrokers, antique dealers, and familiar shopkeepers to negotiate. Even when I said it was fine to sell it at a reasonable price, she insisted it was too low, throwing herself into the task with unflagging zeal.
At the pawnshops, she would frolic about, twirling her arms as she hopped and skipped; one moment she’d be leaning back to peer inside, then suddenly throw open the door with a booming “Good day!”—it was as though she had been born to greet every twist of fate with unshakable cheer.
And she paid no mind whatsoever to my taciturn nature or gloomy countenance.
She had been a bus conductor but quit because handling change was too much trouble, they said. Walking down the street, she would mimic a conductor’s announcements—“Next stop such-and-such,” “Stop requested”—in a loud voice, showing no concern for the passersby who turned around in surprise to look at her.

We traveled for a span of eight days.
I believe it was indeed eight days.
We had intended to return on the eighth day, but having run out of money, she insisted on strict frugality, dragging us around cheap hot springs where our daytime meals consisted of nothing but katsudon.
What I found endlessly amusing was that while this woman wasn’t the type to ever appraise people’s faces, she would exclusively critique female bus conductors whenever we rode together, exclaiming, “My, that girl is so chic!”
When I laughed, “Since none of them are chic at all, your company must’ve been packed with fatties,” she—for once—blushed faintly, let out an “Umm” groan, and explained that she’d become a bus conductor out of envy for those carrying red flags at May Day or whatever, but got flustered when they told her to join the Communist Party.
This woman was utterly scatterbrained and irresponsible, but she was undoubtedly the type to tip her hat to the Communist Party’s underground movement; though she donated fifty sen, she ended up surrendering and running away, or so she said.
She was the type who couldn’t stick with anything once she started.

What I suddenly thought at the inn was that Yada Tsuyeko must have come to a place like this with W too.
Of course, theirs would undoubtedly be more upscale than our inn.
Perhaps theirs was a proper rendezvous house.
But what I feared more than anything was the possibility of glimpsing Yada Tsuyeko and Mr.W during this trip.
It wasn’t fear of being seen with the woman.
It was sheer terror and agony at being forced to confirm their presence through mere visual proof.

Around that time, I would sometimes come to an abrupt halt in the middle of the street.
My chest would suddenly constrict; my breath would stop for an instant.
I was seized by the impulse to turn around and flee headlong.
I feared street corners.
And I feared people turning the corner and emerging from the street.
I was haunted by hallucinations of Yada Tsuyeko.
A woman who, upon closer inspection, bore no resemblance would in that first glance be mistaken for Yada Tsuyeko, and I would often find myself frozen in my tracks on the street.

Especially at hot springs, I was tormented by hallucinations of Yada Tsuyeko and Mr. W.
While believing there was no way they would stay at such a cheap inn, upon catching sight of a figure in the corridor, my chest suddenly tightened, my breath caught, and I froze.
The voices of the man and woman next door—though upon listening closely, the woman’s voice bore no resemblance—the instant I first heard it, it sounded like Yada Tsuyeko’s voice.

The fact that I was going around staying with barmaids held not a shred of vengeful intent toward Yada Tsuyeko.
If I were to go right now, this very moment, to visit Yada Tsuyeko and say, “Let’s get married,” then marriage would have been possible.
It was an undeniable fact, and concerning that alone, there was not a shred of doubt or anxiety.
Of course, I had moments of hatred.
However, when I froze in fear of that person’s shadow, within my own terror was always contained a considerate desire not to inflict pain and humiliation upon her.

At the same time, I did not hate W.
Yada Tsuyeko and W.
Yada Tsuyeko and I.
In my heart, I either lacked the capacity to contrast these two relationships as opposing forces, or such thoughts existed only in the faintest traces.
Yada Tsuyeko and W.
I thought about that.
I thought about it more than anything else.
Yet I had never considered positioning Yada Tsuyeko and myself as adversaries.
That is to say, I hadn’t placed both relationships on the same plane.

Were I to marry Yada Tsuyeko.
Then we would find ourselves squarely opposed to her and W.
Through marriage, I might prevail.
But could I truly prevail?
Wouldn’t I instead become acutely aware of this opposition—of my own inadequacy, my inferior position?

However, I had not been thinking in that way.
The necessity—even the very need—to think in that way had been lacking.
That is, I had already given up on marriage.
Though there was no way to halt the reckless passions that sometimes stirred around it, in the deeper—perhaps innermost—depths of my heart, I had forged a profound resignation.
There existed a resignation like a cloud resembling a stone rooted in immovable bedrock's sedimented form.
It was not merely that I had given up on one beloved woman.
I had given up on something greater.
What was this "something greater"?
That, to me, was unknowable.
It was merely something.
And there was merely a single woman in a corner of that great something's heavy sediment.

I rather thought it would have been better to take this bright, scatterbrained barmaid to the mountains—to the hot spring inns of Kamikochi and Okushirane—that Yada Tsuyeko had said we should visit together.
I didn't know why.
That didn't matter.
I simply thought that Yada Tsuyeko, having invited me there herself, would probably never go with another man.
Yet I also thought that perhaps she might be there even now.
Aimlessly, suddenly, I imagined.
I was walking through the mountains.
Through Hotaka, Yari, Akaishi.
Then the woman beside me became Yada Tsuyeko.
And I would return to my senses from the melancholy midday reverie of the hot spring inn.
Even when my woman chattered animatedly to herself, I wore a smile as if listening while sinking abruptly into brooding.

“Don’t you have a wife?”
“Oh, you liar!”
“You do have one, don’t you?” the woman asks.
“I do.”

“Do you have any children?”

“Just one.”

“Your wife is very beautiful.”
“I can tell.”
“An aloof, incredibly stunning beauty.”

“How do you know?”

“See? I was right, wasn’t I?”
“It’s from my own experience.”
“The wives of men who dote on a weird-looking round-faced fool like me are all beauties.”
“I’ve seen the faces of many of their wives.”
“The wives of men who flirt with beautiful barmaids are all no good.”
“But you know, people who dote on me are exceptionally outstanding.”
“I wonder why that is.”
“Could it be that I’m just a complete failure?”

However, she had a somehow endearing face. Her figure was slender yet alluring. An innocent aura seemed to ripple across her entire being as though her heart were pure. Though twenty-three or four, she retained something of a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old girl about her. She adored doing gymnastics completely naked—carefree, single-minded, joyful in her purity—and even in the hot spring bath would stretch, shrink, play with buckets as makeshift balls or paper balloons, never ceasing her movements. Unashamed to show her nude form to men, she’d let them paint ink drawings on her arms, stomach, and thighs while squealing with delight—making any truly seductive allure feel strangely absent. When she sighed, “I want to be a mannequin, but I’m not chic enough,” I thought her more akin to some divine mannequin—so vibrantly alive were her constant motions and chatter. Which inn had that been? It was near journey’s end; that day in Numazu I’d watched some movie or play while guzzling a two-gō bottle until tipsy, afterward staying in Nagaoka—or was it the neighboring hot spring town? She grew somewhat pensive,

“You know… I still don’t want to go back to Tokyo.”
“I won’t go back with you for about another week.”
“I’ll become a barmaid at a tavern around here and earn money.”

“You think you can pay the inn charge with tips?”

“Ah, I see.”
The woman was deeply disappointed.
Of course, it was a whim.
She was an exceedingly capricious woman.
It wasn’t out of any love for me.
However, capricious as she was, her being somewhat pensive made it such a rare occurrence that even now I find myself recalling a certain desolation.
After that, I would often recall this woman from that time in the loneliness of inn rooms during my travels.

“If we go back after having this much fun, even I would feel a bit awkward.”
“After this, let it be fields or mountains, I suppose?”
“Your wife must be furious.”
“Hey, Madam—is she scared?”
The woman’s face was different from usual, serious.

“Just ten more days, another month—you know, I want to stay here and earn money together with you.”
“I want to make your Madam absolutely furious.”
“I want to kill two or three madams somewhere.”
“Don’t go getting sick of it now,” she said.
And she laughed.
She was already back to being her usual self.
I found it amusing to think that even a genuinely kind-hearted woman might harbor such cruel feelings.
She was a woman who would stir up jealousy or irritation even toward faceless targets, yet showed no sign of jealousy toward clear ones.

At that moment, I clearly realized it would be best if Yada Tsuyeko were dead.
And as I prayed for such things—the lowness, baseness, wretchedness of my heart—I grew utterly disgusted with myself.
With complete singularity of thought—whether to try living awhile in this area with this woman—I pondered this while keeping a perfectly innocent face toward her.

Something in my heart—a great resignation.

Something in my heart—a great resignation.
That dark, mud-like expanse of stagnation was a kind of weariness.
Within that great stagnation, Yada Tsuyeko was indeed no more than a small fragment of shadow in a corner, yet I considered that what deepened the dark thickness of that stagnation, what imparted this great weariness, might perhaps have been Yada Tsuyeko herself.

From around that time, I thought it was fine if I didn't become a famous writer—let things be as they may.
From the very beginning of my literary endeavors, I had conceived of a literature for dropouts.
It was even a youth's rather keen affectation, yet ultimately remained something nihilistic.
I, however, did not seem to have returned to that place again.
In my heart, something keen-edged—a single pillar, something like a driving force—had been lost.
I abandoned myself to ruin.
To every way of living—to literature.
And from this moment onward, the fall of my soul began.

I never met Yada Tsuyeko again. Until three full years later, when she appeared before me.

Until three full years later, when Yada Tsuyeko came to visit me and appeared.