Pathway to Japanese Literature

Nomura lived with a woman during the war.
They had the same relationship as a married couple, but she was not his wife.
Because from the beginning, that was their agreement—since the war would end in defeat and everything would be reduced to chaos anyway.
The chaos of defeat was the very shape of their bond; neither of them held anything resembling domestic affection.

The woman had been the owner of a small bar and a mistress, but being inherently promiscuous, she would get involved with any customer who caught her slightest fancy. Her sole redeeming quality was this lack of scheming intent to earn money; when alcohol grew scarce and running the business became difficult, she readily closed the bar and moved in with Nomura.

The woman needed to be with someone, and since Nomura was alone, she said, "Shall I live with you?" He laughed and replied, "Well, since the war will turn everything to chaos anyway, why don't we start our own mess now and connect it to the war's chaos?" For Nomura never doubted that even after moving in together, she would occasionally get involved with others. From the very beginning, he had welcomed her with these words: "Leave whenever you grow tired of it."

Because the woman had been in a brothel, she found no genuine joy in physical love.
For men, cohabiting with this woman was first and foremost dissatisfying in that regard; yet the absence of notions of chastity could also be seen as refreshing depending on one’s perspective, and it was precisely the lack of domestic gloom that Nomura found appealing.
Even if their play lacked ultimate satisfaction, he thought, at least having a constant playful relationship was better than none at all.
Had it not been for the war, they would never have felt inclined to come together.
Everything would be destroyed anyway.
Even if we survived, he thought we would likely end up as slaves or something, so he had no inclination to build a household.

Despite feeling no pleasure, the woman went from man to man seeking relations. This may have been a habit from her life as a prostitute, but her nature was fundamentally and excessively promiscuous—treating carnal desire and hunger as indistinguishable, seeking different men's skin as if slaking a thirst. She possessed the beauty required to be redeemed as a mistress, with comely limbs and a figure whose pleasing fullness suffused her entire body. This was why she became alluring when naked—a physique that oddly whetted the appetite. Thus, had the woman ever known genuine joy in love, many men would have fallen for her; yet not one became deeply involved. She lacked that final quality needed to truly ensnare men.

Among the customers, there were men who approached her with considerable hesitation, but once they actually interacted with her, their ardor would cool—and since the woman herself disliked persistent entanglements, she preferred it that way. Never being passionately loved, she found contentment in her fate of merely being fondly regarded; though promiscuous by nature, she remained detached.

The charm of her petite nude body—seemingly slender yet oddly well-proportioned, appearing sluggish yet revealing strangely nimble movements—was truly inexhaustible. It overflowed with a dewy freshness that stirred emotions. And yet, despite not showing true joy—like a hollow shell of a soul—when they lived together, there was still some measure of different pleasure to be found. Because the woman showed no pleasure, Nomura remained calm; rather than seeking direct carnal satisfaction, he found joy in manipulating her limbs to savor that peculiar dewy freshness. Since the woman felt no pleasure, she would eventually grow annoyed or angry. Nomura also burst out laughing.

Being such a woman, she detested settling into the conventional role of a proper wife and loathed standing in ration lines; though not possessing any great fortune, she would cheerfully purchase black market goods and lavish him with feasts.
The only thing she didn’t dislike was cooking; she would lay out various dishes and seem to take pleasure in Nomura happily eating them.
Such a temperament was endearing; if not for that infidelity bug of hers, she’d make a good wife for me, Nomura found himself thinking.

“When the war ends, will you throw me out?”

“It’s not like I’d be the one throwing you out. The war’ll end up throwing you out whether we like it or not, I suppose. Even life—given how the air raids are these days, it’s not looking like it’ll last much longer in this situation.”

“Lately, I feel like I’ve become a different person, you know. My life as a proper wife has really settled in now. It’s enjoyable, you know.”

The woman was honest. Nomura laughed but did not explain to her the truth behind what she hadn’t noticed. And he enjoyed her loveliness.

“If your life as a proper wife has taken root, I’d like it if you could feel some physical pleasure.”

Nomura, caught up in the absurdity of it all, let slip the words with a laugh—but the woman’s expression transformed completely.

After her expression changed, the woman finally began to sob with hiccupping cries.

“I spoke too harshly.”
“Please grant me your forgiveness.”

But the woman had not been angry.
The woman, while crying, gazed raptly at Nomura with her tear-filled eyes and whispered as if in prayer.

“Please forgive me, okay?”
“It’s my past that’s bad.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Truly, I’m sorry.”

The woman collapsed in tears onto Nomura’s lap.
Nomura, unable to bear her loveliness, kissed the sobbing woman.
Her mouth was damp like tears, and the sensation felt new.
Nomura, overwhelmed by emotion, embraced the woman.
The woman wept, writhed, and displayed a fervor bordering on hysteria, clinging to Nomura so tightly it hurt her back—yet the true visceral thrill and joy remained absent from her very flesh.
Nomura let out a sigh of despair in his heart but made efforts to prevent the woman from noticing it.
But the woman had noticed it.
Because Nomura had not missed the flash of hatred that streamed through the woman’s eyes once her excitement had cooled.

★

The night came when the area around Nomura’s neighborhood was reduced to burnt fields stretching one ri in all directions. Since it was a factory district, clattering incendiary bombs rained down incessantly, and to make matters worse, explosive bombs were mixed among them. Every direction became a sea of fire.

Evacuating people jostled and surged along the road ahead.

“Shall we run for it too?”

“Yes, but...”

A shadow of wavering thought clouded the woman’s face.

“Put out as many as you can.”
“Aren’t you afraid to die?”

“I don’t want to die.”
“When those clattering ones come falling down, my heart might stop.”

“I feel the same way.”
“But, you...”

Desperation washed over the woman’s face.

“I don’t want to burn this house.
“This house of yours—it’s my home.
“Please don’t burn this house.
“I won’t run away until it burns.”

When a clattering sound rang out, the woman grabbed Nomura’s arm and pulled him into the air raid shelter.
The heart of the woman he held beat violently from fear.
Her body had stiffened rigidly from terror.
What a lovely, honest woman she is, Nomura thought.
For this woman’s sake, he would have to grant any request she made, Nomura thought.
And he confronted the flames, realizing that an unexpected courage to face death had welled up within him.

“Alright. I’ll fight for your sake—truly, for your sake.”

“Yes. But don’t push yourself too hard. Be careful.”

“That’s a bit contradictory.”

Nomura teased. He became fondly aware of the overflowing vast love and calm within himself. He filled water tanks in various places and splashed water around all four sides of the house. The woman also helped with that. The two of them were already soaked. The fire was already approaching. It was all around—front, back, left, right. The fire was too large, but when it finally spread to the neighboring house, they gained an unexpected conviction—that it was surprisingly small, confined to just that house, and there was no need to fear the entire sea of flames.

Before Nomura even became aware of how actively he fought, the flames of the neighboring house subsided, and their own home remained unburned.
The area became a sea of fire save for a square block or so, but that sea of flames no longer advanced toward them.

“Looks like both the house and our lives made it through.”

The woman collapsed onto the dirt in the garden, still clutching the empty bucket.
She was utterly spent.
Nomura too was utterly spent.

“We’re exhausted.”

The woman only moved her head slightly.
In utter exhaustion, even hard-fought emotions held no vigor.
Yet suddenly, he felt tears threatening to spill.
So he abruptly wanted to see her face, but when he peered close at her features,

“You.”

The woman moved her lips.
She was deathly exhausted.
Nomura also lay down on the bare earth and kissed the woman,

“Hold me… more.
“You.”
“Harder.”
“More. More.”

“I don’t have the strength left for that.”

“But more—you—I love you—I understand now.”
“But my body—why is it no good?”

The woman sobbed violently, as though something were bursting forth.
When Nomura tried to caress the woman,

“No. No—no—
“I’m sorry to you.”
“I should have died.”
“Oh, you… We should have died.”

However, Nomura was not particularly moved.
There was emotion, but there was also its opposite—a coldness.

She was a woman who always became temporarily excited and moved.
Today, the woman was lovable.
However, her inherent tendency for infidelity was not something that could be controlled in a woman like her.

★

The woman possessed a tenacious, instinctive craving for amusement.
She liked gambling.
She liked dancing.
She liked traveling.
But with air raids restricting her movements, she took up bicycle practice.
Nomura would ride bicycles alongside her, and together they would stroll for about two hours.
This was genuinely enjoyable.

With transportation systems severely damaged and walking becoming the primary mode of movement, even the speed of bicycles felt refreshing—a strangely vital energy permeating the scorched city that bore a deathly pallor. Now it seemed absurd, but in a world where there were no shops selling cups of tea, no stores peddling goods, and where the absence of entertainment had already become the natural state, simply riding bicycles brought a sense of enjoyment.

The woman loved both excitement and fatigue, so bicycle riding seemed to be among her greatest pleasures, and the two of them would ride to a distant town’s rental bookstore to search for books and return.
The rental books had already grown to hundreds of volumes, and the woman had even begun saying things like, “Once the war ends, maybe I’ll run a rental bookstore too.”

Nomura had no fantasies of tomorrow.
There were no postwar plans whatsoever.
Each day was all there was.

When various regions were being occupied and the war was being waged, he had truly envisioned himself loading some luggage onto bicycles and fleeing deep into the mountains with the woman by his side.
He had even pondered the contents of the meager luggage loaded onto the bicycle.
He had even worried that along the way their fellow defeated soldiers might rob them or that the woman would be raped.

Nomura thought it was a pathetic wish. Then he desperately fantasized that all Japanese people would die and only the two of them would survive. That way, the woman wouldn’t be able to cheat.

But he wasn’t particularly attached to her. Yet there were moments when he suspected he might actually be deeply attached after all. Because with war’s destruction imposing clear limits on everything, he reasoned this very boundary must be quietly shaping their attachment too—allowing them to remain settled. After all, if he survived unscathed by war’s ravages, he could simply find a more complete woman. He told himself he wouldn’t care if this deformed female body left him.

This deformed female body was beginning to exude a certain allure through its very deformity.
Nomura had become consumed by voraciously manipulating the woman's limbs in every conceivable way.

"Don't do that."

He wrenched the woman's arms behind her back like pinioned wings.
Lust and hatred fused into one savage method.

“Ow—ow— What are you doing?”

The woman tried to struggle, but it was no use.
And she suddenly let out a high-pitched "Hiii-" scream.
Nomura further bent the woman’s back into a bow-like curve and violently shook her head.
The woman clenched her teeth in agony.
And only guttural moans—ugh... ugh... ugh...—escaped from her shaking head.

He pushed the woman away, rolled her over, then clutched her to himself.
The woman did not resist.
Moaning, exhausted, writhing—yet she seemed rather satisfied.
However, the woman’s climax still did not come.
And at passion’s culmination, hatred lingered in her eyes as she gazed at Nomura.
And there was a blank, empty expression on her face as she thought of something entirely unrelated to their desire.

Nomura became engrossed in pondering that blank, empty expression on the woman’s face in a strangely persistent way.
In short, he found that face impossible to forget.
His attachment to that face meant loving the very deformity of the woman’s sensations.

★

Five days before the war ended, Nomura was injured.

With the atomic bomb attacks having begun, he thought it seemed the day they would die was finally drawing near.
However, his desire to live was strong.
There, he began repairing the air raid shelter.
He had obtained foundation stones from a burnt-out site and was building up walls around it.
The five stones crumbled and pressed down steadily onto Nomura’s foot.
He pressed down on just the top one with his hand, but there was no way to prevent it from collapsing below.
Realizing resistance would snap his leg, he slowly leaned back as quietly as possible.
His feet were bare.
The stones embedded themselves into his knee bone.
In unprecedented agony existed a heart and will bent on despair.
When footsteps sounded beyond the wall, he tried calling for help—but feared his leg would break before rescue came.
He began pushing the stones away one by one.
Each weighed fifteen kan (56 kg), requiring extraordinary strength to shift from his seated position.
When all stones were gone, dizziness washed over him—yet he took satisfaction in how willpower had aided his fractured leg.
Simultaneously came the thought: impaired mobility meant war’s endgame neared.
Then, for the first time, he called for the woman.
Then they loaded him onto a cart bound for hospital.

On the day the war ended, he still could not walk.

To think he could live to see the war end!
Because the pain of his wound was still raw, that thought grew stronger.
But he thought it was finally time to part ways with her—she’d probably up and vanish before this wound even healed.
It wasn’t accompanied by any particularly intense emotions.

“The war’s over.”

“Is that what it means?”

The woman apparently hadn’t been able to hear the radio clearly.

“It ended so anticlimactically.”
“I’d truly begun to resign myself that my time to be done in was finally approaching, you know.”
“So, what are your esteemed impressions of surviving to see the war end?”

“That was utterly ridiculous.”

The woman wore an inscrutable expression for some time.
Nomura thought she must have intuitively sensed something about their impending separation too.

"Is the war really over?"

"It’s true."

"I wonder."

The woman stood up and went out to the neighboring house to ask.
She spent about an hour chattering around various parts of the neighborhood association and returned.

“Let’s go to the hot springs.”

“If I can’t walk, there’s no point.”

“What will become of Japan?”
“How the hell should I know?”

“I don’t care what happens.”
“It’s all burnt fields anyway.”
“How about some delicious black tea?”

“I want some.”

The woman made black tea and brought it over.
As Nomura tried to get up,

“I’ll feed you, so stay lying down please.”
“Here now, drink up.”

“No way.
You expect me to suck down half-spoonfuls like some brat?”

“If you won’t drink it properly, I won’t give it at all.
I’ll really throw it away, you know.”

“What pointless games you invent.”

“Since you’re sick and we lost the war besides, I’ll spoil you rotten.
Here you go – being spoiled.”

The woman held the tea in her mouth and passed it into Nomura’s.

“This time, you let me drink from you, okay? Please? Hey, sit up. Come on.”

“No way.”
“Lying down, sitting up—it’s too much.”

“But please—I’m begging you—from your mouth.”

The woman lay down and drowsily opened her mouth.
She sipped a small amount of black tea as if savoring it, then licked her lips.
Her smile shone dazzlingly bright.

“Hey, you.
If there were potassium cyanide in this tea, we’d be dead already.”

“Don’t say such disgusting things.”

“It’s okay. I didn’t put any in.”
“I wanted to try acting out what it’s like to die.”

“General Tojo will probably die, but there’s no need for you to follow suit.”

“You remember the night we put out the air raid fires?”

“Yeah.”

“I had actually been thinking I wanted us to burn to death together.”
“But we ended up frantically putting out the fires.”
“It’s just uncontrollable, isn’t it?”
“Even though tens of thousands of people who don’t want to die are dying.”
“I’m alive, but I have no hope at all.”
“I wish you wouldn’t wake me up when I’m asleep.”

Nomura found himself unable to fathom the woman’s heart.
He couldn’t tell whether any truth resided in the words she spoke.
He simply found himself recalling, for some reason, the woman’s pale and expressionless face after their passionate play.
At that time, he found himself unable to resist asking what she had been thinking.

“You put on that pale, expressionless face then.”
“At times, a look of hatred toward me would flash in your eyes.”
“You must surely hate me—of that I’m certain—but beyond that, I’ve been thinking you might be pondering something entirely foreign to my understanding. So tell me, what were you thinking back then? Couldn’t you let me in on it?”

The woman looked puzzled.
After that, she smiled faintly, as if bashful.

“You shouldn’t ask such things.”
“The woman isn’t thinking about anything serious.”

And then, putting on a serious face,

“You have doted on me, haven’t you?”

“Do you think you were being doted on?”

“Yes, very much.”

The woman’s reply was honest.

Nomura thought that the woman was merely worked up by that fleeting emotion.
And if one were to dig beneath that emotion, he suspected it might be a manifestation of having detected her true nature—a fate that would inevitably lead them to part, for she could not help but be true to herself.

“I never doted on you. In other words—I’m just a lust-driven fiend. Just a wretched sight. I’ve just insulted and consumed you, haven’t I? There’s no way you don’t understand that, is there?”

He said as though vomiting it out.

“But humans—that’s all there is to them.”
“That alone is enough.”

The woman’s eyes felt pale and dulled.
Nomura thought she had spoken an astonishing truth.
He realized this statement alone was an unfeigned fragment of her heart.
Play was everything.
That constituted this person’s total philosophy of being.
Yet despite this, her body remained deficient in play’s sensation.

Nomura thought he couldn’t follow this ideology.
He wanted something elevated.
But then again, he also felt marital relationships might ultimately amount to nothing beyond this.
Nomura thought she might unexpectedly make a good wife after all.

“I wish we could stay like this forever.”

“Do you really think so?”

“What do you think?”

“I’d be better off dead.”

The woman said this as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Her words carried a resonance that didn’t seem entirely false.
It could only be thought that this stemmed from her loathing her own promiscuous nature.
As if she could die.
She was merely a plaything—a fleeting consolation.
And Nomura, contrary to his words, was turning over in his thoughts that it would be better to part with the woman.

“You think play is dirty, you know.”
“So you think I’m filthy and hate me.”
“Of course you yourself think you’re dirty.”
“But you want to escape from that—to become cleaner, to rise higher—isn’t that what you’re thinking?”

As she spoke, hatred filled the woman's eyes.
Her face grew fiercely hostile.

"You're a coward."
"You're the one who's dirty, yet you want to rise higher, to escape—that's cowardly."
"Why don't you try to think it isn't dirty?"
"And you won't even try to make me into a clean woman—one who isn't dirty."
"I was sold by my parents to a brothel and have been a plaything for men ever since."
"Since I'm that kind of woman, I like play."
"I don't think it's dirty at all."
"I am not a good woman."
"But I want to become better."
"Why won't you try to make me better?"
"You won't even try to make me a good woman—so how can you think of escaping alone?"
"You've decided I'm filthy."
"You despise my past."

“I don’t despise your past.”
“I just think.”
“That our bond began recklessly—that it was ill-conceived from the start.”
“We never intended to become husband and wife.”
“Hasn’t that shaped the very mold of our hearts?”

The woman glared at Nomura with large open eyes.
Then she turned away, lay down, covered herself with the futon, and began to cry.

Nomura was still thinking spitefully.

Why had the woman become angry?
In essence, this too was about detecting his own promiscuous blood—or rather, it was the thrashing of that poisoned blood itself, a cunning mechanism depending on perspective. Though the woman likely wasn’t aware of it, it had even become a setup as if her promiscuity stemmed from Nomura’s failure to elevate her.

No matter what was said, the image of the woman’s past life of unparalleled promiscuity remained deeply rooted in Nomura’s mind.
He couldn’t say it outright to her, but he saw this behavior as undeniably born from the natural impulses of poisoned blood—something that could never be restrained by reason or any other means.

The war had ended.

The fact that their love was only meant to last through the war had clung to both their minds. Until the day the enemy would land, it had been their daily shared mantra—even the very will of love itself, something beyond words' grasp. That war had ended.

As for whether the woman truly had feelings of wanting to live together, even when Nomura tried to consider it, he found himself unable to believe it.

The impulses of debauchery had lurked beneath air raid warnings, but now those raids would end, the brightly lit hours of night would return, and all manner of diversions would revive. The woman’s blood racing toward its natural promiscuity was only a matter of time. Try to stop it—would it ever cease? Try to elevate it—would it ever rise?

When the war concluded, what passed for resolve between them had hardened into shape. Well, even she was no different. Nomura thought the woman who’d snapped at him—despite mouthing words that seemed to yearn for their love’s permanence—had already, depending on perspective, taken a step toward orchestrating their rupture more decisively than he ever could.

The woman always wanted to be a good girl, always sought to craft her own virtuous facade—and suddenly hatred surged within him.

She had arrived with the carefree ease of someone on an overnight trip—so why did departure now feel so impossible?
"Well, she’s merely forgotten her promiscuity for a spell—no other men in sight—that’s why things are like this now," Nomura thought, his mind spiraling steadily toward darker conclusions. "But mark my words—soon enough I’ll grow sick of it all."
He knew he couldn’t sustain even the pretense of cohabitation while ignoring her selfish whims.

“The planes aren’t flying anymore, are they?”

The woman stopped crying, lay down, and propped her cheek on her hand.

“There are no more air raids, you know.”
“The sirens don’t blare anymore either.”
“It’s unthinkable.”

After some time had passed,

“Let’s stop talking about the war already.”

A sense of irritation surfaced.
The woman swayed unsteadily as she turned around and lay on her back,

“Let it end however it will.”

She closed her eyes.
It was a small, enticing body—adorable and dewy-fresh.

Had the war really ended? Nomura wondered as he continued to gaze hungrily at the woman’s body, his thoughts growing increasingly cold and lucid.