Pathway to Japanese Literature

Natsukawa thought his mother’s tenacity was relentless. Ever since the chaos following Japan’s defeat, he had deliberately cut off contact with his hometown. He avoided meeting anyone from there and kept his current address hidden even from close acquaintances—yet contemplating how Mother had finally tracked down his residence through what rumors she’d sniffed out sent a chill through him.

When Natsukawa stepped off the streetcar, Hiroshi approached and said, “Mr. Naa, welcome back.” Then informed him that Mother had arrived past noon and was waiting in his room. Hiroshi—quick-witted in such matters—had already waited two hours for his return, thinking it might prove awkward if Natsukawa walked in unprepared. Yet despite this kindness, Hiroshi remained impassive; even when mentioning the two-hour vigil, his tone stayed unchanged from usual.

“What will you do, Mr. Naa? Will you be returning home as you are now?”

Hiroshi glanced at Natsukawa’s face.
In his eyes, there was initially a certain severity.
Perhaps because Hiroshi’s informing words were calm, he felt no agitation, but Natsukawa’s mind was thrown into disarray, leaving him momentarily directionless.
Calm though he was, Hiroshi’s piercing will seemed to dig into it.

“Even if I were to stay out somewhere tonight, I don’t have enough money on me today.”

“I don’t mind that at all.”

“I see. Ueno’s close by after all. Guess I’ll join the street children.”

Rather than joining the street children, it verged on becoming part of Hiroshi’s company.
The early summer evening breeze was refreshing.
And the twilight clung thickly.

Hiroshi used feminine speech, but he was a man.
However, his heart was entirely that of a woman.
He had been a low-ranking member in kabuki, training as an oyama, but from during the war onward, he could no longer make a living and had been lodging at the okonomiyaki shop.
Having been driven out by fire, he had been living in the room adjacent to Natsukawa’s alongside the okonomiyaki family.
It was said that he would go out as a prostitute at night, but originally—from his days as a low-ranking kabuki member—he had grown accustomed to attending banquets like a taikomochi entertainer, becoming a plaything for patrons.
However, compared to geisha raised in those same banquet halls—whose hearts grew increasingly desolate—twenty-two-year-old Hiroshi still retained a naive quality akin to that of a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old apprentice freshly emerged from his training.
Natsukawa thought this disparity likely stemmed from differing awarenesses of chastity; yet Hiroshi’s modesty, disdain for vulgarity, and unadulterated passion—imbued with proper upbringing acquired through mastering feminine grace within classical art’s dignity—occasionally struck him as refreshing.

However, even that beautiful face—which had retained a youthful freshness in its faint plumpness—had recently grown haggard, taking on the coarseness of a middle-aged geisha. As this occurred, his heart too became eroded, faintly hinting at a mind like an endlessly expanding wilderness. Even so, his upbringing showed no signs of collapse and maintained a precarious equilibrium. In such unexpected crises, this desolate soul and proper upbringing created a strange harmony, even evoking the reliability of a seasoned man around fifty.

However, when Natsukawa began to walk, he grew exasperated by its aimlessness.

“After all, I’ll just go home anyway.”

“Oh, has homesickness taken hold?”

“Since my whereabouts have been tracked down, there’s no helping it.”
“I’ll lay out my feelings to Mother and settle things after that.”

he said, but the heartache of seeing Mother was unbearable.
Then Hiroshi pressed his body snugly against him as if to—
“Mr. Naa.”

In his eyes, face, and physique alike, a peculiar childishness seemed to stand out and envelop him.

“With me accompanying you, I won’t let you suffer any hardship.”

Natsukawa found it absurd to the point of spiritual exhaustion.
It wasn’t that this youth—barely sustaining his life through prostitution—could prevent hardship, yet he himself believed it so; and if in truth human happiness bore no relation to disparities of wealth or comfort, then one might consider how this youth’s devotion could become an anchor at the end of Natsukawa’s downward path.
This thought terrified him.

Natsukawa was by nature incapable of taking any interest in perverse sexual desires, yet separately, he could not dismiss a certain tenderness toward pure sincerity. The odor of Hiroshi pressing close was unpleasant, but he lacked the fastidiousness to spurn it. Well, anyway, he would take a little stroll and try to collect his thoughts.

★

The company where Natsukawa had been employed during the war was dissolved simultaneously with the end of the war.
Amid that chaos, he joined a group that hauled out the company’s remaining goods and semi-openly sold them off—though it was hardly a planned endeavor, more like a found opportunity anyone present would have seized, and the gain now seemed a trifling sum not worth mentioning.
But this became an addiction.

In that company, he had not held a high position.
It had originally been a special company he joined to avoid conscription, but given his age, it could be said that despite his short tenure, he occupied a position befitting him.
He had sent his wife and children back to his hometown just before the air raids began, but their home burned in the raids; through company arrangements, they ended up living together in a small rented house where he became involved with a female office worker sharing the residence.
His wife was from a family of higher lineage than his father’s—originally forced upon him by his parents, who in turn had gratefully and forcibly accepted her from her own parents. She did not flaunt her pedigree but was sullen by nature, prone to sending complaints to her parental home at every turn.
He had felt no affection for her, but now that he had taken a mistress, his wife’s flaws became glaringly apparent.
Yet given his family’s lineage and the weight it placed on his parents, his anxieties were irrelevant; he found himself wishing Japan itself would vanish entirely.

With the end of the war, the company dissolved, the rented house had to be vacated, and taking the eviction as an opportunity, he was able to part ways with the woman rather easily.

In truth, she was not without some lingering attachment, but as the woman had cleanly withdrawn herself, it must have seemed that a realm of freedom lay open before him—preferable to clinging desperately to a man with a wife and children.

If he had straightened up then, it would have been better, but the job he had lucked into during the chaos of the company’s dissolution served as a foothold, leading him into black-market dealings, and that prosperity continued right up until just before the blockade.
Even if I were to straighten up, she’s the wife I never liked in the first place.
It was only natural that I was reluctant, and it was galling that I had parted with the woman out of consideration for my wife; the slight lingering attachment I felt toward her now seemed like an enormous one.
Having forgotten how greatly relieved I was immediately after parting ways, I had in truth begun to degenerate inwardly.

After vacating the company’s rented house, the single room he finally found was a small plot left behind on a burnt-out hilltop—the modest dwelling of an elderly couple who had once been clerks somewhere long ago.
Three brothers—the eldest and youngest killed in war combat, the middle one dead from a direct incendiary bomb hit—made for a pitiful tale indeed, but this was the Stingy Old Landlord’s domain, that single second-floor room.
Through just one paper-thin sliding door resided three occupants: Hiroshi and the Okonomiyaki shop’s mother-daughter pair.
The Okonomiyaki mistress was niece to this miserly landlord. “Your mother never spared me a single coin when I struggled,” he now dismissed her as a nuisance—though when she first arrived fire-scattered, he’d eyed her purse’s contents without complaint.
This concerned a woman of the water trade; back then he’d readily accepted her compensatory payments—not from any proverb about idle hands growing hungry—but postwar monetary chaos rendering her once-considerable savings pitifully finite.

Natsukawa did not know exactly when the Okonomiyaki Daughter had become a black-market woman, but it was said that she herself had wanted to be a geisha, her mother had wanted to make her a mistress, and because the Stingy Old Landlord nagged persistently, she had become a black-market woman.
That was the mother’s complaint.
It was the Stingy Old Landlord’s theory that becoming a geisha required kimonos and such—expenses that would only drain one’s own funds without yielding a single coin for the parents—and that taking up as a mistress in these times meant hunting for patrons among the wealthy, whose futures were uncertain, and thus one ought not to do it; so he had recommended becoming a black-market woman instead, they said—yet the daughter was eighteen, a beauty too good for such work.
The mother had raised her daughter from childhood to become a wealthy patron’s mistress and live in comfort, but all that had vanished into thin air; she seethed with impotent rage, cursing the Stingy Old Landlord—yet where the truth of the matter lay remained anyone’s guess.
The mother was a shy woman with such a good nature and kindness that one wouldn’t think her a water-trade worker, yet she harbored a reckless soul—once she resolved herself with an *Alright then!*, there was no telling what she might do.
The daughter herself did not think her circumstances unfortunate in the slightest; lately, she was often out day and night, working as a barmaid at an oden shop in the ruins that resembled a kamaboko hut or taking up vendor work at the request of An-chan the black-market dealer, occasionally bringing home money.
“If you just give them money, that’s enough, right?” Though the mother flew into a rage over that phrasing—calling it galling—it wasn’t so vulgar a manner of speaking, and even in her nonchalant tone and bearing, there still lingered something undeniably girlish.
From the mother’s perspective, that too may have been a source of heartbreak.

Natsukawa had stumbled into this single room during the very peak of his prosperity, just before the blockade.
At that time he spent easy money like water, drank himself senseless day and night—the world a phantasm atop phantasms, butterflies from dreams being his true form or whatnot—rambling about not knowing what was what, guzzling whiskey straight from the bottle in bed from morning onward, his surroundings a continuous uproar like an overturned toy box.
He clung to it with a desperate dreamlike resolve indistinguishable from those air raid sirens' roar, treating Hiroshi and the Okonomiyaki mother-daughter like geisha—pouring drinks down throats, handing out cash—and whenever the daughter slept at home, she would always crawl into Natsukawa’s futon.
Natsukawa marveled they’d ever managed such foolish uproar, but once a brazen commotion reached that pitch, those caught in its wake got swept into the mood—so much so that even the Okonomiyaki mother began carrying herself like a geisha, slapping on face powder with abandon, making the whole affair darkly laughable.
Even the Stingy Old Landlord would partake in whiskey and receive party favors, prostrate himself like a banquet jester with flattery, and force out a couple of folk songs through gritted teeth.

His gang had originally been company colleagues—all middle-aged or nearing it, men whose age and circumstances (the defeat in war, the company’s dissolution, wives and children sent back to their hometowns) aligned perfectly for staging a rebellion. They tried earning easy money through a natural foothold, but compared to bloody-minded youth, their restraint and modest foresight only proved their undoing. With the blockade as their turning point, they disbanded; some returned to their families, while others resumed the salaryman life anew.

Natsukawa alone was left behind, but once he resolved to fall, there would be no hardship in life.
Since he still had his connections from before, merely moving rice and alcohol from right to left would yield considerable money; if he kept his feet moving diligently, he couldn’t live as he once had, but he could still drink himself senseless from time to time.
When his financial situation worsened, his intimacy with the Okonomiyaki mother-daughter and Hiroshi paradoxically deepened—the perils of his ecstatic heyday now gone; now fellow fallen souls, a sturdiness born of mutual aid had taken root.
In the world of the fallen, flesh-and-blood intimacy does not arise from one-sided relationships of aid.
Natsukawa was astonished by the unexpectedly temperate livability of the fallen world, but on the other hand, he cried out at unforeseen ambushes.

The daughter had called him Uncle from the very time she used to sleep in Natsukawa’s futon—so that’s how it was, a forty-year-old man and an eighteen-year-old girl. She didn’t particularly dislike Natsukawa but harbored no affection for him. It was simply a matter of being bought with money—not a coldness implying *if there’s no money, that’s it*—but rather, without money, he was just an uncle: free from notions of chastity yet equally unbound by lingering sentiment. Utterly free and, depending on perspective, innocent—far from hateful, she exuded a refreshing brightness. From around that time, she began working at oden shops and rarely returned home anymore, yet she abruptly grew adult-like, maturing visibly with each meeting. It resembled the terrifying speed of maturation seen in plants on the cusp of blooming. That Natsukawa had never witnessed such strikingly alluring maturation in other girls stemmed partly from his lack of ties to such worlds—but knowing her immature form now deepened an unexpected regret. At times, Natsukawa wavered. If only he had money again—

However, since this unexpected ambush wasn’t that particular threat, when the connection between the daughter and Natsukawa was severed so abruptly, the mother’s nearly fifty-year-old passion instead began to assert itself.
At the same time, Hiroshi’s single-minded passion had been directed at him with smoldering intensity from the shadows, leaving Natsukawa thoroughly troubled by this development as well.
A poet might extol a fifty-year-old woman’s carnal flames, but Natsukawa had never cared for Goya’s paintings.
This mother too must have been beautiful in her youth—traces of that loveliness still lingered in her features.
Fundamentally kind-hearted, timid, and reserved by nature, she would undoubtedly have remained more chaste than most had she not been widowed—not licentious by disposition in the slightest.
They say women at this menopausal age undergo peculiar changes, but given these times—these wretched times—the only daughter she had raised with such devotion had become a black-market woman.
With all conditions aligned, it was only natural she might think *Very well then!* and feel justified—yet it was pitiful to behold, or worse: an unspeakable ugliness too grotesque for daylight.
But such is human sorrow that even this monstrous thing—or rather, precisely because it had grown monstrous—Natsukawa, perpetually soused in liquor, found his lust being stirred regardless.
However drunk he became, some shred of restraint remained.
Yet when they drank all day through the dreary rain—all three slipping into drunken stupor until indecency seemed commonplace—Natsukawa unwittingly grew aroused. At this, the fifty-year-old woman who until then had appeared most brazen in her amorousness suddenly blanched, her face contorting into an expression of utter mortification as though stripped of all dignity.
This allowed Natsukawa to regain his reason, but he couldn’t escape recognizing that flowering trees bloom only in their season.

A woman’s youth was the flower of humanity; shame and fear had been naturally tinted by the blossom’s fragrance.
Yet what Natsukawa now recognized before him was not merely that this flower’s season had withered.
In the derelict house abandoned by the bloom’s beauty, there now dwelled another tenant.
This tenant knew neither dreams nor longing nor sweetness—only reality’s filth.
That face contorted in utter mortification told its tale all too clearly.
"I am a filthy old woman."
There was no way that crone could be desirable.
"The fact that you’d even consider seducing her—it’s horrifying," he thought.

Natsukawa had to consider that his surrounding environment and its habits had lost some crucial central axis.
"Everyone relies too much on their own 'flower'," he thought.
The daughter was alluring like a flower; her mother squirmed like an insect.
But the two were not separate things—the daughter too would eventually become an insect.
Because though in floral form, she lacked a flower's heart.
Therefore, even an insect could not possess a flower's heart.
Realizing his own heart followed the same logic, Natsukawa felt revolted.

At that moment, the insect turned her deeply troubled face away and muttered absently, "If only I were ten years younger..."
The first thing that rose vividly in Natsukawa’s hangover-thickened head was that muttering—If only I were ten years younger... Ah, it’s too late now.
He felt as though the woman had muttered something to that effect.
Was that Natsukawa’s hallucination?
No, it was not a hallucination.
Ah, it’s too late—however, the woman had not muttered such a thing.
If only I were ten years younger… Ah, age… Indeed, she had muttered just that.

The muttering persisted like an insect.
"Ah, age... What manner of insect am I?" Natsukawa thought.
Just as the woman herself was an insect, her very words crawled with insecthood.
There existed no playfulness within that soul.
Not a single brushstroke of cosmetic grace had ever touched that spirit.
But I ought to gaze upon myself.
When he considered *I too must be thus*, nothing cut deeper than his own wretched being.

The reason Natsukawa could endure this life akin to three insects was likely because Hiroshi—though an insect—was of a different character.
A perverse man does not turn toward a woman’s charms.
If he were to turn his attention, it would be solely out of jealousy, for he remained firmly convinced of his inherent womanhood.
He refused to say “kabuki female impersonator,” instead calling himself an actress.
“Yes, I was an actress,” he declared.
He showed no desire for wigs or women’s costumes.
While maintaining male attire, he appeared wholly convinced of his feminine identity.
The original beauty of his face surpassed anything the Okonomiyaki Daughter could ever hope to possess.
Above all, it held shadows of profound depth.
His countenance retained youthfulness yet bore sorrow.
One might say a single soul dwelled within his chest in strange form—
a soul no longer existing in this present world,
a soul that lived solely upon kabuki’s stage—one that served lords with loyalty,
upheld righteousness for love’s sake,
endured all agony and disgrace to protect its breast’s purity—
a soul like burning flame.

The Okonomiyaki Mother had lost all modesty of late.
When her daughter appeared, it became something special; she would place her daughter and Hiroshi side by side and begin taunting them with terms like “prostitute” or “black-market princess.”
With snake-like malice, she seemed compelled—as though her pent-up resentment would not rest until she spat out those words at least once.
She would say unbearable things to Hiroshi—“Do you sleep on a rock?” or “You must go through newspapers like crazy every day,” sneering, “What’s wrong? Won’t you scrape your knees raw on that stone unless you tie straw sandals around them?”
The daughter merely wore a mocking smile.
Because she knew she was prevailing through that simple tactic.
The one burning madly with sexual desire was none other than the mother herself.
Was she not even jealous of the very stone upon which her daughter slept each night?

However, there was a strangely incongruous dignity in Hiroshi’s responses. He too gave no reply. He simply turned his back and sat in dejection. It had an air both of finding it unbearable to hear and of mourning the shameful madness of one who had shown him kindness. He did not know how to respond to such vulgar and lewd remarks even with the semblance of a smile. He, at any rate, dwelled within a dignity detached from this reality. He was, in fact, a prostitute. He must have slept on the rock and scraped his knees at times. However, the lamp of dignity Hiroshi clutched to his breast did not intersect with his petty present form; he likely remained unaware of that form’s baseness. He clutched the lamp in his chest and lived with resolute determination. And he detested vulgarity and mourned lewd remarks, yet he seemed neither to hate nor mourn the people themselves who uttered such words. Detached from this reality, he dwelled precisely within the lamp of dignity, earnestly hating all that was vulgar, yet ceaselessly forgiving every person. That was the form of a malformed clown, yet how many could laugh at such dignity?

However, during sleepless nights or mornings when he lacked even the will to rise from bedding, Natsukawa would envision Hiroshi’s peculiarly incongruous dignity through a frigid smile.
He would feel compelled to stifle laughter, yet also be overcome by an oddly poignant emotion.
At any rate, thanks to the fifty-year-old woman’s sexual desire and the perverse man’s obsession sparking absurdly flamboyant displays just beyond the paper door, he managed to halt himself at the brink of the bottomless swamp.
Considering such a self, he wondered what he truly was.
He often thought of his childhood self.
Back in elementary school, he had been the most timid in his class, always trembling as if he himself would be scolded for the misdeeds of neighboring children.
He had likely been a child confined to corners where no one would notice his existence, or to the shadows of objects.
From middle school onward, he had suddenly begun to fill out, grown adept at sports, become strong, and gradually accustomed to living boldly in public view—yet now, at this critical juncture, he found himself reminded that the cowering elementary-schooler lurking in shadows was none other than his unvarnished true self.

From a young age, he had been the type who couldn’t handle anything garish or extreme.
Though he couldn’t bear to look directly at the fifty-year-old woman’s sexual desire or the perverse man’s obsession, and though he felt suffocated by the oppressive gloom of their degradation, why did he also find himself experiencing this strangely indolent, melting respite throughout his entire body?

One time, when a thoroughly drunk Natsukawa showed up at the oden stall where the daughter worked during one of his pub-crawling sprees, it was then that the daughter said to him.

“Hey, Uncle. Don’t go getting involved with my mom.”

Natsukawa savored those words with a strange lingering depth.
Mothers of the world pray and wish for their daughters’ virginity and purity as if to gods, but would an aged mother have chastity and purity prayed for by her prostitute daughter?
How could one know that when she—now a prostitute—had been a virgin, her mother must have prayed even more fervently for her purity?
As the saying goes about karma’s cyclical wheel—whether one knows such things or not, it seems to matter not at all.
What else could there be but to remain as delicate as an insect?

“Is it wrong for Mom to have a man?”
“But that’s absurd.”
“What is?”

“Hey, Uncle.”

At that moment, the daughter’s smile was sharply bright.

“You should quit this black-market business.”
“It’s shameful.”
“Uncle, someone your age shouldn’t be doing such things.”

He too seemed pitied like her aged mother. Never before had his own age confronted him so acutely. The daughter remained unaware of this. She held no philosophy of reason—only the animalistic thinking of eighteen spoke through her. It was audacious confidence. Confidence born purely of instinct. Eighteen stood as life’s queen, making her an unconscious sovereign of utter insolence. Until reaching forty this year, Natsukawa had never personally known that sigh—“Ah, this age…” Yet here, beyond logic’s reach, age crushing age dealt its ruthless blow—through it he glimpsed the world’s transience and autumn’s chill at his threshold. Reassessing the eighteen-year-old prostitute’s alluring form, he had to acknowledge this harsh truth: age itself could reign as queen in our world. Natsukawa still believed his swamp of degradation was youth itself—for youth meant play, he’d thought. No, no, no! Youth differed fundamentally from such boundless play. Like trees in bloom—a season bound to age—he now realized nature’s stern will lay beyond facile reason.

However, the queen of youth told him to quit the black market.
She declared it shameful for someone your age, yet while haughtily thrusting forth such an uncompromising demand herself possessed not a shred of reason.

"But if I don't eat, what else can I do?"

When Natsukawa said this, the Daughter began to laugh,

“Oh, really?”

she said.
She was truly a reckless aesthete, and precisely because of that, Natsukawa could not help but be excruciatingly aware of the dense, packed weight of his lost years.
Youth does not come again, it is said.
Youth is something that so blindly fulfills itself, its very thought blindly alluring.

And I—Natsukawa couldn’t help but look back at himself.
The eighteen-year-old Daughter, even as a black-market woman, still had her bloom.
However, Natsukawa had no bloom.
Where is the place I belong?
Is it a winter’s withered field? A desert?
More than anything—what am I?
For what purpose am I living?

Once, Natsukawa shamelessly propositioned the Daughter.
This was his way of saying they should go spend the night together.
The Daughter snickered.

“Cut it out.”
“You shouldn’t say such things anymore.”

“But you’re going to spend the night with someone anyway.”

“But with you, Uncle, it’s no good.”
“I don’t want you saying that stuff anymore.”

“Why is it no good?”

“Just because!”

The Daughter was laughing.
That laughter too was dazzlingly crisp.

Even then, however, the Daughter soon made a serious face and declared harshly.

“Uncle.”
“Don’t get involved with Mom.”

“So look,”
“Isn’t that what I’m saying? That we should go spend the night together?”

But before Natsukawa could finish speaking those words, it was as if he’d swallowed a stick.
The Daughter’s complexion had changed.
He thought she was about to cry.
Yet being a daughter raised in the flower-and-willow world, she would never do something so undisciplined as show tears.
She bit her lip and looked down—or in old-fashioned terms, one might say her shoulders trembled as though weeping.
Was it because she knew the wretchedness of selling spring that she despised her mother’s lewd desires?
Or was praying to a holy mother simply a daughter’s instinct?

Despite the Daughter’s fervent prayers, Natsukawa ultimately ended up forming a carnal relationship with her mother.

Just before the blockade, since there was surplus ill-gotten money, there had been a man allowed to run an oden shop set up in a kamaboko hut.
This man had run a street-stall oden business since before the war, but having evacuated to the countryside and fallen behind, he ended up working odd jobs like assisting fishmongers in the black market—until Natsukawa befriended and helped him.
Though appearing three or four years older than Natsukawa, this man was now his close friend—the very one who had often said the following to Natsukawa.

“Naa-san.”
“No matter how drunk you get, you mustn’t lay hands on that old hag.”
“Women of that age, having no prospects of finding a man first, end up clinging like madwomen and won’t let go.”
“I’ve had a bitter experience with that myself.”
“It’ll lead to something you can’t take back from a single night’s impulse, you know.”

Natsukawa had not forgotten those words either.
But a soul on the verge of falling must ultimately have had no choice but to descend to its lowest depths.
His soul had long since fallen to those depths; it was only natural things should end this way, with merely his external form left dangling in midair.
Natsukawa felt neither surprise nor regret.
It was simply that, having reached that point, he found himself made to accept the wretchedness exactly as it was.
He saw only a desiccated blackened body like withered wood and the obsession of a specter—one no longer harboring anything resembling dreams—that dwelled within it.

Natsukawa slept well.
He had long thought that life itself was like sleep, but ultimately concluded that if he simply regarded this reality as a dream, wouldn't that suffice?
Even if he resolved not to see dreams, unpleasant ones forced themselves upon him.
However much he craved good dreams, they never came.
Just like those dreams, this reality too defied his will—so in the end, he could only accept it as a dream.
Natsukawa thought this.
"I don't know—I'm dreaming," he told himself.

Natsukawa returned late and crawled into bed.
Then in that bed lay waiting a desiccated woman.
Otherwise when he tried to sleep, the woman from the next room would come crawling in groping her way.
Since dreams have no horns he did not hate them.
Still he thought it better to sleep without dreaming than endure nightmares.
In truth he was sleepy.
Always sleepy.
And lately he had come to think only of sleeping while in his room.
It felt as though for sleeping’s sake he could disregard all waking vexations and squalor.

Natsukawa could still endure the woman in the bed.
First, it was dark.
Because he couldn’t see anything and could remain silent without speaking.
What was painful were the times when he ate meals or drank tea with Hiroshi and the three of them together—for during these moments, the old hag was not only clearly visible.
Proudly satisfied in her carnal desires, she began to tease and torment Hiroshi.
“Closed for business tonight?”
she’d try saying; or she’d remark, “Even a lone soul can’t endure sleeping on stone forever now and then, can they?”
Compared to how the wealthy flaunt their wealth as the wealthy do, and how the talented flaunt their talents as the talented do—those who flaunt themselves solely because their carnal desires are satisfied create something reason can scarcely bear to look upon directly.
Moreover, when a fragment of that satiated carnality turns out to be none other than yourself—the loneliness of it, the emptiness—you would wish to vanish entirely and race away as wind.
Since everything was but a dream as it stood, he tried hard not to hate or curse women—yet he often found himself contemplating Hiroshi’s anguish as though it were his own.

Even in those fleeting moments of contemplation before sleep, Natsukawa found himself thinking more of Hiroshi than of the woman whose legs and waist touched his in the same bed.
What might Hiroshi be thinking now, he wondered.
Hiroshi must be grieving.
Why does Hiroshi grieve?
It is because he bears no hatred toward others.
He simply grieved for both his own fate and that of others.
It was because it lacked nobility—like the fire burning in his chest.
Would Hiroshi be able to sleep well, he wondered.

★

“Mr. Naa.”
“Might I instead humbly ask that you leave it to me?”

“What do you mean, ‘leave it to me’?”

“I have a household in mind, you know.”
“No—it’s a trusted household where you needn’t stand on ceremony.”
“I’ll handle your belongings afterward.”

“Well now—no need to plan that far ahead yet.”

“But Mr. Naa.”
“For now—a place to—”

“So then,”
“Tonight I’m joining the street children.”
“Just want a drink either way.”

“Yes—so the liquor will be at that trusted household.”

“No, no.”
“Liquor’s something I can drink anywhere.”

Hiroshi was not making an issue of Natsukawa’s mother’s imminent visit to Tokyo.
He merely grasped a pretext.
His concern was the Okonomiyaki matron; he planned to have Natsukawa move to a house unknown to her main connections and thereby naturally sever ties.
However, Natsukawa too could not bring himself to resent Hiroshi’s self-serving scheme; for if he could cleanly sever ties with the Okonomiyaki matron, this too—as ever—held its own allure for him.

The relationship between mother and child was as trifling as a toy.
As the Iroha Karuta adage goes—"In old age, learn from your child"—when children gain independence, mothers yearn to become animals belonging to their own offspring.
Yet for an unworthy child like Natsukawa, this eternal motherhood pained him.
Those who stray from society's proper path find the mother in their heart never dies—though her form differs from flesh-and-blood reality—and at the root of every thought returning to oneself through suffering or sorrow, her silhouette lingered.
There existed a mother called Anguish.
There existed a hometown called Agony.

Natsukawa’s mother was now past seventy years old, but having been raised under the rigid discipline of country samurai, middle-school-aged Natsukawa had been made to review and prepare Chinese classics under her guidance.
She was a strict mother who would scold him even for sitting with his knees splayed during meals, but even such a mother could not escape being the creature known as “mother.”
As the saying goes that unworthy children are especially dear, it is always the mother who loses whenever they cause trouble; and if that is her child’s fate, she thinks to set aside good and evil and share the same destiny.

In his childhood, his mother had been fearsome, and even now Natsukawa could not recall her without fear—but that was the mother dwelling in his heart.
The real mother possessed a scolding voice and angry eyes—yet she could be deceived and talked around.
To put it harshly, she was such a foolishly devoted, animalistic woman that one could even persuade her to participate in wrongdoing for her child’s sake.

In all matters, what people fear is generally an extremely animalistic instant.
Even something like death proves no exception.
And Natsukawa’s fear regarding his mother’s visit to Tokyo was in fact merely an instant—her angry eyes and scolding voice were not things that persisted unchanged for long.
She could be deceived and reasoned with, and there even existed the prospect that the situation might improve compared to before their meeting.

The mother dwelling in his heart did not work that way.
The mother he saw at the depths of anguish where he blamed himself—whether in suffering or in sorrow—was a mother who could not be deceived or tricked.
Isn’t that mother enough?
Why must I see the figure of that white-haired, bent old woman gasping her way here on the night train?
Why must I hear that obstinate anger and scolding voice?
Why must I so easily deceive and persuade her, enduring this unpleasant feeling like chewing sand?

But Natsukawa, a born coward, was especially timid when it came to his mother.
The moment of meeting his mother seemed more painful than anything.
The pain that even now throbbed raw in the heart of forty-year-old him differed not at all from that of seven-year-old him.
The thoughts flooding his chest were solely of that terror from childhood when his mother had scolded him; he could do nothing about the fear of his seven-year-old self.

“Hiro-san.”
“Is your mother alive?”

“No.”
“I was born from a tree hollow.”

Hiroshi said coldly.

That night, Natsukawa visited the oden shop at his usual friend’s kamaboko stall and drank himself into oblivion.
Of course, his drinking himself senseless wasn’t limited to this day alone—it wasn’t as though washing away his mother’s specter required some extraordinary quantity of alcohol.
It was simply that his oden shop owner friend had declared what amounted to a solidarity binge that day; once they started drinking together and the friend began outpacing even Natsukawa in downing rounds, things spiraled beyond control.

This oden shop owner had been a champion of local sumo in his hometown and still retained something of a Don Quixote temperament; his youthful days must have been extraordinary.
Having resolved to become the grand champion of sumo, he received farewell gifts from the village’s well-wishers and set out for Ryogoku.
He was successfully permitted entry into the school, but his raw strength proved utterly inadequate; when he charged headfirst at them, he was repelled as if colliding with a boulder. Then, with just one arm swung by the sumo wrestler—whose waist he clung to—his body spun round and round in the air like a top before being flung away.
If he swung his right hand, he was hurled left; if he swung his left hand, he was hurled right—tossed about in every direction or driven into the earth. In just one day of training, he came to keenly grasp the vast boundlessness of the world.
After staying for two full days and some time, he seized the opportunity, grabbed his luggage, and fled.
At any rate, he did possess strength surpassing ordinary people—at least enough to grab his luggage and run.
He remains a hulking man of ninety to ninety-four kilograms, and once he starts drinking, there’s no stopping him.
Though his drunken demeanor was calm, his recent weight had been crushing flimsy chairs, so when he arrived to cries of “Oh, you’re here! Wait a moment—we’ll bring out an empty barrel for you right now,” he found himself less than welcome.

“Mr. Naa. You haven’t had too much sake, have you?”

Hiroshi had said this, but it was already too late. With boisterous intent to sally forth, they left the aftermath to Okami-san and began their pilgrimage from one kamaboko stall to the next, house by house. Since there was neither thought nor coherent speech left, Hiroshi resigned himself and followed quietly like a shadow clinging to its form. The women, unaware that the person within was actually a lady, cast amorous glances which only deepened Hiroshi’s sorrow, making him appear all the more dignified like a samurai’s daughter. True to his declaration of “I do not drink sake,” Hiroshi consumed not a single drop. He would only lick the received cup before returning it to the cup-washing vessel.

Natsukawa no longer remembered where or how he had parted ways with the sumo wrestler. He was probably heading toward Ueno. He was shouting that he was a street child, a street child, as he walked. Behind and to the right, Hiroshi walked as if winding around. "Ah, hey there, street child," called out four or five men as they surrounded them.

"Ah, I see. So you're the town guys, huh?"

"Heh heh."
"We won't let you skip out on this."
"Why don't you come over to the burnt ruins?"

“Ah, sure thing. Anything goes.”

He was being recklessly generous. Neither he nor Hiroshi had carried anything of value to begin with. There, the scoundrels made them strip off their clothes.

“Ah, sure thing. After all, a long summer’s coming.” “These rags are just in the way.” “Take it all—clean away.” Ah, this felt good. “Nah, nothing’s left now. Just these bodies.” “Huh? Shoes? Oh, right…”

The soul of a woman perfected through classical artistry meant nothing before these ruffians—her color draining away, trembling from her lips all the way through her entire body as she undid her kimono.

Only their bodies remained unharmed.

However, Natsukawa—the very essence of his soul marinated in alcohol vapors—found being naked cooler and more comfortable.
He shook hands with the scoundrels, waved goodbye, and was suddenly overcome by a pleasant drowsiness; taking advantage of the shade, he slumped down right there—Hiroshi’s earnest pleas notwithstanding—and fell into a deep, oblivious sleep.

When he awoke abruptly, his entire body was chilled to the core, a heavy creaking pain clinging to every joint.
Only his throat burned raw, his mouth gaping open on its own as he blew and sucked wind like bellows.
When he looked around in surprise, something soft and warm touched his hand.
It was Hiroshi.

Hiroshi sat pressed close against his back. He likely sat with dignity—true dignity—but what people call dignity requires proper robes; there exists no dignified figure clad in nothing but a loincloth. This was an exceptionally well-groomed youth of particular grace who always wore suitable kimonos with exacting propriety, never once betraying even a speck of disarray in his daily appearance. The beauty and vitality of his form—likely owing to feminine-sloped shoulders and a delicately slender frame—now seemed utterly confounded by the solitary loincloth, leaving him sitting dejectedly on the ground like a revenant freshly risen from its grave.

Natsukawa woke up, hurriedly sat upright, and immediately let out seven or eight sneezes in rapid succession.
Then, as if echoing him, Hiroshi began to sneeze—not just seven or eight times but fifteen, sixteen, then twenty, twenty-one—yet still sat there gaping and panting.
In the end, when a six-inch string of snot dangled limply down, he grabbed it with his hand as if plucking a mandarin orange—but by this point, no amount of classical artistic training could help him now.

“Hiro-san. Haven’t you caught a cold?”

“Indeed, Mr. Naa.”

Hiroshi mustered a voice as faint as a mosquito’s buzz and replied.

“How are you faring? Did your body suffer any harm?”

“I might have caught a bit of a chill myself. Still—why are we naked?”

“Oh, Mr. Naa! How cruel! Don’t you remember?”

“No—wait... Ah, right! Yes, I remember now.”

Even Natsukawa, crossing his arms (after all, it was too cold not to), let out a sigh as deep as a thousand fathoms.
Since ancient times, it is said that one cannot journey naked.
Even street children of the burnt ruins would at least be wearing a shirt.

He had no choice but to return home.
To the house where mother waited.
At that moment, Hiroshi spoke thus.

“Mr. Naa.”
“I bear no grudge.”
“Ah, it’s fate, isn’t it?”
“I—just sitting here by your side like this—it’s happiness, isn’t it?”

And so Natsukawa returned home naked to the house where mother waited.

Truly, there was nothing to be done about the alignment of the stars.
No matter how profound a tragedy the author might have envisioned, there was nothing to be done—the facts themselves went spinning off in such a nonsensical manner.

Unfortunately, Mother was still awake and had not gone to bed.
The shadow was visible on the shoji screen.
Then Natsukawa’s heart abruptly shifted.
To say his heart had changed was one thing—not that it had transformed into anything particularly grand.
Hiroshi had come up the stairs behind him, but he suddenly turned around and grabbed Hiroshi’s hand.
He could no longer enter by himself.
Hiroshi, having his arm grabbed, was startled; but when he understood his scheme, the color drained from his face.
Hiroshi—who had absorbed the soul of a classical kabuki heroine through years onstage—could never expose his naked body before strangers; no, or rather before *anyone* at all. Yet when Natsukawa saw him already sensing danger and attempting to retreat, a sudden surge of cruel intent rose rebelliously within him.

Determined not to let him escape, Natsukawa lunged and grappled with him in an instant—but Hiroshi, being so emaciated and slight, was effortlessly pulled into his arms. Having clung to him with such desperate intensity, Natsukawa found himself taken aback by the utter lack of resistance and startling lightness, leaving him momentarily stunned.
At that moment, Hiroshi let out a piercing “kyaaa!” of a scream.
The “kyaaa” of a scream may be casually written about in books, but actually hearing such a scream is something one would likely experience only a few times in a lifetime; thus, it stands to reason that most peaceful souls would live and die without ever knowing such a cry.
Natsukawa, too, had never heard such a scream until he reached the age of forty.

“Hee-hee-hee-hee.”

Hiroshi let out a strange sound—whether he had tried to scream “Murder!” and failed, or whether it was merely a lament from a grief-stricken twilight state between dream and reality, none could say.

At that moment, the shoji slid open with a clatter, and his mother revealed her face.
She had journeyed by train from the countryside in her travel-ready work trousers and now stood exposed in her white-haired form.

Natsukawa lifted the naked Hiroshi up as if hoisting him lightly and faced his mother. His face bore an expression—whether of tears or laughter, likely impossible for anyone to discern—that had frozen stiff. However, he energetically—

“Well, well! Do come in!”

he said.

Then, as if that were the signal, Hiroshi let out another splintering scream that seemed to tear through the air. And then, he thrashed both legs with all his might. Unfortunately, one of his flailing kneecaps struck Natsukawa’s testicles squarely—it was unbearable. Natsukawa, still carrying Hiroshi on his shoulders, staggered unsteadily and collapsed into a sitting position; then, overcome by the excruciating pain, he prostrated himself. The pain was excruciating, but he noted in his mind that this posture happened to be rather convenient—and took the opportunity to offer his long-overdue apologies. Thus, he was at least able to naturally apologize for his repeated unfilial acts.