Pathway to Japanese Literature

I hesitated about publishing this diary.
There was meaning in writing it, but I doubted whether there was meaning in publishing it.

The reason I wrote this diary is already stated within its pages, so I will avoid redundancy; this is a conscious record I kept while writing *Female Body*, documenting how my novel took shape.
I had never kept a diary before, and after these twenty-odd days of entries, I have not kept one since.
Someone like me—living each day as it comes, capriciously, utterly without plan—would never feel inclined to keep a diary without some special reason.

While keeping this diary, I was indeed conscious of Mr. Hirano at times.
I thought Mr. Hirano would surely write something about Female Body and expound on matters such as the nature of the author's intent.
In response to that, if I were to publish this diary and matters such as Mr. Hirano's conjectures being completely at odds with my own intentions were to arise—well, those are ultimately of no consequence.
Since criticism is itself a work, its significance lies in its uniqueness; in truth, whether I even know myself remains profoundly uncertain.

Therefore, I doubted publishing this diary on the grounds that it was not my "work," but upon reflection, since it was a consciously maintained record, it could not be definitively said not to be a "work."

And my publication of this record did not mean that I was challenging, from the author’s side, the intentions that critics speculated writers to have—the challenge would be made elsewhere, through different means.

As Mr. Hirano's request had been titled "Gesakusha Literary Theory," and since I had always taken it upon myself to be a gesakusha, I thought he likely wanted to know why novels constituted gesaku for me.

The gesakusha I call myself exists solely within my own vocabulary, and its meaning might differ somewhat from what is commonly understood as a gesakusha. But no—it's not so different after all. I don't mind being just a gesakusha. I am merely a gesakusha, nothing more than a storyteller. It's simply that my survival is staked on this gesaku writing—on such a wager, I merely engage in gesaku.

To stake one's survival—this too amounts to nothing grand. It's simply that I'm living. That's all there is to it. I prefer not to offer any further explanation.

Therefore, I thought it would be simpler to present the facts of how my novel came into being.
However, what I found most detestable was this "Female Body".
It was that I took twenty days for forty-two pages, absurdly and foolishly agonizing over it.
The reason for this was that since "Female Body" served as the opening to a full-length novel—a novel I intended to title "Searching for Love," though it remained unfinished—the commencement of a lengthy work required at least some degree of overall foresight and calculated planning.
A sort of foreshadowing was necessary.

In many cases, such things were entirely unnecessary—the work developed simply through writing—and while I fundamentally adhered to this principle, with such works being my mainstay, "Female Body" proved slightly different, as I found myself somewhat caught up in and troubled by the novel's structure.
I detested how this diary somehow came across as oddly grandiose, as if agonizing and anguishing, for I was not originally that sort of person.
For works other than this novel, it was my usual practice to write thirty pages a day—sometimes even forty—though truth be told, the time spent thinking far exceeded that spent writing.
Of course, once I started writing, what I had in mind naturally ended up becoming something entirely different—this was the usual course of things.

So, I had come to feel reluctant about publishing it, but moreover, I do not think I am necessarily telling the truth in this diary.
A diary is a rather restrictive thing—since it is not my discovery but my explanation, and because an explanation is not something absolute.

A novelist cannot express themselves except through their works.
Therefore, I must state in advance that this diary is not necessarily a work, and yet again, that it may indeed be a work.

July 8th (Rain)

A letter arrived from Mr. Sasaki Kiichi.
He shared his thoughts on *The Idiot*.
The reason I thought to try keeping a diary was because of this letter from Mr. Sasaki.
Mr. Sasaki imagines the author’s intended meaning in *The Idiot*, but in truth, I, as the author, do not understand what *The Idiot*’s intent was.
Once I finish writing, I end up forgetting the work's intent.

I am now about to write the beginning of a certain full-length novel.
It was this spring that I conceived this novel.
This spring, I read through all of Soseki’s full-length novels.
This was because the person I was living with had Soseki’s complete works.
I was astonished to find that Soseki’s works completely lacked any engagement with the physical body.
While everything consists of male-female human relationships, the physical body is entirely absent.
Soseki’s intellect and logic exhibit that proverbial meticulous attention to detail—his thought reaches every last external minutiae of human relationships with remarkable thoroughness—but the physical body alone is absent.
And without attempting to resolve human relationships within themselves, they resort to suicide or knock on religion’s door.
And even when they knocked on religion’s door, there was nothing resembling enlightenment, so they let human relationships themselves become muddled through that.
Soseki has convinced himself that suicide and knocking on religion’s door represent the sincere form of suffering.

I felt tremendous indignation that such shallow imitations of intellect were believed to be profound and sincere, and that they were regarded as first-rate literature without question. But getting angry would get me nowhere. I myself had no choice but to write. If I could not prove through my own entire body of work that Soseki was nothing more than a shallow imitation of intellect, then I was a worthless human being. Therefore, I conceived the idea of writing a novel that would trace the emotional bond between a certain couple through both mind and body in their rightful form. As it happened, I had considered trying to include this opening section in the September issue of Bungeishunju's fiction.

Therefore, I—the one writing this novel—decided to keep a daily record of what I intended each day and how I went about thinking and writing.
When I finished writing, I always ended up forgetting my intentions and such.
In other words, I possessed no clear overall intent for the work.

In the afternoon, a special delivery arrived from Mr. Ozaki Shiro containing his impressions of Tokyo News's current commentary.
During a break in the rain, I went to the station front to buy cigarettes.
I read history books.

July 9th (Cloudy)

Mr. Fukushima of Shinseisha visited.
I accepted a thirty-page novel commission.
I declined the literary commentary.
Mr. Wakazono Seitaro visited, bringing whiskey.
I became unable to work.
I went out to buy cigarettes.

July 10th (Clear)

The thermometer here read thirty-one degrees.
A request came from Hope for ten pages of essays.
I accepted because I had already written something.

I wrote three pages.
Because the brush wouldn’t flow as I intended, I stopped.
What I am envisioning now is this: the Tanimura couple no longer feel any spiritual connection beyond their current status as husband and wife, and they are both aware of it.
From a societal perspective, they are a couple who care for each other beyond mere harmony.
From there, I only know to begin this novel.
The character Okamoto is merely a convenient device for elucidating the Tanimura couple’s inner world; I am not considering anything beyond that at present.

Today was no good.
Tomorrow I'd start over again.
I didn't know the plot or ending—they quarreled—but whether they'd stay harmonious forever...
The characters were supposed to truly be born onto...

There was a fire near the station burning vigorously, so I went to see it.
Watching the fire proved tedious.
Next to the fire, American soldiers used a roller to level the ground.
Without so much as glancing at the neighboring blaze, they moved back and forth smoothing the earth.
I watched for twenty or thirty minutes, but they never once turned toward the flames.
This struck me as more unusual.
Even America must have its rubberneckers.
Of course, many Japanese too would merely glance briefly at a fire before boarding trains to hurry home.
I am by nature a rubbernecker.
I read history books.

July 11th (Clear)

Scorching heat.
Our thermometer reads thirty-four degrees.
The humidity is intense, unbearable.

I wrote four pages and stopped again.
In the afternoon, I started over again from the beginning.
I wrote six pages but stopped again.
I started over again.
Tanimura and Motoko became somewhat clearer.
At first, I had intended to make Tanimura a completely ordinary person in both mind and body, but it just didn't work.
Today he became a somewhat sickly man.
And I ended up conceiving a man who seemed like a cross between Mr. Izawa and Mr. Kuzumaki.
Motoko was clear from the beginning.
Okamoto also became clear.

In the evening, Mr. Wakazono Seitaro came, accompanied by Mr. N from Uchiyama Bookstore.
They brought whiskey.
Mr. N was a fighter squadron member; apparently, he had fled from Manchuria by plane at the war’s end.
The scorching heat was unbearable.
I slept on the tatami mats.

July 12th (Clear)

The Madam of Yasudaya brought flowers to mother’s Buddhist altar.
At three o’clock，a sudden rain fell，making it somewhat cooler.

I wrote five pages and stopped again.
Tanimura just wasn’t working.
His face，body，and mind all lacked true flesh and substance.
In my head，he still hadn’t truly taken root.
I read history books.
I began compiling a timeline of Dōkyō but grew weary of the task and abandoned it.

July 13th (Clear)

At last my brush began to glide smoothly, but Tanimura had clearly become a sickly man.
As a healthy man, he simply wouldn't work.
I wanted to write about an utterly ordinary man's spiritual weakness, but unless it connected with physical frailty, I couldn't express it.
Due to my deficient brushwork.
There must be a lack of flesh and blood in my concepts—likely I lacked the skill to instill a fragile spirit within a healthy Tanimura.
I'd been strangely fixated on making Tanimura sickly as if exposing my inadequacy, but once I decisively removed my helmet, I felt unburdened.
I wrote thirteen pages.

It seemed I had no particular intention compelling me to single this out for documentation. Regarding the thirteen pages written that day—they simply existed—Tanimura defeated Okamoto, Motoko rebelled against that Tanimura; I had merely tried starting from there. Though vaguely anticipating Motoko's true motivations for rebellion, once writing began, through the act itself, new conceptions took shape organically—utterly devoid of planning. I found myself obsessing over Motoko's bodily fragility. Could she truly be deceived and manipulated by Okamoto? This line of thinking felt dangerous. I wanted Okamoto confined to a plot device role, never letting him dominate. The thought of him running rampant proved unbearable, yet I knew such feelings mustn't linger—though curiously, they never surfaced mid-writing.

July 14th (Clear)

Scorching heat.
An express letter from Mr. Ozaki Kazuo arrived, asking me to send him the Tokyo News editorial.
By express mail, I sent a reply.
Today I took six cold water baths.
I felt as if the strength had drained from my joints.

A man came with a letter of introduction from a relative, saying he wanted me to help him write a script for an Asakusa-style farce. He was someone who had repatriated from Northern China. He was a complete amateur who, after seeing Asakusa plays, thought he could produce something like that himself—but when I heard the plot of the script he wanted to write, it was so utterly foolish it wasn’t worth discussing. Such amateurs do not realize that what they themselves find dull to watch and what they themselves write are entirely separate matters. Even if they find it dull, that’s no proof they can write something better—yet they know no fear. They don’t know themselves.

I, writing a novel that roundly disparages Natsume Soseki, found myself plunged into true despondency when turning these thoughts inward.
I truly couldn't bring myself to laugh at others.
Yet what set me apart from this man was that I at least possessed some knowledge of learning from others' works—of contending and grappling with them—while he remained utterly ignorant of such matters.
When asked what he'd read or whose works he admired, he claimed nothing had yet impressed him.
When I inquired if he'd read Molière, Beaumarchais, Marcel, or Achard, he answered in the negative.
He didn't even know their names.
What a reckless man.
No matter how time dragged on, he refused to leave, reciting his script with recital-like precision.
I became utterly spent.
I found myself completely overwhelmed by the urge to weep.
This stemmed from my own foolishness—and somehow too from how my own brashness, that perpetual failure to know my place, had grown unbearable.

I had come to dissect Motoko’s character.
Yet I arrived at this conclusion: one must not dissect, but rather achieve through concrete facts—facts that exist not for explanation, but as the very form in which events (facts) themselves unfold.
How Motoko handled the woman abandoned by Okamoto—what she felt and thought—this weighed too heavily.
I thought exhaustively.
I thought every which way.
Yet through all my thinking, I couldn’t inhabit Motoko’s feelings or thoughts.
Here I became stuck, managing only one and a half pages today.
Breaking through here felt like emerging into open sea—no landmarks ahead.
There was no semblance of conviction one might call artistic intent—nothing noble whatsoever.
Cool down already.
Hot hot hot.

Let me state it clearly—in this Motoko, I had been envisioning Yata Tsuyoko.
This person and I longed for each other, loved each other, yet ultimately never married, never shared a physical relationship—all while yearning, fleeing from one another, rushing to part... Well, never mind.
Therefore, I know nothing of Yata Tsuyoko's body.
Therefore, I am attempting to create a Yata Tsuyoko whom I do not know.
The Yata Tsuyoko I do not know—I can only think she is as precious as the unknown self within me.
It is precisely identical to my own self-discovery.
Yet I have grown terribly anxious.
The burden proved too heavy.
I sense Motoko is falling in love—whether I can write this—I want to make Tanimura the protagonist and leave it at that.
I detest this feeling that Motoko might be falling for some foolish man.
I keep thinking it's wrong to let such matters preoccupy me.

July 15th (Clear)

Day after day, the thermometer pointed to thirty-eight degrees.
As usual, I dived into the cold bath, emerged, and faced my desk—but my head remained unfocused.
A twenty-four or twenty-five-year-old youth named Motohiko Irie from Shin Nihon-sha, who called himself a poet, came and demanded that I write a thirty-page novel for a magazine called Salon.
I said I hated writing, but this person was again a most peculiar character—perhaps of good upbringing, resembling Hirokazu Ooi yet more pure, bizarre, and utterly bottomless—currently having tumbled into Taruho Inagaki’s place and living under the same roof, though he said he owned nothing at all.
He looked thoroughly disappointed.
“Apart from my fundoshi, I own nothing,” he declared.
“He doesn’t even have a family register,” he said.
Inagaki Taruho took the bed and told him, “You sleep down there,” so he apparently ended up sleeping on a stone.
He kept scratching his body; there must have been lice or something.
If Inagaki Taruho was the sort to have his bed taken from him, then lice were inevitable—I found this unbearably amusing.
Alone, he rambled on and on about this and that—discussing poetry, debating literature—for nearly two hours, and being such an odd fellow, I found it utterly amusing and agreed to write the manuscript.
We made plans to visit Shin Nihon-sha someday and drop by Kikuoka Hisatoshi’s Ginza shop together.
I asked them to arrange for me to meet Jun Okamoto then.
Three years ago, I had received a letter from Jun Okamoto expressing his desire to meet, so I replied that I would invite him out for drinks sometime—yet I still haven’t kept that promise.
At that time, it had been precisely because the drinking establishments had disappeared.
Handa Yoshiyuki had joined the Communist Party, and apparently whenever he saw this young man's face, he would stammer “You should join too!” while spraying spit in his vigorous recruitment efforts—the young man said he wasn’t surprised by the Communist Party itself, but found it troublesome getting spit all over his face.
I burst into uproarious laughter.

Yesterday, I said Motoko was Yata Tsuyoko.
That was an overstatement.
After all, Motoko is Motoko.
When I rested my hands, I remembered that person—it was excruciating.
I wrote that Motoko knew too much of the female body's fragility, weakness, and ugliness—perhaps beyond what could be spoken of in the parlor.
When I received the printed postcard announcing her death—though I realized her mother was still alive—the single line stating "Tsuyoko died with little happiness" left me utterly desolate and defeated.
When considering how little happiness her deceased daughter had had—the mother must invariably have been thinking of me.
I of course did not attend the funeral, send condolences, or visit the grave.
Ten years ago, when I was thirty-one, we shared a single kiss—just once.
You were like a dead person.
I too had no strength at all to embrace you.
It was merely—from afar—as if we had pressed our dead-like cheeks together.
Day after day, during our time apart—after we separated—when the anguish felt intense enough to kill—yet I kissed you for the first time in the fifth year of our love.
That night, I wrote you a severance letter.
I feared thinking of your body; I could not help wishing you had no body; I wanted you to forget mine too.
And now, I never wanted to see you again.
Marry anyone.
I had grown weary of you.
I would nurture a different you within myself.
Don't reply—goodbye. That farewell truly meant adieu.

And since then, I have not met you.
Over those years, in my meditations, your body was defiled more foully than any other woman's; I desecrated your body most thoroughly in this world, hated it—my Blizzard Story became a monstrosity of a novel that soiled, tormented, warped, and tortured your body; truly a wretched monstrosity spawned from a filthy soul.
Had you read that—how enraged, how loathing you would have been—I am such a fool, comprehending nothing, unaware of what I do, now as then, utterly—yet still—it cannot be helped.
When you died, I was desolate—yet it felt lucid.
When I thought your body no longer existed on this earth, there came too a lucid feeling—like the blue sky.

Even now, I continue to torment, defile, and wound your body.
It is not that I intend to defile your body; I truly pray to God that I may write your body and carnal desires as purer than anything else, but once I begin writing, I inevitably end up making them filthy.
I have never wanted to write villains.
I want to write of good things, beautiful things, virtuous souls—but when I start writing, they naturally transform into unbelievably filthy, wicked people and grotesque souls.
Naturally, they inevitably plunge onward in that direction.

Every time I rested my brush and remembered you, it became excruciating. Motoko's body inevitably transformed into one of filthy carnal desire. When I wrote that Motoko knew too much of the female body's filth, fragility, weakness, and ugliness—so much that it defied parlor conversation—and threw down my brush, I kept recalling your face with aching persistence. You would sometimes turn sideways and fall silent. What had you been thinking then?

Motoko must not be Yata Tsuyoko.
Motoko must be Motoko.
Motoko is Motoko.
No matter what, I must believe that.
I wrote four pages.
The time I ended up throwing down my brush was greater.

July 16th (Sunny)

Scorching heat.
My mercury read thirty-five degrees.
An express mail arrived from Mr. Ebihara of Chuo Koron.
He requested I write a novel or essay for Hi no Kai’s magazine.
I wanted to accept this by all means.
Though I thought it quite unreasonable, I resolved to write it without fail.
Mr. Ebihara was someone who had loved my work from long ago, so I took pleasure in working for such people.
The fact that it was a magazine unlikely to sell made me all the more want to write for it.

I thought that the Tanimura couple would probably each fall in love.
As for Tanimura, he confessed wanting a love without flesh—one of pure soul—that he'd be content to burn to death for.
So I temporarily assigned the name Nobuko to that love interest.
Yet having given her this name, I still hadn't considered at all what kind of woman she might be.
Tanimura himself would likely naturally determine Nobuko's character.
For me, there was neither time nor need to think about that yet.
Would that love affair become this novel's theme?
I had never intended such a thing.

Motoko, for her part, seemed increasingly unable to form romantic connections.
Gradually becoming rigid, narrowing, retreating into her shell like a hermit crab—it was utterly unexpected.
I had an inkling—or perhaps an expectation—that Motoko might embark on some outlandish romance surpassing even Tanimura’s, but frankly, I thought it might be better to stop writing here for two or three days and idly waste some time.
I wrote up to the twenty-eighth page.
When the range of my thoughts began to feel constrained, it was best to simply waste time or money—this was a conviction I’d developed through habit, and there seemed nothing better than this.

Around two in the afternoon at the peak of the heat, Ms. Tateno Tomoko of the Zatsudankai paid a visit.
This left me rather troubled.
This person had sent an express letter on July 6th—the day before I began this diary—demanding I write an "Annihilate Fake Literature" piece.
Given that she was a woman, there was something about 'fake literature' and 'annihilation' that felt so valiantly attuned to the times that I couldn't stop laughing.
The woman's militant fervor was simply too much.
Sick of journalism's vulgarity yet unwilling to refuse outright, I had drafted a sardonic essay mocking this "valiant and invincible" lady journalist and promptly dispatched it.

She appeared to be a demure young woman. Yet at times she turned stingingly sarcastic, as if believing that honesty somehow equated to wickedness—an utterly agonizing demeanor. Painful to witness. Far from annihilating fake literature, someone like Sakaguchi Ango was fakery incarnate—that she remained oblivious to how my grand lambasting of senior scholars actually constituted self-admonishment against my own fraudulent nature, this very struggle, made it worse. I had wanted to tell her how vital it was for everyone to fully recognize their own inauthenticity, but anticipating insincere reception laced with sarcasm, I stayed silent. Fundamentally honest yet warped by mistaking contrariness for virtue and posturing for merit. I sensed she armored herself by distorting an inherently gentle, fragile disposition. In this sweltering heat, watching her strain every nerve through forced intensity pained me deeply. Overcome by sympathy, I accepted the manuscript request on the spot.

Around nine in the evening when it had cooled down, I promptly wrote the casual essay manuscript.
About Ms. Nakategawa Tomie.
I had wanted to write this for several years but never intended to compose it so simply. My plan had been to first read Kasuga and consider the matter carefully, but having no copy of Kasuga at hand—indeed finding its absence more convenient—the idea of formally rereading it and approaching the task with excessive gravity made writing seem impossibly troublesome. In about three hours, I finished it straightforwardly.

July 17th (Sunny)

Scorching heat, and again, scorching heat.
An express letter from Shogakukan: a fifty-page novel. I couldn't possibly write it. That was the reality.

When I tried creating Dōkyō's timeline, it became Emi no Oshikatsu, then Shōben, then Fuhito, then Kamatari—digressing ever further into antiquity—until inevitably, whatever I attempted culminated in that proverb: "Excess proves insufficient."
I read Kume Kunitake's History of the Nara Court while taking notes.
The scorching heat persisted late into the night.
I entered the cold-water bath and finally managed to sleep.

July 18th (Cloudy, clearing around 2:00 PM)

It was manageable while cloudy.
When the sun blazed out, this second floor became a steam bath.
From early morning, a strange confidence had welled up within me that I would definitely complete this full-length novel within the year.
What utterly strange confidence this was.
Completely vague and formless—no plot, no plan, no direction—what on earth was this confidence based on?
But to be utterly brimming with confidence—what a farce.
The day before yesterday, writing that informal essay manuscript and then pretending to have forgotten about this novel seemed to have been beneficial.
Strangely, I was beginning to feel refreshed.
I felt as though I could sense energy overflowing within me.
What joy there must have been in times like those!
But when I considered how few days like this there were in a year, it was disheartening.

I deliberately refrained from taking up the brush. Measuring the swelling power within while lying down reading a book—it felt truly grand, and I found myself remarkably dependable. It was the hollow confidence and power of a phantom shadow, but fully aware of this deception, I let myself be beguiled; though a trivial affair, that I felt genuinely content because of it proved laughable.

July 19th (Sunny)

I fell ill.
Diarrhea and abdominal pain—likely from the cold water bath.
The summer's oppressive heat stripped me of all strength, leaving only lethargy and jagged emotions.
In my gloom, I could think of nothing but atomic bomb explosions.
Whether I wanted to be exploded myself or to explode others—I couldn’t tell.
Everything sharpened, turned painful—I couldn’t conceive of peace.
Due to the fever, I couldn’t perceive the outside heat.

July 20th (Sunny)

The scorching heat was relentless.
Even at night, the heat persisted.
My fever had apparently subsided, making me acutely aware of the sweltering heat once more.
I no longer thought about atomic bombs, yet found myself unable to contemplate work either.
I didn't even feel like reading books.

July 21st (Sunny)

Fiercely hot.

Chūōkōron; Mr. Kotaki visited.
The matter of the short story collection to be published this time.
"If you devote yourself to the full-length novel," he told me, "we'll consider your livelihood as well."
This was extremely gratifying and reassuring to accept, but I found myself weighing two options.
At that moment, I felt I had endless things I wanted to write—should I simply write whatever came to mind, pushing myself to the limit?
Or should I resist any urge to write short stories and focus solely on immersing myself in the full-length novel piece by piece?
These two paths.
Setting personal reservations aside, I resolved to tentatively choose the former approach.
I had clearly made up my mind.

Faced the manuscript. Okamoto's financial dealings. Okamoto's coquetry. Why must things take this form? The agony was unbearable. Okamoto's fawning gestures—filthy, unclean, utterly repulsive—yet Motoko's flesh being defiled, battered, and toyed with like this; the fragility of her body became too much to bear. Why does it come to this? Was this not sheer malice—as if exacting vengeful spite through single-minded hatred? Why must it turn out this way? Though not a shred of such intent existed, it inevitably turned out this way. Could no longer refrain from throwing down the brush. Wrote one line, flipped over and shut my eyes; after thirty minutes passed, wrote another line—proceeding in such fashion. Simply didn't want to write. Merely one and a half pages.

July 22nd (Sunny)

Scorching heat.

Mr. Tetsuya Oki Shio of Akatsuki-gane visited.
This was my first time meeting him, but he belonged to a coterie magazine of my close friends—a person whose name I had long known.
He proved an unfortunate soul who had endured eight years of military life in China; he spent two hours recounting that existence before departing.
I made a promise to write a short story by September's end.

I found writing truly painful.
I detested Okamoto’s baseness, yet Tanimura insisted that Okamoto possessed an artist’s intriguing quality.
Tanimura’s thinking felt somehow precarious.
When I wrote about Fujiko that day—though Tanimura spouted nonsense about “soul love”—this persistent anxiety haunted me: wouldn’t he ultimately pursue Fujiko and that so-called soul love, exposing his true nature?
Were that true, it would prove utterly pathetic.
How tragic.
How shabby.
I wanted Motoko to fall in love with someone—to violently rupture Tanimura’s affected air of enlightened self-righteousness and plunge him into frenzied chaos—yet Motoko only grew increasingly incapable of love.
Still, even if Motoko fell in love and Tanimura’s foundations crumbled—would I possess the skill to properly develop such fraught relations? This too tormented me.
Starting then, mired in such anguish—what would become of me hereafter?—I felt utterly desolate regarding my own talent.

July 23rd (Sunny)

Scorching heat.
Ms. Shima Ruriko of Dokusho Shinbun visited.
A review of Kafū's discursive monologue.
Since I could not write, I suggested having Mr. Sasaki Kiichi take on the burden.
This was because I had learned from a recent letter that Mr. Sasaki held views on Kafū similar to my own.

My brother from Niigata arrived in Tokyo.
A faint rain fell.
Not cooling down in the slightest; rather, growing more humid and stifling.

Motoko called Okamoto’s coquetry “mijime,” she said. And Tanimura thought she didn’t realize “now” that this coquetry was being directed at her own body. He believed there were still many secrets hidden in her current unawareness—but whether Motoko truly hadn’t noticed, even if Tanimura thought so, remained uncertain. I might have shown too much sympathy for Motoko’s body here. I couldn’t endure it, but Motoko must have noticed. It was strange that Tanimura interpreted her as unaware now. I kept thinking he should see her as conscious of it, yet I felt I’d imposed my own sentimental wish about Motoko’s body onto him—this desire for her to exist in such a state. Having thought this way disgusted me, yet I couldn’t state it definitively. There came an urge to stubbornly insist Motoko might truly not notice now—so fine then, let it stand like this; let the fields and mountains take the rest. Who cares about this novel anyway? With that, I threw down my brush.

July 24th (Sunny)

The Ōno family, with whom I shared the house, left for their hometown for the summer as planned. They were preparing for their second daughter's wedding.

Scorching heat.
Cruel heat.

I spent the entire day in a daze.
I simply couldn't write.
I didn't even think.
Amidst all this, I found myself suddenly thinking about the novel—but these were merely inconclusive shadows; I wasn't contemplating anything of substance.
It was all so utterly hollow.

When night fell, my brother returned together with Wakazono Seitaro.
"Mr. Wakazono, please find and bring me the Roben Yawashu."
"It's for the short story collection being published by Chūōkōron."
Mr. Wakazono stayed overnight.
I could not sleep the entire night, and Mr. Wakazono also appeared unable to sleep.
This was due to the scorching heat showing no sign of abating even late into the night.

July 25th (Clear, then cloudy)

My head aches.
Due to repeated requests from Dokusho Shinbun insisting I absolutely must write a discursive monologue review, I sent them the book.
What a reckless thing to do, sending the book on my own like that.

It cooled down in the evening.
My older brother from Nagano came to Tokyo on business; the night grew increasingly cool.
Cool air at last.
Today, I only had to take a cold bath once.
I was troubled with meal preparation.
A peculiar meal came into being.
Today, I did not work.

July 26th (Sunny)

It wasn't particularly hot. Mr. Okura from Bungeishunju visited; though the manuscript wasn't ready yet, I replied that since there were only four or five pages left, I would deliver it from my side by the 29th at the latest. He was an extremely serious young man. This type of journalist seemed to have been nonexistent in Japan until now, but among young people these days, one often encountered individuals of such extreme earnestness. They contemplated how one should live, centered on the self. They expressed doubts about the lofty resolve behind the deaths of the kamikaze squadrons—a conclusion drawn from their own wartime struggles with death. What I found deeply gratifying wasn't the thoughts themselves, but rather the earnestness of their contemplative attitude. Since he mentioned visiting the Akutagawa household tomorrow as a friend of Mr. Akutagawa Hiroshi, I asked that he convey my regards to Kuzumaki Yoshitoshi on that occasion.

Mr. Wakazono brought pearls.
This book was my banned work.
I do not possess a single one of my own books.
Kurotani Village still hadn't been obtained.
From among those works, I wanted to include just "Wind Doctor" in this upcoming short story collection.
I entrusted Mr. Wakazono with obtaining it.
Takashi, the young man from Yasudaya, came to visit.
They were disaster victims from the neighborhood who had lived in my house during the war and protected it from fire.
Incendiary bombs weighing fifty kilograms each had fallen on all four sides surrounding my house—front, back, left, and right—and they charged into the raging flames immediately after detonation with water poured over their heads, beating down fires in every direction—truly a terrifying sight.
He was an apprentice plasterer, yet brimming with craftsman's integrity and dedication—truly an admirable young man.
However, because of all this, though I had wanted to work today, I ended up being unable to.
Around ten o'clock, I went to bed early.
I slept well.
The air was cool.

July 27th (Sunny)

Truly, today took an unexpected turn.
A young man named Nishina appeared.
I had thought from the beginning that Motoko needed a young man.
As Motoko gradually became less likely to fall in love, I concluded this wouldn't do—I had considered introducing a youth besides Okamoto, for I simply couldn't bear Motoko's body being toyed with by someone like him, growing ever more resolved to add this character. Yet the young man I had envisioned until yesterday was meant to be far more serious and reasonably clever—the complete opposite of what materialized.

When I face the manuscript paper, my entire mindset shifts—what I had worked out from my preferences and sentimentality becomes utterly trivial when actually written down, its tedium immediately apparent and cloying.

Why did it have to be Nishina as the young man? I feel profoundly irritated.
Yet since it had to be this youth, there was no alternative. Must I truly remain bound to this fate of Motoko’s body being defiled?
I don’t want to have this young man and Motoko fall in love.
If love must occur, I’d rather introduce another reasonably decent character.
Will this sentimental wish of mine ever be permitted fulfillment?
Perhaps because of such hopes, Motoko still shows no inclination to act for love’s sake.
She shows no sign of responding to Nishina.
Judging this hopeful attitude of mine misguided, though I’d had ample time to finish writing today, I abandoned it and turned instead to reading history.

It wasn't particularly hot today either.
Takagi, a young man from Shunyodo, visited; I accepted the novel.

July 28th (Sunny)

It was extremely logical; from the very beginning, it developed with a consistency as though following some clearly assigned plot.
Tanimura discovered something like the true identity of the frog through Nishina.
Of course I had anticipated that the frog’s true identity would be uncovered, but I never imagined it would be exposed in such a manner—so unnervingly clear and decisive. I had wanted to keep everything in vague, ambiguous forms, depicting them hazily while feigning ignorance.
Far from vague, it was unnervingly clear—as if I had planned Nishina from the moment I began writing this novel—that things came to an unnervingly decisive conclusion. It felt rather strange.
The story became too neatly constructed, making me feel it deviated from my initial intentions.
Even if I speak of initial intentions, I have no particular recollection of them, but if forced to say, it would be something vague.
This clarity somehow felt unnatural, but there was no helping it.

Tanimura discerned the frog’s true identity and concluded that even if Motoko secretly loved Nishina, such dreams were unavoidable.
He concluded that there could be no human being without dreams, and that one could not love someone who could not even possess dreams.

I was deeply dissatisfied with Tanimura’s way of thinking like this.
I wanted to make Motoko fall in love and shatter this pretentiousness into smithereens.
Even if he could still maintain such pretensions in this manner, then that would be truly splendid.
That’s what I thought.
And yet, Motoko still showed no sign of falling in love.
No—it wasn’t that Motoko showed no sign of it; rather, it seemed Tanimura was skillfully suppressing it.
That Tanimura affirmed Motoko’s secret dream and thought dreams were unavoidable stemmed from my own hope being reflected there—in other words, a mere secret desire to let it end with just a dream. I couldn’t help but feel this was less Tanimura’s own doing and more the author’s deliberate design.

And so I greatly considered making Tanimura hate Motoko, incite jealousy over her affections, and have them clash—but try as I might, I simply couldn't do it. I couldn't muster the motivation. That would feel more unnatural instead. Since leaving things as they stood felt more natural, I thought it best to end it here. Normally I would have thrown down my brush by now, thinking "Let it do as it pleases" or "Let it turn out however," but today I kept wavering—though "wavering" suggests more intensity than these vague, meandering thoughts deserved—and it took about three hours of aimless indecision to finally resolve that this would suffice.

I no longer want to have Motoko appear any further. If she were to engage in some trivial fling with Nishina and end up sinking into the final mire of physicality—regardless, whenever I write Motoko, defiling her body, toying with it, I can’t help but feel as though I’m imbuing her purity with malice, as though I’m exacting revenge. As for this sequel, I intend to make Tanimura fall in love, but regarding how Motoko will receive this, I find myself reluctant to let Motoko know of Tanimura’s feelings. Because I can’t bear the thought of Motoko growing jealous and becoming restless in her flesh. In any case, well, regarding having written this far, I experienced much pain but also some satisfaction. In any case, I must have done my utmost. If this is no good, then I myself am still lacking, and the consolation that it was simply one of those unlucky instances where things didn’t turn out well won’t hold.

When novel commissions arose from contemplation—times I simply couldn't write—I had to refuse.
The essay "Tohazugatari" arrived from Dokusho Shimbun, so I read it.
Too light.
It's not that a heavy soul becomes light.
Light things remain light.

July 29th (Rain from afternoon)

I went to Bungeishunju and handed the manuscript to Mr. Washio Yozo.
“In any case, it’s my best effort,” was all I said.
Truly, that is all I can think of at present.
I went to Chuokoron-sha and delivered the manuscript to Mr. Kotaki.
Only “Dr. Wind” is still missing.

Just from walking that short distance on the road, I met Terada of Tokyo Shinbun, Nishida of Kaizo, Shibano of Shinbunpo, and drank with Mr. Wakazono and a certain friend of his.
A drink after so long; I was glad.
I rambled on at great length about trivial matters.
When I got drunk, I suddenly became wildly excited—brimming with confidence in "Female Body"—it was absurd. With an emotion bordering on anguish rather than satisfaction, I darkly reflected that before drinking, I had at least done my utmost in my work.
Alcohol makes one reckless.
It makes one unreasonably bold.
It seems I rather arrogantly boasted about "Female Body" and ended up troubling two listeners.
Mr. Wakazono stayed over at my house.
I had forcibly dragged him here.
It was an ulterior motive to have him bake three or four days’ worth of bread.
When alone, I feel truly calm and at ease—but meals become a problem.