Pathway to Japanese Literature

The Day of the Direct Appeal

"You.

What I want you to hear about is Venerable Tanaka Shōzō after his direct appeal.
If one were to speak of Venerable Tanaka after the Direct Appeal, the memories of that very day rise vividly before one’s eyes."

December 10, 1901.
On this day, when I was in the Mainichi Shimbun’s editing room, a young reporter rushed in, his face pale.
“Tanaka Shōzō has just submitted a direct appeal in Hibiya!”

From the people who had gathered, questions erupted in unison.

“What happened to Tanaka?”

“Tanaka is unharmed. Surrounded by a crowd of police officers, he was immediately taken to the police station.”

When I heard of Venerable Tanaka’s direct appeal, I felt an inexpressible discomfort beyond words. Rather, I felt insulted.

Before long, Mr. Ishikawa Hanzan returned from parliament.
Having attended the opening ceremony, he wore a swallowtail coat and silk hat.
I went out to the reception room veranda with Ishikawa and exchanged thoughts about the direct appeal.
Soon news agencies reported details of the appeal document.
They subsequently identified Kōtoku Shūsui of Yorozu Chōhō as its author.
When I read what they called the direct appeal document, it was unmistakably Kōtoku’s writing.

“What madness—Kōtoku writing this?”

I could no longer contain myself and burst out with these words.

“Now, now—don’t be so angry.”

With these words, Ishikawa tried to soothe my heart, but burdened by recurring irritations, I turned away and gazed emptily at the street below. Along Ginza’s main thoroughfare, horse-drawn trams still ran in those days.

“Oh!”

When Ishikawa suddenly raised a loud voice, I involuntarily turned to look and saw Kōtoku standing in the dimly lit entrance of the reception room.

“I came here to be scolded by you all.”

Having said this, Kōtoku hesitated.

“There’s no question of scolding—you wrote it splendidly.”

Ishikawa stuck out his swallowtail-coated belly and said this.

“Is that so…”

As he said this, Kōtoku finally passed through the reception room and stood among us.
Plump Ishikawa; lanky me; slender-and-short Kōtoku—like mismatched legs of a tripod—the three of us stood on the narrow veranda.
I kept my mouth shut and acknowledged them with only my eyes.

Kōtoku calmly recounted the circumstances of drafting the direct appeal document.
Late last night, Venerable Tanaka knocked on Kōtoku’s door in Azabu-Miyamura-chō and roused him.
Then, as a final measure regarding the mining pollution issue, he related the anguish of abandoning himself to undertake a direct appeal; explaining that since this petition differed from his own manner and must contain no lapses in propriety or wording, he proceeded—after weighing the circumstances—to discuss entrusting [Kōtoku] with drafting it.
As they listened to Kōtoku’s account，the sixty-one-year-old Venerable Tanaka—dressed in a black cotton haori over moiré silk hakama—naturally appeared before their eyes in vivid detail：his earnest figure speaking candidly under lamplight late at night with utmost sincerity.

“No one would want to draft a Direct Appeal document.”
“But when you see that aged body, worn out from years of struggle—could you really say ‘no’ and turn away?”

While saying this, Kōtoku looked up obliquely and glared at me.
After sending Venerable Tanaka back, Kōtoku stayed up all night and took up his brush.
When he visited the inn at Shibaguchi this morning, Venerable Tanaka had already prepared himself. Upon receiving the appeal document from Kōtoku’s hand, he silently placed it deep in his pocket, boarded the prepared carriage, and hastened to Hibiya—so it was told.

“Watching the retreating figure of the old man with folded arms being jostled in the carriage, I was struck by immeasurable emotion.”

Kōtoku’s eyes glistened with tears.
Both Ishikawa and I closed our eyes in silence.

Regarding the direct appeal, I had maintained a facade of ignorance throughout, but after ten years had passed and Kōtoku was no longer in this world, I finally asked Venerable Tanaka about the “Direct Appeal” document.
This was because I recalled how severely distorted the text of Kōtoku’s appeal had become in its circulated form—a matter that had deeply troubled him.
For instance, in Kōtoku’s original text describing the devastation wrought by mining pollution,

“Fish perish; fields and villages lay waste; hundreds of thousands lose their livelihoods and abandon their occupations—starving without food, sick without medicine; the old and young fall into ditches; the able-bodied depart and wander displaced to other lands.”
“Thus, the fertile land of twenty years past has now transformed into a wilderness overrun with yellow grass and white reeds—a scene of utter devastation as far as the eye can see.”
It was indeed Kōtoku’s writing, an excellent document.
However, the version circulating in society,
“Fish perish; fields and villages lay waste; among hundreds of thousands of people—some lose their livelihoods, others their means of sustenance; some abandon their occupations, starving without food, sick without medicine—now transformed into a wilderness overrun with yellow grass and white reeds—a scene of utter devastation as far as the eye can see.”

It had ended up like this.

On that very day, even as the three of us spoke on the veranda of the Mainichi Shimbun company, Kōtoku held the news agency’s printed material in his hand and said with a look of utter helplessness, “*‘A wilderness overrun with yellow grass and white reeds—a scene of utter devastation as far as the eye can see.’* Now tell me—how can this be called proper writing?” This was undoubtedly something the Venerable Tanaka had revised himself. I had wanted to know that.

Through the old man’s account, various circumstances became clear.
Venerable Tanaka began by recounting the events of that night when he had requested the Direct Appeal.
Venerable Tanaka earnestly recounted the mining region’s devastation—its origins, demands for resolution, all hopes for a solution—while Kōtoku, one hand tucked in his pocket and the other toying with the brazier’s ashes using a fire iron, merely responded intermittently with nasal hums, listening with an air of utter disinterest.
Venerable Tanaka apparently felt extremely uneasy.
He apparently felt intensely uneasy about whether his words had reached this man’s mind.
The next morning, he received the document from Kōtoku and immediately went by carriage to Hibiya.
Because it was still early, he entered the House of Representatives Speaker’s official residence.
This day, due to the Imperial Diet’s opening ceremony, the Speaker’s official residence stood unmanned and desolate.
Venerable Tanaka closed the reception room door and, for the first time, took out the document from his pocket to read it.
The intentions he had expressed the previous night were now entirely written out in excellent prose.

“A fine mind.”

With these words, Venerable Tanaka reminisced about the past and deeply marveled.

“Humbly considering this matter: there exists no path other than compelling government authorities to fully discharge their responsibilities, thereby enabling His Majesty’s subjects to bask in the grace of sun and moon.
The first measure is to purify the headwaters of the Watarase River.
The second measure is to repair the riverbed and restore it to its natural former state.
The third measure is to remove the severely toxic soil.
The fourth measure is to revive the boundless natural products along the shores.
The fifth measure is to restore the numerous towns and villages that have fallen into ruin.
The sixth measure is to halt the polluting mining industry and eradicate the outflow of toxic water and waste.
Through these measures, hundreds of thousands of lives shall be saved from mortal peril; the foundation for habitation and inheritance shall be restored; the depletion of population shall be prevented; Our Constitution of the Empire of Japan and laws shall be rightfully implemented to preserve each respective right; and furthermore, the incalculable loss of power and wealth that forms the foundation of the nation’s future shall be eliminated.
If [they] continue allowing toxic waters to flow unchecked for long, I fear the extent of its calamity shall become immeasurable.”

This was the essence of the Direct Appeal.
However, there were passages in the text that did not satisfy Venerable Tanaka’s intentions.
Thereupon, he took up his brush and began editing.
The mining-polluted areas are vast.
The victims are many.
There are places where the toxic effects are severe, and places where they are diluted.
There are places that have become wilderness overrun with yellow grass and white reeds—a scene of utter devastation as far as the eye can see—and places that have not yet reached that state.
If this was to be called a Direct Appeal, that distinction had to be made clear.

"Darn it, I can't be telling lies."

With these words, Venerable Tanaka shook his head.

He was still struggling to complete the document’s revisions when the servant from the official residence—whom he had previously asked to notify him—opened the door and announced the Emperor’s return, compelling him to rush out immediately while still carrying the unfinished draft.

“Good grief.”

With these words, Venerable Tanaka struck his head with both hands.

After Venerable Tanaka’s death, I wanted to see the original Direct Appeal document.
I wanted to see the genuine document—the original draft written by Kōtoku that Venerable Tanaka had revised with his own brush.
Convinced it must exist somewhere, I had been quietly pursuing leads when I discovered that Ms. Harada Takeko—Venerable Tanaka’s actual niece who had once been adopted into the Tanaka household—possessed it.
Written on Mino washi paper and originally bound with simple paper strings, it had been elegantly mounted and transformed into a formal scroll.
Confronting the handwritten manuscript while recalling its author, merely gazing upon it sent a surge of heat through my chest.

“I, Tanaka Shōzō—a humble servant from the wild grasses—in utmost fear and trembling, prostrating myself repeatedly, hereby humbly submit this petition.”
“Humbly considering this: I, a lowly man of the fields, have dared to transgress regulations and violate laws by approaching the imperial carriage—a crime truly deserving ten thousand deaths. Yet I prostrate myself to beseech: may Your Majesty, in profound benevolence and mercy, take pity upon my madness and folly, deigning to cast but a glance upon this petition during the late-night hours.”

This was the original text of the opening passage.
It appeared this single phrase—“madness and folly”—had struck a nerve with Venerable Tanaka, for he had erased the character for “mad” with ink and corrected it to “utter folly.”
Looking at this, I remembered various things.

When Venerable Tanaka first carried out his Direct Appeal, society viewed the incident with grave concern, anxious about its potential consequences.
However, after being detained at the police station for merely one night, Venerable Tanaka was released without issue the following day.
Society was once again astonished by the unexpected ease of it.
This was the result of careful deliberation by the government authorities—they had decided to treat him as a “madman.”
From that point onward, every word and deed of Tanaka Shōzō came to be completely ignored as those of a “madman.”

“Those government bastards have damn well made a madman out of this Tanaka!”

With these words, Venerable Tanaka—unable to laugh or vent his anger—could only sigh at their cunning; this I recalled.

I could never bring myself to fully endorse Venerable Tanaka’s direct appeal, but upon hearing the thoroughness of his preparations, I came to feel profound respect.

“If one were merely to submit a document directly to Your Majesty’s hands, there would be plenty of good opportunities.”
“If done during the Imperial Diet’s opening ceremony, it would be a simple matter.”
“However, were I to do such a thing in my capacity as a Diet member, it would constitute an insult to the responsibilities of that office—”

Venerable Tanaka once spoke gravely in this manner.

According to Ms. Takeko’s account, when a note arrived regarding some discussion matter, he had apparently gone to visit an inn at Shibaguchi on the eve of submitting his direct appeal.
When she went to see, there was no sign of any discussion to be had.
Venerable Tanaka sat there with his eyes closed, deep in solitary meditation, with no pressing business at hand.
When she tried to leave, he said, “Stay a little longer,” and stopped her.
But there was nothing to talk about.
As night deepened, she finally rose to depart.

“After I returned home, Uncle must have gone to see Mr. Kōtoku.”
“I believe he called me not for any business, but to bid farewell.”

“After I returned home, Uncle must have gone to see Mr. Kōtoku,” said Ms. Takeko. “I believe he called me not because there was any business, but to bid farewell.”

That Venerable Tanaka had been preparing for death could be inferred from his various actions. In the spring of the previous year—Meiji 33 [1900]—when the Gang Assembly Defendant Incident erupted, even the letter he sent to his wife in his hometown clearly narrated this:

“First: When Father Shōzō passed away in Meiji 24 [1891], I had made no preparations whatsoever. Yet you, over many years through diligent devotion, had exercised consideration appropriate to our station in readying provisions for our elderly father’s eventual passing. Thus were the funeral preparations carried out without hindrance—allowing me, standing in lieu of a proper child, to fulfill my role. This was solely due to your gracious assistance, for which I am deeply grateful.

“Since then, though I have been of no use whatsoever, you have graciously entrusted everything—from household affairs during my absences to even the ancestral rites—to me over these many years. For this I now belatedly offer my deepest gratitude.

“I humbly entrust these matters to you henceforth.

“Respectfully.”

March 26, Meiji 33 (1900) Shōzō

To Katsuko

Two White.
In any case, I have been quite rude in many ways. Please take good care of yourself after your illness.
"Regarding the matter of women suffering from mining pollution lacking breast milk, I humbly request your assistance."

Forty Days’ Imprisonment

In the summer of Meiji 35 (1902), the year following his direct appeal, Venerable Tanaka was sentenced to forty days of minor imprisonment for insulting public officials.
Prior to this, when the public trial for the Gang Assembly Defendant Incident in the mining pollution zone was convened at Maebashi District Court and finally reached the prosecutor’s closing statement phase, this presiding prosecutor’s attitude proved so utterly arrogant and his arguments so excessively cold-hearted that while the fifty defendants—mindful of their surroundings—all gritted their teeth in suppressed endurance, Venerable Tanaka, seated at the very center of the gallery with eyes closed solemnly listening, suddenly opened his mouth and released a long, thunderous yawn.
The prosecutor, his face contorted, abandoned his closing statement and immediately indicted Venerable Tanaka.
This yawn was declared to constitute a malicious act intended to insult the prosecutor’s official duties.

This yawn incident was appealed through first trial and successive petitions until its final confirmation, and on June 16 of that year, at sixty-two years of age, he was to present himself at Tokyo Prison to undergo execution of his sentence.

The public dismissed “Tanaka Shōzō’s Yawn Incident” as a momentary joke and soon forgot it, yet this forty-day imprisonment proved truly pivotal in Venerable Tanaka’s tempestuous life—a significance likely unacknowledged even among his own acquaintances.

In this prison cell, Venerable Tanaka read the New Testament for the first time.
With sixty years of a life steeped in hardship—constantly traversing deadly realms, tempered yet shattered by experiences of failure—he now beheld Christ’s brief yet eternal victorious life. How Christ appeared through Venerable Tanaka’s eyes remains a question of profound fascination.
Those who have read Venerable Tanaka’s speeches in the Diet can visualize his character and countenance in their mind’s eye.
As I now attempt to elucidate Venerable Tanaka after his encounter with Christ—and wishing for you to understand this more profoundly—I shall endeavor to speak a little further regarding his background and inherent qualities.

Venerable Tanaka’s hometown was a place called Konaka in Shimotsuke Asō District, a family of village headmen since his grandfather’s time.
In Venerable Tanaka’s autobiography, matters from his childhood are recorded.

"The stubbornness of my childhood caused Mother countless worries."
"It happened when I was five years old, on a rainy night."
"I drew the face of a peculiar doll and showed it proudly to the servant, whereupon he laughed coldly and said, 'It isn't particularly well done.'"
"You insolent wretch! Then show me how to draw it properly!" I demanded, seizing brush and paper. Though the servant profusely apologized for his rudeness and begged forgiveness, I refused to listen, my obstinacy exceeding all bounds."
"Mother, who had been silently watching until then, tried earnestly to pacify me, but I stubbornly resisted her efforts; she finally cast me outdoors, leaving me—trembling, weeping, and shrieking—exposed to the night rain for over two hours."
"Mother’s punishment pierced me to the core, yet stirred no true remorse."
"When I reflect upon what ultimately made me abandon contemptuous impulses for so long, it is truly the gift of my loving mother’s nurturing."

“From birth, I was halting in speech and deficient in memory.”
Akai Koshirō (Shirakawa rōnin) wrote a calligraphy practice model for me.
“The days grow long, the winds warm, the willows verdant” — though I was taught its reading countless times, I could never commit it to memory.
As a local custom, when children performed their first calligraphy attempts, they would present them to relatives and receive monetary rewards.
However, I feared this would be made to be read, and without regard for monetary rewards, secretly threw it into the kitchen.
This was when I was seven years old.
Thereupon, I too resolved myself and secretly began worshiping Fuji Asama alone, breaking through the frozen ice of midwinter to take cold baths, praying that my memory might be strengthened.
“Even today, fifty years later, I still suffer from rheumatism—is this not rooted in those midwinter cold baths of my childhood?”

When Venerable Tanaka was nineteen years old, his father Tomizo advanced to the position of warimoto (village tax administrator), and Venerable Tanaka succeeded his father to become village headman.
This period is written about in his autobiography.

“From this period onward, I also applied myself vigorously to agriculture. Indeed, my efforts at that time were extraordinary; compared to others, I obtained a surplus yield of two *to* per *tan*. My right hand was covered in hoe calluses and sickle scars, their marks still distinct even now.”

“However, agricultural profits were exceedingly meager, and since this was truly nothing but the sweat of toiling grain by grain, I finally resolved to become an indigo merchant. Father said, ‘Your position is that of village headman, yet you seek to become a merchant measuring trifles—what is the meaning of this?’ However, I never heeded him. I established my daily routine as follows.”

1. Before breakfast, without fail, cut one load of grass.

1. After breakfast, enter the indigo processing hut and attend to business matters for roughly two hours.

1. After completing the above, teach calligraphy to the children who had entered the temple.

1. After dinner, inspect the indigo processing hut again; after night fell, meet at the temple with friends to review Chinese classics.

The procurement of ingredients for indigo balls occurred during the lingering heat each year, and for approximately thirty days before and after, it became an extraordinarily strenuous activity day and night.
Each day, I gathered raw materials in nearby villages.
The scorching heat burned as if ablaze, and along the road, melons were occasionally sold.
When I, wanting to eat, asked its price, they said it was fifty mon.
(At the time, rice prices were low, yet melons and such were exceedingly expensive.) On that day, having not earned even a single *mon* yet, I so deeply regretted spending fifty *mon* that in the end, I did not buy it and left.
I supposed this must be what my father called falling into a merchant’s mentality.
“However, through such strained management, in three years I managed to save three hundred ryō.”

In society, some compared Venerable Tanaka’s anti-mining pollution campaign to Sakura Sōgo’s peasant uprisings, but the actions of Venerable Tanaka that truly deserved parallel recognition with Sōgo’s movement had already occurred during his twenties, in his days as a village headman. Rokkaku Echizen-no-kami, a high-ranking official of the shogunate, governed several villages in Shimotsuke Province, where Venerable Tanaka served as village headman within this Rokkaku family domain. When discussions to reform the Rokkaku family’s corrupt governance and relieve farmers’ suffering gained momentum among concerned individuals in the domain, the young Venerable Tanaka became their representative and worked tirelessly on their behalf.

This movement alone could indeed become a story of inexhaustible interest, but omitting all that, I shall here extract a passage from his autobiography concerning his final prison life and trouble you to read it.

"The prison where I was confined measured a mere three shaku cubed, with a hole dug in the floor to serve as both toilet and urinal—its crampedness defies adequate description. When attempting to stretch my body, I had to first thrust both hands against the floor, raise my buttocks, and assume a posture resembling an enraged tiger. When attempting to stretch my legs, I had to lie supine and arch my feet toward the ceiling, assuming a posture akin to a raging lion. Yet the hardships of imprisonment extended far beyond these alone. For prisoners like myself to be readily poisoned was no rare occurrence in those days—I was truly one bearing grave responsibilities. Were I to fall victim to treacherous hands and perish in vain, I would be unable to close my eyes in death. Driven by this resolve and with no outlet for my torment, I determined to abstain from prison food entirely. For thirty days I sustained my life by a thread, relying on two pieces of dried bonito provided by a comrade named Shōzaemon as both staff and pillar."

“I had already been imprisoned for ten months and twenty days.”
The fourth court session was convened, and I received the following judgment.
That is, I—

“You have disturbed the domain, instigated improper schemes unbefitting your station, and submitted presumptuous petitions—acts of utmost impropriety meriting severe punishment. Yet by special mercy, we hereby decree the permanent exile of your entire household from this domain.”

“Having received this pronouncement—thereby bringing full closure to the matter—the resolution of this case, which had spanned five long years since its inception, saw those village headmen involved compelled to sell rice fields or homesteads after pouring vast sums into campaign expenses during that period, culminating in the wretched scattering of wives, children, and dependents.”

When Venerable Tanaka emerged from Rokkaku’s prison cell and looked around, the world had already entered the new era known as Meiji 2.
Twenty-nine years old.
In accordance with the verdict of exile from the domain, he secluded himself in the Jizō Hall of Horimemura—a detached territory of Ii Kamon-no-kami located across a narrow stream in a neighboring village—where for a time he taught calligraphy and arithmetic to village children, but driven by grand academic ambitions, he departed for Tokyo.
Then, through a strange twist of fate, in the following year of Meiji 3, he became a minor official and was assigned to Hanawa in the remote mountains of Ōu, but here he unexpectedly came under suspicion of murdering a colleague and endured four years of brutal prison life.

You there.
Even though it was the Meiji era, please bear in mind that the law still belonged to the age of interrogational torture.
From the Venerable’s own writings, I would like to speak about the actual conditions of torture at that time.

“—I opened my mouth again: ‘The Danjōdai [Investigative Magistracy] still exists in neighboring Yamagata Prefecture.’”
(At that time, there existed an itinerant court called the Danjōdai.) “I requested to undergo this interrogation once more and pleaded for a swift resolution, but what could that court official have been thinking?”
They suddenly flared up in anger and immediately subjected me to torture.
Without investigating the points of doubt, they lawlessly employed instruments of torture.
This was called soroban-zeme—constructed from wood with upward-facing teeth arranged like an abacus. They forced me to sit with knees drawn up, piled three square stones weighing five kanme each upon them, while jailers shook the structure from the side.
My shins were being torn apart bit by bit.
“I shouted, ‘Why is judicial torture necessary?’”
The stone could not be removed.
The pain recoiled through my legs as though the shins were being torn away.
I was finally escorted back to prison by the jailers, stunned by the unexpectedly lawless treatment.

Initially, shackles were fastened to my legs at Hanawa Branch Office; I was bound hand and foot and confined in a prison cage as I was escorted over four days along fifty ri of mountain roads to Esashi Prefecture’s main office—during which route lay Shishigure Pass, spanning eight ri uphill and downhill. When looking north from Morioka, beyond the plateau stretching between Mount Iwate and Mount Himekami, one could see a sharply pointed peak resembling an overturned turban shell. There exists a song composed by Venerable Tanaka when crossing this pass.

With hands bound behind him through Shishigure Pass

Through Shishigure Pass, tears fall like winter rain—no sleeve to hide them.

In this cold land of Ōshū, a fragment of Venerable Tanaka’s prison life was excerpted from the handwritten draft of his autobiography.

“Now, as is well known, the cold here pierced through ordinary clothing as if to slice off ears and noses; yet with winter provisions lacking, the chill advanced with sudden ferocity. My hometown lay separated by mountains and rivers across 150 ri with no open transport routes—even official documents for the prefectural office required two months for round-trip delivery. As a prisoner, obtaining clothing from home proved utterly hopeless. With the climate’s urgency allowing no delay, I agonized over solutions when fortune brought a prisoner who had succumbed to dysentery. After entreating the jailers, I received the dead man’s garments and barely endured the cold.”
That year, among those who saw the New Year within those prison walls, four had frozen to death.

“In prison, with no books allowed in and only silent contemplation to occupy me, my deficient memory caused me considerable hardship. Thus, I concentrated my efforts on devising a method to enhance my memory and invented a certain technique. Though I say I will omit this matter as it is lengthy, the essence is nothing but what is called specialization. Forget other matters; given my inherently deficient memory, taking on more than two tasks would be an error. Therefore, since my release from prison, I have refrained from undertaking any task that involves multiple responsibilities.”

“From childhood, I had a stammer—my discussions were indistinguishable from quarrels, and my arguments were always perceived as fights, bringing me much trouble. Resolving to study until I could speak without faltering, I happened upon the easily recited passages in Nakamura Keiu’s translation of *Self-Help*. Repeating each phrase relentlessly, I honed my eloquence through nearly a year of study. Only after leaving prison and interacting with people did I finally realize how markedly effective this effort had been.”

"In April 1874, I was suddenly summoned one day."
Governor Shimakore Kiyoshi (at this time, due to prefectural mergers, it was Iwate Prefecture) solemnly appeared in the courtroom to pronounce a verdict upon me:

"You have been imprisoned for investigation since a certain day in April 1871 under suspicion of assassinating Kimura Shinpachirō, senior clerk of Esashi Prefecture. However, upon statements from witnesses, your suspicion has now completely dissolved. As no further investigation is required, we hereby declare your unconditional acquittal effective this day."

"My imprisonment amounted to thirty-six months and twenty days."

Thus, at thirty-four years old, having become a man of clear innocence, when I returned to my hometown after a long absence, I found my mother had already joined the ranks of the deceased on March 9th.
How immeasurable must have been the pain of regret for Venerable Tanaka.

You there.
I shall excerpt a few passages from the draft of his autobiography to seek your profound understanding regarding Venerable Tanaka’s motivations for devoting himself entirely to political activism.

"In Meiji 8 [1875], Shōzō became manager of a sake brewery in a neighboring village, making himself a model for his family, relatives, and friends while exerting effort even in tasks like barrel collection."

One summer day, black clouds hung low as a torrential rain threatened.
The groom who had loaded lime onto a horse threw down two sen in copper coins at the shopfront and shouted, “Serve me some sake!”
When Shōzō looked at the horse, its back was drenched in sweat.
Shōzō thought that if rain were to come now, the horse would fall ill—what a detestable groom.

“Whose servant are you?” he asked.
“I serve Takei of Inaoka Village in Ashikaga District as a farmhand,” answered the groom.
Shōzō pressed further: “State your name! You—though this horse belongs to your master—now intend to drink despite the impending rain.
Don’t you realize this horse is drenched in sweat? If you let rain fall on its sweaty back, it’ll fall ill in an instant!
Your master’s cargo, your master’s horse—do you not care for them?”
When he scolded, “Tomorrow I shall inform your master of this matter,” the groom, overcome with terror, retrieved his two sen coins and, without drinking the sake, whipped the horse and departed.
“As this story spread far and wide, slanderous attacks arose claiming Shōzō was unfit to be a sake brewery manager, until finally Master Mohei found himself compelled to dismiss Shōzō—”

"In the tenth year [of Meiji (1877)], accompanying the Satsuma Rebellion, there occurred an incident of excessive paper currency issuance."
I considered that prices would surely rise.
Therefore, ten years prior during the Rokkaku Family Incident, in order to restore the impoverished members of the justice faction from their exhaustion, I urged them to purchase fields and rice paddies.
Everyone sneered and said: Shōzō has already ruined his estate and remains ignorant of worldly affairs; having served two years as a sake brewery manager, he merely learned basic bookkeeping—his economic theories are not worth believing.
Therefore, I resolved to demonstrate [my capability] to my friends by attempting the task myself. Consulting with my father and wife, I began by selling off the ancestral junk tools stored in the earthen warehouse, borrowing additional funds from my sisters to amass a mere five hundred ryō. From my sickbed, I gradually purchased nearby fields and rice paddies.
Within mere months, land prices suddenly soared—doubling, quadrupling, then sixfold and sevenfold—until finally exceeding tenfold. I easily earned over three thousand yen, thereby restoring my ancestral property.
I restored the ancestral property.
I thought: If one were a person with ordinary mental capacity, they could engage in profit-making ventures on one hand and devote themselves to political matters on the other—yet alas, my mental faculties being deficient, I could not endure this.
It would be better to make a clean break—to cast aside all personal and familial profit and devote myself solely to political reform.
Based on the principle that even a single strand of self-interest destroys myriad benefits, I first repaid my sisters’ debts, respectfully presented a written pledge at my aged father’s feet, and here once more offered my property as sacrifice, petitioning to obtain the freedom to devote myself wholly to public service.
Its main points stated:

1. Henceforth, I shall not exert my spirit for self-profit ventures.

1. To expend one hundred twenty yen annually over thirty-five years for public-oriented movements.
(This budget was later ruined due to election competitions since Meiji 22 [1889].)

1. To provide adequate education to the two adopted children and send them elsewhere.

The document further stated:
Shōzō has forty million brethren; heaven is my roof, earth is my bed.
I secretly thought my aged father would not readily grant permission.
However, my aged father, upon seeing this, beamed with joy and said: "Ah, you have spoken these words admirably! Your resolve is commendable—but can you truly maintain it to the end?"
Then, wielding his aged brush, he wrote down a certain satirical poem by an ancient poet and showed it to me.

"There’s no need to become a saint after death—
Strive to be good while you yet draw breath."

Deeply moved, I swore to the gods: purification, action.

It was Meiji 12 (1879), and he was thirty-nine years old.
Thus began over twenty years of political life.
The first ten years—beginning in Meiji 17 (1884)—saw him repeatedly venture into mortal peril to denounce Governor Mishima Michiyasu’s tyrannical rule; the subsequent ten years, coinciding with the Imperial Diet’s convocation, found him relentlessly championing the mining pollution issue without a single day’s respite in tranquil surroundings.
What fortune was this? Now, by the grace of state penal authority, I was granted forty days of abundant respite in a prison cell—illuminated by the life of the young Christ, I could quietly examine the scars of my sixty years of hardship and further contemplate where my true mission lay.

After his release from prison, Venerable Tanaka advocated for "the complete abolition of the army and navy." He also dreamed of a saint's emergence. This conviction burned ceaselessly in Venerable Tanaka's heart thereafter; when examined, his diaries show it written intermittently like sudden recollections. His Meiji 44 [1911] diary records it thus.

“In the spring of the thirty-seventh year [of Meiji], at Kanda Youth Hall, I declared in a welcoming speech for new students: ‘A saint shall be born and emerge in the Orient.’ However, once before that Japan shall perish. Until then they must each diligently pursue their specialized paths to become saints of their respective ways.” The next day a student came and asked,“What evidence do you have to make such statements as last night?” “I answered,‘Only what my heart thinks.’”

A few recent poems.

Do not change because of rain and wind; work together with rain and wind.

I am rain and wind.

If one looks closely at the lice infesting our country, they too are limbs of Creation—limbs of Creation they must be.

O falling snow, if you will not cease, then pile high—I shall tread upon you.
Trample forth we must.

Destruction of Yanaka Village

Even now, when people happen to speak of Venerable Tanaka in society, they mention the “Destruction of Yanaka Village” incident.
However, few clearly understand what lies within that phrase.
This marked Venerable Tanaka’s most intricately endured hardship of old age—yet here we can only trace its broad outline.

Venerable Tanaka had once cried out in parliament that the Ashio Mine Pollution Incident no longer concerned just the Watarase River banks—it had become an Edo River crisis threatening Tokyo itself.
The government devised a plan: narrow Sekiyado’s upper Edo River channel, dredge Tone River’s lower reaches, widen where Watarase meets Tone—so floodwaters from massive Tone would force Watarase’s current back dozens of miles during deluges, sparing Edo from overflow.
Thus to ease these reversed floods—they would erase Yanaka Village’s downstream farmlands and build a vast detention basin.
The government established a River Improvement Commission issuing national waterway plans—this Watarase scheme included.
The Commission’s roster spanned bureaucrats, engineers, Diet members.
Venerable Tanaka roared.
“This reeks of Copper Mine treachery!”
“Their vile plot—masking poison as flood control!”

But likely not a single soul lent an ear to Venerable Tanaka’s impassioned plea.
Not only that—now even the mining-polluted lands along the Watarase River, partly due to years of exhaustion and partly to escape imminent damage from reverse-flow floods, had come to welcome this government’s Watarase River Improvement Plan—the Yanaka Village Annihilation Scheme—to such an extent that even those heroes of the “Inciting Ruffians” charge now turned against their longtime leader Tanaka Shōzō for the bait of this Watarase River Improvement Plan.

At the Tochigi Prefectural Assembly at the end of Meiji 37 (1904), the governor—in accordance with government orders—submitted an additional budget proposal of 360,000 yen for Yanaka Village’s destruction under the false name of levee repair expenses on the assembly’s final day.
During this period, secret maneuvers occurred; a late-night session convened, and without questions or debate, the full assembly silently passed this through unanimous acquiescence.
After awaiting this Prefectural Assembly resolution, the government submitted a temporary budget titled “Tochigi Prefecture Disaster Civil Engineering Subsidy of 220,000 Yen” to the House of Representatives, and Parliament carelessly passed it.

Venerable Tanaka rushed about frantically.
But Venerable Tanaka’s “treacherous scheme of the Copper Mine Party” found almost no resonance anywhere.
Rather, Tanaka’s frenzied intensity only served to incur resentment wherever he went.
Of the 220,000 yen in government subsidies, 120,000 yen was added to the Yanaka annihilation fund, meaning the total cost for Yanaka Village’s destruction amounted to 480,000 yen.
In neighboring Fujioka Town, a sign for the prefectural office’s "Tochigi Prefecture Detention Basin Installation Disposal Office" was hung.
Thus, Venerable Tanaka, reduced to nothing but the clothes on his back, threw his entire being into Yanaka Village—the rural community of victims in this mining pollution incident.

In a world consumed by Russo-Japanese War fever, seizing this interval when all eyes were fixed solely outward, this small village called Yanaka was struck by hellish torment. Here in April of Meiji 39 (1906), Venerable Tanaka tore himself from the village where he could scarcely spare a moment’s absence to deliver an address at a modest gathering called the Shingeki Sunday Lecture Meeting, urgently conveying their desperate plight. Allow me to have you read an excerpt of this speech.

“People say the Yanaka Village acquisition means buying the people’s land for 480,000 yen.”
“That is utterly mistaken.”
“While some of this 480,000 yen might reach farmlands, its true purpose is funding a campaign to reduce our people to wandering beggars.”
“Such things exist in this world.”
“Since this alone may not suffice for your understanding, allow me to explain further.”

“When we ask why our people would sell their village for a mere 480,000 yen—there are various accounts.”
“The village’s value, if converted to money, currently amounts to seven million yen.”
“These assets said to total seven million yen—they were built over four hundred years.”
“Through four centuries, our people gradually accumulated them.”
“What remains there today exceeds seven million yen in on-site assets.”
“In this very village, constructing new levees to protect a single settlement would cost three and a half million yen.”
“Beyond this—farmlands, residential plots, standing timber—none come easily.”
“Consider this: there are four hundred fifty households today.”
“Creating a village of four hundred fifty households cannot be done with two or three million yen.”
“Given existing assets worth seven million yen, purchasing them at seven million might seem fair.”
“At first glance, selling for seven million yen appears reasonable.”
“When they say ‘Sell seven million ryō worth for seven million ryō,’ those ignorant of economics rejoice—but abandoning a seven million ryō village cannot build a new one with that sum.”
“Destroying it with 480,000 ryō isn’t purchase—it’s mere campaign expense to seize the village.”
“Thus they’ve given paltry relocation fees and scattered our people to the winds.”
“Why then do our people heed the government’s words?”

“Are they not a people lacking too much resolve?”
“Though you all may hold me in contempt for this observation, I must emphasize this was deeply calculated—I appear before you to convey even a sliver of this truth, and humbly ask your forbearance as I explain.”

“The Yanaka Village acquisition occurred in Meiji 38—last year.”
“Yet since exploiting the levee breach from Meiji 35’s flood, they deliberately neglected reconstruction.”
“Five years passed thus.”
“With no levees to stem the waters, crops refuse to grow.”
“They bear crushing debts and endure privations merely to survive.”
“Then at Meiji 37’s end, the Prefectural Assembly resolved to acquire Yanaka.”
“Around midnight, they settled matters through secret deliberations.”
“This became their acquisition scheme.”
“They announced it in regional papers.”
“Upland fields priced at thirty ryō, paddies at twenty-eight.”
“Once these rates saw print, all land transactions froze.”
“In adjacent villages where fields fetch two to three hundred ryō, they advertised ours at these paltry sums.”
“Since the prefecture meant to claim these lands anyway, this amounted to a sales ban.”
“Thus—after years throttling livelihoods and credit—they commenced this charade of ‘Come, sell to us.’”
“The people had no choice but to flee.”
“In fleeing, they craved whatever funds they could carry.”
“Unable to haul fields or homes upon their backs, they accepted whatever trifles were offered before departing.”

“It was truly an appalling state of affairs—ever since August of last year, when Yanaka Village was marked for purchase, they committed even more terrible acts.”
“They infiltrated the village with all manner of merchants.”
“These were rumormongers.”
“First they brought in roughly a hundred secondhand dealers.”
“‘Sell your tools! They’ll demolish your homes soon—sell quickly! Whether you obey the government or not, they’ll smash everything—sell your tools now before it’s too late!’ This was how they pressed them.”
“‘Sell the trees from your estates.’”
“‘Sell your chickens—you’ll have no use for them anyway.’”
“‘Sell your boats too—they’ll be useless once you’re gone!’—They flooded the village with hundreds of such merchants, driving the unsuspecting people to utter frenzy.”
“Then they sent seven rogues into the village to spread outrageous rumors and set the people scrambling in panic.”
“Even without such tactics—over these three or four years—the people had been sinking deeper into debt.”
“There they manipulated moneylenders to hound them relentlessly.”
“They deployed unscrupulous agents who barked, ‘Hand it over now!’”
“Even when trying to mortgage their fields, there were no takers.”
“Even when trying to sell outright, there were no buyers.”
“They blocked access to credit, seized food stores, even issued an official proclamation vowing never to build levees in this village—thus leading the people astray.”
“No wonder they were driven mad.”
“They fled the village like lunatics.”
“And just when they desperately needed funds for their flight, they were given mere pittances.”

“What do you think, ladies and gentlemen? The matters you concern yourselves with daily are all akin to this—whether you find this remarkable or not, I cannot say—but since the year before last I have embedded myself in this Yanaka Village, and from observing this single example, I assert that Japan as a nation does not truly exist. What is Japan? For what purpose do they wage war? The conduct of what passes for government toward its people bears the very aspect of warfare.”

The time of Yanaka Village’s destruction drew near.
This was marked by the formation of the Seiyūkai cabinet and Hara Takashi’s appointment as Minister of Home Affairs.
The Katsura Cabinet—which had prolonged its tenure through the Russo-Japanese War—could no longer withstand criticism of the peace treaty at the war’s conclusion; after awaiting the return of Komura Jutarō, plenipotentiary ambassador for peace negotiations, on New Year’s Day of 1906, it resigned en masse. On January 7, Saionji Kinmochi, president of the Seiyūkai, assumed office as Prime Minister, and thus Hara Takashi became Minister of Home Affairs.

Prior to this, in April 1903 (Meiji 36), Furukawa Ichibē, owner of the Ashio Copper Mine, died of illness at age seventy-two, and his adopted son Junkichi inherited the mine—but he was sickly and ineffective.
In 1905 (Meiji 38), they reorganized into the "Furukawa Mining Company," installing Junkichi as nominal president while simultaneously elevating Hara Takashi to vice president due to his connection with Mutsu Munemitsu.
And now, seizing the opportunity of the cabinet change, he emerged as the Minister of Home Affairs.

In Meiji 24 (1891), when the mining pollution issue was first submitted to the Imperial Diet and Mutsu Munemitsu, then Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, devised political strategies to address it, Hara Takashi served as Mutsu’s secretary.
Fifteen years had now passed since then. Hara Takashi—on one hand as de facto president of the Furukawa Mining Company, and on the other as Minister of Home Affairs of the Japanese Government—seized the opportunity to politically eradicate the “mining pollution issue” with a single decisive stroke.

Behold—in that April, the Tochigi Prefecture Governor issued the following consultation draft as procedure for Yanaka Village’s abolition.

Consultation Regarding Municipal Mergers Yanaka Village, Shimotsuga District

Yanaka Village, Shimotsuga District, having purchased the majority of its land and houses for the necessity of constructing a reservoir and caused its villagers to relocate elsewhere, is hereby recognized as having reached a state where it lacks the financial capacity to independently bear legal obligations in the future; therefore, Yanaka Village shall be abolished and its area merged into Fujioka Town.

We hereby submit the above consultation.

However, opinions must be submitted by the 16th of this month.

April 14, 1906 (Meiji 39)

Tochigi Prefecture Governor Shirahito Takeshi

On the 14th, this document left the prefectural office; then they convened a village assembly and demanded a response by the 16th.
As for today’s laws—I do not know—but under the Town and Village System of that time,

“To convene a town or village assembly and notify them of the matters to be discussed, except in cases requiring urgent measures, this must be done at least three days prior.”

It was written thus.
“To claim that ‘consultation on municipal mergers’ constitutes ‘cases requiring urgent measures’—even the most unscrupulous lawyer would blush to make such an argument.”
At this time, Yanaka Village’s autonomy had already been half destroyed, with a district clerk dispatched to take charge of the mayor’s duties.
Through the administrative custodian’s office on the 15th, same-day convocation notices for the village assembly’s opening were delivered.
The second convocation notice for the handover was delivered.
They perversely exploited a legal provision in the Town and Village System of that time—which stated that village assemblies convened under a second convocation notice could be opened even if the number of attending councilors failed to meet requirements—and through such fraudulent methods, superficially disguised it as a village assembly under a second convocation notice.
On this day, the Security Division Chief was dispatched from the prefectural office, and numerous police officers surrounded this small village assembly.
The village assembly rejected the consultation draft.
But the will of the village assembly held no weight in their eyes.

On June 8, Tanaka Shōzō was subjected to a precautionary order; on July 1, the merger with Fujioka Town was announced, and from that day onward, the name "Yanaka Village" was legally abolished forever.

You.
At times, reflecting on it makes one want to smile instead.
During Mutsu Munemitsu’s tenure as Foreign Minister, when a Japanese fishing vessel was wrecked off Korea’s coast, a member of the House of Representatives questioned the number of casualties in the Diet.
At that time, Hara Takashi—who had indeed served as Director of the Bureau of Commerce under Mutsu—stepped up to the podium as a government commissioner, replied nonchalantly “about twenty,” and attempted to return to his seat.
The questioner, apparently satisfied with this response, remained silent, but Tanaka Shōzō stood from his seat, repeatedly calling, “Chairman! Chairman!”
“What do you mean, ‘about twenty’?”
“What do you mean, ‘about twenty’?”—he condemned the government commissioner’s arrogant attitude that trivialized human lives and demanded an accurate casualty report.
Hara’s face turned crimson as he endured this, but compelled by reason’s logic, he had no choice but to apologize for his careless remark, promise a revised investigative response, and withdraw from the session.
There sat Hara in the Minister of Home Affairs’ chair—were he to but twitch his brow, a prefectural governor would brazenly stage this shameless spectacle of trampling laws in broad daylight without feeling any disgrace.

Now, within Yanaka’s embankment, sixteen households of farmers ultimately remained.
The government resorted to violence to destroy these houses.
This is what is still recounted today as the “Destruction of Yanaka Village.”

The state of Old Man Tanaka’s heart during this period—its depth like a blue abyss, its intricacy like silken thread, its solemnity, its anguish—was something my crude brush could not possibly depict.

From the prefectural office, the Police Department Chief led a large contingent of inspectors, patrol officers, and laborers into the village.

I will omit all else and conclude this article by recording only the names of the household heads and the dates of destruction.

June 29, 1907 (Meiji 40)

Sayama Umekichi, Ogawa Chōsaburō, Kawashima Isogorō

June 30

Moro Matsuemon

July 1 (Meiji 40)

Shimada Kumakichi

July 2

Shimada Seigorō, Mizuno Hikoichi

July 3

Someomiya Yosaburō, Mizuno Jōsaburō, Mamiyada Kamejirō, Mamiyada Senya

July 4

Takesawa Kōzō, Takesawa Fusazō, Takesawa Shōzō

July 5, 1907 (Meiji 40)

Miyauchi Yūji, Watanabe Chōsuke

On July 5, Yajima Kashi and Shimada Nobuko of the Mining Pollution Women’s Relief Society came to visit.
On July 7, lawyers Hanai Takuzō, Urabe Kitarō, Ishiyama Yahei, and Imamura Rikisaburō from the Gathering of Ruffians Incident, along with numerous other visitors, came.
After seeing off Hanai and his party aboard the boat to Koga Station, someone unfolded a white fan they had with them and asked the old man for his calligraphy.
The old man pulled the writing set from his waist, took up the brush, and pondered phrases for a moment—but then wrote with swift strokes and tossed it down.
When they looked, the ink strokes were vivid—

“Through bitterness comes excellence.”

The old man struck his long-haired head with both hands and let out a dry, hollow laugh, but everyone aboard the boat kept their eyes downcast, not a single person raising their face.

The Old Man was sixty-seven at the time.

On Saints

In the summer of Meiji 42 (1909), one day, a postal item arrived from the Old Man.
It was different from his usual correspondence.
When opened, inside lay a notebook filled with large characters scrawled freely and unrestrained.
Upon reading it, I was stunned and my eyes widened.
This was a self-portrait of the old man who had undergone what is called the "Destruction of Yanaka Village."
I now excerpt this substantial text and request your careful reading.

"To become a saint alone is not difficult.
The teaching of leading society to heaven proves arduous.
This is where saints stumble—rare are those who do not.
A man dwelling in chaotic society finds saving both present and future beyond hope of success within one lifetime.
Labor must find contentment in itself; merit must be left to posterity.
This is what is termed true humility."

“In human interaction, none compare to a saint.”
However, without being God, one cannot attain sainthood.
Holiness comes from God.
Therefore, since ancient times, there has been no saint who does not believe in heaven and God.
Pitiable are the mediocre masses, who do not know God.
“If one does not know, there is no basis for belief.”

"The form of God—those with eyes shall see it.
The voice of God—those with ears shall hear it.
The teachings of God—those with senses shall receive them.
These three are known through belief."

"They carve wooden statues to show Him to the sightless.
Since the advent of wooden statues, God has become ever more unseen.
Since the advent of music, no one has listened to the divine symphony."

"A saint is an ordinary person; a saint is a person without excess or deficiency.
What Confucius meant when he said 'If one sees what is constant, it suffices' refers to constancy in the narrow sense—the constancy I speak of is vast and universal.
The essence is one, yet there are differences in scale.
When speaking of the common sense of people today, much of it is merely common sense divorced from God, common sense that does not fear heaven, common sense devoid of faith.
This is common sense distant from truth.
Common sense divorced from truth becomes the work of the devil.
How profound is this single character—constancy!"

There are those who make cleaning the dust off glasses their sole profession.
What is the purpose of glasses?
Their purpose lies in seeing things.
Without engaging in seeing things, they make the sole polishing of glasses their lifelong occupation.
To see God is not through the power of glasses.
Buddhist wisdom is called the mind’s eye.
Even when seeing with the heart, one still cannot escape selfishness.
Even if one speaks of fairness and proclaims sincerity, unless one attains sainthood through true strength, they cannot claim to possess a clear mind’s eye.
Even saints still suffer from this; precisely because they are saints, they suffer from this.
Common people do not even consider it an illness.
Rid yourself of self and desire; calmly inquire of God on the right path. What one asks through my faith, God will surely answer.

“If one desires to see God to the fullest, one will see Him instantly. If one truly desires to see God, first look at yourself. Even if you look up to heaven, you still cannot see. Exhaust your spirit and strength; first look within your own body. With not a single speck of cloudiness within your body, let your words and deeds be clear, desiring to see with a true heart. Only then will you see. God is not a wooden statue. To idly claim that God cannot be seen—their foolishness is pitiable.”

“If you desire to see God, first look at yourself. By looking at yourself, all becomes clear. Look up and behold heaven. The heavenly father and mother are all visible. Heaven and earth are one entity; God is one entity. I am a divided part and a child of God.”

“Though there may be those who resemble saints by chance, there exists only one saint—a solitary saint.
There are no independent adults; no saint bears the world’s burden.
Therefore I blamed myself—
‘I blamed my power’s weakness, my faith’s shallowness, my spirit’s inadequacy, my courage’s insufficiency.’

‘Sin dwells within your body.’
I possessed not the slightest right to condemn others.
This was my fervor; this truly was the secret through which I saw God.
Life’s highest vocation lies in mystery’s invention.
The study of mystery will likely branch into countless fields—
‘The essence of my mystery lies in seeing God.’”

“In the end, Japan will perish through madness, perish through arrogance, perish through victory, perish through oppression, perish through deceit, perish through theft—but the greatest of these is perishing through godlessness.”
“Is there none who stands by Christ’s truth?”
“Is there none possessing a great spirit to bear the world?”
“I believe I exist.”
“To say ‘nothing’—there is nothing.”
“To say ‘being’—there is being.”
“Faith alone is the One.”
“With God beside you, nothing remains unaccomplished.”
“This is how multitudes shall be saved.”

“Global ambitions truly spring from one small faith.”
“This smallness—formless, barely worthy of the name ‘small’—yet fills heaven and earth, reaching everywhere unhindered.”
“It becomes God; it becomes oxen and horses.”
“The world’s people deem this simplicity difficult and do not study it.”
“My grief and pain dwell here.”

At the end, it was written thus.

July 7, 1909

Written in the rest area of Tanaka-ya at Kōriyama Station Shōzō

Both the text and the handwriting were executed in a single breath—truly an act of so-called inspiration.
At this time, the old man had been deeply dissatisfied with my attitude.
While I had turned my back on all of society and fallen into a life of escape, he harbored no small dissatisfaction.
Therefore, recognizing that he had deliberately sent this text via post—surely containing profound didactic intent—I read it with even deeper gratitude and astonishment.
The next time I met him

“How on earth did you manage to produce something like this?”

I tried asking, but the old man,

“Somehow I felt like I was going to die, and simply wrote aimlessly.”

That was his reply.

He met Okada Torajirō.

Meiji 43 (1910).

――A postcard dated August 3rd arrived from the old man.
On the front was boldly written "Non-Urgent Midsummer Greetings."

"The day before yesterday, I visited Kawabe Toshima in Saitama and Minami Shingō Village in Kōriyama Town, Ibaraki.
This year, there have been no floods up to today; the climate has been favorable, and the rice plants in the fields have grown thickly, their color turning dark.
If all remains well, they say the three villages would have an income of 400,000 yen.
Yet the fact that not a single grain has been obtained these three years is due to the Tone River flow obstruction project.
This year’s climate has not been influenced by the obstruction project’s efforts.
How very interesting...
I simply wish to make it auspicious."

I, Shōzō, have also adopted the principle of grand cooling.
The vastness of heaven and earth, the abundance of mountains, rivers, plains, and forests—when one ventures forth, there is always wind.
Above all, farmers weeding fields have grasped the true purpose of practical respite from heat.
Why would one stay indoors using a fan?
The construction of grand houses and vast courtyards only proves the smallness behind their purpose.
I consider large temples and imposing temple complexes to be nearly useless as well.
"How could such things exist?"

However, from around that time, prolonged rains began, and then came the great flood of the Kantō rivers.
I was staying idly in Mikawashima’s Machiya, a small rural village, when a great wind struck on the night of the ninth; the next morning, as the sky cleared completely, a muddy torrent suddenly rushed in that afternoon.
The water advanced with terrifying speed; in an instant, it had risen all the way to the floor.
The water level continued to rise until night.
Boats came and went over the fields and paddies.

――The water had receded, but on the 23rd at noon, when no tatami had yet been laid, the old man unexpectedly appeared.
With his hakama’s thigh panels pulled high, a straw raincoat tied to the end of his staff and slung over his shoulder, and his tabi socks worn barefoot—a light outfit.
It was a flood damage inspection.
He had left Kōriyama that morning, disembarked the train at Kita-Senju, and come while observing traces of flooding along the way—so his account went—when suddenly they hastily laid out two or three half-dried tatami mats on the floor to welcome this esteemed guest.

The old man promptly took out Japanese paper from his pocket, pulled an ink case from his waist, drew a map of the rivers with practiced hands, and began explaining the recent floods.
To think of Tokyo’s floods as merely the Arakawa River overflowing was a grave mistake—the conclusion was that they were in fact the lingering effects of the Tone River’s flooding.
A seventy-year-old man—no matter what—was remarkably vigorous.

“Through deep breathing and exercise, I finally managed to defeat decades of rheumatism.”

While saying this, the old man raised his thick, ailing arm high and moved it behind his back to demonstrate.
I, thinking it a good opportunity, recommended to the old man:

“What if you were to meet Mr. Okada Torajirō?”

Then the old man frowned irritably,

“Well... I’m rather swamped with—”

I promptly changed the subject.
Then I fetched a pillow and urged him to rest.
The old man flopped down by the shōji door and promptly began rumbling with deep, tranquil snores.
I fanned away flies while steadily contemplating this titanic veteran warrior.

Soon the old man blinked his eyes open, trailing elongated shadows across the ground as he gazed at the summer sky tilting toward dusk,

“Oh, I’ve overslept.”

Saying this, he hurriedly got up and began preparing to leave.

“Won’t you please stay the night?”

As she did so, the wife, who was preparing dinner, poked her face out from the kitchen, but—

“If I don’t get to Banchō by today, things will go badly.”

While saying this, he adjusted his hakama, put on his tabi socks, and briskly set out.
Intending to see him off to the edge of the village, I too went out with him.
It was exactly the time when villagers were returning after drawing fertilizer from the city, and carts were coming in succession from the opposite direction.
Daughters and young wives—wearing striped work clothes with their hair wrapped in hand towels, healthy complexions glowing without wiping away sweat—came pushing their fathers’ and husbands’ carts spiritedly from behind.
Seeing this, the old man for the first time recounted the origin of the straw raincoat he was carrying.
The straw raincoat in the old man’s possession was one I had deliberately brought from this village at his request during the memorial held on the third of last month for the third anniversary of Yanaka Village’s destruction.
The last time the old man visited my village, it happened to be raining, and the sight of young women working in straw raincoats and sedge hats had appeared truly vigorous and beautiful.
It seems the old man had felt moved to try wearing this straw raincoat himself.

“By the way, when I wear this, I look exactly like a peasant rebel—not exactly a dignified appearance.”

With that, the old man laughed with a serious face.
I involuntarily burst out laughing.
Taking this opportunity, I tried recommending it again.

“Why don’t you go see Mr. Okada?”

Then the old man’s face suddenly clouded over,

“Well, you see... there’s simply no time—”

The old man seemed to regard Okada as something akin to the popular hypnotism of that time.
I immediately shifted to another topic and proceeded to walk along the small stream, winding along.
Before they knew it, they had come to the small bridge at the village boundary.
They had to part here.
The old man had already crossed the bridge and was turning around to offer his farewell.
In that moment, I said for the third time.

“Why don’t you go see Mr. Okada once?”
“You’d grasp it immediately, sir.”

The old man, still shouldering the straw raincoat, kept his eyes closed and remained utterly silent before solemnly lifting his face.

“I shall go.”
“I shall certainly go.”
“Then I shall impose on you for lodging in Nippori tonight.”

I watched until the old man’s figure disappeared around the hedge corner before turning back.

Around that time, I was often lost in fantasies about Nichiren.
Nichiren this, Nichiren that—the world was making such a tremendous fuss about him, yet I knew nothing.
That summer, I finally read something called Nichiren's *Collected Writings* for the first time.
The Nichiren I encountered through these primary sources bore a countenance entirely different from the one society noisily celebrated.
The famed *Risshō Ankoku Ron* amounted to nothing more than an indictment of Hōnen-bō.
The treatise simply redirected the tyrannical demands of Enryaku-ji's monastic authorities—who had once pressured the imperial court to ban the Pure Land sect—straight toward Kamakura's new government.
The great misfortune of Nichiren's life lay in how he extracted scriptural passages about "internal calamities and external calamities," then—when signs of the Mongol Invasions later appeared—descended into self-delusion by claiming this coincidence validated his prophetic infallibility.

In his later years, he was in the mountains of Minobu, expecting the inevitable defeat of the Japanese army.
Thus, when a certain female devotee from Kamakura reported the Mongol army’s atrocities in Iki and Tsushima, Nichiren sent a reply: this was not merely a matter of those distant islands—before long, Kyoto and Kamakura too would become streets of calamity; they must abandon sinful Kamakura now and flee to this Nichiren’s sacred Minobu.
When a report of the Mongol army’s complete defeat came from a certain female devotee, Nichiren declared it false.
He even wrote a reply declaring these were undoubtedly malicious slanders intended to defame this Nichiren and must not be believed.
What then of Nichiren’s state of mind when the complete annihilation of the Mongol invasions became certain?—Years of anguish, the ruin of body and spirit—finally descending from the mountains to take to the Tōkaidō road in search of healing.
When he trudged along the coast of Musashi Province, he could no longer endure staying on horseback and took to bed at the residence of a certain Ikegami, a local retainer.
That site is now Honmon-ji Temple.
I believe that Nichiren, at sixty-one years old, had arrived at the time of great repentance.
Alas, he died without achieving his great transformation.
When I think of Nichiren, his face unconsciously transforms into Old Man Tanaka’s.
When I imagine Nichiren’s final exhaustion, the figure of Old Man Tanaka at the time of his direct appeal naturally arises.
—Now, as I made my way home after seeing off the old man, I naturally came to think of these two men as one.

Now opening the old man’s diary, I briefly excerpted some entries from around this time.

August 13.
Violent storms and raging waves arose.
From 10:00 to 11:00.

August 14.
Lodged at Nodate, Nogimura Village.
This day purchased five bales of rice and one bale of barley and notified Yanaka.

August 16.
Entered Yanaka.
Met with evacuees at Kegano.

August 23.
Departed Koga Town; arrived in Nippori.
Lodged.
The floor was flooded over a foot deep.

August 24.
This morning, went with Mr. and Mrs. Hemmi to Mr. Okada’s.

August 25.
Visited Okada’s Divine Breathing.

December 17.
In the morning, I departed from Eguchi in Senda Village, Ora District on the northern bank of the Tone River and arrived at Kawamata Village’s station.
On the way, a violent storm suddenly blew fiercely from the west, making walking perilous.
The road had recently been repaired using mud, and there were places where the teeth of my geta could not gain traction.
Even my cane was nearly torn from my grasp by the violent wind.
My hat was in danger of being blown away; I quickly removed it and entrusted it to the laborer who had accompanied me.
Suddenly, the wind grew even fiercer, threatening to knock me down. When I discarded my geta and went barefoot in my tabi socks, my entire demeanor transformed—no matter how violent the gale became, it now felt exhilarating, the weakling instantly becoming a stalwart. I recited poetry aloud into the wind, all while discerning how the flood-deposited mud spread across the paddies might serve as natural fertilizer for crops—a secret gladness stirring in my heart.
Thinking upon the sorrow of villagers who had collapsed and been washed away, there was much mingling of joy and sorrow.
In the midst of devastation following the flood, I saw a glimmer of the path to recovery.
The matter of life truly resides in decisions from the depths of the heart.

December 18.
Yesterday, I came to stay at Mr. Hemmi Onokichi’s residence in Nippori Kanasugi.
Today is Christmas.

Prayer Before Meals

Heavenly Father and Mother gave birth to my parents; my parents, by God’s command, conceived me and brought me forth.
They nurtured me with skin and milk.
That love—divine.
And like heaven and earth.
I do not receive this as grace; their heart too is like God’s.

When I came to discern water from fire, my parents considered my food and drink.
By now, my parents do not become like God.
I too feel appetite.

As I gradually grew older, I regulated my food and drink.
When I reached adulthood, I could not accept my parents' discipline.
At times I would overeat and drink to excess; other times I fell ill.
At this time, destroying my body, violating human morality, and falling into numerous sins.
After falling, I repented.
The repentance ran deep, yet change remained unattained.
Though I greatly repented and greatly reformed, the years had already grown late.

In his later years, through the powerful admonitions of close friends, he finally hastened to completely reform his transgressions.
And only afterward did he come to serve God, know the path of receiving sustenance from God, and clearly realize that all things consumed are bestowed by Him.
Here, after years of putting these teachings into practice, he came to believe with ever-greater conviction that those who work for God receive their sustenance from Him.
Today's work is allotted to today's sustenance.—

December 28.
At Mr. Hemmi’s in Nippori, I met Okada’s spirit.
This corresponded to the prophecy I had delivered to students during my speech at Kanda Youth Hall in the spring of 1904.
It had indeed come to pass.

In the evening, I returned to Koga Town.

The 29th.
Payment settled in full with the white rice merchants of Koga Town and Nodō.

That Old Man Tanaka met this man called Okada Torajirō was, I consider, a matter of utmost importance in his life.
For me personally, this man truly served as a mentor who brought about my rebirth; yet I lack the capacity to speak of him.
The time will come when this man's name shall be spoken.
Someone will emerge to speak of him.

Deathbed

On August 3, 1913, during his survey of mountains and rivers, the Old Man finally became bedridden at the farmhouse of one Niwata Seishirō in Shimohata, Azuma Village, Ashikaga District, Shimotsuke Province.

“You there. What I wished to say flowed boundless as a river, yet I cast all aside to speak directly of that day.”

On September 4th, under the clear sky of an early autumn morning, I peered into the old man’s face and offered my morning greetings.

“How are you?”

The old man, remaining on his pillow, nodded slightly, but soon—
“The coming disorder of Japan—”
While saying this, he etched valley-like wrinkles between his brows, his entire body convulsing in anguish for what felt like an eternity.

The time was noon; the sun shone brightly as insects chirped in the garden’s grassy thicket.

The old man declared he would rise.
I remained seated behind him, almost touching his body while quietly supporting him and keeping watch.
Madam Katsuko, in her sixties, took a fan and moved to the front, fixing her gaze on her husband’s face as she gently fanned him.

The old man sat solemnly in a formal cross-legged position, raised his head, poured all his strength into his body, and began taking deep breaths.
Five times, six times, seven times—when it seemed to reach about ten—a long, resonant "Uun" echoed forth—

Madam Katsuko, who had been staring without blinking,
“It has come to an end,”
she announced quietly and gracefully.
As for possessions the old man left behind, there were only a sedge hat and an alms bag.
The following evening, the relatives sat in a circle before the remains and untied the cord of the alms bag.
A compact New Testament.
Diary.
A few tissues.
I promptly took up the diary and opened it to the final entry.

"August 2.
I who lack the power to repel demons am myself a demon.
Already, through my deeds, my body has become a demon; it is difficult to repel demons.
Hence repentance and baptism are required."

He was seventy-three years old at the time of his death.

[Chūō Kōron, Shōwa 8, no. 9 (September 1933)]