Pathway to Japanese Literature

The stagnant water in the large glass tank filled with green algae grew clouded to a leaden hue.
The two Kyariko goldfish that had been swimming resplendently until now sank side by side under the oppressive air pressure, then turned their faces this way in deliberate unison.
Their backs dissolved into the murky green algae until only their front halves remained visible.
Outside the tank, a striped horse figurine with eyes like amber beads pressed its nose against the glass pane misted with condensation like sweat.

The potted pale red plum blossoms placed on the tank lid scattered one after another, their robust stamens standing out on the small branches like bundled needles.

Mihotani Keiko, master of new-style ikebana, after the disciples' wives and young ladies had left, gathered the remaining branches from the materials, arranged her own floral piece in a cylindrical vase, and gazed at it for a while; then, while noting the suddenly changing sky through the glass door, she observed the goldfish's sensitive responses to even minor weather changes.

The sky grew increasingly ominous, and the tips of lightning bolts that began flashing with the spattering rain pierced through the window glass into the charcoal brazier in the tatami room.

"Goldfish, striped horse, flowers, lightning—this looks exactly like a scene those Fantasy School literati would delight in."

To her niece Senko, who had calmly brought water, Keiko spoke without any real intention of being heard.

Then, for a brief moment, Keiko recalled that a surviving fin-de-siècle poet had still been tirelessly composing poems of this nature right up until her departure from France.

Holding the base of the unfinished vase, Keiko gently pushed the cylindrical floral arrangement toward Senko as she added water to it and said.

“Master, today’s the thirtieth—tomorrow’s the month’s end—you must take the money to Mr. Kobuse even tonight.”

Kobuse was a son of Keiko’s distant relative and had been her fellow student when she studied painting.
An unfortunate, sickly painter, he had long received material assistance from Keiko.

Wrapping flower scraps and removing her lap blanket, Keiko found it endearing how Senko always attended to the frequently ailing Kobuse in every matter.
Perhaps she loved him deep down.
Keiko then loosened her collar slightly and thrust her right thumb into her obi at the front right side to adjust it, twisting her well-proportioned torso as she did.
The Hakata obi creaked.

“Ah, how constricting that was!”
“It’s so hard having to behave properly in front of my disciples.”
“Senko, bring some tea or something.”

A somewhat fierce thunderclap echoed beneath the floor joists of the tea-room-style tatami mats, then its roar receded far into the distance.
Keiko picked up two or three barley-shaped rakugan with her niece and live-in disciple Senko, then decisively grasped the heft of the paper-wrapped bundle resting on the lacquered picture-scroll stand.
This was the full sum of today’s monthly tuition left by the disciples.
Keiko wrapped it in a fukusa cloth,

“Well then—shall I go meet my young lover?”

Half-teasing Senko, she said this.

Senko looked around and furrowed her brows.

“You shouldn’t say such things even in jest. That kind of talk could be misunderstood...”

In that voice was only a pure resonance recalling the circumstances of Keiko—both her aunt and her teacher.

“For a woman living alone to start speaking like this is no small thing.”

Keiko said this in a somewhat dejected tone.

But as the sky softened and she shielded herself with an umbrella from the spring rain falling in soft, short strands like fine hair while exiting through the inner entrance, Keiko straightened her well-proportioned, large frame without a trace of hesitation and looked back at Senko—who had been trying to stop her from visiting Kobuse during daylight hours for fear of prying eyes—

“Going boldly during the day would actually be striking back against the world’s gossip in a better way,” she said.

Senko now sensed anew—within her beautiful young aunt’s gentle disposition—the mental fortitude that could powerfully endure any hardship, and watched Keiko’s retreating figure that seemed to embody this very quality with a gaze full of trust.
Then, in a tense voice as though that vigor had transferred to herself, she turned toward the kitchen area and spoke.

“Nanny, the Japanese laurel in the front garden is covered in berries.”
“Since the blue berries are mixed in among the blue leaves, I didn’t notice them at all.”

With lively footsteps, the live-in disciple Kuwako and the student came running toward the inner entrance doorway of the Western-style house where Senko stood, outpacing the maid.

Keiko descended the sloping path that dipped into a hollow from a Yamate district where mansions and merchant houses vied for space in a haphazard mix.
There were rows of cherry trees, and along the road's edge bordered by mottled liriope, dignified garden trees remained entwined with wild mustard and black crow gourd vines.
This must have once been the entrance to a proper garden, though now the garden itself had been subsumed by residences, leaving only the roadway behind.
The tight combination of hardened old trunks and sinewy slender branches evoked a gateway forged from an alloy of steel and cast iron.

As Keiko entered the slope where pale yellow young leaves were bursting forth across branches of trees—hardened and aged like steel corridor gates—she suddenly recalled Gorgonzola cheese.
How youthfully seductive was that mold bloom’s green, flourishing in cracks formed spontaneously by decaying fat.
She thought of how this world held beautiful things so ethereal they seemed barely real—things that defied all attempts at rationalization.

Walking alone through desolate spaces now made her crave something intensely rich—something like cheese.
When serving austere tea treats to Senko and others at the training institute—mere barley-shaped sweets—she felt like an entirely different person.
Had those years abroad forced her palate to cling stubbornly to foreign flavors?

The rain had stopped, and as sunlight poured through funnel-shaped rays the color of yellow roses, the fragmented remnants of thorn hedges suddenly emitted a strong colloidal odor of verdant rawness. Keiko found the thorn buds impertinently adorable—needle-shaped yet infantile in both hue and form.

"If you mean to prick me, then prick me."

Keiko extended her index finger—its whorl of fingerprints intricately and perfectly coiled—and pressed against the thorn’s tip.

The new bud’s thorn offered slight resistance before bending pliantly.
When pressed harder, the outer skin of the bud’s belly threatened to split while its inner surface creased.
Then came an infant’s wail—as if the bud itself had cried out plaintively—triggering an auditory hallucination deep within Keiko’s ear.
She withdrew her finger.

Though thirty-eight and in her prime, her childlessness sometimes accused her.
Only phantom cries of children never born would catch at her ears intermittently.
The cumulative persecutions and existential threats had left Keiko prone to delusions of persecution, her days threaded through with illusions.
No longer able to withstand this corrosive misery assailing her mood, she dashed out and tumbled into Kobuse’s studio like a schoolgirl—consumed by anguish that only being fed something delicious by this younger male friend might soothe.
She swallowed thickly as tears spilled silently.
But noticing sunlight filtering through, she narrowed her eyes into slits and began vigorously ascending the slope. With each thrust of her wooden sandals against stone, she felt her body’s excellence—this very corporeal excellence—residing powerfully in her driving thighs.
A stature matching any man’s crowned by abundant white flesh—she couldn’t let such physicality crumble now. Her resolve stiffened.

Having climbed to the top of the slope, when Keiko looked back at the town’s roofs under the brightening early spring sun, the miserable erosion staining her mood had faded, leaving her with a grateful, relieved feeling akin to when abdominal pain begins to subside.
Only a faint, dull ache remained—painfully itchy, as if urging her to laugh.
Then a faint glimmer of ambition rose to the surface.

"I want to console this painful life with flowers—if nothing else.
I want to overflow with my flowers...
At least fill this city to the brim..."

Keiko felt something akin to a caress toward life—stretched taut by ambition into thin wings of wax-silver—lightly brush past the heat-shimmered sky over vast Tokyo.

Keiko, having been invited by Madame Marei—a Parisian art and fashion designer—during her six-year stay in France, crossed the sea at the earnest request of Japanese compatriots residing in London to teach ikebana for about a month.
Every night, shivering from the cold in her backless evening gown, she made the rounds of the season's plays.
At the Queen's Theatre, a first-class theater, she saw Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan.
In general criticism, the author was said to have scathingly mocked the French saint.
However, Keiko discerned the true nature of this defiance—how the saintly girl let pass over her body every last one of the blade-like ironies that the author swung with such apparent relish, leaving not a single wound.
Women possess the true essence of womanhood as seen through women’s eyes.
The criticisms of others' intentions do not reach the eyes.
A deep natural force that even she herself cannot fully comprehend lies buried within every woman—whether she be an idiot or a country girl—and when caught on the hook of strong passion, it is drawn forth equally.
Depending on the case, it may even perform miracles.
Or there are cases where it remains buried for a lifetime.
Which might be a woman’s happiness—one cannot know.

After returning to Paris, when Keiko told Madame Marei about the play,

“It’s often said that what emerges beyond the creator’s intent constitutes a genius’s art.”
“Shaw was likely a genius.”

She smiled in her distinctive beautiful manner—a smile that blended wryness with reverent flattery.

“If you walk through the streets with a crimson flower in your mouth, ultimately there will be no fear.”

This was the phrase that Ms. K—her school friend and a literary scholar—had written on the hanging scroll when Keiko opened her training institute.
Among the disciples at the training institute, reading this led them to declare it the "Crimson Flower Curse"—they would stride about with fresh-cut flowers clenched between their teeth, hands on hips, striking affected poses like George Sand in the movies. This briefly became a trend before eventually falling out of fashion—

From the slope’s entrance, Keiko surveyed the rain-freshened thinly populated straight path ahead—where mansions were few, and old and new shops lined both sides, their storefronts gaping like greedy mouths hungry for passersby’s curiosity—and felt hesitation welling up within her now.
Keiko had long known rumors of her frequent visits to Kobuse had spread throughout the area.
There were also homes of colleagues who viewed her with hostility.
Suddenly it occurred to her that if she walked with a flower stem clenched tight between her incisors—as in that phrase Ms. K had written—she might endure this fear.
She must not be separated from the flowers even momentarily.

She shook one shoulder and, drawing confidence from her body’s vigorous vitality, began walking straight ahead.

Kobuse’s residence stood second from the corner where the thick thoroughfare of this modest neighborhood—marked by a hitching post at its entrance—curved sharply right.
The lower floor contained a Japanese-style room; the second floor was the studio.

After plucking two or three overgrown buds from the golden spindle hedge and discarding them, Keiko placed her hand on the pinewood gate and looked up to find a new sign hanging there: “Kobuse’s Studio.”
The characters displayed his Western-style painter’s brushwork.
When Keiko gazed up at the sign—still damp from recent rain—she intuitively realized: Ah, his condition must have worsened again.

Kobuse, who appeared aloof in his misfortune, proved unexpectedly sensitive to contemporary trends. From sixteen or seventeen years prior—when he and Keiko had been fellow students entrusted to Y-sensei’s studio in Yaraichō—until his gradual independence, he had pioneered every cutting-edge style seen in Japan: Post-Impressionism, Dada, Expressionism, Neoclassicism, Surrealism, clashing head-on with the mainstream faction.

Keiko admired his enduring youthful fighting spirit but worried over his own superficial busyness—a restlessness incapable of delving deeply into anything.
There resided his conflicted self-awareness of adopting such modernism for poetic display—a consciousness that retaliated against viewers through mocking brushstrokes and murky hues.
The perplexed art world neatly categorized him as a promising yet unfinished painter.
Of course, these were not paintings that sold.

Keiko noticed that Kobuse’s restlessness had been growing ever since the tuberculous nature latent in his constitution began increasingly invading his lungs.

“As long as I have money coming in, I will guarantee your livelihood, so you mustn’t rush.”
“That’s poison.”

Keiko had said this many times.

Kobuse then,

“No, that’s not it.”
“Human beings want to constantly affirm their existence to society through some means.”

He had been painting abstract works but stopped midway; following the trend of the Oriental Art Ministry Advisors, he put away his Western painting tools and became engrossed in ink paintings.
Keiko had repeatedly heard from Kobuse these names of ancient Chinese ink makers—Tei Kunbō and Hō Kanro—unfamiliar sounds to her ears. But had he now felt compelled to adopt them as his artistic pseudonym, even inscribing one on his studio plaque?——As Kobuse’s illness progressed, his yearning for contemporary trends appeared to demand physical manifestation in each instance to ease his mind.

When Keiko entered the house, Kobuse had surrounded the twelve-tatami downstairs room with Momoyama-style screens and was lying on the floor inside.
At the bedside lay an enamel pot and Western plates in disarray—between them sat a paulownia wood ink box and xuan paper splattered with ink, a water brush scattered atop.

“Oh my—what’s happened here? This state you’re in—”
“Where’s the maid?”

Though Kobuse had recognized Keiko’s approaching footsteps earlier, he deliberately kept his eyes fixed on the postcard album until addressed. Blinking as if dazzled by light, he finally looked up at her.
Beneath moth-like eyebrows crowding his high forehead—a mark of his irritable nature—his gentle narrow eyes showed traces of conjunctivitis and fear.
His naturally pale complexion had taken on an ashen hue.

“Shige (the maid) took her leave and left yesterday.”
“These days no girl stays long in a bachelor’s sickroom just for wages—you’d have to hire a wife with an inheritance attached to make that happen.”

He had spoken with slight sarcasm but immediately shifted to a sincere tone,

“That doesn’t matter.”
“These past few days, with the maid gone, I’ve been worn out from boiling water and dealing with trash—found it bothersome to read books or paint—so I lay down and ended up studying you on my own.”
“You are, after all, a woman—and women have this innate chastity—I came to think that ultimately, it’s this foundation that resolves everything.”
“What do you think?”

Kobuse flipped through the album’s pages one after another as if presenting evidence. Then he made a wistful expression she had never witnessed on him before. Now it was Keiko’s turn to fix him with a bright-eyed gaze.

“What are you saying such nonsense for? I’m not the issue here right now, am I? More importantly, how’s your illness?”

Though she had asked this, Keiko found herself wanting to hear more of what Kobuse had begun to say about her own circumstances.

“Why are you bringing out that album now of all times?”

The album was a thick compilation containing postcards that Keiko had diligently sent to Kobuse and inserted into it while she was abroad. It was a shared past between them—something that by now hardly required nostalgic revisiting.

“Now that I look at these postcards,” Kobuse said, “I realize that when you collected them abroad, you probably just chose scenes, plays, paintings, ceramics, dolls—whatever caught your fancy. But by sending them to me, your underlying intention seems to have been to enlighten me.”

“Now then, there’s something interesting here.
When I look at the messages you wrote on these three hundred or so postcards—each one varying with its greetings and reports of travel impressions—if I search for something resembling your subjective philosophy, it all comes down to just one thing.”

“What sort of subjectivity or philosophy?”

“You’d be astonished to hear it yourself.”
“To put it plainly—‘I want to paint pictures with living flowers through to the end.’”
“Paints could never suffice—I was twenty then, you must have been twenty-two.”
“When I rashly disparaged that ideal painting you first conceived through imagination, you sank into gloom for days before suddenly approaching Professor Y—declaring ‘I shall paint with living flowers! Paints will not suffice!’”
“Having made this proclamation, you smashed your palette.”

Keiko listened up to that point and clearly recalled the incident exactly as it had been at that time. Perhaps the relationship between the two—who had naturally been on the verge of becoming lovers—had, through such circumstances, avoided strange fermentation and instead veered into friendship; and upon returning to her father’s house—he being the head of an ikebana school—Keiko began devoting herself to flower arrangement. Kobuse now pressed the album before Keiko and declared that the determination she had shown at that time ran consistently through nearly every single one of the messages on so many postcards.

“I didn’t send each of those postcards with such things in mind.”

“Then shall we? Let’s read through some parts here and there. Look here—there’s a bit of avant-garde art theory written—and this artistic theory can be splendidly applied to my ikebana art as well. In any case, I must express my entire being—whether through theory or emotion—through my own self. Isn’t that undeniable?”

When told this, Keiko recalled the hallucination of wax-silver wings she had involuntarily expanded while looking out over the city’s rooftops from the slope just moments earlier. And might not that same lineage of will and emotions have been discerned even in fragments of the messages sent to Kobuse on those postcards?——Faced with Kobuse’s blunt remark, Keiko found herself somehow ashamed even of the fantasy she had conjured moments earlier at the foot of the slope. But the Kobuse before her now had taken on a somewhat defensive tone.

“Then that’s perfectly fine, isn’t it.”

Kobuse, increasingly excited as if unable to contain himself,

“Lately, having become aware that I—an Easterner—have returned to being an Easterner, I’ve come to feel calm, as if everything appears clear.”
“Now, making an even more penetrating observation about you—when your work was attacked back then, you became agitated and rebelled, but what you clung to was precisely your family’s ikebana business. It’s because of this that you’ve devoted half your life to serving flowers faithfully until today.”
“Had there been no ikebana business of your father’s to cling to back then—had a man instead occupied that position—I’m certain the daughter Keiko would have devoted all her passion and chastity toward that man until this day.”
“become either a faithful housewife or wife—”

Keiko tried to deny it, but Kobuse cut her off.

"By nature, you are that sort of woman."

There was in Kobuse’s tone a desperate insistence that left Keiko unable to retort.
It was an almost pathological insistence.
Keiko wondered why Kobuse was making such dogmatic assertions and trying to gain his own reassurance.
But gradually, she began to feel she was coming to understand it.
For men high-strung in spirit yet physically enervated, a woman with firmly established individuality becomes a burden—and so they forcibly reinterpret her qualities as male-subservient traits, seeking mental equilibrium through this instinct. Might it not be that Kobuse too had now come under this compulsion’s sway?
If that were the case, rather than debating the validity of such matters, she ought to first be concerned about Kobuse’s physical condition.

“Be that as it may, how’s your condition today?”

“Hmm, this time it’s reached the stomach, has it?”
“How fortunate.”

Kobuse’s deliberate levity when discussing matters of life and death made Keiko’s heart constrict in her chest, but recognizing it as the desperate irony of someone long afflicted by illness, she instead felt pity.

“……”

Keiko fell silent.
Kobuse had grown weary of his ingrained illness and disliked even being kindly comforted whenever his condition was mentioned.
It had become something of a habit for him to respond to Keiko and others with sarcastic retorts laced with rhetorical questions.

Keiko gathered both sleeves against the unseasonable chill.
And then she looked at the garden.
The garden had its flower beds from days prior removed, leaving only stones and winter bamboo arranged here and there across flattened ground hastily covered with moss.
For about half a month, busy with her lessons, Keiko had been unable to visit herself and instead sent Senko occasionally; however, the girl had not reported anything about the garden.
Keiko noticed,

“When did you change the garden?”
“Senko didn’t say anything about it, you know.”

“About ten days ago.”
“Since I realized I don’t have long anyway, I called a gardener and had them hurriedly prepare it in about three days.”
“This room and this garden—I don’t want anyone but you to enter them.”
“I intend to savor it alone until my dying day.”

The setting sun grazed the corner of the neighboring tiled roof and the top of the rear fence before descending into the garden.
The bamboo and stones had one side dyed crimson, casting shadows on the opposite side.
The wind came, and the bamboo clashed.

“It’s curious how even newly planted bamboo can produce such proper rustling sounds. When I listen to this alone at night, I feel as if the fatigue from seventeen or eighteen years of futile struggles is momentarily released. Though I must admit, beneath that surface, a tinge of sentimental old wounds does occasionally resurface. Ah, it’s nothing serious.”

Within the deepening dusk that faded into darkening azure, the courtyard hazed over mysteriously.

“In any case, austere Eastern aesthetics are best for one’s final days—so clean and unadorned.”

Keiko, unable to manage her heart that had been churned too much and too abruptly, wordlessly turned on the light, tidied the dishes nearby, and pushed the money bundle she had brought under Kobuse's futon pillow.

"In any case, let's have Senko come care for you here temporarily."
"And let's try changing doctors again—it's not something to abandon life over so recklessly," she said as she left the studio.

As Keiko was exiting the room, she turned back to look at Kobuse's body—more imposing than most—lying limply, and pressed a hand over her eyes.

Keiko’s school was scheduled to hold its fifth-anniversary commemorative event at Q Art Museum in about ten days—during the peak of the flower season—and so she found herself frantically busy: requesting supplementary exhibits from fellow professionals, exchanging formal greetings, and devising installations for her own works and those of her disciples until she could hardly see straight.

If Keiko were to entertain suspicions, complications had arisen regarding the already agreed-upon lease of Q Art Museum—now being contested through what seemed like the machinations of an opposing faction—with disputes over whether to lease it or not flaring up just ten days before the scheduled opening.
The reason given was that this art museum had never hosted an ikebana exhibition before.
Moreover, whether artworks or crafts, everything exhibited thus far at the museum had been works of established excellence; the intermediary relayed that the director had suddenly begun insisting how hosting an ambitious “experiment” laden with risk would significantly undermine the prestige Q Art Museum had painstakingly built as a venue for first-rate exhibits.

Though nominally a commemorative event for her school's fifth anniversary, this was effectively Keiko's debut in the new ikebana realm. She sought to showcase avant-garde artistic methods—breaking from traditional floral sensibilities—by masterfully employing not only conventional Western blooms like amaryllis, tulips, carnations and dahlias, but also exotic tropical flowers scarcely used in arrangements, rare frigid-zone blossoms, and desiccated branches and foliage through innovative applications. This constituted Keiko's inaugural attempt to challenge society with her convictions and accomplishments.

No matter from which direction it came, Keiko found her fighting spirit blazed up—she simply couldn’t withdraw as she was. However, in the end, securing Q Art Museum fell through. The anxieties over this and the disgrace of canceling the flower exhibition gnawed at her very being, and whether it was that exhaustion had seeped deep into her bones, Keiko had recently taken to napping at midday—a rare occurrence.

Before she knew it, the flowers had scattered, and the season had raced ahead of her anxious heart—this truth pressed upon Keiko with crushing clarity.

Today again, when she hung the latch on the sliding door in the tea room’s small alcove, placed the rattan pillow against her cheek, and lay down, Keiko felt somewhat that she had regained her own world.
Since sending Senko to Kobuse’s place, everything around her had become inconvenient; her California-born live-in disciple Kuwako, who took over the tasks, was too businesslike in manner, often clashing with her sensibilities.
Then there were matters that could not be handled unless by her niece Senko.
The chamber pot kept in the bedroom wall’s hidden shelf—even if it were an elegant Persian-patterned piece—such disposal tasks could not be entrusted to Kuwako, no matter that she was a live-in disciple.
She had to do it herself.
However, there was a certain charm in Kuwako’s actions—unaccustomed as she was to Japanese customs after being raised abroad until adolescence—that sometimes brought comfort.
To the ikebana master, there were all sorts of gifts from the disciples.
One day, a downtown restaurant sent over bonito Tosa-style grilled fish beautifully arranged on a Xiangrui-patterned plate.
While intently staring at the bonito fillet—grilled on one side over straw flames, its opaque roasted flesh rapidly transitioning to the carnation pink of raw meat—Kuwako said to her master.
“Master, hasn’t this sashimi gone bad?”
At such times, Keiko would feel a surge of maternal affection, as though she had a son, spreading warmly through her body.
She would first shake Kuwako's hand.
And then she said.

“Kuwako!
“Oh, that’s enough already!”

As yet another instance of Kuwako’s overzealous handiwork, the glass tank for the goldfish on the veranda had been thoroughly cleaned, and the water that had painstakingly accumulated algae was now replaced with fresh water akin to newly bleached cotton cloth.
However, Keiko thought this was not ill-suited to the seasonal shift toward summer.
And for a while—having been too busy to properly observe them—she gazed pensively at the garden and veranda-edge scenes she had neglected.

The early summer sunlight that struck the entire garden with fierce intensity and reflected back just as fiercely rose onto the veranda, illuminating the glass tank for the goldfish from the side and solidifying the water—along with the pebbles at the bottom—into something resembling crystal veined with impurities. The two Calico goldfish, seemingly dazzled by the light, showed some bewilderment in the quivering corners of their fins while appearing to delight in the sudden refreshment of their changed water.

The Calico goldfish, their fins like white gauze and bodies scattered with five-colored leopard spots, patterned themselves into tangled clusters like flowers. Shimauma still touched its mouth to the outside of the glass tank, amber eyes wide and round. On the lid sat a vase with a bundle of blue wheat ears inserted.

Above the strange turbidity of excitement and exhaustion that left her drowsy yet unable to fully sleep—when she anticipated still more difficulties lying ahead—her heart paradoxically grew more vividly alive, not without a certain pleasure. What sort of woman am I, I wonder. To feel a surging pleasure even in my fighting spirit at times... Gradually, Keiko was drawn into a half-awake, half-asleep state. Her pupils slackened and her eyelids grew heavy as they drooped downward, yet when she let them remain thus, nerves reflexively rebelled against this state at intervals—each time, the garden flowers pressed vigorously against her conscious eye glowing with a firefly-hued radiance.

In the garden, against a backdrop of leafed-out cherry trees, one could see a feminine and graceful pond modeled after the Enshū-style garden of Yamato Kokubunniji Temple in reduced scale.
A large flowerbed was arranged right before her eyes on the veranda edge, where disciples and regular florists brought rooted plants or buried greenhouse-grown specimens past their prime—these flowers bloomed in chaotic profusion, either defying seasons or adhering to them across all four.
The disciples called it both “the Flower Obasuteyama” and “the Flower Hyakkencho,” but early summer remained the peak of its floral splendor.

At the blurred threshold where Keiko drifted between dreams and wakefulness—poppies, lupines, buttercups, azaleas, asters, sweet peas, irises, lilies of the valley, snapdragons, anemones, hyacinths, kerria roses, roses, brooms, tulips, California poppies, Shasta daisies, daisies, ice plants, cowherbs, petunias—all these flowers in white, crimson, purple, orange and every other hue rippled and mingled, their colors touching and blending into a single colossal wreath. Then hundreds—no thousands—of stems and leaves and trunks beyond counting fused together into massive stalks and foliage and trunks to form the foundation supporting this great floral ring.

A powerful voice resounded there.

"Bellow! Bellow!"

Pearl-like sweat dripped soundlessly down, scattering and soaking into the earth.
The earth had imperceptibly turned transparent, revealing giant roots entwined with pearlescent strands underground—roots that supported the world above, now visible like frames from a silent film.
From there emerged a powerful voice.

"Bellow! Bellow!"

Could this be the form of Jules Romains' old Unanimist sanctuary—that which sought to establish for humanity a system of mechanical mysticism? Keiko wondered in the liminal consciousness between dream and waking.

——

Was this the symbol of poetic Catholicism that the poet Claudel had boldly proclaimed—"The Lord exists even in modern train stations and theaters"—Keiko wondered.

Various other "such-and-such," "such-and-such."

——
——

Throughout Keiko's artistic career, certain ideas had left her breathless with their profundity only to depart in haste—whatever formidable spirit they might possess, each strangely bore velvet-like tentacles of woman-respecting gentleness that caressed tender femininity.
Those now visit within the realm of Keiko’s dreaming consciousness.

——
——

Not a single flower nodded.

The flowers merely emitted powerful bellows—"Bellow! Bellow!"—their pearl-like sweat glistening as it dripped down.

Could it be that flowers exist prior to thought—coiling within lived experience as an endless, beginningless great karmic cause of beauty?
Because it was a great karmic cause, no one could alter this beauty.
If that were so, was it already a significant force upon this earth?

An elegant, richly fragrant, refreshingly metallic scent lingered.
In the practice hall, the disciples were burning the roots of cut peonies to better absorb water—Keiko thought this drowsily at the edge of waking from her dream.
Keiko’s mind serenely regained full consciousness.
Then, the giant flower in the dream gradually transformed into individual flowers across the real flowerbeds—splitting from a single colossal wreath—and returned to their original positions in each respective plot.

Senko stood vacantly at the edge of the garden.

“What’s wrong?”

When asked, she bent at the waist and performed a slightly bashful ceremonial bow meant for formal occasions. Her awkwardness in adjusting her kimono's hemline, the practiced neatness of her obi arrangement, her fussing over sleeve cuffs—she seemed like an entirely different person from when she was at home. What struck Keiko even more profoundly was how this listless young woman's expression now concealed both resolve and pride.

For Mihotani Keiko—who had spent sixteen years overseeing hordes of virginal disciples while maintaining what she considered a celibate life devoted to flowers—her sensitivity to sexual undercurrents had grown sharper than most. She instantly recognized that her niece had matured into a woman beyond even a blood relative's control. A fissure had opened between the unmarried woman and the virgin who had once shared unreserved affection. And who might be Senko's counterpart in this?

—Blast—Keiko felt a branding iron sear her chest.

“Senko, why aren’t you coming up?”

“Um, I came all the way here to do some shopping for Mr. Kobuse…”

Senko had settled into such composure that she deliberately uttered Kobuse’s name in an artificial, loud manner.
Keiko, conversely, became flustered.

“Then why don’t you have a seat here?”

She laid out a zabuton cushion beside the goldfish bowl on the engawa veranda.
While finding it strange that she herself ended up adopting formal manners to match her counterpart’s affected propriety...

According to Senko, Kobuse’s condition hadn’t improved much.
The only hope was having X-rays applied to his tubercular lesions, yet Kobuse absolutely refused to consent to hospitalization at a specialized hospital.

Every morning when the roosters crowed, the affected abdominal area began to throb intensely.

“When the pain comes, he just drinks tea while laughing through tears, saying he’ll die like that. That’s what he always says.”
“It’s utterly heart-wrenching.”
“But with such a robust physique, I absolutely can’t believe that!”

The poignant urgency in Senko's breathing—her unspoken vow to save the man through her own fervor—stirred Keiko more profoundly than the girl's actual words. That Keiko now felt shame when reflecting on her relationship with Kobuse—which she had always insisted wasn't romantic—stemmed from the scent-based solace she'd drawn from his masculine presence. Kobuse's larger-than-average frame carried an odor both flannel-soft and hay-fragrant. This seemed to emanate from constitutional weaknesses wrought by chronic illness. Merely imagining it could soothe Keiko's heart without physical proximity. The influence of Kobuse's scent transcended temporal and spatial boundaries. She'd once caught his aroma aboard a steamer near America while crossing the Atlantic during her homeward voyage—nearly antipodal distances rendered meaningless. Thereupon she'd found peaceful sleep in the ladies' cabin bed.

It couldn’t be helped—it wasn’t as though their skin ever actually touched—.
Keiko’s chastity—which had sworn to dedicate itself solely to flowers—would occasionally make such excuses to itself.

What was this feeling?
Yet—to think another now monopolized even the bodily scent of this man whose relationship she had considered so casual—spasms of unbearable flame churned within her flesh, threatening to overturn in one stroke the soul’s order forged through years of discipline, her moral discernment, even her artistic martyrdom—.

But as a woman, she had no grounds to blame either Kobuse or Senko. Kobuse was not branded as her lover, and since he was merely a recipient of material support, he remained free to fall in love with another woman or even marry her. She could not claim that her niece had stolen what belonged to her aunt. Regarding her connection with Kobuse, Senko’s restraint toward her aunt amounted to nothing more than prudence that had yet to find an opportunity for confession.

“Mr. Kobuse hasn’t mentioned wanting to meet me for some reason lately, has he?”
Keiko asked desperately feigning nonchalance.

“No, not particularly… Oh! Right—lately he’s become very fond of sencha, so he said if there’s good sencha available, to get some for him—”

Keiko searched for a box of sencha and, attaching a money envelope for immediate expenses to it, handed it to Senko.
Senko departed, her neatly composed retreating figure reminiscent of a young wife.

“Before Senko returns, please hurry and tell me.
I don’t want Senko to know even a little about this matter,” said Keiko.

It was Kobuse's sickroom.
Keiko, overwhelmed, came to visit amidst her busy schedule.
Knowing that Senko always went to the public bathhouse late at night, Keiko felt with a click of realization—and a pang of sadness—that she too had fallen into the position of someone who snooped around during others’ absences.

“My mind has grown dull, and I’ve come to think anything and everything is fine—there’s nothing left to respond with—”

Kobuse finally managed to prop himself up using his pillow, crawling onto his stomach.

“If you ask, I can tell you.”
“You and I have truly been in love since long ago.”

Kobuse said matter-of-factly, as though discussing someone else’s affair.

“I too suddenly realized it. But no matter how much I thought about it, the desire to marry never arose over all those long years.”

Keiko too aligned herself with the other’s tone and kept her voice composed.

“Strange kindred spirits we are.
“You have something like a predetermined main river current that’s flowed unwaveringly since before your birth, sweeping in everything that comes its way and steadily swelling that single course.
“In contrast, I—over a lifetime—have scattered what little life I was born with, no more than the water in a pond—”

Kobuse spoke in a voice growing increasingly hoarse—as if even his flesh were withering away—while wetting his throat with bancha.

He remarked that human instinct appears clever yet foolish, foolish yet clever—utterly incomprehensible. While he had loved Keiko from the beginning, he had merely surrendered to the vigorous flow of her life. Those who heard the resonance of life’s ceaselessly advancing torrent—tirelessly widening the river’s breadth—found their minds thrown into disarray. And for those humans fated to scatter a predetermined measure of water—their own portion dwindling from the very start—their hearts grew all the more agitated.

“The first painting you ever drew was of peonies.”
“When I saw it, I was astonished by something mysterious that was burgeoning—something that could not be fully expressed by mere painting.”
“There, an ambition surpassing the painting on the canvas had transformed into a fierce spirit, fluttering across the surface.”
“So I unintentionally shouted, ‘This isn’t a painting!’”

“Yes—that painting of white peonies, pale yet burning like flowers in full blaze.”

If one were to persevere in pursuing that painting’s intent, they might discover potential in the field of painting.
Or perhaps it had entirely strayed from the path of art.
However, before one could even look that far, Kobuse’s instinct had already rejected it.

“It can’t be helped. In humans, it’s neither emotion nor reason—something murky wells up inside, and before you even think ‘Huh?’ you’ve already acted.”

Kobuse, having driven Keiko from his life's course over matters with Senko, felt relieved yet simultaneously found himself filled with an inexplicable loneliness.

"Robust life..." Kobuse said again.

"It torments weaker lifeforms."
"If 'torment' seems too harsh a word—then it pampers them, frets over them, toys with them helplessly."
"Just like when a child finds a pond turtle—makes it swim in water, crawl along a bucket's rim, flip it on its back—they grow restless precisely because it's not a human their own size."

It was impossible to know how much Kobuse had been troubled and stirred by the energetic dispatches from Keiko in Europe—whether they introduced emerging art schools, shared impressions of her theories, or offered opinions.
Keiko treated these like fashionable garments, donning them only to cast them aside.
Kobuse would painstakingly reshape both body and mind to each new style, trying to make them fit.
In the end, this only served his fate of scattering a predetermined measure of life’s water.

“Lies! Those are lies!”
“I wanted to somehow mold you into a splendid painter with true originality.”
Keiko could bear it no longer. Her hand fell unintentionally on Kobuse’s half-discarded futon cover as she insisted, “That was all there was to it. Not a shred of selfishness or frivolity—not one grain!”

Kobuse was growing steadily more exhausted.

“It’s not a lie—it’s the truth.”
“And that love was disguised.”
“Love born between those with mismatched measures of life force is tragic.”

Now, even Keiko found herself thinking that what Kobuse said might have some validity.
But more than anything else, upon realizing that Kobuse was now someone who had no connection to her whatsoever, she suddenly broke down in tears.

“But I’m not merely the strong woman you describe me as.”
“I’ve lost all sense of purpose now.”

Kobuse took a single deep breath into his body and sat up, compassionately stroking Keiko’s well-fleshed back while,

“Oh now now,”
“With that large frame of yours—thirty-eight years old and still calling yourself a beauty...”
“It might hurt for a little while—but your resilience won’t stand for this.”
“You’ll soon rise up swelling again.”

Keiko thought she had to say what needed to be said.

“Is what happened with Senko meant to spite me?”

“No—that’s not it,” Kobuse said, abruptly stopping the stroking hand. After a while, as he resumed gentle caresses, he continued: “I suppose you could say we followed nature’s will. To all those who remained unfinished in this world—nature wouldn’t even let them leave behind a single child…”

Kobuse, utterly exhausted, lay down on the bed again, planted his toes, and twisted his body somewhat while lying down.
And then, clasping his hands to his forehead without addressing anyone in particular,

“By the time my child grows up, medical science will have advanced enough that tuberculosis won’t be much of a poison to the body……”

During the year Keiko had spent in listless collapse due to the failed loan from Q Art Museum and the Kobuse incident, her credibility and reputation were elevated, and her grand exhibition came to be welcomed by Q Art Museum more as an earnest entreaty.

Keiko herself no longer felt particularly moved by this good fortune.
"When you can finally do something is when you no longer need to do it"—this was what Keiko had always sensed about life’s progression—but ultimately, she needed the strength to rise from her apathy.

“Should one walk through the world with crimson blooms held between one’s teeth—after all, there shall be no dread.”

In accordance with the words her friend had written, Keiko—rather than holding flowers between her lips—bit into them instead, clinging desperately to the blooms.

There welled up a vitality beyond necessity, and exceptional thinking ability was granted.

Here, for the time being, if we were to systematically summarize Keiko’s love for and understanding of flowers before the reader, it would generally be as follows.

The colors of all flowers are essence-saturated hues that seep directly from their life force.
Rather than artificially mixed paints—a purer chromatic ornament—Keiko wanted to paint her own pictures using flowers.
In artificial paints there exist complementary colors that often clash discordantly.
In flowers, their inherent color was nothing less than chromatic light cast by solar rays.
Each flower’s color presented variations in shade within primary hues.
They could not be divided into two things.
Once divided, they ceased to be flowers.
And even what appeared as mixed intermediate colors always possessed maximum chromatic purity.
The purest elements exhibited no repulsion or disharmony however chaotically combined.
Therefore, a single flower felt no loneliness, nor did clusters become burdensome.
The form and shape of flowers—that was existence’s very ideal.
In this world, even genitals could be sanctified.
Keiko shed bitter tears upon reading how Balzac’s painter protagonist in *The Unknown Masterpiece*, seeking absolute perfection in art, had obliterated his canvas with frenzied forms unrecognizable to human eyes.
When her tears ceased, she burned with desperate urgency to make this protagonist comprehend flowers.
The form of flowers groped for in midnight darkness—what delicate secret joy of tactile discovery that must be.
Flowers possessed power to artistically stimulate beholders’ hormonal responses.
(So—is this why I stay young? Keiko wondered.)
Here the novel’s author quoted an ancient Eastern text explaining flowers: “They symbolize how the universe nurtures ideal seeds through enduring life’s hardships until perfected personalities blossom through plants.” To this Keiko appended her annotation: “To love one bloom is for the unformed self to unconsciously revere its perfected form.”
Furthermore she added her own view: “Even a single millet blossom expresses all flora’s character and life’s burdens.”
Drawing upon earth’s every impurity as nourishment to unfold resplendent fragrances under sunlight—that indomitable floral vitality.
She appended this subjective conviction: “Flowers are strong.”

Now came at last the public exhibition of Keiko’s paintings created with flowers.
It was held occupying every room across both floors of Q Art Museum.

To introduce the principal ones here,

Downstairs—serving as an entrance screen—a large pine trunk cut and anchored in a lacquered vessel shaped like a great ship, its branches swaying with wisteria waves. They constructed a furnace from mahogany, white brass, and gray marble that evoked the stratosphere, upon whose mantelpiece stood a solitary red camellia. At the window—from a sake cask of wheel-like wood banded with red copper hoops—the roots of two vines wound around the frame and stretched upward, their dense dark-green foliage sheltering small bignonia corymbosa flowers like rubies wrapped in polished silk. In one alcove corner, at each angle of a leaden Yatsuhashi bridge design, Japanese irises evoked imperial court passions.

Upper floor == To the right of the stairway's top landing—there stood what seemed a small hill... No, in an unglazed vessel large as a hillock, a single decades-old great red camellia spread its branches and leaves in an outline wider than the vessel itself.
To the left, equally: in a large wicker birdcage where birds had been replaced, tricolored southern blooms sang.
In the shadow of a pillar = There, a cluster of pale purple lilacs hung lit within a diamond-patterned lantern.
On the meticulously thin edge of a protruding box's surface lay saintly dried reeds and three fishing rods that seemed to offer floral tribute. Directly ahead, the grand flower bed stood illuminated by the white light of a rising moon behind it, while before it lay a solar cluster of peony blossoms.

Third floor == The grand alcove of the Kuroshoin. While the right hand of the Kudara Kannon displayed the abhaya mudra gesture, it balanced against hemp flowers at the mouth of the son-shiki vessel. In the background hung Sesson’s summer landscape scroll. In the side alcove: yellow roses evoking Rokumeikan-era fragility within an elegant pine-bark diamond vase. Red roses.

Tea room: In the small alcove stood a solitary arrangement—rapeseed flowers on the verge of forming pods in an ancient oil jar.
Background: An orchid painting with luminous brushwork by Bada Shanren.

In one corner of a corridor == A *Battle Scene* of red and white carnations in chaotic profusion within a large white porcelain basin.

Dining room: In a ceramic stein from the Munich National Beer Hall—rhododendrons and sheer lilies; in an eared single-vase—marguerite daisies and sweet peas.
In a Venetian glass platter: hornwort and water lilies.

Each flower arrangement had been given its own title.
*Ashiya’s Unahi Maiden.*
*Harp.*
*Plain Song.*
*Faust’s Contemplation.*
*Wabi Bookmark.*
*White Hair.*
*Literary Renaissance Era.*
*Pasturage.*
*George Sand.*
*Nara.*
*Gothic.*
*Murasaki Shikibu.*
*First Love.*
*Grand Banquet.*
*Rhyming Poem.*

*Rhyming Poem.*
And still more—too many to count.

There was a special room.

Grand hall.
In a space somewhat removed from the disciples' various works stood two pieces that became particularly acclaimed during this grand exhibition.
One was titled "Cradle," the other "Coffin."
A cradle woven from cast iron and artificial fiber material—its rim adorned by a single spherical tulip bud—appeared utterly simple at first glance yet produced an elegantly pure and fresh effect; while the large coffin, crafted from Chichibu serpentine stone with its interior hollowed in human form, had soft lilies of the valley arranged serenely at its base.

On this day, Keiko wore a pale blue Western dress that appeared almost pure white.
No matter which ikebana arrangement Keiko stood beside, her attire never clashed with its color tones.
Keiko mingled constantly smiling among the audience that had gathered from all parts of the city.
Whenever she occasionally encountered acquaintances and received congratulatory words, Keiko would bow her head and return words of gratitude.
She did so even to the newspaper reporters who were preparing all manner of encouraging words for their coverage of her bold new art.

Night.

The venue stood emptied of people.
Senko—who had come by automobile from home to fetch her—now sat exhausted in the dining room taking some drink, having circled the venue all the while clutching an infant to her chest—while Keiko stood alone revealed beneath the darkened sky, her shoe soles pressing into Q Art Museum’s rooftop garden.

……………

……………

Mr. Kobuse…… Keiko pressed a handkerchief to her eyes and sobbed loudly…… Mr. Kobuse……

But even as she called out to the deceased Kobuse, Keiko’s tears were truly being shed toward her own extraordinary fate, grievous endurance, and intense hidden emotions.

But suddenly, Keiko noticed.

The flowers throughout the entire building beneath her feet were now supporting Keiko above them in unison.

That very thing was the valiant force of Keiko’s own life striving to uphold Keiko’s life further—and an eternal new vitality.

Keiko was no longer crying.

“Flowers are strong.”

With that thought, Keiko nodded deeply.
As the night wind gently swayed the hem of Keiko’s garment, Keiko herself became a large floral form and stood there.