Pathway to Japanese Literature

I’m not yet at an age to reflect on my life’s journey, but as a child I was a hellion of rare caliber—making my parents weep, my teachers weep, getting expelled from my hometown middle school, and even after fleeing to Tokyo, struggling to find any school that would take me.
It wasn’t that I struggled; rather, thanks to my parents’ foolish doting, I hardly ever showed my face at school.
When I did occasionally appear, it would immediately turn into a frantic chase between me and the teacher—though in the end, I’d be the one pinning him down—and given how grueling it was even for myself, it wasn’t exactly enjoyable.

There was no helping being expelled.
For my part, I breathed a sigh of relief—truly, this had severed that ill-fated bond.
Delinquent youths, you see—they’re creatures of circumstance.
The individual themselves suffers more than anyone else.
But they were foolishly doting parents.
Even if they tried to enroll me in a proper middle school again, there was no one who would accept me.
In the end, they enrolled me in a middle school where only rogues gathered.
There existed such a middle school.

Having severed those ill-fated ties, I resolved to reform—or at least believed I had—but wherever you go, circumstances take hold.
Though I was no scholar, I was an all-around athlete—when asked to casually step into a tournament, I’d take first place in the Kantō regionals and even the national championships.
Even if some big rogue sumo wrestler from Kyushu—one of those defeated warriors—gave it his all and threw with every ounce of his brute strength, a twelve-pound shot put would only fly about seven or eight meters.
When I tossed it lightly, it would fly eleven meters.
When I did judo, the big rogues would come tumbling down one after another at my hands.
No matter how poor my studies were, I stood out among these types, so I believed I had reformed—but before I knew it, I was sitting at the center of the big rogues.

Many of Kyushu’s defeated warriors had a political activist streak, but they were distinct from true rogues. They largely supported themselves through honest work—newspaper deliveries and street vending. While these remain common student jobs today, back then such opportunities were scarce. You’d find Chinese soba vendors playing charumera flutes through the night and rickshaw pullers who seemed to fare particularly well. When rain began falling, they’d promptly borrow carts from their bosses and race to stations and theaters. Working only on rainy days could sustain them for a month—a favorable arrangement indeed.

This group was past twenty in age, leading full-fledged adult lives—even going to visit prostitutes—and while they appeared bizarre in the eyes of ordinary middle schoolers, they were not rogues.

The true rogues of the hard-liner and soft-liner factions were, in terms of age, actually more common among ordinary middle schoolers.

In rakugo terms, they were like Teikichi—*“Hey there!”*—those young boys in straight-sleeved kimonos, five or six of them gathering from early morning to drink Denki Bran bought with a one-shō bottle. They pawned about three people’s worth of Western clothes and kimonos to buy Denki Bran.

When the brats got drunk, their eyes would glaze over. Their speech would slur just the same, but their rationality remained surprisingly intact—they’d make a few grandiose declarations, never losing their composure the way adults did when drunk. They showed no tendency to get amorous when drunk, nor did they seem genuinely exhausted—perhaps that’s why.

“Well, time to get some work done,” they’d say, and about three of the less-drunk ones, dressed in leftover pawned uniforms and straight-sleeved kimonos, would head out.
The belts wrapped around their waists were their weapons.
Their straight-sleeved kimonos concealed brass knuckles.

They would sometimes target rogue types from other schools or intimidate soft-liners to extort money, and when things got desperate, they’d even fabricate charges against adults.
You’d underestimate them as mere brats, but they’d suddenly pounce with leopard-like eyes—landing brass knuckle blows or swinging their belts—and even when turned over to the police, they wouldn’t utter a word about their comrades, only to emerge smirking three or four days later.
They were small middle school students of sixteen or seventeen.

They would sometimes raid gambling dens.
They weren’t infiltrating gang-run gambling dens, but rather barging into the legitimate adult world of semi-regulars—rickshaw pullers, freelance laborers, those who were neither professionals nor complete amateurs.

If you underestimated them as mere children and tried to pull some shady trick, the boys’ actions were swift—no sooner did they steel themselves than they raised their belts like a whirlwind, flashed brass knuckles, and pressed in on the adults.

I once happened to witness them engaged in such an act, but they cautioned me to keep my distance so as not to be mistaken for one of their group, showed me meticulous consideration, and never once asked me to join them or keep watch.

The Kyushu Ossan Group and Hon-Yota Group had absolutely no dealings with each other, but I was cherished by both and occupied a remarkably favorable position.

The Kyushu Ossan Group were older, innocent yet simple-minded, while the Yota Group were young but worldly-wise; though academically inept, they acted swiftly with sharp judgment.
The sole commonality was their complete lack of interest in childish pursuits like sports. Had they clashed, the young Yota brats would’ve prevailed.
For they possessed tenacity and ruthlessness.
They indeed ambushed soft-liners to gang-rape female students, their daily lives consumed by practicalities—diligently practicing how to cheat at hanafuda cards.

Later in life, when I was around thirty, after wandering aimlessly, I ended up lodging for about a year in a diner at a dead end of a back alley in Kyoto’s Fushimi Inari.

When I first started staying there, it was just an ordinary diner and lunchbox delivery shop, but the proprietor here—a man around sixty—was Go-crazed.
Every night, he challenged me.
That was an utterly terrible level of ineptitude.
He barely grasped the principles of stone life and death, yet would give a nine-stone handicap and set a komi of 100—and win.
In other words, all the stones end up dead.
Even so, the old man claimed he couldn’t get enough of Go—meaning the one truly cursed was whoever found themselves relentlessly challenged by him.

Since it was too absurd to keep humoring him, I suggested opening a Go parlor—if he wanted to play so badly—in the diner’s vacant second-floor hall. Since Go parlors aren’t just for experts but also attract beginners, I suggested that if he tussled with them over the board, he’d finally satisfy his frustration—and thus persuaded him to open a Go parlor.

The old man was brimming with enthusiasm—he’d prepared a full set of Go equipment and stood ready to welcome beginners—but unfortunately, no worthy opponent ever appeared to grapple with him across the stones. No one would play against him. As for this predicament of his—even now I find it baffling—but for someone so utterly terrible at Go to love it this much… well, that’s what you’d call a truly cursed fate.

Before long, there became something like a gambling den.

The carnival boss who patrolled Inari district as his territory began stopping by for meals and took notice of the proprietress during these visits.
A woman around forty with bark-like skin peeling slightly—outwardly adopting a gambler’s bravado and itching to spout off—she was a woman of spectacular stupidity.
One who’d pin down her mild-mannered husband and stage loud declarations in public: “Why not hurry up and die already with one foot in the coffin?”

When this fool of a proprietress heard about the carnival boss, she caked on white makeup she hadn’t worn in years and lavished attention on him. From then on, whenever he made his rounds, her place became his rest stop—no other customers allowed while he dined.
A clean sweep of the premises.

Before long, the boss would get drunk.
The underlings withdrew, leaving only the boss and the proprietress in the back, and the café owner was driven up to the second-floor Go parlor.
The old man, his back bent, planted his hands on each step as he crawled up to the second floor, groaning "Uu... uu... uu..." with every movement.
Seki-san, the caretaker of the Go parlor, faced off against another terrible player—veins bulging like those of a frenzied horse—and began slamming down stones with ferocious speed.
Ah, so the Carnival Boss was here.
The fact that they’d been driven out was something the regulars grasped immediately.

They had closed the Go parlor for the day and held succession ceremonies in this hall, and there had even been dispute resolution rituals.
In a dead-end alley where planks at the bottom had detached and tilted, in a diner whose dirt floor always reeked of overflowing gutter stench—for someone to hold succession ceremonies or dispute resolutions in such a place, he must have been a boss of truly low standing indeed.
It was a house fit only for dropouts and remnants to lodge in, suitable as a hideout for plainclothes squads—but well, he must have been a boss of squad leader rank in those plainclothes units.

Once things reached this state, even to the Go parlor came underlings like quack medicine sellers, their shills, fortune-tellers, healers, fake masseurs, and those with shady reputations—and when they came during the day, it was during an uproar, having fled there as a temporary refuge. They fidgeted restlessly, their Go games half-hearted; every time a heavy thud sounded from downstairs, they’d half-rise from their seats, faces paling.

I had these guys demonstrate for me, through practical examples, the various techniques of cheating at hanafuda and chōhan dice games.
This was something you couldn’t understand unless they demonstrated it for you in person.
It was sleight of hand.
The card tricks performed by magicians in variety halls—unless one had honed their finger dexterity to at least that level or beyond, they couldn’t run a rigged gambling operation.
The cards became like extensions of their fingers and hands—between their fingers, in their palms, on the backs of their hands, up their sleeves—fluttering front and back, left and right, spinning freely, too swift for the eye to follow.
The person across had no idea whatsoever.
Only someone seated to the left of the mark could discern the trick if they watched closely, so it seemed unwise not to station an accomplice there.

I knew nothing about mahjong, but watching them play—flushed with excitement, frantically busy at it—they seemed caught in a whirlwind. As if their very reputation as mahjong players hung on maintaining this feverish pace, the hands of all four darted back and forth in a dizzying blur. Moreover, with their hands sweeping horizontally over discarded tiles like skimming water, there was simply no way they could’ve hidden two or three extra pieces. With just a little practice, you could cheat endlessly at this. That’s why amateurs shouldn’t play gambling mahjong with strangers.

My life has been one of unruly lawlessness—a delinquent youth, a delinquent young man, a delinquent middle-aged man—truly, even viewed through the most favorable lens, it's been a thoroughly no-good life.
Nevertheless—by nature detesting forming factions so intensely—I never threw in my lot with either gambler gangs or the communist party.

In other words, my life was one of solitude—a life spent perpetually as an observer and a gawker.

However, having surveyed the underworld existence I’d long observed from the sidelines, I must emphasize that those who lament postwar moral collapse by pointing to street prostitutes, male prostitutes, and Aloha-shirted delinquents were merely spouting the ignorant ravings of those who knew nothing of the world. They had existed in every age. They had always lurked in the underside of orderly society; after defeat, they’d merely surfaced to the forefront.

Yet in those post-defeat days—when Japan’s major cities lay largely as burnt-out wastelands and reconstruction materials remained nonexistent—the underside and surface now coexisted in disorder; it became inevitable that back-alley life’s visage would brush against mainstream society. At least the exposure remained regional, and one could say it proved exceptional for a defeated nation that order persisted sufficiently for those wishing to avoid such things to still live untouched.

In terms of the contact and mixing between the underside and the surface, it could be said that officials’ open bribery and their wine-and-meat extravagance through abuse of privilege were far more abnormal and nation-ruining than the likes of street prostitutes and thieves.

During the late Qing Dynasty, a satirical novel titled *The Bureaucrats: A Revelation* appeared.
It depicted officials’ corruption and decadence—from gatekeepers at the bottom to ministers and generals at the top—indulging in bribery and wine-pool-meat-forest excesses while doing only the bare minimum to maintain surface propriety and cutting corners freely under money’s dictate; this novel’s emergence is said to have hastened the Qing Dynasty’s collapse.

Yet when we read *The Bureaucrats: A Revelation* today, these aspects of officialdom’s rot belong not to the Qing Dynasty—they mirror Japan’s reality with uncanny precision.
Japanese officialdom’s reality bore all the hallmarks of a nation careening toward ruin; moreover, the wartime military establishment, bureaucracy, munitions corporations, and state-sponsored enterprises showed no difference whatsoever from the late Qing Dynasty’s collapse symptoms.

Even if there were no street prostitutes on the avenues, wartime wives existed in the evacuation wake of section chiefs' spouses, and wartime sexual relationships were rampant everywhere.
While rations provided mere subsistence for the masses, military officers and corporate executives—relative to today's material standards—wallowed in equally extravagant wine-pools and meat-forests, with regulatory agency officials approving defective goods for cash while keeping surface-level ledger propriety.
Yet newspapers wrote only of '100 million hearts beating as one,' overflowing with patriotic sentiment nationwide—but this was because they couldn't write otherwise. Had they operated in an era like today where anything could be published, moral collapse and ethical corruption would first have required maximal documentation during wartime itself.

In eras when newspapers couldn’t publish freely and no one was permitted to voice criticism, these moralists—who swallowed reports whole without grasping reality—now, in an age of free press where newspapers can publish anything, heave sighs of righteous indignation over discovering exactly what’s reported, lamenting the nation’s state. Such men have eyes like knot-riddled wood—incapable of seeing anything with their own vision.

When compared to the military, bureaucrats, and corporate elites—who preached devotion unto death for the nation and service through one’s occupation even as they reached pinnacles of corruption, decadence, and incompetence—the existence of today’s extremely limited street prostitutes and male prostitutes in these post-defeat burnt-out wastelands pales into insignificance.
The former are things that should not exist, but the latter are things that ought to naturally exist; moreover, their numbers are by no means excessive, and one must recognize that today’s post-defeat Japan maintains a surprisingly high degree of order.
It would seem that this is due to the general populace of Japan being inherently gentle and peace-loving by nature.
The bureaucrats of supervisory agencies and tax officials are not inherently demonic in disposition—they are likely the same Japanese as the general populace—but it seems that Japanese people are originally suited to being commoners, and when granted privilege, they become demonic dimwits.
In today’s world, the chasm between the demonic brutality of bureaucrats’ privilege abuse and the gentleness of the general populace is vast.
Unlike the military era when criticism was forbidden, even in this age of free criticism, the tyranny of privileged classes persists at levels matching those wartime excesses. Thus, for all its reputed gentle nature, the pitiable Japanese temperament—where a crying child cannot prevail against the magistrate—appears particularly remarkable among contemporary oddities, possessing as it does a tradition of unbroken imperial lineage spanning millennia.
Resignation and suicide are not virtues.
To commit suicide over taxes is misguided; rather, like Mei Jian Chi who kept thrashing about even after his head was lopped off, they should be foaming at the mouth to confront Finance Minister Ikeda—sinking their teeth into his throat if need be—to assert what's just.

Somehow my preface had grown too long, veered off course, and become a jumbled mess.
I hadn’t meant to say such things, but this is precisely why bungling raconteurs are such a pain.
Even knowing that losing my composure on stage disqualifies one as an artist, the moment taxes came up, my vision clouded over.

★

After the war’s end, markets sprang up in front of every station across Tokyo, serving hooch.
Hence a breed of people dead drunk gathered, and street prostitutes and Aloha-shirted delinquents loitered about.

Markets were originally places for buying and selling, but in the post-defeat era, one could just as well purchase women there or find oneself in transactions where they’d be tricked into compliance only to be stripped bare—not a single deal went wanting; everything could be settled right there.

I was targeted by pickpockets twice at the same location, though I never got stripped completely naked. Once—when Ginza still lay mostly in ruins—I went out to relieve myself in the burnt-out wasteland (markets don’t have restrooms), when two shady characters swiftly closed in from both sides. Without a word, they slipped their hands into my chest pocket, pulled out its contents, and vanished into thin air. When I finished my business and turned around, there was no trace of anyone left.

Their technique impressed me—flawless execution worthy of true professionals—but they’d failed miserably. Eager to finish before I stopped pissing, they’d snatched whatever was in my pocket without checking and disappeared immediately. One had only grabbed toilet paper, while the other made off with something called a Kamakura Bunko notebook. It pains me as an artist to record such lessons, but being too skilled at this sort of thing proves problematic indeed.

The damages I suffered at the market were limited to those described above—extremely minor for a regular—but this might have been because I rarely drank alone.

In any market where delinquent youths gathered, personal safety could hardly be assured, but Shinjuku’s market in particular was regarded as the foremost dangerous zone among hooch gangs.

However, even before the war, Shinjuku had been Tokyo’s foremost delinquent youth district and a dangerous zone for drunks.

When I was in middle school, Asakusa had been a rough place, but after the earthquake, the syndicate bosses began exercising restraint and voluntarily launched—in cooperation with the police—what might be called a cleanup campaign for Asakusa. By the time I was roaming Tokyo’s entertainment districts, Asakusa had become one of the safer drinking areas.

The entertainment districts where delinquent youths thrived and roamed freely for so long were led by Shinjuku, and I had quite a time of it there.
This was because, at the time, I often drank alone there until late at night.
However, since I was usually drinking at bars late at night—where the madams and sisters were of the righteous sort who protected their customers—I was never truly robbed in Shinjuku, nor did I ever see blood rain down.
The rogues of Shinjuku remained until the war had turned to rot and every last drinking establishment vanished.

However, Kamata—where I had lived continuously before the war—was even worse, though unknown to most since it wasn’t an entertainment district.

The Chuo Line corridor was an apartment zone for students, but Kamata back then was an apartment district for low-wage salarymen and Ginza waitresses; the apartment waitresses would bring men home, while women from bars and restaurants were full-fledged street prostitutes—though not officially permitted, even today’s back alleys don’t surpass this.
That said, Ginza was equally deplorable.

At the time, cup-sake shops could be found everywhere, but Kamata being a town of low-paid salarymen and laborers meant these shops would overflow with crowds come evening.
From large establishments packed with forty or fifty patrons down to cramped 10-sen stands filled by just four or five, the customers were chiefly laborers over forty—men working for that day’s wages.

The Kamata rogues were vicious precisely because they preyed on these men.

To explain their methods: they’d plop down beside one or two or three frail laborers drinking alone and start guzzling booze themselves.
Soon they’d try talking (though often they wouldn’t speak at all)

“This one’s on you, Uncle.”

Saying this, they would order a drink and push it on him: “Well, drink up! Take it!”

If he refused, they’d pick a quarrel over why he refused; if he accepted, they’d pick a quarrel over why he didn’t return the favor.
If he returned it, they would push another drink on him and make him return that one.
If he tried to leave midway, they would pick a quarrel over why he was leaving.
Once they set their sights on him, they wouldn’t let go.

They targeted laborers more often than salaried men in suits, but it was the elderly laborers dressed like beggars and stevedores who were most frequently preyed upon—no doubt because that approach proved more reliably lucrative in the end.

Such extortion could be witnessed nightly at several drinking spots, yet shopkeepers and their staff never lifted a finger to help patrons.
At such times, bars lacking male attendants proved far more dependable—it fell to madams and worldly-wise waitresses to chase off the hoodlums.
Ironically, it was precisely those liquor merchants with proper storefronts who, fearing future trouble, refused to lift a finger for their customers.
What’s more, the forty-odd drinkers would turn their faces away and keep guzzling, feigning ignorance.
Even an accidental glance risked provoking accusations—indeed, these thugs would torment frail old men while lying in wait for some do-gooder to intervene.

I too once had an all-out brawl against five men there.
Being drunk, I took quite a beating.
I lost count of how many times they knocked me flat, but each time I'd spring up and lunge back at them—this endless cycle only stopped when five syndicate bosses intervened.
The next day, when my face had swollen blue-black like an oni roof tile, Nakahara Chūya came by. He clapped his hands in glee and spent two or three hours—until his regular bar time rolled around—needling me with every imaginable quip about my bloated visage before taking his leave. I couldn't muster anger, laughter, or even speech.
The muscles in my face had frozen solid.
Yet sustaining three hours of malicious commentary directed at a single swollen mute countenance—that's what earns one the title of praiseworthy poet.
Ever since that day, the tendon between my nose and mouth stays perpetually taut, flaring up at inconvenient moments.

The rogues of Kamata at that time were of two types: ordinary rogues, and remnants left behind when Shochiku Studios relocated from Kamata to Ofuna—the castoffs from the studio's lower-tier ranks.

The room next to my apartment was their den, where they primarily used their mistresses to plan their scams.
It came through loud and clear.
The hectic commotion of everyone mobilizing for final preparations, the clamor of triumphant returns, the clinking of celebratory cups—all reached my ears. Finally came even the sounds of the lover caressing the woman who had rendered distinguished service. From start to finish, it was as though I were savoring a modern drama without ever leaving my seat.
The money they scammed from their marks amounted to just three or five yen, but once when they managed ten yen, I heard the woman murmur wistfully, "A ten-yen note... My first time..." and found myself struck by an odd sadness.
In today's streetwalker era, women's bodies hold greater value.
Back then there were more women selling themselves in the shadows than today, and since they couldn't openly declare their trade, it was either free or done for tips—in short, there was no set price.
Today's street prostitutes are no match for those of the past in terms of income.

Shinjuku wasn’t as blatant as Kamata, but as an entertainment district, it had been the most disreputable since before the war.

However, postwar Shinjuku was truly terrible.
Now that I live in Ito, I no longer go to Shinjuku, though I used to frequent it in the past.
The "Chitose," a shop run by an old friend of mine, was located near the outdoor theater—an area free of delinquent youths—but Mako’s shop of the Wada Group, now demolished and gone, became truly lawless when one went there.

However, when returning home drunk, Mako would always escort me to the station, so I remained unharmed—but had that not been the case, there was no telling what might have happened.
Mako would escort all her regular customers to the station, so my friends didn’t suffer much harm there; however, a considerable number of people—editors among them—were stripped naked in this market.
In such cases, they were often too drunk to remember when they had been robbed, and even when I used to go drinking in this market, there were always several delinquent youths loitering at key shops near the entrances and exits, keeping watch over the drunken state of departing customers.

This market was demolished, but the surrounding markets remain, and the presence of delinquent youths has not changed to this day.

Even if humankind spends thousands of years constructing what we call social order, once something like the burned-out ruins of defeat we faced comes to pass and anarchy descends, history reverses course and drags us all back to the same starting line.

They called it a dark age.

It was only natural that delinquent gangs, who claimed entertainment districts as their turf, would first set about reviving their territories in the immediate post-defeat anarchy—but the political parties' lack of sound judgment—scheming to exploit this for official reconstruction efforts, even relying on these gangs' new yen for party funds—their base, stopgap mentality and utter lack of clear foresight or ideals for future planning were simply appalling.

Even when consulting history, incompetent governments had primarily failed due to their base, stopgap schemes.

To overthrow their political enemies, they would borrow another’s military force only to have that very force seize control of the nation.
The decline of the Heian nobility, the rise and fall of the Taira and Minamoto clans’ reigns, even the tragedy of the Southern Court—all stemmed from inept governments resorting to others’ loincloths as stopgap measures.
The several governments following Japan’s defeat were among history’s most incompetent exemplars, yet under the occupation forces’ guidance they managed to avoid major blunders.
Repeating history is the act of a fool.
History must be studied so that we do not repeat past mistakes.

For years they had clamored to eradicate the bosses, yet even now every region remained under their control—we were nowhere near achieving their destruction.
Bosses had emerged in droves among Diet members, prefectural and municipal legislators; politicians who weren’t bosses turned boss-like themselves; and worst of all, bureaucrats morphed into bosses too. Given this, one had to admit that the small-time hoodlums and delinquent youths haunting entertainment districts seemed almost endearing by comparison.

★

On Saturday, April 15, 1950, having obtained permission, I stood guard at the police box in front of Shinjuku Station, then took up duty at the police box beneath Mr. Saigo’s statue in Ueno Park, and was shown the night view of Ueno’s woods by a police officer.

Shinjuku was hardly surprising.
Because it was simply a case of everything that tended to happen when we were drunk—or surrounded by drunks—occurring all at once.

However, befitting Shinjuku’s reputation as a premier entertainment district, the police box was bustling—half their duties involved tending to drunks, some so dead drunk they had to be carried into the police box where they kept snoring away without waking no matter what was done to them.
What could they have drunk to end up like this? Their stupor was nothing ordinary.
It was a twenty-two-year-old salaryman in a brand-new gabardine suit, impeccably dressed.
It was no wonder caregiving thieves had emerged.
The term "caregiving theft" referred to stripping people of all their belongings under the pretense of assisting them, and in Shinjuku Market, it was primarily drunks who fell victim to this harm.

However, there were cases where this became extremely ambiguous.
Staggeringly drunk, someone would be dragged into an unfamiliar bar.
The reason one got dragged in was because countless hostesses who solicited customers were out on the streets tackling them.
When the bill came up short, they had their watches and coats taken as collateral and were thrown out.

If Mr. Drunkard had been aware of this, things would have been fine—but the trouble arose when he suddenly noticed only that his possessions, watch, and coat were missing. It was problematic because he couldn’t tell whether he’d been hit by caregiving theft or had them taken as collateral for the bill.

This happened.

The drunkard was a section chief in his mid-forties from some company.
The one who dragged him to the police box was the café madam—she claimed to be thirty-two, but with her large build, thick bones, and a face marked by a scar, she was an imposing figure who looked ready to bite.
The man was thin and small; having his arm seized by the imposing woman, he was literally dragged in.
The madam was also drunk.
And she had brought along a waitress.

“This is a dine-and-dash.
“Please have him settle the bill.”

And she thrust it out with a fierce look.

The bill in question was a mere hundred yen.
When the waitress was stationed on the street soliciting, a man happened to stagger by drunk, so she tackled him.
Since he said he didn’t want any more alcohol, the waitress suggested they have two glasses of milk.
The man had one glass; the waitress had one glass.
That came to 100 yen.

“Two glasses at fifty yen each.”
“It’s sugared milk.”
“So, fifty yen.”

The imposing woman kept emphasizing the sugared aspect.

The man had been carrying a bag.
When it came time to settle the bill, he realized his bag was missing.
He had started sobering up slightly.
Yet his words remained utterly slurred.

"I can't pay—the bag's gone."
"I'm not refusing to pay."
"I am a man of standing."

The man produced his business card, but swayed drunkenly, lurching forward with a *whoa*—it seemed improbable he'd recall any of this come dawn.

The police officer examined the business card and commuter pass together; it was indeed his business card.

But the imposing woman would not back down.
Despite knowing he had no money on him, her tone was vehement as she demanded immediate payment.
In other words, it seemed she intended to collect collateral—a coat or something—like a hustler would.
The police officer, also exasperated,

“It’s just a hundred yen, isn’t it?”

he scolded, but far from being cowed, the woman

“Then have him pay in front of the police box tomorrow at whatever time, and you, Officer, act as our witness and take full responsibility.”

she shamelessly declared.
Faced with this arbitrary shifting of responsibility, even the police officer couldn’t endure it—

“Since I’ve got his business card here, why not trust him?”
“It’s already proven not to be fake.”
“This gentleman here means no harm either.”
“It’s perfectly clear he can’t pay because he got drunk and lost his bag.”

“Y-yes, I’ll pay without fail.”
“Tomorrow morning at seven.”
“Right here.”

The man puffed out his chest and acted tough, but his speech remained slurred, and he kept swaying unsteadily.
He would forget even this promise by the next morning.

The woman, seeming to realize that digging in any further would be disadvantageous,

“It’s a mere hundred yen.
Very well.
Let’s trust this person.
I’ll trust him and take responsibility, so please find this man’s bag.”

You’d think she’d leave after saying that, but no.
Seeming about to leave, she fixed him with a stern look and—

“I’ll trust this business card and take responsibility, but please find this man’s bag.
I’m counting on you.”

This time, she began persistently demanding they find the man’s bag, repeating “I’m counting on you” as if forcing that task onto them too.

The police officer, infuriated by her obstinacy,

“It’s not even your bag—why keep badgering us about it?”
“We’d do our job without your nagging. Quit meddling and take him back once you’re done here.”

“Poor thing losing his bag like that.”
“Then make sure a hundred yen gets here tomorrow.”

With a snort like a wild horse’s, the woman left.

However, twenty or thirty minutes later, there she was—the woman, clutching something like a precious bundle against the pillar of the station entrance about seven meters from the police box, standing conspicuously as if to say *Look at this!* to the officers.

The furoshiki-wrapped bundle was just about the size of a bag.
Of course, it couldn’t be the bag, but she carried herself in a way that practically begged suspicion—too persistent, and utterly spiteful in method.

Exasperated, the police officer led the woman into the back of the police box and inspected the contents of the furoshiki-wrapped bundle, but unsurprisingly, it was not the bag.
However, having devised a plan,

“That customer, you see...
“He lost his bag at your shop; he says he definitely took it all the way there.”
“I’m not suspecting you, but since he claims to have lost it at your shop—even if he’s a drunk—we have to investigate. Kindly show me the way.”
“I’m not suspecting you, so don’t take it the wrong way.”

Now, this police officer was young, but his choice of words was remarkably skillful.

“Yes, yes.”
“Of course it is.”
“Since that person says so, it’s only natural to undergo an investigation.”

And the woman acted as if she had been waiting for this all along.

Listening to this, I felt thoroughly disgusted.
This woman had scripted every part of her performance.
The police officer had the woman lead him to investigate, but of course, there was no bag to be found.

The police officer said that the man had left his bag at the woman’s shop, but this was merely the officer’s spur-of-the-moment pretext—the man had no memory of any of it.
He didn’t even remember where he’d been drinking.
He would say things like, “I drank alcohol at that woman’s shop,”
but when asked, “Wasn’t it milk?” he looked mystified and started pondering deeply.
He may have had drinks there, gone elsewhere for more after leaving, and even returned to drink milk, but his memory remained hazy and utterly lost.

The customer may have snatched his bag upon seeing his disorientation and dragged him to the police box under the pretense of a hundred-yen dine-and-dash to cover it up; or perhaps they dragged him there fearing they’d be suspected of stealing the bag.
Based on circumstances alone, one simply can’t make a judgment—nor should one even try.

However, the woman’s attitude was thoroughly detestable and calculated. And she fixated excessively on the man’s bag. From what I observed, I couldn’t definitively say the woman was the culprit, but it was certain she had all the makings of one. She wasn’t a woman commonly encountered in society.

That such strange characters ran bars, had their waitresses tackle customers, and pushed drinks on disoriented patrons to sell them was the openly acknowledged nature of Shinjuku—hardly a tranquil state of affairs.

They didn’t care whether the customers they tackled had money or not.
In fact, it seemed they preferred those without money.
As long as they had items like coats, watches, or bags that could be seized as collateral, that was good enough.

Some might not have clearly remembered which establishment they were at; others, in their disorientation, might not have known whether their belongings had been stolen, forgotten, or left as collateral. They’d likely scrounge up money to retrieve a coat or bag, but with something like a watch, they’d just resign themselves to its loss.
It was a matter of a beer or two—an absurd situation—but drunkards, being creatures who embraced their self-inflicted rust and resigned themselves to disaster, never had tales of gain from their drunken escapades.
Knowing full well they’d lose out, they tried interjecting vows of sobriety, yet never learned their lesson.

Caretaking theft was undeniably a crime, but they lured disoriented customers into their establishments, pushed drinks on them, and seized their belongings and clothing as collateral. This wasn’t some scheme by bandits or the Adachigahara hag running inns as a side business—no, this was the openly acknowledged nature of Shinjuku’s station-front market, the imperial capital’s backdoor. That was why Tokyo had its jungle.

Yet the jungle had its thrills. It wasn’t just spitfire girls who showed no fear of tigers and wolves—drunkards actively sought out such beasts. Since you knowingly charged into Adachigahara, it was your own damn fault if you got stripped bare—ah, right, exactly. But listen here—if you put it that way, didn’t it make drunkards out to be the villains and caretaking theft seem justified? Both were rotten. Ah, I saw it now.

Drunkards, even when falling victim to caretaking theft, neither cursed heaven nor blamed others; instead, they engaged in self-restraint and made declarations of abstinence—each lasting about three days.
They were a breed that truly possessed a deeply robust spirit of introspective self-restraint, followed by a spirit of forgetfulness, fierce courage, and all manner of virtues—all dedicated to serving taxes.
Considering my own self, I couldn’t bring myself to speak ill of other drunkards; but viewing them from inside the police box, one realized what a hassle drunkards truly were.

There were drunkards who would pick out a police officer at the police box and come to strike up conversations.
The street seven or eight ken behind the police box was lined with street prostitutes, and every shop had waitresses idling about, waiting to engage patrons—yet they paid no heed to such places and came to chat up the officers instead.
Leaning against the police box with cigarettes dangling from their mouths, grinning slyly while muttering things like “Hey there,” they wouldn’t budge for thirty minutes.
What upstanding drunkards these were.
Indeed, dropping by the police box to loiter was unquestionably the safest bet.

While the bar madam who drags in drunks for dine-and-dash showed such tendencies, what's amusing is that among those hauling people to police boxes, it's often the haulers themselves who seem shady.
The mentality surrounding police boxes forms a subtly tangled web—perhaps true villains feel most compelled to drag others there.

Two Anchans in aloha shirts—though not actually wearing them—a pair in sharp new-look double-breasted suits with red neckties.
They dragged a drunk laborer into the police box.
It was nearing last train time.

“When I was trying to buy a ticket, this guy here—acting drunk and staggering—stuck his hand into my pocket.”
“Look, you can see this here, right?”
“What a brazen thief!”

Something resembling a shopping parcel peeked out from his hip pocket, but could there really be a pickpocket so drunk he staggered about without steadying his footing?
The drunkard, enraged,

“What the hell are you talkin’ about?”
“I staggered and accidentally touched you, and now you’re makin’ up this bullshit!”

“What?!”

The aloha-shirted Anchans inside the police box smoothly attempted to take off their jackets.

“Oh, oh, sorry about that.”

The drunkard deliberately bowed deeply with exaggerated deference and, through a slurred tongue, put on a mock display of chivalry he must have picked up somewhere long ago.

“He’s a pickpocket caught red-handed—lock him up!”

With that, the Anchans glared fiercely with terrifying eyes and—perhaps anxious about the last train—hurried off.
That the drunkard was promptly released goes without saying.

As for why they dragged him to the police box—this aspect remained utterly mystifying, and I couldn't make sense of it.
The Anchans themselves may have been acting purely on some *aloha* instinct, unconscious of their own actions.
Perhaps there existed an *aloha* instinct—one that compelled them to smoothly start removing their jackets or swiftly flee, and when the opponent proved worthless or they themselves had no weakness in that moment, drove them to drag the other party to the police box.

There was also an eccentric who came to the police box to borrow money.

On the business card he presented was written “President and Director of Such-and-Such Company in Kyōbashi.”
Indeed, he carried himself with fitting dignity—a sharp-featured dandy around forty.

This gentleman seemed pleasantly warmed by alcohol yet maintained articulate speech and steady posture, showing no outward signs of intoxication.
His appearance coincided with that hour past midnight when even Shinjuku Station’s bustling front stood on the brink of emptiness, the last train long gone.

“Actually...”
“This is my first time in Shinjuku.”
“Having long heard about Shinjuku’s reputation, I thought I would try drinking here.”
“Given that circumstance, you understand there’s no regular establishment I frequent in this area.”
“The bill amounts to ¥1,000, but I only have ¥800 in cash on me.”
“However, I told them, ‘I have this ¥30,000 check collected today—use it to cover the difference,’ but they refused, saying, ‘We don’t accept checks—it must be cash.’”
“This is preposterous.”
“This check isn’t crossed—as long as the bank is open, anyone can cash it at any time, you see?”
“Look here—see?”

The man took out and showed a ¥30,000 check.
I know nothing about checks, but whether this one would bounce didn’t seem like something they could authenticate at a police box.
Yet the dandy wore an acerbic smile and remained utterly composed.

“Since they absolutely wouldn’t take a check, I was at my wits’ end.”
“When I said ‘Lend me ¥200’—seeing as I only had ¥800 on me—that wasn’t allowed either.”
“Not being a regular, I’ve got to pay up the full thousand yen neat and tidy.”

“What kind of establishment is that?”

“Well, what’s it called…”

The man faltered.
The police officer, puzzled,

“Are they still open at this hour? What kind of place is it?”
“Bring someone from the establishment here.”

“Well, you see, when I said I’d go to the police box to settle it, they told me, ‘You can’t involve the police.’”
“They told me, ‘You go by yourself and come back,’ just like that.”
“They’re against involving the police, you see.”
“There’s simply no way around it, I suppose.”

“If you’d left some item as collateral…”

“Huh…
Are you telling me to leave something as collateral?”

“You haven’t left any items, have you?”

“No, I haven’t left anything.”

The man was taken aback.
He didn’t seem to understand the nature of Shinjuku.

The man eventually took out eight 100-yen bills from his pocket.

“Look.”
“Here’s ¥800—all the cash I have on me.”
“I’m sorry, but could you please lend me ¥200?”

Things were getting strange. None of this made any sense.

They claimed checks couldn’t be trusted. Since he wasn’t a regular, they couldn’t just lend him ¥200. It was absurd that they’d let a customer—one they distrusted so much they wouldn’t even knock off a mere ¥200 or lend him the difference—leave without taking custody of his ¥800 cash or check as collateral, let alone sending someone to accompany him.

Even for this gentleman, if he’d truly intended to pay the bill, he should’ve simply gone home and returned in the morning to settle it. No one in their right mind would come to a police box to borrow ¥200.

The man, however, didn’t seem to mind such irrationality.
He placed the check on the police box’s desk,

“Look.
“I’ll leave the check with you.”
“As long as the bank opens in the morning, it’ll turn into cash, so I’ll exchange it and pay you back.”
“Please lend me ¥200 with this as collateral.”

“At a police box, we can’t do that sort of thing.”

“Oh come on—couldn’t you personally lend it to me just this once? I’ll leave the check with you as collateral.”

“We can’t lend you money, but I’ll settle the bill if you bring someone from the establishment.”

“But they refuse to involve the police—it’s impossible.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Just lend me ¥200.”
“I’ll leave this check with you.”
“I trust leaving it here because it’s a police box.”

“Just bring someone from the establishment.”
“I’ll arrange for the ¥200 to be treated as the store’s loan.”

“I see.”
“This is a real bind.”
“If they’d just come, it’d be fine—but they won’t.”

“Why don’t you leave something as collateral and go home?”

“Hmm, right. Then let’s do that.”

The man finally gave up.
And then he dashed into the alley beside Niko in a great hurry.
I burst out laughing in spite of myself.

Needless to say, it was all lies.
There must have been a street prostitute waiting at the back of the alley without a doubt.
If you pick up a street prostitute, they say it costs a thousand yen.
However, he only had ¥800 on hand.
However, the street prostitutes wouldn’t lower their price.
Even showing a check was no use.
So he left the street prostitutes waiting and came to the police box to borrow ¥200.
He borrowed ¥200 and left the check as collateral.
There’s no safer repository than this.
It was a classic case of killing two birds with one stone.
If it were truly about settling the bill for drinks already consumed, they’d never let him walk out still carrying all ¥800 in cash without even sending someone to accompany him—that’s just unthinkable.

Judging by how he hurriedly dashed in and never showed himself again, he must have succeeded in persuading the street prostitutes with ¥800.

A drunkard who had been picked up lying on the street was laid out in front of the police box.
Urine flowed freely while his upper body was caked in sludge—in short, he lay covered in filth from head to toe. Even caretaker thieves would have pinched their noses and kept their distance.
Since they couldn't bring him inside the police box, they had laid him out on the road in front instead.
He remained completely comatose, with no telling when he might wake.

Apart from one minor traffic accident, what we encountered at this police box was little more than a whirlwind of drunks. There was no respite from attending to them.

Tagawa Hirokazu muttered gravely, crossing his arms beside me.

“In Shinjuku now... I won’t drink anymore.”

Though he wore a tragic expression, such declarations of abstinence had a lifespan of only three days.

★

Now, the time had finally come for me to recount the Ueno Jungle expedition.
April 15th was when I conducted my exploration, and now over a week had passed—there was a reason I was still toiling away at this manuscript.

I too was utterly disoriented by Ueno Jungle.
The reason I went on at length about my own delinquent life was my intention to have even such delinquent individuals come to silently accept Ueno Jungle—a place where they too would lose themselves in a daze.

In Ueno Jungle, I was at a loss as to how to convey the sights I saw and the clamor of voices I heard. Could I possibly depict this without filling readers with discomfort and revulsion? If I wrote it exactly as it was, more delicate readers might be driven to retching—and then the magazine would risk being banned.

Compared to the Shinjuku police box—overwhelmed by drunk-related incidents and frantically busy with reckless abandon—the police box in Ueno’s forest stood enveloped in profound silence, its surroundings utterly still, with no visitors to speak of, completely at ease.
They had no choice but to take it easy.

When one stepped out of Kurayami and shone a light into the darkness, the jungle swarmed with a night parade of demons—teeming with the stirrings of a hundred specters.
There was no remedy.

Shinjuku was filled with clamor, and even when bloody incidents occurred, they were events in a world that everyone—once drunk—recognized as one they themselves had experienced, never distant from our own lives. It was this unease we felt—not knowing when we ourselves might be caught up in the same kind of incident.

Ueno is a foreign land.
There exists an immense distance from the country where we dwell and live.
Though who knows how many thousands of miles it spans, that place is utterly a foreign land.

It may seem strange that I, who pride myself as the nation’s foremost rubbernecker, had not once visited Ueno since the war’s end—but the Ueno I saw was no place one could casually saunter out to observe. It was a jungle you couldn’t enter unless guided by a pistol-toting policeman.

Every time I thought of Ueno, there was always someone who came to mind.

Long ago, there was a tavern called Chiyobai in the backstreets of Ginza.
There lived a beautiful youth named Yama-san who freeloaded there.
He was eighteen.
A female impersonator disciple of Sadanji, he earned the affectionate nickname Yama-san from the term "Oyama"—a beautiful youth who dripped with allure like morning dew.
The person himself called himself an actress.
"I am an actress," he would say.
Though dressed in men’s clothing, his heart belonged wholly to womanhood.

This Yama-san fell for me and doggedly pursued me for three years.
Having no connection to twisted sexual desires, I found this persistent courtship nothing but trouble.

Yet Yama-san was a person who truly possessed endearing virtues; having been raised in the old traditions of Kabuki, he was deeply loyal, empathetic, and never once showed any unseemly desperation, even in passing.

Even in his clinging pursuit of me, it resembled a kabuki stage actress single-mindedly yearning for a man—an all-consuming obsession. He would visit under the pretext of dance or nagauta lessons, sit properly to discuss artistic matters; yet sometimes he’d arrive by car at two or three in the morning, and when I went out to meet him, he’d simply stand there despondent with bowed head. Those moments were truly vexing.

During those times, I would harshly berate him, send him away, and on occasion—when I was drunk—even play cruel pranks.

Late at night when he came and refused to leave me no matter what, I summoned a Kyushu man with proclivities for male companionship, then slipped away and ran off to the brothel. When I called from there, Yama-san clung to the receiver, wailing that he was going to be killed and begging me to come save him—a truly wicked prank I had pulled.

He was a youth of rare character—one who endured society’s tempests without losing his noble spirit, unwaveringly loyal to Chiyobai’s proprietress, kind and compassionate to all. Though lacking formal education, he possessed a refinement honed through kabuki artistry.

After I left Tokyo and all communication ceased, in the second year after the war’s end, when I published a novel and my address became known, I received a letter.

During the war, even someone like me had been conscripted and made to work on Senbanki machines until my fingers became calloused, but I took satisfaction in having been able to serve our country nonetheless.
"Now I’m with such-and-such troupe and performing at such-and-such theater, so please do come visit," it read—a letter brimming with nostalgia.

I had thought about visiting the theater at least once, but it never came to pass.

Before long, people began making noise about Ueno’s forest and male prostitutes, and whenever that happened, I couldn’t help but think of Yama-san.
Kabuki underlings originally led difficult lives, but postwar—with Kabuki’s management in particular decline—their wages were said to be practically nothing.
If making ends meet was truly impossible, one couldn’t help but fear Yama-san—with no other means of livelihood—would naturally turn to such things.
When people mentioned that the top female impersonator from Ueno’s forest hailed from such circles, I’d grow concerned it might be him; whenever I heard there were photos of male prostitutes published, I’d go out of my way to borrow or order those magazines—all because I worried he might be in them.
His beauty far surpassed that of the top male prostitutes now causing a stir.
He was a youth of peerless beauty, one who seemed to drip with allure.

I had developed a habit of associating Ueno with Yama-san, but the Ueno Jungle I witnessed firsthand—how utterly, utterly distant it was from Yama-san, that youth who seemed to drip with allure—there lay an entirely foreign land.

At the park entrance, about a hundred people were crowded together.
Male prostitutes and street prostitutes.
Such a place was nothing.
Ueno Jungle was not in such a place.

At the base of Yamashita, where the tram line branches off—one arm bending toward the pond—there stood a public toilet.

"That toilet is where they ply their finger trade."

The police officer who had concealed a pistol beneath his plainclothes pointed.

"Finger trade?"

"In other words, it's a finger trade providing masturbation services—the clientele consists mainly of middle-aged and older men."
"You'd never expect it, but high-ranking officials come here."
"When we catch them, you'd be surprised how many people of social standing get mixed in among the regulars buying street prostitutes."

We proceeded to the communal toilet. When we came within about twenty meters, a hoarse voice—

“C’mere—”

A groaned voice.

The policeman suddenly dashed over and flashed his flashlight. It wasn’t to catch the finger-trade workers but to show us the scene.

However, since their solicitation had been detected too quickly, by the time the officer who had rushed to the toilet entrance shone his flashlight inside, seven men were fleeing in all directions like scattering spiderlings. They scattered in an instant—a disheveled old man over fifty wearing something like a tattered national uniform, a thirty-five- or thirty-six-year-old man with a military air, and so on.

They all seemed like people who would be shining shoes on the street, but what kind of enthusiasts would have them polish *a certain part* with those hands—so suited for scrubbing muddy shoes—in the darkness of that communal toilet? I simply couldn’t fathom it.

“The fee for the finger trade is fifty yen.”

The policeman informed us.

Tagawa-kun and Tokuda Jyun-kun accompanied me, but Tokuda-kun—a Ueno regular who wouldn’t feel content unless he stopped by Ueno after work to wander a bit—despite being such a connoisseur, had been unaware of the finger trade’s existence.
In other words, the over-a-hundred male prostitutes and street prostitutes loitering in clusters at the park entrance were what general society knew by name as Nogami, while the dark zone stretching from the communal toilet along the tram line to the edge of the pond was a place ordinary people could never set foot in without pistol protection.
Even connoisseurs could not set foot there.
Only those great connoisseurs who staked their lives dared to set foot there.

I was supposed to guide you all there, but even with a pistol-armed escort, my legs froze.
Well then—let me start from the more presentable parts of this story.

The police officer guiding us possessed instincts so sharp they verged on genius.
His senses seemed honed to perfection.
When I still hadn't sensed anything amiss, he'd suddenly swing his flashlight beam onto some patch of darkness.
There would invariably unfold the very scene we sought.
The sole exception came during that finger-trade operation.

He illuminated a woman passing by.
A duffel bag was slung over a shoulder.
He wordlessly made her open the bag.

“This woman’s a toilet prostitute.”
“There are twelve toilet prostitutes in Ueno.”

Her face was rounded, utterly relaxed, bright. Unforced laughter. She pointed at herself with her own finger to show her mouth and ears didn’t work right. A modestly stylish one-piece dress. She gave off a clean impression.

Inside the bag were several neatly folded new towels.
Paper.
Tooth-cleaning items were neatly organized and packed.
Vitamin B medicine and a sack were inside.

Ueno was a safe haven.
There was no doubt she had no other way to live.
She, who loved cleanliness and order, had nevertheless surrendered herself to the squalor of Ueno with quiet resignation.
While the other street prostitutes and male prostitutes clustered together, she walked alone along the pavement of the pitch-dark, hushed jungle.
As if a young lady were walking alone through Ginza.
When the policeman turned off his flashlight, she turned around and walked away with quiet, clacking footsteps.

The policeman whirled around and dashed into the shrubbery.
Without a moment's pause, we gave chase.
When his flashlight swept across the area, a man and woman stood working against the wall.
The light vanished.
This officer showed compassion.
Since it wasn't solicitation, he let the woman retreat.
She fled beyond the wall.
The man stood dazed with unfastened trousers, looking like a fox had bewitched him.

“How much did you pay?”

“200 yen.”

“Alright, get going.”
“Don’t forget to at least button your pants.”

The man left.
Then another man with a prosthetic leg followed suit, clunk-clunking away with the sound of his artificial limb.
Where had he been?
And what kind of man was he?
Within the circle illuminated by the light, this man’s figure was nowhere to be seen.

The policeman paid no attention to that and shone his light on the ground at his feet.
Scattered paper scraps.

“This is a battlefield’s aftermath.”

Even in the haste of doing business standing up, it seems they still use paper.
About fifty paper scraps were scattered about, all of them brand new.
They were from this single night.
I didn’t even have the courage to step on them with shoes.

As we kept walking along the darkened pavement, we came upon twenty or thirty men and women standing on the sidewalk.
Two-thirds were street prostitutes, but men mingled among them too—neither clients nor male prostitutes.
They were people who’d built shacks along this road, a breed with vested interests in the streetwalkers’ trade.

The policeman had halted at the crowd’s edge, but his focus wasn’t on them—he seemed to be peering into the blackness beyond.

We too had no choice but to stop.
The spot was no good.
Street prostitutes kept approaching us one after another—everyone was watching—creating an eerily unsettling atmosphere.
We lingered there for three or four minutes.

The policeman whirled around and dashed into the darkness.
We too followed in a tight cluster.

Before our eyes flashed the circle of a flashlight beam.
A shack.
Not even three square meters in size.
The ceiling and all four walls were straw mats.
Straw mats laid directly on the ground served as tatami substitutes.

On the straw mat lay a single blanket.
There, a man and a woman were indeed in the midst of their business.
Beside them where they were conducting their business, a girl of about five lay fast asleep.

Once the policeman confirmed I had seen it, he turned off the light and,

“The man may leave.”
“You, get ready and come out.”

The man rustled his way out and left.
When the light flashed again briefly, the woman was in the act of pulling up her bloomers.
She had kept her dress and stockings on as they were, having removed only her bloomers to conduct her business.

In the gloom outside the shack stood a woman of thirty-five or thirty-six, blank-faced.
She seemed good-natured in a rustic way.
She held a baby.
This woman owned the shack.
The child sleeping beside where business was conducted belonged to her.
The one she held was the prostitute's child.
She had taken care of it during business.
Fifty yen per job was the room fee.
The residents of these straw-mat shacks earned substantial rental fees from street prostitutes and lived off that income.

I thought a straw-mat ceiling would be problematic when it rained, but since they built these shacks under thickly foliaged trees, it apparently wasn't much of an issue—so they reasoned.

The street prostitute who emerged took the child in her arms,

“Please have mercy.”
“I can’t make a living—there’s no other way.”
“I only just started this kind of work.”

“Liar!”
“You’ve been here three years!”

“Yes, I used to solicit on the station’s other side, but I felt bad and quit.”
“Then I turned to begging.”
“But then I had a child.”
“Begging couldn’t keep us fed—that’s why I had no choice but to do this, I tell you.”

When she said she’d been “begging,” that meant she’d been soliciting.
Seen in the light, she appeared twenty-three or twenty-four—not beautiful, but seemingly guileless, giving a heartrending impression.

Ueno might be unrivaled in squalor—whether it’s open soliciting, standing in shrubbery shadows, or at best offering makeshift huts—but precisely because of that, the street prostitutes here moved sluggishly, honest and kind-hearted, perhaps possessing a resignedly laid-back quality like beggars who can’t quit even after three days.

“Please have mercy on me just today.”
“I haven’t even gotten the money yet.”

“Alright, alright.”
“I’ll let you off today.”
“But still...”

The policeman signaled with a look that I could ask if there was anything I wished to inquire about, but I had nothing I wanted to ask.

When we left that place, a group of about twenty people surrounded us and began walking along while circling around us.

"So they’ve come at last," I thought, and while I was on guard to break through the encirclement and flee if I were to say "Break!," the encirclement dissolved before I knew it, and they separated from us.

We emerged into the park before Lady Benten.
A male prostitute disguised as a woman in Western clothing recognized the policeman,
"Oh, officer!"
With that, he teased him and ran away.
From behind,
“Officer, that thing of yours is so stiff. Hee hee hee.”
“Hee hee hee.”
They began mocking him in loud voices.
On the bench, street prostitutes were lined up,
“Hey there!
Hey there!
Thanks for all your hard work yesterday!”
they jeered.
Yesterday, they had conducted an all-out raid.
It seemed to be the bunch who had skillfully ducked out of that.
They jeered in unison.
At every place they went, even before drawing near, everyone already knew they were the policeman’s group.

I suddenly noticed.
We had been a group of four, but before we knew it, we had become five.
When the encirclement slipped away, that was when our numbers had actually increased by one person.
The darkness made it hard to tell, but he seemed to be a young man of twenty-two or twenty-three.
When we stopped walking, he stopped along with us.

In the shadowy darkness, five or six street prostitutes sat, stood, and gathered on a bench. In front of them stood a man in a flowing kimono,

“I’m just a dropout in life, you know.”

He was chatting amicably with the street prostitutes. He appeared to be nearing thirty. He had the air of a failed scholar—the sort who came here nightly for strolls from the Hongo area, finding pleasure in deep conversations with street prostitutes.

There are aficionados, you see. There are quite a few brave souls who would risk their very lives to pursue their hobbies. The world is a vast place. It is through the existence of such hobbyists that the animals of Ueno Jungle can sustain their lives.

The residents of this Jungle valued their hobbyists.
They didn’t extort money or cause harm.
Because if those patrons stopped coming, their own livelihoods would collapse.
The bosses of Shinjuku’s Jungle stripped their customers bare, but this Jungle—shrouded in shadowy darkness and steeped in desolation—left its visiting hobbyists largely unharmed.

In Ueno, they said it was couples who came to harm.
Because couples only ravaged the Jungle without contributing a single coin.
Yet reckless lovers still dared to rendezvous in Ueno’s infamous woods—and since that folly never ceased, one had to concede the world remained vast indeed.

There was no need to write any more about Ueno Jungle’s night view. What I had written was but a fragment of it, but no matter how much I wrote, it would all amount to the same thing. For whenever a flashlight snapped on, that thing was always being carried out there. Without sound, without light. On the ground, beneath trees, along walls. Anywhere.

Shinjuku’s police box remained overwhelmed, endlessly dealing with drunken incidents. Yet at Ueno’s police box, no visitors came, no passersby lingered—all due to the nighttime curfew. And so the police box stayed perfectly peaceful and relaxed.

However, if one were to step out of the police box and shine a flashlight, this too would leave no capacity to handle it.
Since it would become an endless task, they left the Jungle's edges undisturbed—reserving their efforts to prepare for greater incidents yet to erupt—or so went their reasoning.

However, from the very peacefulness of Ueno Jungle, we could glean one lesson.
In the very composition of Ueno Jungle, the hands of yakuza organizations and yakuza-like bosses had hardly been involved.

It was simply that the war’s spontaneously arising male and female stragglers ended up haphazardly coexisting in the Jungle.
Ueno was a foreign land, a jungle far removed from our daily lives; and despite its nightscape teeming with a hundred demons, it remained generally peaceful under their spontaneous self-governance.
Though the entire mountain was cloaked in shadowy darkness, it remained generally peaceful.
Because there was no boss’s interference, and no boss’s stragglers remained.

Are not these foreigners—homeless or dwelling in straw-mat huts, yet peacefully maintaining the shadowy jungle they inhabit—pitiful, heartrending, and even lovely? I loved them. I could not help but avert my eyes from their work, yet they were likely more virtuous than I. As had been true of that Yama-san.

The night view of Ueno Jungle truly stole one’s breath away, but even amidst filth that made you want to cover your eyes, when I reconsidered it, I sensed a faint coolness and freshness. This was because they bore no resentment toward others, accepted their ordained fate, quietly safeguarded their humble straw-mat huts, and maintained the Jungle’s peace.

The bosses of other entertainment districts who extorted money, stripped clothes, and spilled blood in my Jungle were the lowest of the low.
Mentally, they were undoubtedly aliens.
Given that many of the burnt ruins remained unreconstructed, it couldn’t be helped that jungles still existed—but even if we left Ueno Jungle undisturbed for now, it had no connection to us, and wasn’t there a certain poignant restlessness to it?
What urgently needed to be crushed were the bosses, the organizations of the entertainment districts they’d created, and the very existence of those bosses.