Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Sakaguchi Ango

My wife became pregnant, but due to a retroverted uterus, she couldn’t give birth.

When I heard from my wife about her pregnancy, a chill ran through me.
The feeling that young couples have—envisioning blueprints for their future and counting down the days on their fingers while awaiting their child’s arrival—was something I never had.

My life had been one of dissipation, so I feared there might be various viruses lurking within me.
The other day, while hospitalized in the University of Tokyo’s Neurology Department, I underwent detailed pathogen testing, but all results came back negative.
Since I have no medical knowledge, I can’t say for certain, but whether it be spirochetes or gonococci, during their latent periods they would only test negative.

Because I thought this way, I negotiated with the doctor in charge and requested that—just to be thorough—he inject both me and my wife with about ten million units each of penicillin.
Since I was going to be hospitalized for two or three months anyway, I became eager to take this opportunity to cure all my ailments.
I intended to cure my teeth, my nose—everything.
The doctor in charge smiled somewhat forlornly,

“Strictly speaking, one might say that everyone who has been with prostitutes carries that risk.”
“Those who went to the battlefield all have their own share of experiences, so even doctors aren’t exceptions, you know.”
“But if we’re being strictly precise, there’d be no end to it, so we settle for a ‘Well, well’ and consider ourselves somewhat reassured for now.”
“At your age, it should be safe to assume there’s no lifelong risk anymore.”

Since this was the neurology department, the doctor in charge spoke strictly within his specialty's framework. My current negative results suggested that any pathogens wouldn't progress to brain infection within my lifetime.

I had feared this exact outcome. Anyone hospitalized here would harbor such fears. They say schizophrenia and depression leave intelligence intact, but once spirochetes ravage you, your former mental acuity can never be restored.

In the same ward, there was a female patient around thirty years old whose brain had been ravaged by spirochetes.
She raged and thrashed about daily in her madness, but despite the violence of her fits, they said she would drop dead surprisingly soon—yet even as they predicted she’d die within two or three days, she kept clinging to life.

For some reason, this patient harbored a grudge against slippers and sandals; she would steal all the slippers and sandals from her roommates, clutch them to her chest, and stagger unsteadily to the bathroom to discard them.
Moreover, several times a day, she would stand watch in the hallway and accost passersby,

“Gimme those slippers!”
“Hey!”
“Gimme, I said!”

She would chase after them like a shadow.
Though her remaining life was sustained by artificial nutrition, even her madwoman’s vigor could only propel her in a staggering, unsteady gait.
Yet I too walked with faltering steps; though the doctors and nurses had told me to use a bedpan, I hated it and stubbornly staggered to the toilet instead.
Being waylaid or pursued by this woman during those trips back and forth was agonizing.
They said the husband who had infected her with the virus remained in perfect health and occasionally came to visit.

I would think of my wife, and whenever I thought of this patient, I was plunged into gloom.

“I might be fine, but I’d hate for my wife to develop symptoms someday. That’s why I want you to do it now while we have the chance.”

“But is there really such a danger?”

“I believe there is.
“Moreover, since chronic gonorrhea is a certainty, there’s a risk that once we proceed with sustained sleep therapy and I weaken, symptoms could emerge.”

Dr. Namigumo nodded with a troubled expression,

“Very well, I’ll proceed as you wish, but since we need to consult urology about the penicillin dosage, we’ll handle it appropriately once we’ve done that.”

The urology department had said that 500,000 to 600,000 units would be sufficient, but I insisted and had them administer 3 million units each.

That time was strange. I had been tormented day and night by hallucinations steeped in anxiety and restlessness, one of which concerned my wife's blood. It was a hallucination—or rather, a dream I'd had while comatose from sleeping pills—that she had tested positive in a blood test administered by Dr. Namigumo. What I saw in dreams became perceived as actual events; I would wake and continue their aftermath. I had truly lost all distinction between dreams and reality.

This particular hallucination consisted chiefly of guilt and remorse—though I couldn't say why. There were instances of paying trivial bar debts in squalid visions devoid of any literary refinement. One such vision involved my wife's blood.

There had been times when I thought of going to settle old bar debts, but whether I had truly suffered from remorse over tainting my wife’s blood with virus before that remains doubtful.
I sometimes feel as though I had suffered.
However, when I suddenly awoke, this dream felt just as vague and elusive as those instances where I thought I had dreamed it many times before.

My wife had two children from her previous husband.
Moreover, between her previous husband and myself, she had been involved with several men.
To some extent—or so I believed—she had disclosed this, but I paid it no mind; she had not committed infidelity during her previous marriage, nor did she do so while with me. She was a woman who had made it quite clear that infidelity would only occur when separation became inevitable.

I have a tendency to fixate on quantitative expressions in psychological descriptions—"considerably," "to what degree," and such—but it stems from my innate disposition that inevitably leads me there.
The quantitative subtleties of psychology coiled about my mind.
At times I wanted to cast it all off.
Doing so would leave me no recourse but to omit all explanation.
Through this method I could satisfy one facet of my psyche, yet suffered dissatisfaction from sacrificing other emotions.
This constitutes one of my professional secrets.

There was a possibility my wife had contracted the virus not from me but from someone else, but this did nothing to alleviate my own sense of guilt.

When I heard about my wife’s pregnancy, my first thought was of the virus, and I sank into gloom.

Then, calculating the pregnancy’s timeline—around New Year’s—I realized I had been drinking excessively while taking both sleeping pills and stimulants during that period.
Not a single one of these could pass anything healthy to the child to be born.

I had recently begun working quite excessively again.
At times I unavoidably resorted to stimulants and sleeping pills, but was attentive to their usage; as a method to cope with overwork I ensured not to exceed reasonable limits and never neglected considering rest after overexertion.
As for myself, the lifestyle was healthy, the tension from work was also invigorating, and each day was quite bright.
As for myself that might have been true, but the things around me could not be called healthy for the child that would be born.

However, though I feared those genetic effects, I lacked the resolve to go through with an abortion.
Around the time of the pregnancy—it had been Christmas Eve—there had been an incident that could cast doubt on my wife’s chastity.
My wife’s parents and a man had come to apologize and settled the matter, but I lacked the resolve to use the pretext that the child might not be mine to justify having an abortion.

I had believed in my wife’s chastity, and one of my mental tenets had been to forget the past—but it was indeed a fact that this conviction had wavered slightly due to her pregnancy.

No matter how I considered it, it simply didn't seem like my child. For if I were to father a child, it should have been born long ago already—not only with my wife but with other women too. There had been multiple opportunities in the past, yet no woman had ever conceived.

They say contracting gonorrhea or chilling one's lower back depletes sperm and renders pregnancy impossible. Both explanations struck chords within me.

I had maintained the habit of cold water baths for seven years, from during the war until the year before last.
I couldn’t do it in midwinter, but from spring through autumn—and sometimes into early winter—I would continue.

The origins lay in wartime fuel shortages that made heating baths impossible and bathhouses frequently closing during the war, but I had always taken cold baths multiple times a day in summer to ward off the heat, so I simply extended this practice into winter as a substitute for regular baths.

The house had no plumbing and relied on well water, so even in summer, the moment I submerged myself in it would startle me, but from autumn through winter, that same moment would render me unconscious.
Consciousness would be cast beyond the chill, fading into haze.
As the consciousness lost minute by minute gradually returned while clearing away the haze, there would be moments when I was enveloped in a fleeting refreshing sensation.
Before long, the cold would penetrate to my bones, become unbearable, and I would leap out.
The moment I leapt out, I would lose consciousness completely, my vision blurring into haze as I crumpled limply to my knees, hunched my back, and pitched forward.
I don’t know how long I remained unconscious, but it was December 6th of some year.
Since then, I decided not to do it in winter and generally stopped around the end of October.

Having engaged in such harsh practices for seven years, it wasn’t merely a matter of cooling my lower back. Given that I had been cooling my entire body, if sperm were to die from cold, they would have perished long ago. Even before the cold water baths, I had been a sea-bathing fanatic since around seven or eight years old. When I began living in Tokyo, one of the things that pained me was not being able to go sea bathing as I wished during summer. Every year at my hometown sea, as autumn deepened, I alone remained standing on the beach. When autumn came, the Sea of Japan was stormy day after day. On the beach, there were no signs of people, nor any footprints left behind. Needless to say, it was only I who was spun around by the waves. I loved the sea, and indeed, I loved solitude. That was what kept drawing me to the sea until autumn’s stormy weather every year.

However, even in the Sea of Japan, the autumn sea does not grow so cold even by October.
The seawater heated in midsummer does not cool down easily.
Probably in the Sea of Japan, the sea in October is warmer than in June—sometimes even warmer than at July’s beginning.
While it takes considerable time for the temperature to cool down, once it does, one might think it would take equally long to warm back up.
In mid-August, the seawater’s warmth reaches its peak and then gradually cools.
I came to understand such absurdities through experience.
I was innately cold.

Since moving to the hot spring town of Ito last year—well, inns have their own baths, but at home, while there is hot water, there’s no cold water.
And so my cold water baths came to an end.

I wondered if my wife's pregnancy had occurred because my cold water baths had ended.
But could what had once been lost truly be regained?
Doubt.

Given these accumulated circumstances over the years, compounded by incidents that invited doubt if I chose to doubt them, I felt it wasn’t my child. There were nights—about three days’ worth—that I spent brooding over this. Three days, I believe—it apparently hadn’t lasted longer than that.

Even through those three days of sustained suspicion, I never once felt moved to have her undergo an abortion.

And then, I told my wife just once.

“I suspect it’s not my child.”

“I knew you were doubting it.”
“If you doubt it, I won’t carry it to term.”
“I’ll have the abortion.”

“There’s no need for an abortion.”
“Whatever comes into this world, we’ll raise it.”

“Is there a way to prove whose child it is?”

“We’ll know after it’s born.”
“Through blood type testing.”

After leaving these words behind, I took sleeping pills and fell asleep, so I do not know at all whether the wife cried or got angry.

And with that, I brought this matter to a close.

However, from the very next day, my wife was completely unperturbed and composed.
She may have felt relieved knowing there was a scientific method to prove whose child it was, or perhaps she felt secure having discerned my thoughts—that regardless of parentage, I seemed to harbor some degree of commitment to raising a child born in our household.

I had even thought for about a week half a year prior about whether to take in my wife’s child from her previous husband.
That child was being raised by my wife’s mother.
Probably around five years old.
It wasn’t that my wife had asked me to take the child in, but because her demeanor of being unable to forget the child at times was evident.

However, after observing the child who had come to visit one day and finding myself lacking confidence that I could love them, I decided against it.

“If I’d had the confidence to care for it, I would have raised it. But lacking that confidence, I gave up.”

“I never asked you to.”
“What are you talking about?”

"The traces of others’ meddling were too clear—I couldn’t adjust to it, couldn’t find any affection."
"It’s all twisted up."

“How cruel to say that.”
“It’s not that child’s fault.”

My wife flushed faintly and raised her voice.

Surveying these past events, my wife must have seen that a child born to me might unexpectedly bring me joy.
As for myself? Nothing could be known until it was born.
My present state held nothing but resignation toward what would emerge.
Only the faintest trace remained—a feeling that if it were mine, I might find happiness, detectable only through deliberate searching.

And if it were indeed my own child, what I feared were the various unsavory traits that might be passed down to it.

Since last year, I had been receiving daily health checkups from Dr. Amagi and getting injections of glucose and vitamin B.

I consulted Dr. Amagi.

“It seems my wife is pregnant, but is there a way to save the child from pathogens before it’s born?”

“Yes, there certainly is.”
“I’ll contact the gynecologist, so you should go ahead and visit promptly.”

So my wife went out, but the blood test was negative as usual.
However, it was said that due to a retroverted uterus, childbirth would be difficult.
It was said to be the result of an appendectomy she had after we got together.

“Do you wish to give birth to the child?”

The gynecologist asked my wife this.

“I do want to give birth.”

My wife answered thus.

“It may not work, but for now, try coming once a week.”

That was apparently what had been discussed.

As I listened to that account, I began feeling everything was utterly absurd.
It was as if something tightly wound had slackened.
I might have been fixated on preventing an abortion.
There hadn’t seemed to be any such fixation, but when that tension slackened, that’s how it felt.

All these needless anxieties were nonsense.

My feelings became honest.

“We’ll go to Tokyo right away and have Dr. Namigumo examine me.”
“It’ll probably be the same diagnosis.”
“If it’s the same diagnosis, I’ll have the surgery done right away.”
“The sooner the better.”

My wife also shared that sentiment.
My wife had been seeing Dr. Namigumo in Tokyo all along and trusted him completely.
I did too.
Though Dr. Namigumo was a gynecologist, we entrusted everything except cavities to him without a second thought.
Though we troubled them with quite unsavory matters, both Dr. Namigumo and the nurses were kind throughout.

Frankly, for someone like me engaged in work that anticipates overwork, I should take responsibility for the job myself but entrust my body entirely to a reliable doctor.
With that sense of security, trivial worries could be forgotten, and I came to a resolve that whatever happened beyond this couldn’t be helped.

When we were in Kamata，we had entrusted everything to Dr．Namigumo，but only when issues arose；ordinarily，there was no contact．

Since coming to Ito，I have been receiving daily health checkups from Dr．Amagi．
Every day，I have been receiving injections of glucose and vitamins．
This was an excellent method．
I often caught colds，but even when I thought，*Today’s a cold day* or *I must have a fever*，the sense of security from having Dr．Amagi examine me daily made me feel inclined to decline the medication he recommended—so while relying on him every day，I usually ended up treating myself in my own way．
It is precisely this sense of security that leads to such an outcome．

And once one determined that nothing more could be done, one could live by prioritizing the joy of labor and completion, no matter the overwork.
When it came to overwork, I even felt rather invigorated.
What was currently painful were the midnight chills and eye pain.

The mountains of Izu being charcoal-producing areas meant there was no shortage of charcoal, but since I was sensitive to carbon dioxide, working with a charcoal fire gave me headaches, brought on dizziness, drained the strength from all my joints, and left me nearing a state of collapse.
If I used electricity, the fuse blew.
There was no choice but to soak in the hot spring, but the one at my house was lukewarm (about 36 degrees) and useless in winter, so it needed to be heated.
Considering that, they had managed well.
It was the fruit of the family’s cooperation.
My wife was unfazed by boiling baths outdoors in howling cold winds late at night if it meant alleviating my work-related pain, and in those moments, it became clear she prioritized me over herself.
She seemed to consider that her own job.
In return, she relentlessly spent her salary without my permission.
If being a wife were a profession, she would have earned a higher salary than I, and the tax office should perhaps have collected from her instead of me.

The eye pain was likely a result of visual distortion caused by the jumble of presbyopia and myopia, along with ocular fatigue from the decline and fluctuation in visual acuity.
When I closed my eyes after a bit of reading, tears welled up, and a burning pain in my eyes became apparent.
And always, a pain as if from eyes dried out too much clung persistently.
They were eyes fallen onto desert sands.

Spring departs— / birds sing, / tears in fish’s eyes.

What did Bashō see when he composed this haiku?
This haiku, if I recall correctly, was composed not long after he embarked on his journey through Oshu—but would reading his travel diary clarify its meaning?

While soaking in the hot spring, I applied fountain water to my eyes using the eyewash basin Dr. Amagi had brought for me. At that moment, I felt somewhat refreshed. The fatigue seemed to have subsided slightly—not just from my eyes, but from my entire head.

“They’re fish eyes.”

I thought this way.
They were fish eyes not because they had been moistened by water, but because they were dry, exposed to the wind, and painfully rough.
Dead, dried fish eyes.

"That Bashō fellow—maybe he saw a salted salmon hanging by its tail with a coarse rope in front of a dried goods shop."

I had forgotten.
When they say "fish eyes," they don't mean actual fish eyeballs but rather those callus-like growths on feet.
Yet understanding it this way felt thoroughly unsatisfying.
Had they been fish eyeballs, that would have fit perfectly with me.

My wife went out to Tokyo.

Dr. Namigumo’s diagnosis was the same, and they performed the abortion surgery that very day, but apparently the fetus had already died.

“Both abortion surgery and childbirth leave you equally exhausted.”

Dr. Amagi expressed sympathy for my wife.
Feeling pity, I had a messenger deliver extra money, but my wife collected her manuscript fee from the magazine publisher, appeared in Ginza immediately after being discharged, spent all her cash, and returned home with nonchalant composure.

My wife gave me a souvenir she had bought, but never mentioned a word about the abortion surgery.
I didn't ask either.
Whenever my wife gave me a souvenir, it invariably followed her having done about ten times as much shopping herself.

“You might be lamenting the abortion, but you don’t realize it’s for your own good.”

In the dead of night, I rose, sat facing my desk, and as I gazed at my wife’s sleeping form visible beyond it, I thought.

The fact that the child hadn’t been born was a relief—this occupied almost the whole of my emotions.

I had never originally intended to live together with my wife.
I had never wanted to live in the same house with any woman.

I said to her.

"I'll rent a house for you."
"I'll get you a housekeeper or a maid."
"I'll come visit sometimes."

She nodded.
We had intended to do so.

However, after luring her out from her mother’s house and while dining in Ginza, she complained of abdominal pain.
I suggested she see a doctor, but since she refused, I took her to my house, gave her a painkiller, and let her rest.
She had been suffering all night, but when I asked if she was in pain, she smiled and said no, so until dawn I didn’t think it was that bad.
She had been demonstrating superhuman stoic endurance.
By the time I noticed her at dawn, she had stiffened and appeared dead.

The one who came at this time was Dr. Namigumo. There were a few doctors closer by, but despite being quacks, they wouldn’t agree to a predawn house call. This marked the beginning of my dealings with Dr. Namigumo—a stroke of luck for both my wife and myself. Any other doctor would likely have killed her. In this neighborhood, only Dr. Namigumo had an operating room, though time was critical for surgery.

My wife developed peritonitis and was hospitalized for over a month. Since she still had difficulty walking after discharge, I could not send her back to her mother’s care, so I took her into my house, had her rest in the room next to my study, and received Dr. Namigumo’s house calls.
Eventually, she became able to commute to Dr. Namigumo by rickshaw, but when I saw her walking around the room in shoes with the unsteady gait of a woman whose feet had been bound, tracing the walls, or clutching her shoes as she slept late at night, I was struck by the pitiable smallness of her desires—yet all the while, I kept hearing a voice insisting I must not yield to that pity.

However, taking advantage of this coincidence, my wife gradually came to live in my house.

Yet I cannot say I was dissatisfied.
Her spirit was incomparably generous, holding little malice toward anything.
Had her affections been focused solely on me, I would have felt tormented and resented their intensity—but since they overflowed with kindness and affection toward so many others, having such an unguarded soul near me became, at times, my salvation.

For someone like me—a contrarian—to live with a woman, finding myself drawn more to her virtues than her flaws, and managing to lead a life marked more by satisfaction than discontent, may indeed be a rare thing.

My wife was fond of leisure and liked flashy things, but she was devoted to me. Usually leaving everything to me and idling about irresponsibly, whenever I fell ill, she would admirably fulfill her duties, taking stimulants to stay awake and nurse me for days on end.
I suddenly noticed how haggard my wife had become, and though I urged her to rest and see a doctor, she would only nod—then with that weakened body, spend her days running about to secure funds.
And on a night when she had spent all her spirit, she would fall asleep at my bedside.
Then, in her exhausted dream’s sleep-talking, she called out another man’s name—not mine.

I found my wife pitiable.
At such times, it was only natural that thoughts like *What a hateful creature* would surface—yet out of pity, I found myself shedding tears.

I wanted to do good work, but I had no desire to become a saint.

My wife was incomparably devoted to me, but this stemmed from economic dependence; had she been able to maintain her current standard of living independently, she would never have remained subservient.
And she might well have conducted affairs more brazenly than I ever did.

However, I am not using that as an excuse to defend my infidelity.
In place of staying indoors for months absorbed in work, once I stepped outside, I often lost myself in a vagabond existence—lingering aimlessly, forgetting to return home.
Due to debts incurred during those times, even months of diligent seclusion left me unable to purchase even a single futon for guests to this day.

My wife does not know it yet, but by not having a child, I am blessing her.
It’s better not to make strange gambles.
In the case of someone like me.
I can select women and puppies, but I cannot choose the child that will be born.
If a child were born who happened to please me, that would be fine—but if not, both my wife and the child would end up unhappy.
Such a karmic gamble is not something I myself wish to invite.

Love and such things are nothing but known quantities.
They are dreams, and things destined to fade.
I am by nature a materialist.
I consider that even something like the spirit—to the extent it can be converted into material terms—is better converted and settled, as this would be more convenient, cleaner, and bring greater happiness to each individual.
I have no fondness for decaying obligations like that.
I have no fondness for specter-like mental gymnastics that attempt to rationalize decaying obligations through human sentiment.

Male-female relationships are no exception.
Even between spouses or with children, I believe converting them into material terms rather than decaying obligations of duty and human sentiment would be cleaner and bring greater happiness to each individual.
I do not hesitate to separate from my wife.
This remains unchanged even if my wife were to bear a child.
I will pay by converting it into child support and my wife’s living expenses.
Even if I don’t comply with payments to the tax office, I will certainly keep up the payments to my wife and children.

However, the dream of leaving one woman to start a new life with another scarcely exists in my mind anymore—ninety-nine parts out of a hundred gone.
It’s not that I imbue what remains with any particular meaning—it’s simply that a trace of lingering sweetness still persists.

Love is a transient thing; even if one were to cycle through tens of thousands of wives, there could never exist such a being as an absolute lover.
Those who wish to search may do so, but I lack such perseverance.

Exhausted from nursing me, my wife dozed off at my bedside and called out another man’s name—not mine—yet I found myself with no inclination to condemn her infidelity.
Rather than blame her, I found it pitiable—heartrending, even.

Anyone likely carries six or seven names they’d want to call out in their dreams.
If there were someone who bragged about having only one such name, I would simply beg to decline any association with that person.

I would stay up all night for most of January, but since my study was in a detached building, my comings and goings remained undetectable from the other rooms.
When we moved here and she was permitted to sleep in my study, my wife seemed overjoyed.
And there she slept every night, on the other side of the desk where I worked.
My wife would sometimes moan, talk in her sleep, or wake up screaming.

“Did you say something just now?”

“I said something, but you couldn’t make it out.”
“Didn’t you call someone’s name?”

“You couldn’t make it out.”

My wife closed her eyes again in relief.
Such things happened occasionally, yet she did not seem particularly afraid of having her heart’s secrets discerned through sleep-talking.
But listening to a loved one’s murmurs in sleep was heartrending.
For within those moans lay infinite sorrows of humankind.
Heart-wrenching anguish dwelled there too.
And all uncertainties—

Human children would inevitably toss in torment.
This was their pitiful fate.
Within that fate lay bonds connecting me to others—and especially those binding me to my wife.
A fate no one could unravel.
Thus did it become an inexhaustibly longed-for destiny.

O my wife. Do not fear calling out your lover's name.