Pathway to Japanese Literature

I saw

A wild deer suffering a severe wound

Chased by Orion's spear
Across the twilight summit it ran,
Ah, yet—
In the manner of ancient lamentations

A shadowy hunter is he
A shadowy beast be it

Under persistent drought, the stream's volume had―At dusk―left me senile as a guttering candle from days fretting over the waterwheel's idle spinning; Yukitarō, master of this waterwheel house and I, steeling trembling arms to plunge our depth gauge deep into watery beddings, found five inches lost since dawn's measure.―I hung my head over surface waters feeling that desolate chill―as if drawn into wind caves―and when my deep sigh struck liquid glass, there sharp appeared my face mirrored in sky-bearing waters. Though upstream by ancient willow shadows roared that dreadful wheel unceasing―churning foam-white rapids where no reflection ought live―ah! There our torsos thrived vivid yet heedless of breeze's breath―Yukitarō's and mine.

We stared vacant-eyed at watery plane.

No different from two Nickelmann (kappa) were we.

Thus I―morbid curiosity piqued―resolved to scrutinize these phantom visages: pressed face near enough to drink surface tension itself, glaring with Yama's own unblinking eyes―when glitter-glitter-glitter!―shattered that liquid mirror burst apart.

When I turned to look at the willow's shadow, the waterwheel—now nearly grazing the water's surface—began spinning frantically, as though a parched throat had been granted a droplet from a spring.

Yukitarō and I sat heavily cross-legged among the reeds at water's edge; with movements that fell unexpectedly in unison, we slowly crossed our arms with the weighty solemnity of men lifting iron rods, then puffed out our chests in silent resolve.

Through the willows upstream where the current began its gentle bend stood the sluice gate.—Looking closer, two men sat astride either end of the watergate facing our direction, arms raised as they shouted something sharply, but their voices never reached us through the waterwheel's clamor.
The way their arms swung about appeared to my eyes as the dashing figure of a knight who, having now executed a splendid parry against an unseen foe’s blade, raised a triumphant cry from his mount.
The two figures were Yukitarō's father Yukigorō and his younger brother Yukijirō.
The two of them spent their days facing each other across both ends of the sluice gate, wholly absorbed in their work—damning up the water only to breach the embankment, releasing the flow only to shut the gate once more and begin damming again.
Yukigorō was a man nearing eighty years of age, yet possessed health robust enough to effortlessly endure such labor.
I too had once attempted working as a sluice gate operator; but when the moment came to breach the embankment—pulling the latch, shouldering the handle, mustering every ounce of strength to open the gate—only the "Heave-ho! Heave-ho!" shouts resounded more fiercely than the waterwheel's clamor. Beat at it though I might, pound as I would, that door remained for me eternally unopening.
Moreover, with surplus strength causing my shoulder to slip, I attempted an unintentional dive headfirst into the water in no time at all, and was nearly drowned before being rescued by Yukigorō.

Night after night I would raise my sake cup alongside Yukigorō and his sons as we gathered around the hearth, but creditors of every stripe came pressing in; they had grown utterly weary of hearing our prostrate apologies, their momentum such that they might seize this decrepit waterwheel house by tomorrow itself.

"If only rain would fall, the wheel would start turning immediately."
"Please wait until then."
"If you take those rice bales now—even if merciful rain should fall tonight and the wheel finally begins turning—our mortar would remain empty, leaving us no choice but to be struck by the pestle and shatter."

As Yukitarō pressed his head to the tatami and tearfully offered apologies, from among the swollen-faced thugs who had formed a wheel-shaped encircling formation around us—their features puffed up like stormclouds—the most vicious among them, landlord Ābisu, rolled up his sleeves and thrust forward. Without uttering a word, he swung his rock-like fist down with a crack onto Yukitarō’s skull.
Then he struck a pose more terrifyingly authentic than any actor’s gesture—a dreadful pantomime of hatred—

“You empty mortar-headed wretch—”
[He] spat out.
“Go on then—let every last one of you get beaten by the pestle and drop dead!”

Following this, Ābisu’s henchman Anubisu suddenly thrust his prized twisted arm—this time right before the nose of Yukigorō, the father—

“If you can’t repay the money, then hand over your daughter into concubinage service as our Young Master desires.”
“It’s not like we’re going to devour her just because we’re taking her into service.”
“For a poverty-stricken girl living hand-to-mouth in this crumbling hovel to receive the Young Master’s favor—what an unimaginable fortune! Yet you show no gratitude for such kindness. Where in blazes have you hidden the girl away?”
“Hey, hey, hey! Out with it—tell us where you’ve hidden the girl!”
“We all didn’t come here to watch you lot do your bow-scraping calisthenics—hey, you senile old bastard of a rice-pounding cricket!”

And indeed (like water flowing down a standing board), he rattled on and on.
As I encountered the simile "like water flowing down a standing board"—before I knew it, the vision of a stream brimming with water and the waterwheel beginning to turn with serene rhythm rose vividly before my eyes, filling my chest to bursting.
Involuntarily, I closed my eyes and was about to drift dazedly into this welcome vision when—

“Oh Great Teacher over there in the corner!”

I was jolted awake by the call. When I looked, there sat Garadō the hook-nosed, arrogantly sprawled over rice bales with legs wide apart. He was a thief. By day he knotted a modest necktie and attended to gentlemanly duties as a bank receptionist—a resplendent gold chain gleaming at his chest—yet come nightfall, he would cast off these false whiskers as it were and, contrary to a fox’s nature, leap into bizarre exploits. The tale went that he had conspired with an uncle of mine—a man of similar cunning—to deceive my aged mother into seizing “my” seal stamp after my deceased father, whose foolishness only deepened his doting concern for my future livelihood, had left behind a magnificent citrus grove spanning hundreds of *chōbu*, forging debt certificates thereby.

I absolutely held no interest in ownership of such “mountains,” yet on days when I wandered admiring the splendid hues of citrus groves encircling three sides of Tornado Village from autumn’s onset through winter, catching sight of my uncle and Garadō peering vigilantly from the guardhouse window as they watched for fruit thieves would send me scurrying away in panic. I did not scorn their material greed itself but felt stifling revulsion upon learning a blood relative had joined their ranks.—Now this Garadō had made such deeds his very trade; these days beyond the mountains in the neighboring town where my uncle’s estate adjoined peach orchards, he had built a bungalow-style mansion and installed a beautiful mistress within.

This digression aside—to return—the name “Garadō” was a derogatory epithet I had bestowed upon him, meaning “fox-headed monster.” His original Japanese name—though needless to detail here—was Kirido Ryōnosuke, which he himself had recently altered to Ryōtsū. The reason remained unclear—nor had I pondered it—but apparently he followed some principle of onomancy. In like manner, landlord Ābisu was Ox-Head and henchman Anubisu Dog-Head—both names I had ordained.

“Hey, Sensei.”

Kirido Garadō repeated this while seated atop rice bales—his eyes positioned clearly higher than mine beside Yukigorō—as he twisted his gaze into undulating waves and thrust it upward, peering at me as if pushing my chin from below.
When I had dubbed him “hook-nosed,” it abstractly signified his savage irony—for his actual nose resembled a loathsome log: ruddy and fleshy enough to perpetually evoke those sausages said to dangle from greedy villains’ noses in folktales, never literally crooked.
He would call me “Great Teacher” or “Sensei,” sometimes even “Doctor”—and at first I genuinely believed he addressed me thus out of respect. In those days before I bestowed his derogatory name Garadō, we’d drink tea-house sake together in a daze, compose calligraphy for presentation, stamp seals on document-like papers—all while I still considered him the close friend he so often claimed to be—until one day he...

“Once we get this seal stamped, it’s ours for the taking.—This half-wit bastard went and wrote such nonsense, getting all high and mighty...”

Mocking thus, that bastard tore to shreds the Germanic pastoral song—a beloved hymn I had painstakingly brushed despite my poor calligraphy skills, one whose three stanzas I could still recite by heart: *“Torn into tatters wandering clouds / Evening sky with a single star / Light still faint yet thoughts run deep—oh sea of sky / Ah! Since Chaldean shepherds first beheld thee four thousand years ago / Light remains eternally young / While the world has aged so...”*—and scattered it like snow over the head of Mameido, the tavern girl toward whom I felt affection.
Hearing this from Mameido, I felt my self-esteem deeply wounded.
Moreover, he would use three honorific titles when referring to me in Mameido’s presence—

“Great Idiot Teacher”—“Doctor Pompous”—“Great Pauper Teacher,” that’s what they meant—.

“Without knowing that, getting all high and mighty with his nostrils flared—the very picture of it…”

Having said such things, he alone clutched his belly and guffawed—.

“Sensei, I was so mortified! That guy twisted our good relationship into some outrageous notion—he fought with that Doctor Pompous, then said ‘Why not get along with me instead?’ Can you believe it!”

Mameido had come to visit me carrying a bouquet picked by the riverside, conveying these words with her head bowed in sorrow.
This was undoubtedly true—what I felt toward Mameido couldn’t be called romantic affection.
Yukitarō of this household was my age—thirty-some years—but being a dutiful soul devoted to his parents and siblings, he’d thrown himself entirely into managing the waterwheel house, still unmarried.
I harbored hopes that once the waterwheel stabilized, I’d see him and Mameido wed—they were both suited to remain lifelong companions through life’s trials, which defined the nature of my goodwill.
Moreover, Yukitarō and his father had taken in my wife and me—utterly destitute as we were—letting us dwell upstairs for years while revering me like some magistrate, treating us with utmost deference.
The reason lay in ancestral fields once worked here—fields where Yukigorō had milled our family’s rice. If anything, we’d likely been the detestable rentier class exploiting unearned wealth. Yet their descendants still honored us, for when they heard I shivered in a townhouse ruin, they’d fashioned a red-blanketed seat on a rice cart and come galloping from afar.
After that, we’d lived peacefully with my wife here—until Anubisu’s gang began storming in daily, their assaults on Yukigorō’s daughter Oyuki growing fiercer by the hour. One night we four men gathered at the hearth for urgent counsel, finally deciding to send her upriver five ri to Karamatsu Village along mountain trails.
Karamatsu Village nestled in a sunlit basin ringed by steep peaks—a temperate land of plenty where fifty households brewed sake while excelling at crafting Kagura masks. Come spring and autumn festivals, they’d form troupes to perform primitive masked plays across villages—a tradition ingrained in their bones.
Their theater’s regional renown rivaled the worldwide acclaim showered upon Oberammergau’s Passion Plays in distant Western lands.
Karamatsu was peace incarnate—a hamlet untouched by war’s shadow since antiquity.
For millennia since our nation’s founding, not even war’s faintest wingbeat had graced its skies.
Thus we concluded that even Anubisu’s lot would balk upon hearing “Karamatsu” and meet their doom.
Moreover, Karamatsu was Yukigorō’s birthplace—where his ancestral house still brewed modest sake as of old.

Fubukigawa—this river whose flow had steadily turned our waterwheel and sustained our dew-like existences thus far—wound through forests, crossed valleys, traversed fields; at times bathing in spray shattered against midstream rocks, at others intoxicated by the swaying charm of vine bridges as though delighting in aerial flight, listening to water-music gurgling far below like muffled sobs, forgetting oneself amid meandering paths and vistas of numerous waterfalls while ascending ever upward—until before one knew it, "Fubuki" became renamed Chidorigawa and reached the serene sake-brewing village.

That day, my wife had clad herself in an American Beauty ski jacket, donned a snow-white turban hat upon her head, and serenely mounted Harukaze.
Oyuki fastened a red obi around her new dark indigo striped lined kimono, adjusted her rustling leggings and straw sandals with care, and mounted Shirakumo.
Both Harukaze and Shirakumo were labor horses of our waterwheel house, but on that day especially, they wore brand-new aprons dyed with the dancing figures of the Seven Deities of Good Fortune, their bells jingling clearly in the morning mist.
And Yukitarō grasped Harukaze’s bridle while Yukijirō took hold of Shirakumo’s, each putting their mighty arms to full use.

Oh, how vividly the figure of my wife from that day floated before my very eyes—

“Once the wheel starts turning, I’ll come fetch you tomorrow without fail, so please wait in joyful anticipation of that.”

I took my wife’s hand and offered heartfelt words of encouragement, whereupon she firmly grasped my hand,

“Please don’t worry about me—you must keep up with your studies.”

With a radiant smile, she departed.
I stared fixedly up at my wife’s face, nodding deeply as I thumped my chest forcefully.

"Now then, Oyuki, once you reach Karamatsu, there ought to be rare herbs again—so help the missus properly."

Yukigorō, having seen the plant-collecting satchel hanging from my wife’s saddle and given these instructions to his daughter, went on to repeat meticulous advice for the journey.
My wife had long prepared specimens concerning the collection of wild plants in this area—specimens meant for eventual citation in my utterly stagnant creative work.
I had earlier recorded how Mameido brought a riverside-picked bouquet; this too formed part of her continual assistance in specimen creation.

Now, even if Kirido Garadō were to turn to me in such a manner now and call me "Sensei—", I would never respond—not a chance.
I glared coldly at the bastard's nose.
This was precisely what they meant by words falling on deaf ears.

“Hey Sensei—truth is, I’ve come bearing quite the lucrative proposition. You see, given our long-standing friendship—hearing you’re in dire straits—this humble soul thought to offer assistance...”

“According to my account—you’d been reduced to near starvation lately—ended up taking that ancestral armor chest—your last remaining possession—to pawn at the town liquor store for a pittance. Then before you knew it—rumors spread far and wide until you became a laughingstock—when fortunately ‘a certain chivalrous figure appeared and—”
“First I’ll retrieve it and keep it until you can repay—” he began,

“Let’s wait even until your grandchildren’s generation—”

He struck a kabuki pose and chuckled under his breath.
The man proposed to furnish me with whatever funds I might desire.

“Isn’t this a sweet proposition? That moldering treasure you left to rot has sprung back to life—how utterly auspicious!”
“—And that’s where I enter the stage!”

Then he suddenly returned to a dead-serious expression, puffed out his chest, and clapped his hands with a resounding smack.
"Sensei, why not try stating the amount you desire—just as a test, if you will?"

Had it been another's proposal, I would have consented without hesitation—but having been deceived once already, why on earth would I accept that bastard's offer? Moreover, that bastard was the very mastermind who had incited Anubisu and his ilk to drive forward the seizure of this waterwheel house. He was the enemy!

“Hey now, Sensei, why don’t you give it a proper think?”

“……”

He was giving a speech to a wooden statue—I thought.
Even so, if this were a proposal from someone else—!
And I couldn’t help but think.
"If that were the case," he proposed, "couldn't we first settle the waterwheel's debts and go fetch your wife and Oyuki tomorrow? Just how much money do you want anyway—a thousand? Ten thousand?" With this, Garadō snapped open his palm before my eyes,

“How about this much?”

he shouted.

“……”

It made no sense to me whatsoever.
Then he—with an intensity resembling solemn resolve—

“Then perhaps this approach?”

—placed two additional fingers upon his outstretched palm this time, fixing me with an unwavering stare.

“……”

My thoughts had drifted as clouds through Karamatsu's distant skies, swaying solely above my wife. Vivid upon my mind's screen rose the vision of her—having found rare herbs with Oyuki along Chidorigawa's banks—playfully plotting to startle me. To think—having parted from her at spring's end—the world had now transformed into late autumn's height of mandarin season! "Oh how I yearn for you, my wife—" I sighed deeply, the melody of that ancient song—"When stags cry, my beloved's dream lingers"—unwittingly resonating through my breast with poignant clarity.

“Are you still insisting—even now? Just how much do you want?”
“I’d hate to be surprised now.”

Garadō put on an exaggerated show of trembling, wearing a sickly-sweet grin that seemed to peer into the depths of my chest as he slowly thrust out his jaw.

At that moment—enraptured by the intricate rhythm of an autumn song I was murmuring within my breast, eyes narrowed dreamily while faintly swaying my head as if wandering into some wondrous realm—I remained oblivious to my own state. Yet Garadō, observing my demeanor, misinterpreted it completely: convinced I must be elated by this unforeseen boon, now dizzyingly lost in monetary calculations, he concluded I had tumbled straight into his snare—

“Heh heh heh, how does it find you, Sensei? Your spirits can’t be ill at ease.”
“But of late, this humble self’s mettle has grown most meager—what one might call terror-stricken nerves. Why, even trivial encounters set my heart leaping so, I swoon clean away.”
“Would you kindly take such circumstances into consideration—in some arrangement that won’t overly startle this frail soul—come now, Sensei, won’t you attempt declaring your desired sum…?”

Muttering such nauseatingly courteous remarks, he deliberately edged closer to me—or so it seemed—

“Mei-chan sends her regards.”
“This is where we’ll make our grandest profit—while the ogre’s away, we’ll take our leisurely time with that girl…”

As he continued speaking, just as he began to slowly lay that hand upon my shoulder—I jolted awake from the dream……At the crucial instant—struck by a roar that magnificently eviscerated my very entrails—in that moment of leaping up at the zenith of complete unconsciousness, with fearsome momentum, suddenly—

"Wha—!"

I let out a cry. At the same time, also— “Wha—!” No sooner had a whirlwind of terrified shrieks—as if to blast the entire hut skyward—swirled up than I saw them: Kirido Garadō at the forefront, Landlord Ābisu and his henchman Anubisu who until moments ago had flaunted their imposing visages around us in postures primed for violence, along with bailiff Doraiasu, attorney Kusehosu, some broker or other, talent agents’ lackeys—the whole black-clouded horde recoiled in shock like frogs scattered by gunfire, leaping up in unison—

"Gah!"

At the same instant they shouted—each maintaining the imposing postures they had held until that very moment—they leapt up in unison.
No sooner had they scattered into the air with a crack than they scrambled every which way in mad frenzy: some crashed through paper screens, others somersaulted down from entryway steps, still others kicked doors off hinges—all whipping up a gust as they fled headlong into the night.

Before I knew it, I stood brandishing a gnarled red pine log—over three feet long and blazing fiercely in the hearth—bathed in the light of a perfectly round moon, transformed into an ogre at the edge of the potato field. Needless to say, I had driven away the black-clouded horde and appeared to have rushed here in a frenzy. Just like that, I vacantly stared at their retreating figures. Beneath the boundless moonlight, across fields layered like an open sea, they glided smoothly and swiftly—as though skating over ice. All sounds were absorbed into the clear moonlight as if extinguished, and in the distance across the vast plain—amidst three or four scattered twinkling village lights—their fluttering finally vanished. And once more, the surroundings became a boundless sea-like expanse where not even a shadow of movement could be seen.

The waterwheel house was a solitary dwelling with a thatched roof, coiling at the foothills of the sacred grove's forest far removed from the village.

From then on, expecting their retaliatory attack, I never let down my guard—

“Oh no, should it come to that, we’d be perfectly unfazed.”

said Yukigorō and the others.
Though advanced in years, Yukigorō possessed arm strength that had made him a renowned powerhouse throughout neighboring villages—should matters escalate, whether facing eight or ten of Garadō and Anubisu’s ilk, he could handle them with ease and make them eat humble pie—

“Right here from this very seat—just like so—I’ll send them flying out the window into the river. All before breakfast—”

He muttered offhandedly.
Yukigorō was generally a man of humble disposition who had never been known to boast, yet on this occasion alone he displayed his thick arm to me with heaving breaths.
The reason those wretches had fled in such disarray was likely because they saw the three asuras—charged with low-pressure intensity—that had risen behind me.
Those capable of effortlessly raising and lowering that massive sluice gate existed nowhere but Yukigorō and his sons.
They were renowned as first-class sluice gate operators.
Upon their shoulders—tempered through years of bearing that gate’s handle—bulged muscle masses precisely the size of clenched fists!
During that incident they too seemed thoroughly agitated and—perhaps seeking to steady me further—urged me to try gripping this while vowing to crush it with full force—

“Even if this gets sliced, it won’t hurt.”

As they spoke thus, the three men alternately bared their shoulders and strained with resolve as if pursuing phantoms of those villains—first I gripped Yukijirō’s muscle bulge, its form writhing beneath the skin like an apple lodged within, seeming to harbor some magical force.

“Go on—give it a proper squeeze.”

Urged by Yukijirō, I gnashed my teeth and attempted to wrench it, but my fingertips went numb and it slipped clean away.

When it next became Yukitarō’s turn, to my astonishment, his proved to be a genuine stone-hard ball—impossible to get any purchase on. Gripping it with both palms like an eagle’s talons, I channeled all my vigor into a heave-ho struggle to wrench it free. But in an instant, my arm was twisted backward in reverse contortion, the joint of my upper arm nearly dislocating.
Once, when a hornet had landed on this very spot—thinking "this is it"—I’d quietly watched as its stinger snapped clean off, leaving the insect to fly away in pitiful retreat—Yukitarō added such an anecdote.

Then finally, I assumed a grand stance—first cracking my arm like a laborer about to begin work—then slowly raising it overhead before lunging at Yukigorō’s muscle bulge. But this proved to be actual stone, so I hastily withdrew my arm.

“Then why don’t you give mine a proper bite…”

Seeing me recoil with wood-owl eyes goggling in their sockets, Yukijirō—perhaps interpreting my hesitation as dissatisfaction—repeated his offer and thrust forward his apple-swollen shoulder. But finding this too grotesque to endure, I shouted “Enough already!”
I flatly refused and let him keep his shoulder cocked.

Their extraordinary arm strength and Herculean shoulders proportionally matched the three men’s magnificent physiques—Spartan-balanced frames of such towering stature that one’s gaze climbed upward helplessly.
To quantify: Yukigorō stood five shaku nine sun tall (~5’9”), while Yukitarō and Yukijirō shared identical heights of five shaku eight sun (~5’8”).
Year after festival year, Yukigorō would lead shrine processions as the tengu—that demon-quelling path-clearer for deities—so indispensable that villages vied to secure him.
Whether from six decades perfecting this role, even in daily life his walk possessed an unearthly cadence—leisurely yet unstoppable, feet treading clouds rather than earth, eyes blazing with mystic light that pierced thousand-league mists while fixed on eternal truth’s horizon, moving precisely as he did during festivals.
After all, beneath that vermilion Great Tengu mask his face mattered little—yet I’d always believed only such a visage could radiate authentic tengu essence.
Now that I considered it, even his voice resonated deeply—sparing in words yet sonorous when speaking, as if channeling immortal echoes from primordial voids beyond mountains.
This serenity extended to his spirit—untroubled by distinctions or toil, ever contented.
――By now I’d exhausted all pawnable goods, living day and night in my threadbare Indian jacket’s embrace. But formerly, whenever dusk’s thirst gripped me and I gathered trinkets for the pawnbroker’s, Yukigorō would fluster forth to snatch my bundle and insist on going himself.

Watching that Yukigorō—as twilight mist settled over a lone path through fields where no village lights yet flickered, beneath a sky and earth blurred into indistinguishable haze—depart with a cloth-wrapped bundle swinging lightly from one hand, his strides vigorous and assured, I would lean against the window until his figure faded slowly into the mist’s horizon, unwittingly singing the following verse each time with lingering resonance: ——(an excerpt…)

...Haltingly he stands alone, now west, now east he roams.

Ah, destined to meet yet forbidden to obey

In an instant, buoyantly he journeys far

Riding the chill light breeze—

—and such.

Such was the festival custom of Tatsumaki Village: the Great Tengu would lead the portable shrine procession, sleeves of his eye-dazzling golden brocade robe(?) fluttering in swaying breezes, gleaming great naginata held staff-like as he clanged it along while wearing single-toothed tall geta—one step loftily surmounting cloud peaks, another deeply crushing earthly demons beneath—proceeding with heavy, deliberate strides.
Following this, they thrust a root-cleared sacred sakaki tree into a white-lattice box-like structure, passed two thick poles through its sides, and four attendants came bearing it aloft.
Next, they suspended a giant drum—its face spanning nearly five shaku—from the thickest moso bamboo pole, which two young men then carried front and back.
This drum possessed tremendous weight and such massive bulk that unless one were a young man endowed with exceptionally strong shoulders and rare stature, its body would easily drag against the ground while carrying it—not to mention promptly injuring one’s shoulders—making it a formidable challenge. As for those who could accomplish this great task with ease, in recent times there were none who could rival the brothers Yukitarō and Yukijirō.
Furthermore, an armored warrior appeared attending beside this drum, grasping an enormous drumstick. Gauging the rhythm of each step in the tengu's stride, he focused his full strength until precisely when the tengu's tall geta left the ground to kick at the clouds—Boom!
With an echo that reverberated through the mountains, he struck the drum with all his might, and then—just as the tengu’s leg traced its arc to descend upon the earth—once more, Boom!
and struck it with divine solemnity.
Then, on the opposite side of the warrior stood waiting a white-faced attendant who, precisely as the second drumbeat faded, rhythmically struck the drum's wooden body—clack, clack, clack—three times along its sides with the single drumstick he carried.
This ensemble would continue as a "tsuke" accompaniment for as long as the tengu kept advancing, resounding with utmost solemnity.

“Boom, boom—Clack, clack, clack… Boom, boom…”

The striking sounds flew through the forest, crossed over hills, and announced the portable shrine’s procession in all directions—whereupon the waiting villagers,

“Here comes Lord Tengu’s procession!”

shouted in chorus as they swarmed toward the procession. And following closely behind the drum team, they targeted the giant offering box—carried by four people and roughly one tsubo in capacity—waiting in reserve; bowing gratefully, they rained down coin offerings from all directions like a downpour.

After this procession had passed, nearly half an hour elapsed before the portable shrine made its appearance.
Because the main deity was being set down before various houses to be showered with sacred sake offerings, its procession gradually adopted a staggering gait as it followed a tumultuous ceremonial route.
Over there too stood another solemn offering box freshly bound with sacred ropes.
When villagers threw coins aiming for that box, they rejoiced upon seeing those that flew through the air to land splendidly at its bottom—taking this as an auspicious omen. Even when their aim missed and coins fell to earth, solemnly dressed collectors stationed there would retrieve them—instantly restoring any lost fortune while bestowing prayers that one's destiny would unfold auspiciously. This practice essentially became their own income—for ultimately, simply by tossing offerings, all could attain blessed days bathed in divine grace. Thus the villagers competed fervently with each other, growing impassioned in beseeching future blessings through their efforts.
Regarding income distribution, it was customary for the drum team's offering box to have its majority reverently received by the Tengu and Armored Warrior, with remnants distributed among carriers and those beating the drum's belly.
The share would reach fifty to a hundred gold coins at once—meaning that had festival day arrived, our waterwheel house would have instantly prospered and regained standing before those creditors dark as stormclouds. Yet now we had reached dire straits lacking even daily rice and salt.
We would mill others' rice to buy our own grain with those wages, but since spring thaw three heavy rains had made the waterwheel spin so violently that each time—all three times—the belts snapped and wheel blades shattered. In desperation we pawned our horse and even pledged the armor chest itself as collateral to finally complete repairs. Believing I could now summon my wife and Yukigorō could bring his dear daughter home imminently—just as we were poised to begin our family's great united effort—this drought calamity struck us.

I had been secretly counting off the days on my fingers, waiting in readiness for the festival’s arrival.
When the festival arrived, even without being fetched, my wife and Oyuki would return as part of Karamatsu Village’s open-air theater troupe’s covered wagons.
We would hang offering pouches around our necks and, hand in hand, run out toward the sound of the drums.

“Oh dear! The tip of Father’s headdress is…”

Because the six-shaku-tall man wore one-shaku-toothed tall geta, the tengu’s face floated alone above the rice stacks, instantly recognizable even from afar.
Oyuki was raising her voice,

“Father, Father—”

When hailed in such manner, the tengu would turn his lofty nose toward us and nod in apparent delight.
When I envisioned the scene of the giant drum borne by brothers advancing solemnly—its lingering resonance trailing like smoke as the armored warrior struck it with his mallet—I found myself whirled into an unstoppable tornado of passion that stirred the very blood coursing through my veins.
Resplendent in his black mask, scarlet-laced armor, and hoe-shaped helmet, the armored warrior raised his honor-filled arm and continued striking the drum with desperate force.
This prestigious role followed a seasonal rotation and was traditionally reverently received by prominent figures who had been village leaders, but the gallant figure of this brilliant champion—radiant with honor—became the object of the crowd’s envy, and without exception, all virtuous men and women spared no tears of admiration, starting with the youthful maidens.
Parents wished for their children, wives for their husbands—if one was a man, none failed to desire that he stand there as a fierce drum-beating warrior.

In springtime, that landlord Ābisu would appear on the shrine approach as the designated drum beater, but once matters reached this point, no one spoke a word of his usual misdeeds—all raised bright cheers and had their souls stolen away by the sound of his resounding drum.

“It was as if the world had returned to the past.”
“Isn’t it splendidly brave? If I could, I’d even wish to be struck by that young warrior’s mallet and swoon away!”

Amidst these girls shouting such things and making commotion, my wife too stood spellbound among them, her mouth agape as she gazed enraptured at his gallant figure.

In all respects, the conduct of that warrior was so reminiscent of the Gascon tribe of a distant past and land—a people who embodied every human virtue of passion, perseverance, endurance, and ambition—that one might nearly mistake him for their return.
The drumbeats of that fierce warrior—who poured his undivided spirit into this unrestrained grand performance—so powerfully wrenched the souls of all who heard and saw them toward paradise’s skies that one could not help but wonder: Had the essence of the Gascon tribe and Goths—peerless in valor, rich in righteousness, deep in faith, devout in worship, reverent toward women, and masterful in strategy—their eternal bloodline transmitted pure into the hearts of medieval knights to flower continental history with color—coalesced into a single entity and been reborn here?

Lying restless through the false chill of sleepless nights without even sake's warmth, on the second-floor cot of the mill house, I would toss and turn while directing my thoughts to those festival drums—when suddenly their sounds, neither quite illusion nor reality, would come surging in tsunami-like force from far and near to engulf me. Leaping up unbidden, I'd sing the following song while leaning against the window until dawn's first light whitened the eastern sky, gazing entranced at processions endlessly streaming by.
(--that verse--)

...amidst such waves of people
Plucking willow branches and gathering lotus flowers
Brandishing jade rings and gem pendants
Clanging resoundingly, clear and brilliant.

Robes fluttering like startled swans

My body supple as a swimming dragon

With "...", and such, I continued singing endlessly.

Lately, I had been deeply contemplating the birth of "tragedy" and "comedy" and the diverging origins of their paths, wandering through theater's history back to the primordial age of masks—when unexpectedly, I encountered a document detailing how Gascon tribes during grand festivals honoring the wine god Satyros would organize costumed processions remarkably similar to Tatsumaki Village's shrine parades, hauling ahead a giant drum called Baralda as they marched up to the mountain deity's shrine—at which my eyes widened in astonishment.
The procession of Pan, Utapi, Karaiāpi, Batsukasu, Eratō, Yurēnia and others—imitating goats’ legs, wearing grape clusters as headdresses, and arrayed in motley costumes as fox-heads, dog-heads, star-children, love-messengers, and cloud-spirits—swelled into a drunken uproar as they carried ram-horn-shaped wine jugs in every hand, blaring them like trumpets and drinking from them, their footsteps synchronized to the Baralda’s rhythm in a manner that vividly evoked how Karamatsu Village’s masked theater troupe—Okame masks, Hyottoko clowns, old men, bearded warriors, foxes, and salt-sprinklers—would reel about intoxicated by street-corner sake offerings, already weaving Kagura dance gestures into their movements as they followed our tengu drum team.—Incidentally, the Baralda measured approximately five yards in diameter—the same size as our waterwheel—and was said to be pulled by six oxen while twenty attendants pushed from behind, struck by a giant mallet rigged like a trebuchet’s counterweighted sling.
Therefore, though the immensity of that sound surpassed even my imagination, the shadow of the waterwheel—creaking as it spun in the dull, sluggish flow beneath my window, seeming ready to halt at any moment—appeared to me, drunk on pitiful delusions, as nothing less than the Gascon Baralda.
Aiming for those distant mountain peaks faintly tinged crimson by dawn’s wings, the grand procession that kept surging through my vision—following the waves of the moon’s white radiance—became a marvelously bizarre and resplendent commotion, mingling Gascon devotees with Karamatsu’s worshippers into one chaotic mass.

Boom, boom! Clack, clack, clack!

The drumbeats filled sky and chest alike as tengu, bull-headed demons, elephants, mountain echo spirits, horses, kappa, wind gods, puppeteers, butterfly spirits—Diana hand-in-hand with Okame—marched forth, while a swan spirit holding aloft a cuckoo bird played its flute and waved sakaki and olive branches radiantly, on and on without end...
The rumbling rotation of the Baralda and Tatsumaki Village's great drum—beaten by fierce warriors with finality—parted the human tide and led the procession onward.

I continued singing at the top of my voice……,

"Clanging resoundingly, clear and brilliant..."

――“Oh, you’ve awakened already?
“Yukijirō is preparing breakfast, so please come down to the hearth.”

By the voice from below the window, I awoke from a dream to find Yukigorō and Yukitarō heading out to open the sluice gate—their first task before breakfast.

Before long, night had already dawned faintly—the mountains turned indigo, and across the vast fields, only the figures of rice sheaves floated here and there in the thin mist.
The procession had been completely absorbed into the mountain forest, and even the creaking sound of the waterwheel had vanished.
"This morning's drop of nearly two and a half inches means the waterwheel can no longer drink water—but please keep your spirits steady."

Yukitarō called out.
“The night dew’s mercy need not wait any longer—”

“As long as these arms hold out—”

Yukigorō thrust his red pine-like arms toward the window from the morning mist’s depths, moving in perfect synchrony.
And then,

“The festival shall have fair skies.”

With a groggy growl, he lumbered heavily along the riverside and vanished into the willow’s shadow.
The current, with a stillness that did not disturb its own form, meandered clearly white downstream as far as the haze-blurred end.
Had there been any shadows afloat, even a single flower would have been captured in such clarity; yet the view before me held not even the shadow of a water strider to obstruct my sight.

Clearly, now fully dawned, the golden arrows of the sun slid over the mountain peak, playing upon the model-transformed waterwheel's vanes while drinking in the dew from the riverside grasses.
I had already learned every last name of the riverside plants without exception.
Golden lace, scouring rush, great burnet, bush clover, rock pine, Japanese roof iris, fox's lantern, snake gourd, dangling lanterns, peacock moss, Thunberg's bush clover, cocklebur, ladybells, Chinese motherwort, pussy willow... and so on—with but a single sweeping glance across them all, I could instantly enumerate a hundred varieties.
Therefore I wondered—might there be among the things flowing downstream from upstream a flower unknown to me?
Pondering the Chidorigawa River basin—which I had only heard about in rumors but never yet visited—it had become my habit to keep a watchful eye on the water’s surface for anything unusual.
Since my wife had gone to that place, I would often watch the river's flow—now with this vigilant gaze further layered by longing—wondering if perhaps some floral message borne on a bamboo-leaf boat might come drifting downstream. To me, this vigil held neither absurdity nor sentimentality.
For though Karamatsu Village lay just over five ri away along mountain paths—a mere twelve miles or so—it remained such a remote hinterland that mail delivery came but once a week. Thus when we parted, though we had laughed about it as if joking,

“Perhaps if we set a bottle marked with flowers adrift in the current, any urgent messages might reach us quicker.”

“Truly—if by chance some unknown plant comes floating downstream, you must think we sent it as an extra specimen.”
“We might even attach a letter to it.”
“You could write something like ‘Send money’—”

We had exchanged such words before. As a test for Yukigorō—about how many hours would pass before what we had sent down the Chidorigawa River back then reached Fubukigawa? When I posed such questions to him, he would tilt his head thoughtfully before,

"Given the current's flow in this rainless season, a flower boat departing at twilight would arrive here by dawn."

He added that in his prime, the people of Karamatsu Village had indeed used this current as a postal network, and that they had installed a four-poled scoop net-shaped mailbox beside the sluice gate—and such things.

Styx—though glossing it as Sanzu River sat somewhat ill with me—now lay whitely clear beneath my gaze, the Fubukigawa that had forgotten its own current while stitching through the grand atmosphere's silence with infinite composure, becoming the Lethe (River of Oblivion) that swallowed all doubts and delusions in its quietly vast lucidity—so immense it seemed to reach the clouds were it poured out—before vanishing into dawn's cloud-hemmed edge. I saw myself—as if trying to trace this Stygian River's path through realms of light and darkness while beating a drum—and felt an indescribable intoxication neither sorrow nor joy. —Then piercing through those clouds, a girl's figure racing headlong appeared like a lone bird within the cumulonimbus.

“Sensei—Sensei—”

When I looked, it was Mameido from the izakaya. Thinking she must have come to report discovering some rare plant—I shook off all foolish dreams and rushed outside in haste, only to have Mei-chan collapse limply into my arms. I called Yukijirō and made Mei-chan take water and reviving salts.

“Garadō’s coming… Garadō’s…”

“Mei-chan, you’re alright now.”
“Let that bastard Garadō come! Right into the River of Oblivion…”

Upon hearing Mei's story—revived through our care—(I had no doubt Garadō had tried to assault her) came a warning that Garadō, having devised a once-in-a-lifetime scheme (as he himself reportedly boasted) to trick me into surrendering the armor chest, would come transformed into a fox at any moment, and thus we must never let ourselves be deceived.

During this spring's festival, when they staged a war play with armored warriors as entertainment, a fire broke out from the dressing room and reduced all twenty suits of armor and helmets in the village to naught, leaving mine—the one I'd left at the pawnshop—as the sole remaining set now.
For the festival's armored warriors, only armor passed down here since antiquity could be used, so mine ultimately came to be employed; however, after an all-night village council meeting yesterday, it was resolved that whoever first wrested it from my possession would bear the honor of drum-beating for however many years henceforth—combining both spring and autumn festivals.
This proposal had in fact been circulating among the villagers for quite some time already, though it never reached our waterwheel house secluded deep in the forest shadows; yet among them, ever since early summer's rice-planting season, there had already been unfolding a clandestine and intense struggle over that distant armor chest—or so it was said.
Hearing this, I found myself recalling countless details that aligned with that account.
Until then, certain village councilors who would cruelly point behind my back and swagger about whenever we met had suddenly begun offering polite weather greetings and clearing paths for me as if in deference—whether this was flattery born of armor chest covetousness or whether they'd finally recognized my abundant erudition and begun offering heartfelt respect, I convinced myself of the latter and boldly stepped forward—mounting lecture podiums for ideological speeches and announcing my candidacy for village council—only to find, alas, that once again I faced unexpected disgrace.
At that time, having gained no more than two votes from Yukigorō father and son alone, I lost the election—yet I remained clear-headed, thinking this simply meant the principles of my self-established "Independent Republican Party," which relied on no faction of existing political groups, had failed to reach their understanding—and yet——

No sooner had this armor commotion erupted than Kirido Garadō immediately calculated the annual tally of shrine offerings,

“If we squeeze fifty or a hundred gold from that Professor Usunoro, it’ll be easy pickings.”

Grinning like a wily old man already fancying himself an armored warrior, Garadō had organized a drum corps—appointing Anubisu as offering collector and recruiting every last comrade-villain as lackeys—while making nightly arrangements at Mei’s shop and raising celebratory cups in advance. But now, with the hour fully ripe this morning, he pressed me with every rhetorical trick, resolved that if I refused his demands, he would subdue me by force in one decisive stroke. At this very moment, over twenty of his cohorts stood assembled and eagerly poised to march out—hearing this, I not only stiffened defiantly for the girl’s sake but thought: Now this’ll be interesting!
And I’ll vent all my daily frustrations—I won’t let them get away without a lesson!
Though I had growled such things through clenched teeth, somehow an intense, inexplicable trembling surged through my entire body until my jaws rattled uncontrollably.

The sluice gate’s weir appeared to have been cut; after a brief moment, the waterwheel began spinning with a thunderous roar, and the entire hut started quivering as intensely as my own trembling body.

“No, that’s… Sensei… Sensei… If I take up the drumstick and lead the procession… It’ll be as natural as a duck diving…”

Though hindered by the hut's shuddering vibrations that made me catch only intermittent fragments of sound, before I knew it—with Yukijirō, who seemed to have run out to meet them at some point, leading the charge—Yukigorō and Yukitarō came storming in while shouting excited words all at once. At that same moment, Mei too cried out something and leapt against my chest, pounding my breastbone like a drum with both clenched fists. Just then Yukigorō swiftly stretched out his arm—the next instant my whole body became a ball soaring up to the pitch-black soot-stained attic roof—and no sooner had I felt myself floating weightlessly than I was swept away by utterly incomprehensible "waaah waaah" cheers from some phantom crowd, tumbling head over heels through empty air again and again. I couldn't see anything anymore. I teetered on the brink of unconsciousness. As Garadō's gang pressed forward in force, I wondered if battle had finally commenced... Then suddenly I fell—though even so found myself seated on an improbably comfortable sofa—had we driven off the enemy forces and seized the commander's seat without my realizing? In this dazed state, when I quietly opened my eyes I discovered myself using Yukigorō's lap as a chair.—The commotion I'd mistaken for combat turned out to be Yukigorō and his sons tossing me about in celebratory joy-lifting.

Against the waterwheel’s clamor, I had grown accustomed to maintaining loud exchanges of conversation.
I put on an especially composed front,

"But I simply don’t have the strength to swing that thick drumstick."

With earnestness tinged by genuine lack of confidence, I thrust my bare arm out before everyone—and indeed, it proved to be a pitifully slender limb that might be mistaken for a pencil.
“Isn’t the drumstick five times thicker?”

“No.”

The father and his two sons shook their heads in unison.
“We remember—that time when you swung this red pine log with such ease and drove off Garadō’s gang—”
“The drumstick shares this very thickness, and should you replicate your stance from that occasion when striking, there will be no cause for objection.”
“Ever since beholding your bearing that day, we had quietly nurtured hopes that a formidable drum-beating warrior dwelt among us—and now to chance upon such providence…”

"I said that what I did back then was purely an act of frenzy—how could I possibly repeat those same motions to lead a procession now? Even with that single swing back then, my arm nearly came out of its socket—" but my voice dwindled, swallowed by the waterwheel's clamor, reaching no one's ears.

"Oh, that I might move these tengu legs to the sound of your drumming..."

As Yukigorō spoke these words and began to puff out his chest in delight—just as I nearly slipped from his lap—Yukitarō lightly transferred me onto his own knee as if handling a decorative ornament,

“And I’ll shoulder my part at the rear—”

Following this, Yukijirō was then handed me onto his lap,

“Could there be such an auspicious occasion with the whole family gathered together?”

It was a hospitality that never once put me down—

"Oh, Sensei, I can already hear the drumbeats so clearly…"

Mei-chan trembled and clung to me, weeping quiet tears of joy.

Rejoicing in the continued fair weather—they had even stopped the waterwheel—as the bountiful harvest festival drew near, surely rain would soon fall, then turn and turn to pound golden rice cakes for us—Yukigorō and the others began singing their “Waterwheel House Song,” imbued with such meaning.
Garadō and his gang’s impending attack was something they showed not the slightest concern for in their demeanor.
Then, the whole group took red pine logs stacked nearby and tapped them against the hearth while keeping the song’s rhythm, and I too, caught up in the moment, tried to wave the baton—but found I couldn’t lift it with one hand at all.

"Still, with the sluice gate's current weakening by now, we must go close it—but look how vigorously the waterwheel keeps spinning!" As the brothers said this and peered out the window,

“Hey, it’s raining!”

they shouted.
In their expressions, I felt something akin to an elusive cloud—as though seeing a manifestation of my own mental state, wandering lost at the crossroads between "tragedy" and "comedy," relentlessly pursued and pursuing Gascon’s Baralda.

“The rain—ah! So that was the sound of rain? To me, it had sounded like distant drumming.”

Mei-chan pressed both palms to her chest with an indescribable expression and raised prayerful eyes.—“No wonder Garadō and his gang haven’t come…”

From the mist-blurred edge of distant fields came racing the thunderous roar of pelting rain—stirring billowing clouds that merged with wind before adding lightning’s crack to their charge.
Yukitarō, who had dashed through the deluge to reach the sluice gate, handed me a bouquet—its flowers bearing names wholly unknown to me—claiming it had come drifting downstream. With no heart to inspect such things, I leaned vacantly against the window and gazed across wild margins of land scourged by the lashing storm.
At my vision’s farthest limit streaked an unsaddled horse trailing watery mist from its tail; behind it through midair stumbled and tumbled a lone black speck of human form in pursuit.

Suddenly, I heard a sob resembling a flute from behind.
Though someone seemed to be muttering intermittently—the sound lost amid the madly spinning waterwheel’s roar and thunderclaps—it appeared to leak from Yukigorō’s throat as he sat by the hearth with arms crossed like Nio guardian statues. No sooner had this thought struck me than I suddenly transformed into an incarnation of a wild deer drenched in the River of Forgetfulness’s spray. Letting out a single high-pitched, strange cry, I collided with Yukigorō’s boulder-like seated form and began pummeling indiscriminately—head or back mattered not—with thudding blows!
I struck him with thudding blows.