Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

White trumpet creeper flowers floated in the twilight beside the spring water, their quiet murmur undisturbed.
They’re blooming, I thought.
Trumpet Flower?
No—that meant Trumpet Creeper. But whether Trumpet Creeper or trumpet grass, they’d always bloomed wherever we moved, though I’d never heard anyone claim to like them—the words slipped from me without reason.
Water mallows choked the garden pond, obscuring the water’s surface.
The radio hummed with a kabuki play.
I felt like a scrap of paper—insubstantial, adrift.
Even to my own eyes, a shadowy figure, I’d drifted back to Mother’s house from nowhere in particular.
Mother asked no questions; I offered no explanations. Where I’d returned from grew indistinct—yesterday itself dissolved into dreamstuff, my memories of places wandered and deeds done collapsing into fragments.—We simply exchanged a smile steeped in nostalgia, unremarkable yet profound.
I must have been bone-weary, for Mother’s lamplight seemed unnaturally sweet, the air of my hometown something I gulped down greedily.
Strange how sharply I felt it then—that current flowing between mother and child.

“Ah, I’m actually hungry today for once.”

While parting the water mallows and washing my hands, my voice sounded unpleasantly loud.
Mother turned off the radio switch and leaned against the rattan chair on the veranda,

“We’ve just finished eating now.”
“The beer’s chilled if you want some. How about it?”

she said.
It had been quite some time since we’d last met, yet our greeting ended at that.
As I stepped up into the sitting room, I was overcome with shame remembering how I’d once drunkenly kicked through sliding doors and sold off anything within reach—but when I timidly looked around, everything stood neatly arranged without a trace of damage, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

“It’s a shame to trouble you right after you’ve just finished tidying up.”
“Matsu, I need you to prepare the meal tray again—” Mother instructed the maid, then suddenly noticing something,

“Matsu, this is our eldest son.”

she introduced me somewhat sheepishly.
She was a neat, unfamiliar maid around thirty years old.
Matsu was somewhat flustered and made an excessively polite bow.
My disheveled appearance and rough speech were so off-putting that even the maid must have taken me for a suspicious guest, and Mother suddenly doubled over laughing at how Matsu had earlier reported some strange figure loitering around the garden.

“Feeling awkward, I deliberately put on an angry-looking face… It’s always like this with me…”

Mother laughed even more.
――Even so, no matter where I lived or wandered under foreign skies, perhaps because I dreamed of Mother most often, it never felt like we’d been apart so long.
I often dreamed of traveling with Mother.
Even so―after returning home for the first time in ages without a single anecdote or gift to offer, sitting cross-legged with surly indifference while exposing this strange, imposing facade of mine, and observing the unpoetic figure of myself seated across from Mother―if seen from the side, I would surely appear as a son who could never inspire such dreams. Thinking this, I was threatened by an unbearable cold sweat at my own wretchedness.

“You don’t look the least bit ill.”

“Yes, well—walking around here and there has apparently restored my spirits.”
“Family life—it seems I’m thoroughly inept at the whole business.”

“So, were you walking around all those places alone?”

“Yes—”

I told her about having enrolled my son—who had been attending the Catholic elementary school as Mother wished—into that institution’s stricter boarding school.
Regarding our son’s tuition fees, no matter what state arose between Mother and me, she was supposed to cover them without fault on her part; yet before long it began shifting to my expenses, becoming a source of quarrels between my wife and me.
Though entirely my fault with no way to respond, facing my wife made my pride swell further, leading me to drink heavily and incur debts.
When I thought of it, my wife was pitiful.
Her younger siblings and fathers—with their despicable vanity and shameless ignorance—had tormented her endlessly with contradictions that made maintaining decent living impossible.
I now could mentally separate my wife from those people, having no cause for unhappiness or melancholy myself; yet their falsehoods remained something I simply couldn’t overlook.
As long as I styled myself a mere Stoic—or rather Cynic-school novelist—I’d never held subjective hatred or contempt toward them; I pray my awkwardness in writing this won’t be mistaken for boasting, though truthfully I felt not hatred but ample warmth for them—yet even I couldn’t overturn my own morals just to uphold artistic views.

“Sis, Kitarou’s been absolutely killing it lately, I tell ya.”
“He’s become a full-fledged executive now—built some amazing Western-style mansion along the Hankyu Line.”

My brother-in-law Bensuke (eldest son) would often corner my wife and say such things.
"You must be jealous."

“Oh, honestly…!”

The wife’s lips trembled with fierce animosity.
As for Mr. Kitarou, I had no personal acquaintance with him, but according to hearsay, he was a man of remarkable success and social advancement, worthy of respect.
And I had long held a tendency to admire those who were self-made through diligent study and hard work.
That man, long ago during the time when their family ran a moving business, attended Mita Night School while working as a cart-puller; he later served at the South Seas Trading Company and gradually amassed a fortune, or so it was said.
As for my wife, she had been betrothed by her father, but Minzou (her father), leveraging past favors, kept demanding money too frequently until finally Mr. Kitarou lost patience,

“If one were to marry the daughter of such a shirker, there’s absolutely no chance of success—so I’d run away.”
“……If only she’d taken even a passing fancy to Ama’s looks or something, there might’ve been room for consideration……”

and had discussed with Yakichi—his colleague from the moving company—that he had made up his mind; Yakichi had later informed me of this as well.

“That Kitarou guy really knew how to play his cards right, I tell ya.”
“Dead right.”
“As for me—my poor judgment led to ending up in this miserable state…”

Yakichi had married his niece on Minzou’s recommendation and taken over the family business, but even the rural fields and paddies were swallowed up by Minzou, reducing him to a vagrant whose whereabouts were now unknown.
His wife, left with five children, was now working at a rural restaurant while supporting her husband’s parents as well.
As the eldest among the siblings, she alone remained dutiful.
Bensuke and my sisters-in-law would shudder in contempt whenever someone referred to that country bumpkin of a woman as their sister, and only my wife kept friendly ties with her.
On one occasion, when Yakichi went to Kitarou’s new residence to borrow money, he was ushered into a splendid parlor only to be rebuffed with a claim that it would be troublesome if someone claiming to be a friend came around.
And it was said that no money was lent at all.

“I tell you, when my resolve starts to waver, I take this out to commemorate the old days.”
“You too—if you abandon this notion of borrowing money from others and start over by putting this on once more, what do you think?”

As Yakichi watched, wondering what he would produce, Kitarou took out an old workman’s coat from a box inscribed “In Commemoration of Diligent Endeavors” in bold characters, and it is said he offered such counsel.

——“If there’s no money, there’s nothin’ to be done.”

Bensuke said such things loud enough for me to hear and smoked a gold-mouthed cigarette.

Lately, even my wife would show a troubled expression upon seeing her brother in such a state,

“Just because you can earn a little money now doesn’t mean you should get full of yourself.”
“What about your own studies?”

she admonished him.

“Even a little? Huh, seems downright pitiful.”
“Probably more than the brother-in-law here.”
“How much has your daily wage become…”
“Enough—stop it.”
“Prying into someone’s business…”

He looked immensely pleased with himself, wrinkling only the space between his brows—the spitting image of his father Minzou—and the tip of his nose as he sneered. He had somehow become a pattern designer at a downtown wrapping paper shop, but from the very beginning held such contempt for the occupation and his colleagues that—believing his education entitled him to respect—he insisted on being treated as an artist while constantly demanding money. "Everyone thinks I'm an art school graduate, you know."

“That doesn’t matter one bit. You should concentrate on your actual studies.”
“You didn’t even properly finish elementary school—what makes you think you’ve attended art school?”
“If you truly wanted to be a painter, you wouldn’t need to fuss about schools anyway.”

“I detest being poor.”
“If I were to take on serious work, I wouldn’t lose to those young pups from Teiten or Nikakai—but first I’d need to establish a properly extravagant lifestyle…”

And then, with great fervor, he would boast about having tailored such stylish Western suits, owning several pairs of golf pants, and being pestered by a merchant’s daughter smitten enough to offer a dowry for his hand.—I had often thought that, given how relentlessly he trumpeted his own artwork and how savagely he reviled every renowned painter, he might possess some talent after all. But when I once glimpsed the illustrations he had submitted to a literary magazine entirely unbeknownst to me, I shuddered—gooseflesh rising. To compound the horror, these became the half-year illustrations for a flagship serial novel, during which period I couldn’t even show my face at the publisher’s office and drowned my shame in reckless drinking—a memory that still makes my whole body shrivel.
Even those uneducated sisters gaped speechless when they saw it, yet until then they too had unanimously accused me—though we all walked the same artistic path—of failing to pave their brother’s way, while vehemently insisting, “All book designs must be entrusted to Bensuke.”

“If it’s book design you need, I’ll take it on without hesitation—no question!” Bensuke blustered.

When I later reflected on it, his unshakable confidence stemmed precisely from being a wrapping paper pattern artisan—a fact I had failed to recognize at the time.
——It was a book I had rarely managed to publish, yet its execution proved so abysmally poor that I could scarcely bring myself to touch it.
Still, I resigned myself to it being simply one of those misfortunes—but they grew ever more presumptuous, thrusting plan after plan upon me with such relentless force that I found myself overwhelmed, compelled to abandon all thought of publishing books henceforth.
Their vanity manifested as an obstinacy worthy only of dread.

“Isn’t there some way to keep Father from coming around to my place? To the people renting downstairs now, I’ve actually—told them he’s some outsider from elsewhere, you know. If he shows up dressed like that, I just can’t stand it. At work too, everyone thinks my father’s a director at Japan Transport.”

“Ha ha ha… A transport company director?!”

The sister burst into laughter, and my wife bit her lip and looked down, but she couldn’t bring herself to scold her triumphant brother.

“I’ve been driven out by Lord Ben again.……”

Minzou visited before three days had passed, laughing about having walked here.

“Of course, Father—.”
“It’s not your fault, Father—it’s not like you’re ill or anything, being exceptionally robust and all, what with dragging in young women and such. You could’ve taken up work as a janitor or night watchman if you’d wanted.”

Even though she had worked as a hot spring waitress and claimed to have endured mountains of hardship, this sister—a braggart and show-off just like Bensuke—was cohabiting with a young company employee.
She touted herself as a typist who had returned from abroad, peppering her speech with English at every turn and boasting that she would never associate with uneducated people—yet she couldn’t even write a proper letter in Japanese.

“Father has the audacity to go to Bensuke’s place again. When have you ever fulfilled your parental responsibilities?”
“Bensuke is truly pitiable, you know.”
“As for my school, wasn’t it he who took care of everything for everyone, you know.”

The sister had apparently attended a typewriter school for two or three months. She was small and mouse-like in stature, appearing at first glance to be eighteen or nineteen years old, but once she started talking, her worldly wisdom was as robust as an old woman’s at a wellside.—When I was in the countryside, she would apparently put on whatever gaudy outfits she could find—whether her own or her sister’s—and come over under the pretense of visiting Father’s villa.

“The country air is nice on rare occasions, but the food leaves much to be desired.”
“When Father and Brother think about that too—apparently they still can’t bear to leave Tokyo even for a single day……”

She would make utterly irresponsible remarks about occasionally inviting my mother to a Tokyo mansion to take her to plays, greatly delighting her. And she boasted that her father remained a company director while her brother was an ostentatious designer. From my perspective as someone sharing the same household space, her words seemed utterly divorced from reason, but seeing no purpose in objecting, I remained silent. Every time she sat at the dining table, she would pick up her chopsticks with exaggerated distaste, periodically pretending to sniff at the food’s aroma, and without finishing even half of anything, left her meal scattered like a sparrow’s peckings.

“Whenever I go out walking, everyone around here comes out to gawk at me—it’s simply unbearable.”

“People in Tokyo have such refined tastes—that’s why you’re such a novelty here.”

Mother was always swept up by her forceful energy and tended to be overwhelmed.

“Hey, Mother—I don’t know what sort of novels our resident big brother here writes—but they’re truly hopeless.”
“To think he still can’t manage a single decent life after all this time—it’s utterly inexcusable! I truly feel sorry for you and my poor sister here! Why—my own sister has never tasted a day of hardship since childhood.”
“And Mr. Bensuke—over ten years younger than this big brother of ours—already plans to build a house next year! He says he wants to join Father in showing proper filial devotion—they’re looking to buy land around here somewhere!”

“Even if it’s me, when it comes to my son…”

Mother involuntarily resented me and choked back her tears.
I had no particular reaction to being exposed to my siblings’ nonsense and posturing, but when their relentless pressure began to tarnish even Mother’s perception of me, I could not help but feel troubled.
To Mother—who already saw me as her incompetent layabout son and fretted over me—being subjected to such malicious sarcasm proved unbearable.
Even hollow flattery would have sufficed; I was so desperate to be praised instead.
Whenever her son received compliments, Mother would beam with delight regardless of circumstances and spare no expense—making these guests’ appearances always strike me as blows.
Because of this witless sister, I was often forced to endure Mother’s bitter lamentations and tormented by heartrending anguish.
“If only you had shown some resolve, we might have avoided such disgrace. When you see how Bensuke and his sort conduct themselves, shouldn’t that spark at least a flicker of competitive spirit in you?”

“I’m truly sorry, Mother.”

Each time, I would kneel before Mother and apologize from the depths of my heart.
It was utter humiliation—I could not help trembling.

“Mere words aren’t enough…”

And again the sister sneered from the side.
“Even someone like me—when I visit Mother’s house on rare occasions like this—I make sure to bring even the food expenses.”

“Now, you needn’t go that far.”

Even when I involuntarily blushed crimson from sheer bewilderment and tried to restrain myself, my sister—who of course had no such provisions prepared, her habitual practice being to arrive with barely enough for a one-way journey—would nonetheless proclaim these sorts of things with such fervor, as though her very self-respect hung in the balance,

“No, Father and Brother are saying such things too—that if the son remains in that state forever, the Odawara house will be in dire straits, so we mustn’t incur any losses—and then two or three friends might come by, but Mother, please don’t worry about a thing.”

She added with a smug twitch of her nose.
When Minzou came to their rented second floor but couldn’t devise a way to get money—perhaps because she had her company employee husband, whose eyes she’d deceived, carry rice sacks and soy sauce jars—her maneuvering turned brisk.
When the sisters occasionally reproached Bensuke about such things,

“Hmph, how pitiful.”

He burst out as if thoroughly relishing the moment.
While his pride in never depending on his father since childhood was one thing—that much could be excused—the cruelty of treating that very parent like an insect became too harsh for bystanders to endure.

“I’m shocked!”

When I inadvertently let slip these words, the sisters immediately twisted their stance with defiance,

“What now? You’re the eldest yet haven’t fulfilled a single decent responsibility...”

she snapped back.
If I were to argue over such things, the women would recoil and spew unbearable insults not only at me but also at my deceased father and biological mother.

“What’s the big deal about twenty or thirty thousand yen? Human beings are…”

She was accustomed to continuing like this.
“Don’t you know chastity’s what matters most? Money’s just something you pay back and be done with!”
“Once Bensuke settles it all properly, that’ll be the end of it…”

“Hey, hey…”

“Don’t keep callin’ me Bensuke, Bensuke,” he said with a smirk. “I ditched that name my folks stuck me with ages back—now I’ve gone and changed it proper-like, I tell ya.”

“How do you even *read* this?”

The sister tilted her head in puzzlement as she examined the business card Bensuke had produced.

“You think someone like *you* can read this? Go ahead and figure it out yourself…”

“You actually managed to dig up such complicated characters, huh? Hahaha…”

The sisters laughed.
When the husband who was a company employee was absent, Minzou began sipping alcohol bit by bit,

“You’re all so consumed by vanity—what do you think will become of you?”
“Aren’t you concerned about your parents?”

he began to fix his gaze.

“None of your business.”
“I don’t want even a single finger pointed at me.”

Bensuke blustered brazenly.

“There’s nothing in this world more despicable than money—listen here, Lord Ben…”

“If it’s such despicable money, then you shouldn’t go borrowing from others.”

“Idiot! That ain’t how it is!”
“Listen proper—if ya just pay back the money, that’s the end of it!…”

“Oh, that’s what this is about?… What a relief.”

Minzou seemed fixated on something—even me. His absurdly sensitive baseless suspicions left me utterly speechless. Bensuke’s manner was so devoid of courtesy that it grated on me; when I stayed silent, he took it as my wielding parental favor to act willfully and grow presumptuous toward my siblings—indeed, the sisters had cursed me most vehemently on such occasions.

“That we never make a single unpleasant face no matter when you come barging in—it’s only because we siblings are good people through and through. As for your relatives—there’s not a single place where they could stay even one night in peace. If they were to go to some rundown shack in Odawara... It would’ve been more considerate to stay at a hotel—Toriko, you mustn’t go there again.”

My wife drew in the oppressive atmosphere and puffed out her chest.
Having distanced himself from his retinue for some time and devoted himself to his so-called “noble pursuits,” perhaps his glibness and jealousy had considerably diminished—yet here we were back to square one, I lamented.
——Given that it stemmed from my own spinelessness, it hardly qualified as a grievance—but her countenance, eyes blazing as though fueled by some grand sense of justice as she spewed that fervor, was truly a dashing sight to behold.

“Well, enough now, enough—”

Minzou let out a laugh that seemed to mock all of humanity, then suddenly adopted a grave, affected tone,

“The truth is, Mr. Toriumi Matsunosuke’s—”

He drew a sharp breath, and when it came to uttering the sum—money he had scorned so vehemently moments earlier—his habitual reedy voice transformed into a thick, commanding growl that seemed to surge from the depths of his gut,

“Ten million yen—it’s settled… The company will finally be established.”

He ecstatically raised his cup.
No one knew what kind of company it was supposed to be, but he had spent decades drinking his way around town, peddling the same grandiose proposals for establishing various major companies—though not a single one had ever materialized. Yet his delivery—honed through years of practice—carried an undeniable, mysterious force, so potent that even tea house women were often swayed. The young prostitute he had recently brought from somewhere now supposedly dreamed of becoming the future vice-president’s wife.
Even when speaking ill of him in private, these siblings too, upon hearing that voice, would unwittingly wander into a dazed state, lured into blissful dreams—and Bensuke even altered his manner of speech,

“So, my overseas trip will finally be realized, then.”

he leaned forward.

“Of course.”
“You lot are artists—you’ve got to broaden your horizons.”
“Now then—first off you ought all go to France with your brother-in-law and his wife.”
“Everything—I’ll take care of it all, I tell you.”
“Don’t fret—just cultivate a magnanimous spirit.”

“My, aren’t you looking pleased with yourself…”

My wife turned toward me.
Of course, I wasn’t in a bad mood myself.
That said—though lecturing about Western suits was just one thing—between Bensuke boasting about those golf pants being the ultimate luxury item and my wife acting like leaving food uneaten in front of others was proper etiquette, I found myself unwittingly imagining even such trifles.
And yet, I found myself earnestly resolving to beg off after all.

“Father, how utterly ridiculous!”
“You really shouldn’t worry about that—yes, really, Bensuke alone is quite sufficient.”
“No one finds it the least bit worth being grateful for at all.”
“If you keep saying such kind things, you’ll only end up at a loss.”

My wife too imagined her father—who resembled a brown mantis—suddenly settled into a private automobile,

“Even if he arrives by rickshaw and makes those Odawara bastards foam at the mouth—after they’ve made fools of us so thoroughly—if he were to slam down a bundle of banknotes, what kind of faces would they make then?”

...and so she ranted on.

“Now now, don’t entertain such base thoughts.”
“It’s precisely by maintaining dignified composure that a person’s true worth becomes known naturally…”

“Even I’m fed up with the Asakura relatives… Those wretches over there—they’re nothing but self-serving ghouls obsessed with money. It’s unbearable.”
“They look down on me for being a poor man’s daughter and still haven’t even put me in their family registry, have they?”
“They look down on me—those snot-nosed salarymen—but I’ll slam it right in their faces…”

The younger woman also banged the rice tub and grew agitated.

II

(Note)

The second section of this text was interrupted.
It seems likely that while the author of this memoir was working on his unfinished manuscript in a room on the second floor of a downtown rice cracker shop where he was cohabiting with those siblings—having chosen a time when the others had fallen asleep—the manuscript was unexpectedly discovered and torn apart by one of his cohabitants.

"I don't know anything about that."

Unable to speak openly about it, he muttered through gritted teeth while smoothing the paper scraps' wrinkles and asking about the missing sections—whereupon the cohabitants all turned away in unison and feigned ignorance.
Even letters were indiscriminately torn open or flung aside, and once a recipient was away, they'd never reach their hands in such circumstances—so manuscript losses might as well have been foreordained.

“Damn it—making a fool of me…”

“You scoundrel…”

“You’re all just playing goody-two-shoes—still haven’t straightened out one bit.”

One night, a thrashing commotion erupted—violent enough to collapse the second floor—as drunken men and women bellowed with terrifying ferocity. In the end came the sounds of objects being hurled, bodies being struck, pottery shattering… It escalated into a riotous uproar that seemed on the verge of erupting into full-blown blade-wielding mayhem.

“Go on—kill me if you can!” or “I’ll have my revenge even if it kills me!” or “You hypocrite!”—and just when it seemed to subside, a woman’s frenzied voice erupted: “You lecherous bastard! You grabbed my leg the other night, didn’t you? Shameless wretch—I’ll spill every last secret!”

“Now now—if you’ve got something to say, we’ll hear it properly when you’re sober. Quit bellowing nonsense…”

The gaunt figure trembling anxiously in complete disarray as he attempted to pacify the uproar was unmistakably that very memoirist from earlier—the man himself.

“Don’t panic—do you even have enough conscience left to feel ashamed when people see you making such a racket, you hypocrite’s brat! Fox bastard… Don’t act dumb—I know everything too, you hear? I’ve been blabbering everything! What scheme did you have sneaking in here? Everyone’s been pretending not to know—you trash bastard!”
“You greedy old hag’s brat—shin-biter! Just go become some filthy priest already…”

“Sis… Toriko… Enough now—I’ve made up my mind, so quit your worrying.”
“What’s this—shit…!”

At the same moment such a man’s voice rang out, the shrill cries of two women rose up simultaneously from both sides,

“Bensuke, please calm down…”

“Bensuke—I’ll take my revenge without fail!”
“Aah… I’ll make us rich…”

“How infuriating!”
“To be mocked by those good-for-nothings!”
“They’re my lifelong enemies!…”

And every possible curse and insult showed no sign of abating.

“You wanna keep acting all high and mighty? Go right ahead! You don’t even know what it’s like to get your ass burned—writing that kind of crap! You’ll pay for this!”

The man’s fierce tirade joined the others.

“Get out! Get the hell out—right now, get out! Even looking at your face disgusts me…”

Driven out by that violent commotion, it was none other than he—the memoirist himself—who fled barefoot down the alleyway in disarray.
He dangled a wooden clog in one hand and clutched the mangled manuscript in the other.

The alleyway below was packed with a crowd craning their necks toward the second-floor uproar, buzzing with curiosity.
He tucked the manuscript-bearing arm into his coat and desperately shoved through the throng.
Reaching the riverbank, he cradled his head while waiting for his gasping breath to steady.
Without needing to check, he knew he carried no wallet—nor could he fathom where to go next.

On the water, two or three cargo boats lay moored, their lamps lit.

“Can I really cut ties with them like this and be done with it?”

He quietly asked himself—when faced with those to whom they owed social obligations, Bensuke and his sister had always maintained an appearance of remarkable sibling harmony. Yet when money entered the equation, they would tear their eyes out over a ten-sen loss—neither parent nor elder sister held any meaning for them anymore. If I were to vanish like this, my wife would likely have no choice but to become a barmaid starting tomorrow, just like her sisters—so he thought.

Even while cohabiting with them, his sister would kick off rice pot lids and stage extravagant displays of resentment whenever payment deadlines grew ambiguous... Realizing how disastrous it would be if mistaken for a suicide jumper, he hurriedly retreated from the bridge's edge—yet that sensation of being dragged backward by his collar proved too insistent to fully escape, compelling him to circle back toward the alleyway's vicinity.

He looked up at the illuminated window.

By now the crowd had scattered; silence reclaimed the second floor, all voices extinguished.

Under a sky washed clean by blue moonlight, roofs darkened like antiquated stage backdrops while bright windows hung lantern-like in deepening night air.

Two shoji screens glowed with interior lamplight like projection screens awaiting shadow plays.

Along the bay window ledge stood washbasins, charcoal braziers, pots and pans—each object's silhouette cut sharp as papercraft.

When he counted these meaningless shapes with fixed gaze, even mundane items came into focus: an unadorned fan and toothbrush dangling from the handrail.

He couldn't resist vague melancholy—yet however often resolved, his cowardly knees refused to carry him back upstairs.

At least I'll send my wife a postcard—he reconsidered—and wait for better timing... With this thought he departed.

Having chosen her as spouse, he neither complained nor entertained fantasies of other women.

Fundamentally—he recognized himself as a misogyny patient—though even so... Those bastards' unforgivably dismissive tirades still burned fresh in his ears.

Whenever Minzou and Bensuke—who'd bragged to friends about fictional business trips—crowded into that six-tatami room with six or seven others for communal sleeping sessions...

He might suffer kicks from unidentified legs during sleep (cursed be Minzou's clan whose violent nocturnal habits ignored gender)—or find horselike limbs and radish-thick shins crushing his chest until shuddering rejection followed...

Though harboring no lewd intent toward such grotesqueries...

But since everything hinged on subjective interpretation...

Arguing over pulled sleeves or untouched ones seemed pointless.

It absolutely wasn't with any rebellious intent matching their wild accusations that he'd been forced into that second floor—he alone flushed crimson while muttering this denial.

Rather than that... Whenever his sister's husband absented himself...

He'd invite university students and young office workers from who-knows-where...

Expound pretentiously on social philosophies...

Display absurdly exaggerated generosity...

Then after feeding them trifles in grand style...

“Everyone, stay over tonight.”
“This here is our lodging, you see…”

She said things like that.
The siblings were lodging together for educational purposes and claimed their hometown was ○町.
The place called ○町 was, in other words, his hometown.
The father back home was a man of considerable wealth who boasted of holding honorary positions and such.

“Everyone should come over during the holidays—our fathers will probably be away then…”

――None of that particularly concerned him, but now even if he were gone and they let pretentious young men stay over, as long as no trouble arose that would be fortunate enough―yet he found himself worrying about such an outlandish possibility.

“Brother, don’t walk around looking so disheveled. Since everyone already knows you’re my brother-in-law, it’s really awkward for me.”

Bensuke also frequently said such things to him.

III

“Say, why don’t we go to Atami for the first time in ages?”

Even after several days passed, he remained listless, not even attempting to read a book, so his mother worried he might still be unwell.
His mother, believing his wife’s family to be as the sisters described, paid it no mind, but he could not be irresponsible toward his wife even for a single day.
Unfortunately, his work had completely stalled again, and not even a single line would come to him no matter how much time passed.
With no real justification, he would claim he needed to buy reference books or that he had to have clothes made—piling up haphazardly purchased cheap books, tucking away the clothes after barely showing them—and after much anguish and struggle, he finally managed to scrape together around a hundred yen each month to send.

“But now that I’ve lost my means to make a living, going there feels too intimidating.”
“All this time—I don’t even know how much trouble I’ve caused you, Mother…”

He was merely an obedient son.
But when he showed hesitation, his mother became wholehearted and recommended an excursion.

“Even if our family has fallen on hard times, a mother would still care about her son’s illness…”

“But wouldn’t Atami be troublesome if I still have old acquaintances there?”

Even though his showy late father had built houses—and inns run by acquaintances still existed today—he felt all the more intimidated. Even so, it was rare for him to have savored the bond between mother and child as deeply as he had in recent days.
The relationship between father and son was something that could always be cleanly resolved, but even a scene viewed together with his mother remained, strangely enough, forever clear within a flowing stream of sorrow—or so he thought.
Contrasting this son’s homecoming with his father, and even when he reflected on himself as a child’s parent or tried to imagine it, he could not comprehend the mystery between mother and child.
Moreover, when he considered his own wife as the child’s mother, it became clear that she was filled with a far more composed tenderness than any paternal sentiment.
That there could be no one in this world other than a mother who accepts all human actions—this notion had, for no particular reason, become the foundation of his recent worldview.
Only as the mother of his child could he not forget her absolute preciousness when he thought of his wife.

“Shall we buy a hat? Your shaved head looks rather unsightly.”

He went out with his mother to have her buy him underwear, a coin purse, and such.
He had returned from somewhere without even a hat, wearing a frayed unlined kimono or something similar—now dressed in his late father’s summer best (which his mother had specially altered to evade recognition by his former self), a Hakata obi fastened around him, wearing straight-grained wooden clogs unlike any he had worn in years.

“Wouldn’t a straw hat still be better?”

“No, these days even in midsummer you don’t see many people wearing straw hats anymore. If it weren’t for these soft hats being worn year-round all over… And with an outfit like this, you can’t possibly make do with just five or six yen…”

He had, before he knew it, shed his initial hesitation and was spouting such shameful excuses.

“Despite having no talent, you sure are vain…”

Mother watched him with a mocking wry smile as he stood before the hat shop’s full-length mirror, trying various items on his head—fixing his gaze here, puffing out his chest there—as if measuring the overall balance of his appearance.
At any rate, even for Mother, seeing her son’s style being decked out in gentlemanly fashion seemed to bring her no small satisfaction.

“If I put this on, even the shaved head you hate so much will be hidden, right?”

When he returned home from somewhere, the first thing Mother laughed at was his head, which had somehow become a close-cropped buzz cut.
His head had an unpleasantly wide crown, with sharp protrusions on either side.
By lightly sweeping his hair back, he could conceal those flaws, so he had always let it grow out carelessly; but not long after fleeing that tenement’s second floor—whether on a whim or some sudden resolve—he had become a grotesque blue-skinned monk.

He finally selected a soft hat he liked before the mirror, hid his misshapen head beneath it, tucked the new rattan stick under his arm, and gazed for a while at his own appearance. And, in his heart, he muttered such things to himself.

――If I had known one could still dress like this despite being destined to become Yakichi’s successor as a vagrant, I wouldn’t have half-heartedly sought enlightenment and shaved my head to become a monk――Ah, what a rash impulse I acted upon. Even I, dressed like this, am not entirely unrespectable—at the very least, I’m several degrees more presentable than that cheaply tailored Bensuke and his ilk, even appearing rather sensible! To think I let those bastards mock me, shove me around without uttering a word of protest… I must’ve been utterly deranged back then…….

"Yes!" he bit his lip involuntarily.
At that moment, what flickered before his eyes—much to his own astonishment—was not any zeal for work or livelihood, but rather the figure of a young geisha he had seen several times when old friends accompanied him to pleasure quarters during his homecoming visits.
She likely didn’t even know what he did for a living, but out of deference to his friends who were doctors, she too addressed him as “Mr.,” “Mr.”—showering him with respect.
When he recalled that, he felt inexpressibly happy,

“In this attire, even if I were addressed as ‘Mr.,’ I likely wouldn’t feel ashamed,” or “Shall I take you under my patronage from now on?—or perhaps say I’ll look after you…”—with such thoroughly vulgar upstart’s satisfaction swelling his chest.

“What are you smirking about all by yourself?!”

“No… When I realized how many years it had been since just you and I rode a train together, my own wretchedness suddenly struck me as absurd.”
“To call something funny is just another way of saying it’s sad…”

“You fool…”

However, Mother had carved a smile brimming with inexplicable fondness—he, unwittingly drinking in her words down to his very core, so intensely—

"Truly—" he marveled.

Even so, with the autumn wind now rustling and my wife—whose freshly made signboard had been taken by Minzou—likely seething with irritation, and Bensuke hoarding his wares in two chests while refusing to let Minzou lay a finger on them, I realized: this was no time for me to lounge about, smugly resting on my laurels. Above all else, I had to rescue “the mother of my child” from that den of vipers—yet at present, I could find no rational means to do so.