Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

Outside was a moonlit night washed clean of darkness.
Beneath the window lay a river six feet deep and eighteen feet wide, but when the waterwheel ceased turning, no matter how one strained to hear, the sound of flowing water vanished completely.

"Why must you keep the window open when it's freezing?"

I sat curled at the hearth's edge, swaddled in a red blanket until my limbs grew slack.
He offered no reply.

The lamp above our heads was dim.
Taikichi merely sat with his arms sullenly crossed, staring at the window where moonlight brighter than the lamp wavered hazily.
On his knees lay unfinished straw sandals.
Taikichi’s left eye was an artificial one, so he tired easily during handiwork.
He purchased cheap artificial eyes without concern for appearances and with impatience, so they jutted from his eyelids and differed in color from his right eye.
When I looked at his eyes, I sometimes felt hatred.

But bathed in light, his artificial eye resembled a high-quality piece. The colors of both eyes could no longer be distinguished.—He lowered his gaze to his lap once more and returned to his work. His right eye looked slightly downward with melancholy, as though having utterly resigned itself to life, but the left one glared protrusively in my direction. Because of this, he inadvertently offended many people's sensibilities. His friends always urged him to purchase higher-quality ones, but he grumbled that he could never afford them since they ended up destroyed at least once a month.

He was forty years old but had never been married.

Hearing faint snoring, I looked to find him dozing off in a daze, still pinching the end of a straw sandal.
The eyelid of the artificial eye never closed whether its wearer slept or laughed, so observers often misread the true state of his mind.—Speaking of laughter—he had a habit of closing his eyelids whenever he laughed.
However, I had never once actually heard him laugh.

Taikichi suddenly arched backward like a toad and let out an absurdly large sneeze.
Once it began, it was his habit to sneeze ten or twenty times in succession.

I, who had been adding charcoal,

“So just close the window already…”

I hurriedly tried to offer the blanket I was wearing as I stood up.
He—driven by a sneezing fit of “Hatchoo! Hatchoo! Hatchoo!”—kept hunching his shoulders.
And when it burst forth, he tried desperately not to leap up by clamping his teeth on the hearth’s edge like a lion, but it was such a violent sneeze that his back forcibly arched with a jerk.
The force trying to resist this momentum throughout his entire body instead provoked a restrained reaction.

“Ah!”

I involuntarily shouted.
Taikichi’s glass eye flew out with great force and landed atop the blazing flames.
He had been concerned about this, trembling with unnatural intensity each time a sneeze erupted.

“Ah! The eye fell out! Aaaaaah!”

I was floundering to take the fire tongs when Taikichi—who only now noticed due to my commotion—

“Don’t use the fire tongs! Don’t!”

—and frantically grabbed my arm.
Indeed, iron fire tongs with the thickness of an index finger and a length of over two shaku were exceedingly dangerous.
Taikichi, without delay, first put on black tinted glasses.
Despite his habit of carelessly inserting that unsightly artificial eye, he was strangely bashful—no matter how dire the circumstances, he never showed others the empty socket left by its removal.—He closed the window.
Barefoot, he jumped down to the earthen floor and bolted the entrance door.
Even though such precautions seemed entirely unnecessary, after taking such great care, he searched for the chopstick box in the cupboard.
And he attempted to retrieve the artificial eye by maneuvering the tips of cedar chopsticks, but could not locate it at all.
The chopsticks merely prodded at the red flames.
Due to a fit of shock, the sneezing had stopped.
The artificial eye glowed crimson in the fire.
His chopsticks kept darting toward the flames.
Of course, I too had taken up chopsticks to help, but whenever my chopstick tips drew near, Taikichi’s would somehow slice through and bat them aside, obstructing me.
He seemed embarrassed.—Soon after came a popping sound like a ginkgo nut bursting.

“Taikichi, are you there?”

Outside the window was Kura’s voice.
She was Taikichi’s mistress.
Kura always peeked through the window.
Taikichi knew that when bathed in moonlight, the artificial eye would gleam as if it were real.

Taikichi looked at my face, waved his hand, and covered his mouth with his palm.
I bit my lip and held my breath.
Taikichi quietly extended his arm and turned down the wick of the already too-dim lamp to its limit.—It went out.

Normally, Taikichi kept stored on the shelf in a hand chest the two-yen-fifty-sen item he only swapped in when meeting Kura, but four or five nights prior, it had been knocked down by a mouse. Kura, being of a highly strung disposition, could not bring herself to meet Taikichi with his fifty-sen artificial eye. Trembling in fear, Kura could never face Taikichi with that eye. Even if Taikichi with that eye muttered something joyful, Kura could not share in his delight. Even when he lamented the sorrows of the world in grief, Kura could not feel sympathy for him.

Even with the lamp extinguished, the flames from the hearth cast a lurid red glow across Taikichi’s face and chest.

“Have you gone to sleep already?”

Kura was checking on the man’s well-being.

“Wh-what do we do?”

I brought my mouth close to Taikichi’s ear.

“…………”

“You two are there, aren’t you?!”

Kura peered through the knothole.

Taikichi’s kneecaps trembled in tiny shivers.
Soon came a sound—sob-sob-sob!
A cricket-chirp-like stifled weeping.

Two

I went outside and explained the circumstances to Kura.
Kura covered her face with her sleeve.

“Do you have any straw sandals at your place?”

When Taikichi’s straw sandals reached three pairs, I would put them on and go to the town ten ri away to secure funds.
At the town’s post office, a single two-yen-fifty-sen and three fifty-sen items had arrived via cash-on-delivery mail.
It was a steep mountain path traversed only by horseback riders, mountain palanquins, and straw-sandaled travelers.

“Tonight, I’ll try making them myself.”

Kura moved her fingertips in the moonlit night as they probed for the weaving method,

“Taikichi can’t handle overnight work, but I can manage two nights or so.”

“she said.”

Taikichi did not sleep even beside the woman.
Even in sleep, the only one who saw his open eye—as if fixated on something—was me alone, facing where he sat dozing by the hearth.

"Why do those who are husbands and wives—or aim to be—fixate so much on a mere artificial eye? I find it utterly perplexing."

With that, I tilted my head in puzzlement. However, this was an absolute contradiction only comprehensible to those who are husbands or wives—or aim to be—and moreover, the two of them were each individualists of a truly peculiar sort—this being the meaning Kura explained in her drawn-out dialect.

Kura and I stood at the river’s edge.

The surrounding mountains, forests, fields, and even the stream were all swollen to bursting, satiated with light.
I looked all around me.
I couldn’t find my own shadow either.
The round moon hung directly above us.

Kura wanted me to escort her as far as the base of the bridge, but knowing Taikichi was always watching her movements through the door’s knothole at times like these, I politely declined,

“I’ll keep watch here for you.”

I declined.
Taikichi was not particularly jealous, but he did enjoy secretly observing his lover’s figure.

Even after crossing the bridge and reaching among the rice straw stacks on the opposite side, Kura’s moving form remained clearly visible. Kura playfully zigzagged through the rice straw stacks with deliberate theatricality, as if reluctant to part ways—now turning back to nod repeatedly over and over, now hurriedly hiding behind the stacks. Since this was no different from an acknowledgment to her lover inside the door, I was merely fulfilling my role of vacantly seeing her off while leaning against the persimmon tree trunk.

“My apologies.”

Sure enough, Taikichi—who had been peeking through the knothole—called out in a deep voice.

Three

Of the two pairs of straw sandals Kura had made, one was so large they resembled banana leaves, while the other had all the toes sticking out and proved useless.
Kura, exhausted from making them, stretched out along the hearth’s edge.
Taikichi, instead of his tinted glasses, had fastened a thread to a square cloth that covered one eye and wore it hung over his ear.

Kura gazed admiringly up at Taikichi’s natural eye,

“This one is gentle, but…”

she said.
But when she imagined the state right beneath that eye cover, a nervous spasm rippled through her entire body, repulsed and unable to approach.
Taikichi, turning the profile with his gentle eye toward Kura, was hurrying with the straw sandal crafting.

The lamp was dim.
A wind was rising.
The lamp's flame kept threatening to go out from wind seeping through the door's cracks.

“I wonder if it’s going to storm?”

I listened to the wind rustling through the trees.
Taikichi stood up to check the outside conditions,

“Since the sky over Myojingatake is bright, there’s no need to worry about a storm.
They’re saying this’ll blow the rain away, so tomorrow’ll be clear.”

and kept his face exposed outside the door indefinitely.

“Even if it rains, I’m going out.
I’ll attach straw sandals to these shoes…”

I had brought out the mountain climbing tools I had prepared during summer with the aim of crossing Yagura Peak and entering Tanzawa Mountain, arranging them along the edge of the hearth. The rucksack, boots, staff, and gloves were all new. I had made plans and completed all preparations, but when sudden trouble arose with the waterwheel, I ended up unable to carry them out.

When Kura was holding a blowpipe before the hearth to prepare tomorrow’s lunchbox for me,

“Kura! Kura! You comin’ back to this one-eyed freak’s place again?!”

Like a red demon, Kura’s thoroughly drunk father came bellowing his way in.

“That’s unnecessary meddling! If only he had an eye, Taikichi would be a splendid man.”

Kura and her adoptive father were like cats and dogs.

“Shut your mouth! Go on, get out…”

“But you—did you really take the money from Daihachi’s teahouse?”

Kura’s face was pale.
The blazing hearth fire emitted smoke that wreathed around Kura’s figure.
Her father stood gazing at her radiant, pale complexion with its sharply defined eye corners.

“Kura—don’t push your luck! This here’s the sake you’re givin’ me to drink.”

“Ain’t none o’ my business!”
“I’m done with this teahouse drudgery!”

“Then what’re we supposed to do? We made a promise and poured all that money into the fields…”

“Pouring into fields only to squeeze drinking money back out from ’em…? Enough with your grand tours! I’ve already made a husband-and-wife vow with Taikichi!”

“A promise with that one-eyed freak…”

“Don’t you dare keep callin’ him ‘One-eye’!”

“A poppin’-out eyeball, a bulgin’ eye! How much money you bastards even got?”

“You don’t know ’bout Taikichi’s proper eye, do ya? The world’s movin’ ahead now—they got artificial eyes same as real ones you can buy right quick! Taikichi’s a fine son-in-law, I tell ya! Once that eye’s in, he’s set to work at Dai’s transport outfit, I tell ya!”

“Let’s have a look at this ‘splendid eye’ then.”
“The poppin’-out eyeball is…”

“That’s just his everyday one, I tell ya…”

Kura choked on the smoke and covered her face.
The old man never did acknowledge there were different grades of artificial eyes.

“Don’t wanna ride no damn Tenma, I tell ya.”
“If Taikichi’s sunken eye lands him a salaried job, I might just bow down to you…”

“Keep spoutin’ that nonsense, and even if he gets a salaried job, I won’t pay you a damn thing.”

“Don’t forget that fancy talk of yours, you brat!”

“You’d better not regret misjudging Taikichi.”

“Bahaha…”

The old man kicked the door and left.

Taikichi was slumped against the window.
I bowed my head into my folded arms and exhaled into my lap.
When misfortune strikes, everything hits a dead end all at once!
And so I found myself astonished by how matters had been progressing lately.
Soon enough, the owner of Dai’s teahouse—having heard even fouler insults than the old man’s—would come to snatch Kura away.
The watermill hut’s repossession agent would come storming in.
I possessed no explanatory words for them.
Though Taikichi had been gifted with a silver tongue for rebuttals, without his eye inserted he’d grow utterly spineless and lose all capacity for speech.
They knew Taikichi’s weakness and at every turn—“Popping-out eyeball!”—
They’d hurl the insult and ruthlessly deflate him.

Taikichi, who was leaning against the window, began to be gripped by sneezing fits again.
But he no longer resisted the recoil at all; bending his torso with the leisurely grace of a grebe amid sneeze after sneeze, he leaned his upper body out of the window where persimmon leaves were swirling.

“After such a fight… there’s no way she can go back now.”

When I worried about Kura’s situation, both Taikichi and Kura would simply wilt, knowing they couldn’t possibly spend the night together until I returned from town.
When I tried to retreat to the attic bedroom, Kura frantically urged me to wait until she finished making the lunchbox.

For me, rather, it was difficult to gauge the emotional states of Taikichi and Kura.

As usual, Kura was seen off by me and went out to the wind-whipped ridge path between fields.
The next morning, I made an additional promise to Kura that we would depart even in the rain and saw her off at the foot of the bridge.
Amidst the sound of wind whirling over the water, the noise of Taikichi’s sneezing fits still continued.
The hut’s lamp was out, but the figure of Taikichi inside the window—repeating intense bows like someone pounding rice cakes—was reflected in the bleak night air.

IV

After completing my errands in town, it was already night so I couldn’t go around to the post office.
Where should I stay?
I closed my eyes on the station bench.

Without detouring through Dai’s post town, I dashed through only the mountain paths in one go, reaching the town halfway through my journey; fortunately, the weather was fine.
I searched for a traveler’s inn by the seaside.
In my flask, the sake Kura had packed remained untouched, weighing heavily.

The sound of the offshore tide roared.
The crash of waves pounded against the shutters until rain began falling.
My sleep came easily—whether in mountain villages or by the seaside.

When I ran out of the post office clutching the small box, I suddenly came face to face with Nabekawa Daihachi. He was the proprietor of Dai’s teahouse. As I attempted to avert my gaze,

“Heading back to the mountain now, I see.”
“Since the timing’s perfect, why don’t I accompany you?”

And he was uncharacteristically amiable.

“How much had the alcohol bill accumulated, I wonder.
If you just pay half now—”

Taikichi had gone to his shop due to matters involving Kura and recklessly drunk himself into debt; Daihachi had long been lying in wait for this.

“It’s not your responsibility, so let’s set aside such worries for today at least…”

“The reason he couldn’t pay is my responsibility. As you well know, I hadn’t been able to give him his wages for some time.”

“If Kura should come to work at my place, will you visit us?”

“Isn’t Kura already married to Taikichi? Instead of back wages, I’m handing over that watermill hut to them. I’ll be returning to Tokyo soon.”

At Kitayama Station, we got off the train.
From there, we were to be transported by bus for two ri to Akamatsu Village, with the remaining path to Ikarigayama’s hut to be walked on foot.
There was a deep forest.
We were supposed to climb the jagged path along the valley stream.
The view from Nokogiriyama Pass offered a glimpse of distant islands on the sea.
I enjoyed resting alone and leisurely at the base of that pass’s pine tree.
Nokogiriyama, Karamatsu, Onidoro, Onitori, Dorouzu, Kitsuneoka, Yadorigi—climbing up and down the mountains, we passed through villages with names that were neither comical nor frightening until we finally reached Ikarigayama.

Daihachi’s mansion was a place called “Dai’s post town” in Kitsuneoka Village.

Must I really accompany Daihachi all the way there?
The thought was irritating.

Daihachi paid no heed to whatever relationship Kura might or might not have had with Taikichi,

“That woman is mine.”

He remained composed.

“Anyway, since that eyeball makes Kura’s hair stand on end, there’s no chance it’ll ever work out.”

“You’re at a decent age, yet there’s talk you’re indulgent with women in all the wrong ways.”

Knowing Daihachi’s various immoral acts, I said this intending to criticize him, but he instead laughed cheerfully, “Heh heh!”

“Kura’s quite the beauty, isn’t she?”
“Things between us aren’t all bad, you know.”

he oozed smarm.
Then he went on at length about the thrill of luring married women and even confessed his affection for Kura.

When we approached Nokogiriyama, his footsteps tended to lag behind, and he would call me back when I had gotten a full chō ahead.

“Perhaps because I drank a bit too much last night—my lower belly feels tight and I can’t keep up.”

He grimaced and tilted my canteen.
“I thought it was water, but this is sake!”
Delighted, he finally reached the pass’s pine tree and plopped down the palanquin with a heavy thud.
He boasted about having gone to town for Kitsuneoka Village’s renaming campaign and how splendid his carousing had been the previous night.

I found myself half-listening.
It turned out he’d apparently been the guest staying next to me at the seaside inn.
Whenever I started dozing off, women’s screams would occasionally jolt me awake, though such noises didn’t particularly disturb my rest.
Daihachi’s ramblings were incoherent.

Perhaps a low-pressure system was covering the offshore area, for the horizon's whereabouts could not be seen, and the islands had vanished from view.
The land was bathed in bright sunlight, and the light that had struck the mountains slid over the white villages and fields washed by the previous night’s rain.

“But you see, Kura says—Taikichi supposedly possesses a fine eye he rarely shows others. Is that really true?”
“Truly, Taikichi’s right eye is that of a remarkably gentle charmer.”
“If those were both present, it’d be no wonder Kura fell for him—but lies, I say! No matter where you order one these days, you couldn’t get an eye that skillfully made.”
“If those gentle eyes were both present, I’d take off my hat too.”
“I can’t help but think Kura is being deceived by that one eye of Taikichi’s…?”

“…………”

I briefly considered threatening him by saying I had Taikichi’s high-quality eye right here with me—but remembering Daihachi’s utterly malicious nature, I feigned ignorance. If someone were to carelessly show such a thing, pretending it was an accident and dropping it on a rock would be child’s play for Daihachi. Taikichi did not use it in his daily life as much as possible because he feared the mischief of such malicious people. Taikichi had resolved to raise funds through the watermill hut and transport company and abandon Ikarigayama Village as soon as possible. If he went to another region and used that eye, no one would suspect it of being an artificial eye. In Ikarigayama Village, it was customary for the people to despise one-eyed individuals, especially.

“Hey, something like that doesn’t really exist, does it?”

Daihachi was quite persistent.

“I hear there are quite decent ones like Zeiss-made products, but matching the color is troublesome…”

I could do nothing but stare vacantly.

“What’s that?”

Daihachi leaned forward uneasily despite this.

“If the person themselves goes to a medical equipment store in Tokyo and does research, they can get something fitted that’s no different from a real eye.”
“However, since I fully know the color and shape of Taikichi’s right eye, I’m thinking of taking care of it for him soon.”

Originally, Taikichi’s had been arranged through my doing; as long as there was no issue with payment, it could reliably be procured whenever it broke.

Then Daihachi deeply furrowed the wrinkles between his nose and eyes,
“Enough!”
he spat out dismissively.
“You shouldn’t be meddling unnecessarily.”
“I truly can’t grasp your way of thinking.”
“I’ve been meaning to say this for a long time…”

Despite being at such a mountain peak, Daihachi brought his foul-smelling mouth close to my ear with a hesitant air.
I instinctively pinched my nose.—“I don’t know what you think of Taikichi, but despite being so indebted to you, whenever that bastard comes drinking at my place and gets drunk, he does nothing but badmouth you from start to finish.
“Shall I say it? That bastard—” here he pointed at you, “—he’s trying to snatch Kura away from me! Acts all friendly with us when he’s just—” and that’s how he puts it!”

Daihachi took a breath and glared fixedly into the void.
His nose was red.
Because I believed in Taikichi, Daihachi's sudden demonically earnest expression rang false.
I watched the train plunging headlong across the fields below.

"What’s with Daihachi putting on such a pompous act all this time? Thinking up lies must be so tiresome!" I thought, yet since he still hadn’t resumed speaking, I stole a glance at his state. Daihachi’s expression remained frozen—lips bitten tight with the terrifying demeanor of a Nio guardian statue. Not wanting to appear deferential, I quickly averted my eyes and struck a match.

Then I perceived something odd about Daihachi—

“Ugh…… Uh…… This is really……”

And then I heard a groan so strangely exaggerated in its anguish that it defied belief.
I spat and didn't even glance over.

"This is bad!
"This has turned into a real mess..."

Daihachi’s groans reached their peak, and when I looked, he had collapsed forward with a thud like someone committing seppuku.
He clutched his lower abdomen frantically and began to roar like a tiger.
I had to go around behind and lift him up.
The weight of Daihachi trying to pitch forward was a resilient spring opposing the full strength of both my arms.

“Could it be epilepsy?”
When I muttered this, Daihachi shook his head violently.
His consciousness was clear.

“What am I supposed to do now?”

I was at a loss.

Then Daihachi pointed toward the oak forest leading down to Karamatsu Village,

“Ice—Ice! I need ice!”

he indeed bowed his head. Probably, if I went down to the edge of the swamp under the oak forest, ice would be found there— “Hurry—” he shouted. His sudden illness was the outbreak of orchitis. When the diagnosis became clear and I felt relieved, I didn’t have such a heartless intention, but—

“I’ll be taking my leave since I’m in a hurry,”
I said teasingly.
Daihachi let out a scream and rolled on the grass.

In a shaded puddle by the marsh, thin ice had formed completely. Since the hat was made of waterproof cloth, I piled ice fragments onto it, and when I returned—perhaps because Daihachi’s seizure had subsided somewhat—he lay facedown on my bag in a seated position. However, each time violent pain struck him, he would writhe like konnyaku jelly while sinking his teeth into the bag like a lion.

Wrapping the hat further in a hand towel, I handed it to him. He was fastening the ice pack to his affected area, but I tried to use that time to run to Karamatsu and bring back a mountain palanquin.

“Karamatsu’s a full ri away, isn’t it? I can’t stay lying here alone in this wretched place, suffering like this for so long!”

“Can I face this way now?”

“If we keep up the treatment and rest for three or four hours, I should manage to move somehow. Please tend to me till then,” Daihachi implored tearfully.

Every thirty minutes, I had to pinch the edge of the ice pack and trudge down to the marsh.

“I’ll borrow your shoulder as far as Karamatsu—we’ll stay there tonight.”

Daihachi managed to stand up and set out leaning on my cane and shoulder.
When the path sloped downward, he could no longer endure the pain and collapsed onto my mountaineering bag.
The package’s a wooden box—it’s safe!
I thought.

When the path leveled out, Daihachi found slight relief from his pain and tentatively began badmouthing Taikichi.
And by now tonight, Kura must have been dragged to Fox Hill by her father—if that’s settled, even that woman would get soiled by the teahouse’s gaudiness and surely forget all about that One-eye in an instant—why not hire a palanquin right here in Karamatsu and dash over Flower Mountain in one go?—he muttered such smug notions.