Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

“I chatter, chatter, as I flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever”

……………… If I didn’t keep singing some song or other, I felt I might expire on the spot; fearing every sound around me, I pressed the stethoscope’s rubber tube to my ears and focused on my own heartbeat—yet soon enough, it seemed I would vanish into the river’s void, free of ailment or dreams.

Through long years of dissolute wandering, my dreams were filled with nights turned ashen from longing for Mother. I thought I must return to Mother. I was a neurasthenic plagued by palpitations. Though I meant to wait for recovery before departing, those pallid nights only drove the symptoms to worsen without respite. Hunched like a gnarled tree, I could do nothing but fashion bird specimens with hollow ceremony. When a pitiful goose’s cry at the pond’s edge merged with a gunshot’s echo, I leaned from the window—half-made specimen still clutched to chest—and saw Tona (my wife) aiming at the cat willow roots along the riverbank.

“Did you miss?” “…………” Tona didn’t so much as glance my way. Weasel attacks were frequent, and her kept birds were often robbed of their lives. The weasel would suck the birds’ blood and leave behind only the corpses. I would always pick them up and make them into taxidermy. Not a single book remained on my shelves; specimens of bulbuls, pheasants, jays, thrushes, pheasants, shrikes, sparrows, and kingfishers stood wing to wing. Horned owls, crows, chickens, geese, and their ilk—those too numerous to fit even on the shelves—now swarmed across the floor, leaving no space to plant a foot. Tona caught small birds using mist nets and birdlime, then built a mixed coop next to the chicken shed. She tied a shrike to a perch and set it at the edge of the mulberry field; when made to call out, its companions would descend and become ensnared in the birdlime. The horned owl and crow nests had been found by Yuzuta, the waterwheel keeper, but Tona raised the baby crow, and the horned owl became so tame it would perch on her shoulder. The baby crow, along with the geese, was chasing after Tona as she did her water chores. Pheasants, bulbuls, pheasants, and such were brought by Yuzuta; however, I refused on the grounds that consuming meat would aggravate my palpitations and made only my allotted portion into specimens.

Yuzuta’s left eye was a glass one, and for some reason he found it intensely mortifying that this eye could never close when taking aim—which was why he never handled firearms in others’ presence. Tona asked Yuzuta to fire blank shots to scare off the weasels, but even this he refused with a flushed face. Tona loaded Yuzuta’s old-fashioned rifle with live ammunition and took aim at the birds’ enemies, but when she imagined how I—caught off guard—would startle in my sickroom, she seethed at the thought of losing her nerve.—But I had grown unstartled by gunfire. Instead, I waited for the corpses of birds killed by weasels.

“Another one got taken, huh.” “The enemy’s made a clean getaway—” “It’s beyond saving now.” “Throw it over here for me.”

“It was only clawed, so it’ll probably heal.”

Tona picked up the goose at her feet and pressed her ear to its injured chest. “It’ll never heal! Stop it! Stop!” I thrust out my arm to snatch it, but Tona, bristling with anger, withdrew to the hearthside still clutching the bird. Every time gunshots rang out or birds cried in distress, Tona had long grumbled that my figure—leaning out the window as if lying in wait—looked as detestable as a weasel.

II Tona’s vigilance proved effective, and the weasel attacks gradually receded. Tona hung a cradle from the ceiling above the hearth and monitored the goose’s condition. The pond was completely frozen over, and the weasel could no longer target the carp. When my taxidermy work ceased, I became nothing but a wooden puppet—lying on my back in the attic bed, doing nothing but listen to the ominous heartbeat in my own chest. The boundary between life and death grew hazy, and I, much like one assailed by too blissful a dream who pinches their own cheek to test reality, picked up a crow’s feather and tickled it beneath my chin and armpits. Yet again, unbearable ticklish urges seized me—and through them, I recognized life.

I had been abnormally ticklish since birth. Even imagining my fingertips grazing my armpits or soles would send my entire body into breathless squirming—it became an ingrained reflex. Of all the folktales I heard as a child, none chilled me more than the one about a wicked fox that abducted children and tickled their tiny bodies to death with its bushy rump.

With the tip of a single crow feather, I awoke raucously from a dream of death. I nearly tumbled from the bed, startled anew by the violent surge of my heartbeat, and petrified into stone.

It was a dim attic. Beyond the window, willows and cypresses spread their branches; when I drew the curtain of stitched wheat sacks, even daytime required a lamp. The single small north-facing window and a two-foot-square skylight—distorted into a pyramid shape—opened in the attic ceiling, but when I gazed at the sky through that tiny window, smoke tinged with pitiful wanderings swirled thickly, and the thought of it meagerly rising upward proved so heartrending that I pulled the cord to close the shutter and, like a spider poised at its burrow’s edge, merely shut my eyes at the cavity’s depths. On the north-facing window lay an old storm shutter with hinges attached, opened outward above eye level, but I kept the lamp lit with the curtain fully lowered. The daytime lamp burned pale and dim, hazed by billowing rice-pounding dust, as though we were submerged at a swamp’s bottom.

When the waterwheel began turning, the entire cabin started shuddering portentously, and the specimens around me began dancing a lively jig with small, rapid footwork. The male goose killed earlier by a weasel—which I had clumsily crafted far too top-heavy—kept toppling over incessantly. When this female goose inevitably dies despite Tona’s care, I’ll pair it with this one and mount them firmly on a thick plank—mumbling such things, I fussed over those shoddy specimens, hurriedly righting them as though treasured before pulling them close to my chest until the vibrations subsided.

In this dim aviary-like attic—where I startled at crows’ wingbeats, shrieked oddly, or stamped my feet among the birds—my hunched form became indistinguishable from the surrounding specimens: neither woodpecker nor horned owl nor anything nameable. Thus did Tona and Yuzuta find me eerily unsettling. In truth, when the waterwheel turned, my seated figure—upright in bed clutching a goose—bounced with a rhythm more amusingly harmonious than the birds around me, for it rested upon springs.

Under the window flowed a gentle current, but silken threads of spray—struck loose by the waterwheel’s paddles—rained down upon the window screen, and from within the bright sunshine came a sunshower.

III

Because of this illness, I could not shorten the waterwheel’s operation, so whenever I could no longer endure those vibrations, I would move my sickly body to the attic of the barn directly across from the stable.

The phantom of my mother grew more vivid in my dreams with each passing day. —I could do nothing but gaze up at the distant village path where cliffs piled upon cliffs and slopes overlapped slopes, letting out a deep sigh.

“At least until the day I can ride you.”

I stood before the stable and, while stroking Z’s muzzle, “When that day comes, gently carry this pitiful patient away,” I would whisper in an affectedly theatrical nasal voice. Somehow in those days, having grown inexplicably timid around people until I could scarcely speak properly, I increasingly found myself clutching at beasts to vent endless complaints or act out the pantomime of a sorrowful actor. Yet when Z opened his dull eyes—as though vexed I hadn’t come bearing feed—he merely expelled a rough, portentous sigh from his languid nostrils. Not even a blink would he spare to acknowledge my theatrical posturing. My chest had turned into two rigid rods, yet even they couldn’t withstand the pressure of that snort driving into me.

This old stallion, as though never forgetting the rough treatment I had often inflicted upon his innate laziness and greed during my days of health, now brushed off my pitifully feeble theatrical lines—uttered as if this were some belated revelation—with the very tip of his nose. For my part, when I considered my various past misdeeds against him, my current demeanor struck even me as shamelessly theatrical—yet each time I approached, his utter lack of receptivity drove me to distraction. Z would demand fodder at the mere sight of any human figure, yet upon recognizing someone who offered none, no matter how benevolently their face might be brimming with kindness, he would grow inexplicably sullen and refused to grow even slightly accustomed. From those packhorse tendencies, I was now trying to correct Z’s temperament ever so slightly toward suitability for my riding needs—yet he remained obstinate through and through.

“What a wretched nag you are!” When struck by Z’s ugly whinny, I grimaced as though about to vomit from the mortifying awkwardness of having my pitiful performance ruined. In turn, I too harbored a spiteful determination not to lose, and waiting until just when Z had eaten his fill of fodder and sunk into a sulking nap, I stealthily tickled his mud-like nostrils with a crow feather. Z was an extraordinarily skittish horse, and each time this happened, he would let out a shriek and leap into the air. It wasn’t that he was sensitive—he simply had no patience for enduring things and reacted with exaggerated theatrics. His stud horse too had originally been a workhorse here, but when a single horsefly landed on its nose, it caused such an uproar that it leaped into the river and drowned—this was its sire. Z let out a sound like a monster’s laugh and tried to violently kick down the crossbeam of the doorway. There’s no chance of him growing accustomed now anyway—I resigned myself and thought, serves that beast right for its whinnying! With a resentful glare, I tried to sleep again, but then crept up on tiptoe and tickled him mercilessly.

The sky glowed purple. The shrike's cry pierced sharply. Under walkers' soles, frost pillars crumbled as wildfire smoke billowed distantly—Hwee-ee! With a guttural sound neither sneeze nor snort, Z exhaled skyward; even through my window beyond the eaves, I distinctly perceived the vivid white form of an elephant dissolving heavenward.

“Stop this wretched mischief already.”

Tona turned toward my window and showed her fist. And then, when she quietly stroked Z’s nose, the clamorous cries gradually subsided. Tona had an innate skill for taming small birds and animals. And though she often explained her methods to me, the relationship between Z and me seemed daily on the verge of turning even into enmity. I listened through the window to Tona and Z’s growing familiarity, fluttering my suspicious eyes like a cowardly villain, then with idle hands flipped through the books by my pillow. No one’s books in particular—there were only two or three old volumes scattered beside me.

One book was a small genetics text. It detailed Galton’s law—expressed through equations like 1=1/2＋1/4＋1/8＋1/16—wherein an individual A inherits ½ of their temperament from the preceding generation, ¼ from the generation before that, and so forth in even ratios; alongside Mendel’s report that established new principles through experimental theories of “dominant” and “recessive” traits. Following Galton’s law, when I imagined my ancestors as far back as I could trace, foolishness, absurdity, reckless courage, and cowardice were calculated to manifest in ratios of halves and quarters. Furthermore, when compared according to Mendelian principles, I was made to realize that beings such as Z and myself indeed stood as clear specimens of 'recessive' traits. “I chatter, Chatter, as I flow……” I listened to the stream beneath my window and grew melancholic.

IV

The letter from my mother urged me, as the eldest son, to return home regarding the memorial services for my father and grandfather. —I was dreaming of massaging Mother’s shoulders. The heart of a wandering child—that longing for his mother—was being pelted by glittering rain beyond a mysterious colorless mountain.

…Beneath the window overlooking the sea, I was steadily massaging Mother’s shoulders. We seemed to be conversing about some particularly happy memory. I forgot what we had been discussing the moment I awoke, but as I gazed vacantly at the sea beyond the window—a serene expanse so dazzling it blurred my vision—the small wave crests that had seemed so innocuous began swelling relentlessly into a tsunami, surging forth until they pressed against our very windowsill. I could only gasp in astonishment—This is… this is…—and when at last I tried to lift Mother into my arms, she had already transformed into a bronze seated statue, utterly beyond my strength to raise. And yet Mother spoke clearly, muttering something like “Why are you in such a rush?” and laughed crisply.

“Mother… Mother…”

I awoke to my own cry. It was a storm-like tumult in my chest.

Even this stirring in me akin to longing for Mother wrung a grotesque cold sweat from my body—a sensation born of forced nonchalance, for never had we exchanged ordinary words, nor had I laid eyes on her in over three years, and though I indifferently endured being called an unfilial wretch, how could such a plausible dream arise from mere indelible blood ties lingering in some corner of my heart! As I rubbed my eyes, I felt as though I might vomit up black blood.

I could not help but flee to the stable’s attic. Choking on the swirling fodder dust, I pressed my hands over my eyes and nostrils and collapsed into the dried grass. Whenever I was driven by an uncontrollable fit of violent throbbing in my chest, it had become my habit to flee to that attic—yet these storms within my breast were always utterly nonsensical, arising without any discernible cause, and though there was nothing in particular to grieve over, without fail when the fit struck, tears would suddenly overflow until at last I could not help but raise a sob. This affliction was none other than a form of neurasthenia caused by a deficiency of vitamin B—for even when seized by fits of intense laughter, I would be assailed by the same outcome.

Z, startled by the bizarre clatter of my crashing in, kicked away the empty feed bucket dangling before his nose; struck in the snout by the recoil, he stood frozen, his whole body trembling in shock. “What are you doing, laughing like that…” Tona—who had been cutting straw with an osikiri—saw my face already on the verge of tears as I rushed up the ladder steps. “You seem to have recovered quite a bit, haven’t you? It’s almost spring now, after all…” She mocked with those remarks. Since operating the osikiri was dangerous, one-eyed Yuzuta carried bundles of dried grass to Tona’s side while singing.

“That brute Z’s eyes went wide after he kicked the feed bucket and got hit by the recoil himself.” I managed to force a smile, but as for the emotion called “laughter”—I had never once detected even the faintest tremor of it in any extremity of my peripheral nerves. I regretted having been so frantically rushed that I failed to notice the osikiri’s sound and singing voices that should have been audible downstairs, but with no other choice, fearing my words would fail me— “I want you to take me as far as Oufuki’s place in Oniyanagi?”

I called out to Yuzuta. "My old mother says she wants a massage on account of her age..." Though nothing of the sort was written in the letter, I found myself wanting—unexpectedly even to me—to have Oufuki summoned if only to gain some respite from this self-reproach.

Oufuki was Yuzuta’s aunt and a practitioner of moxibustion, massage, and bone-setting, but she was so profoundly deaf that communication proved impossible without hand gestures. Otherwise one would have needed to shout loud enough to call down someone from the mountain’s summit—a feat beyond me, who lacked even the voice to curse Z properly. By nature a dim-witted old woman prone to wild misinterpretations that left others confounded, she had achieved such rapport only with my mother, who could converse smoothly with her through deft gestures. Come winter, people would once have eagerly awaited Oufuki’s visits—but now she apparently passed her days in bleak seclusion, having long concealed from the world how I’d recklessly amassed debts throughout my mother’s town before fleeing. Since my grandmother’s era, it had been her custom to cross the mountains after autumn’s harvest and linger until the snow melted on the distant peaks.

“As a side benefit, why don’t you have Oufuki give you some moxibustion too?” For someone with my condition, those around me had long been recommending that Oufuki’s massage and moxibustion would likely prove most effective—but even the mere thought made my hair stand on end, and I feigned deafness. Recalling that, Tona and Yuzuta promptly recommended Oufuki’s treatment to me. “I’ll walk partway, and if it proves truly unbearable, I’ll rest at Oufuki’s place for the time being.”

I made up my mind. "But I'll have to decline any massages or moxibustion." "I've never been massaged before, but just imagining how unbearably ticklish that would be—it's more than I could stand." "If we pinned you down and made you take the moxibustion, this wishy-washy sickness of yours would be cured in one go..." Yuzuta's single eye glinted sharply. I inevitably noticed his glass eye first—that grotesquely luminous orb left perpetually agape like a Nioh statue's glaring eyeball—and felt intimidated by its intensity. But when I calmly focused on his right eye, it merely gazed downward with sheepish timidity, fluttering meekly.

“I want to help out too.”

Tona added her support from beside them. “If this stubborn fool were to have those moxa cones applied, just imagine how he’d carry on—I can’t help but feel it’d serve him right.” “Please don’t concern yourself with me.”

I shook my head violently. “Look at that face of yours—like you’re already having moxibustion done…” I absolutely hated things like moxibustion and massage—no matter the reason—and could not even bear to witness others undergoing such treatments. The phrase “Oufuki’s moxibustion” had long been readied as a terrorizing refrain for me since childhood. Even in recent years—let alone childhood—there was a time when Mother, who had long lost patience with my dissolute drinking, muttered offhandedly that having Oufuki’s moxibustion applied might settle me down; upon hearing this, I shuddered without a second thought and fled in a scrambling panic. By all accounts, Oufuki’s moxibustion was said to be remarkably effective for the nervous system—so much so that none but the gravest patients sought her treatment—yet I vividly remember, from early childhood, a single instance of my grandfather undergoing that brutal therapy. My grandfather was employed at the Oniyanagi village office (though of course this was none other than extreme neurasthenia—not that anyone ever ascribed such a diagnosis to the patient), but along his commute, he would often find himself bewitched by foxes into performing unspeakably wretched and absurd antics—until at last, driven to desperation, he resolved to undergo Oufuki’s moxibustion.

Oufuki’s moxibustion likely differed from commonplace bean-sized ones in its ferocity—copper-coin-sized moxa cones were stacked over vital points, then set ablaze and vigorously fanned with a hand fan while burning, creating a fearsome spectacle. My grandfather’s bared chest—yes, now that I think of it, that gaunt and leathery torso of his, like a stiffened persimmon-tanned fan from generations past, along with the wind-chime-like timidity and petty cowardice encased within it—had been passed down to me unchanged. His ribs stood countable, his abdomen hollowed into a spoon-shaped concavity. As Oufuki slowly began her preparations, that spoon-shaped hollow—now terror-stricken—swelled violently, gradually expanding and contracting like a rapidly pumped bellows. He bit down on the window frame like a horse baring lion’s fangs, yet no voices of pity were heard from those around him—though not a single flame had yet been lit. His expression had already frozen into a rigid Kara-shishi mask, glaring fiercely at the heavens, his spindly shanks trembling like wooden slats, clattering at the knee joints.—Unable to bear watching this venerable elder writhe in terror with such grotesque contortions, I hastily fled the scene. Thus, I never ascertained whether he heroically endured that treatment or not—yet even now, decades later, his expression at that moment remains preserved in my memory as vividly as if I could still grasp that Kara-shishi mask in my hands. Ever since then, even upon merely hearing the word “moxibustion,” I would unwittingly feel as though this face of mine too might transform into such an agonizing mask.

Mother later recounted how Grandfather had burst into hiccuping sobs at that moment—Hic-hic-hic! She told how he’d cried out with those convulsive gasps, and just as the moxa flames were about to reach his skin, let loose a stray-cat wail, leapt up shaking off the burning cones, and vaulted over the windowsill—but I thought it only natural! I sympathized. “As for my father…”

Mother boasted about her own father. “Even if they lit three of those moxa cones on him at once, he’d just calmly keep smoking his tobacco.” “That’d be the skin on his back…” “Don’t spout such nonsense!”

Mother was greatly displeased. And so it was said that my grandfather—overpowered by Oufuki’s brute strength, she who was skilled enough to pound rice cakes—had moxibustion forcibly applied until his illness was finally cured. But had he continued it for three weeks, twenty-one days (though the first two or three sessions inflicted the greatest agony, with the burning pain diminishing as they repeated—), it stood to reason that even the hardiest nerves would have been paralyzed. “Mine isn’t some nervous disorder or anything, so keep your moxibustion away from me.”

I worried that Yuzuta’s overzealous kindness might lead Oufuki to jump the gun with her treatments—a real disaster!—and so found myself belatedly explaining my symptoms in exhaustive detail.

“Anyway, having the old woman give you a massage would probably be best…” “No thanks!” “I wonder if I’ll just faint away and die sometimes?” “At times like that, even a bird’s feather brushing me makes me so ticklish I jolt back awake—if I actually got a massage, I’d be tickled to death for sure.” “Oh, how I hate it!” I felt compelled to make myself perfectly clear, so I kept stubbornly elaborating on how much I detested moxibustion and massage. Yuzuta’s offhand remarks kept startling me each time they came, sending shudders through my body,

“What a troublesome illness you’ve got!”

he seemed to grow indignant. However, when I looked at his right eye and realized it bore a bitter smile, I tensed up. Yuzuta had a tendency to push even unwanted things on others, so I worried that provoking him would lead to trouble.

From an uncharacteristic dream about Mother—dragging up matters like Oufuki—I found myself thrust into undue discomfiture,

“So far away...” I groaned. Nothing afflicted my own heart with such disgraceful turbidity as when I remembered Mother. The more natural a child’s longing for a parent should be, the more I found myself bathed in filthy mire beyond a double enclosure. While I remained unable to witness my mother’s life firsthand, I could only grapple with the emotions of a child bewitched by her. There was no memorial service or anything of the sort—and so I would pit Mother’s hypocritical words against my own pseudo-malicious lingering resentment. Yet abandoning the moral facades of human ethics, the absolute cause-and-effect intervening between parent and child as mere humans was terrifying, lamentable, and yet starkly simple—there existed no path to discard everything in accordance with morality or purity.

“Let’s stop talking about Oufuki.” “—Anyway, I have to keep walking.”

“In that case, shall I prepare a palanquin?”

Yuzuta pointed to the mountain palanquin in the barn loft, but Tona, having long viewed the emotions I harbored toward my mother as decadent,

“Let Z throw you off for all I care—” Tona spat out dismissively. Tona misunderstood my feelings as though I were someone clinging greedily to material possessions, but I had no way to explain myself. I found the words she used to curse my mother utterly terrifying.

Tona swung her hay-cutting arm in time with a whistle, showing no intention of engaging with me. I, leaving behind the sound of straw being chopped, grasped a hatchet and headed to the bamboo grove across the river to search for a walking staff to use in crossing the mountains.

Five

Our village was called Kiseiki Village, the hamlet of Oninamida. The traces of Oninamida Marsh were now dried up, becoming a damp expanse where mugwort and reeds grew thickly. Tona, who proposed to accompany me partway, borrowed Yuzuta’s gun and brought along Roku—a stray dog she had tamed. Yuzuta grasped Z’s bridle, while I planted my catkin willow staff with anxious upward glances—and so our party departed the marsh’s edge at the hour when dawn’s stars still glimmered. Even departing Oninamida at such an early hour, it was customary for even a healthy walker’s pace to only reach Otonashuku—where one might find the bus terminus—by twilight.

“To reach Yagurasawa by noon, I suppose I’ll have to ride Z from time to time after all…” Yuzuta, concerned that my gait—from the very start of our departure—was marked by ominously labored breathing, kept his mouth firmly shut, breathed only through his nostrils, and cautioned me not to lean my chest forward. Cutting a staff that seemed too heavy would have been excessively cumbersome, so settling on a willow branch was preferable—though even that was rather thick. Yet before I knew it, my spine swayed like the willow itself, making this breath-staff utterly unreliable.

“I have absolutely no intention of riding Z, so if Tona gets tired, let her borrow him.” I worried about Tona as she wound through the woods—Roku leading the way, veering onto side paths—but she chased after birds without a trace of fatigue.

Tona shot down a pheasant on the midslope of Tatsumakiyama. “Could you keep the prey stored until I return…” “Do you know the goose has completely healed and started walking? I’d gladly hand over birds I’ve shot down, but to already have designs on taxidermying a goose that’s still breathing—honestly, you’re insatiable.”

Tona tied the prey to Z’s saddle and set off ahead along the byway once more.

“Reaching Yagurasawa would be impossible.” “We’ll have lunch around Kitsunezuka, I suppose.”

I recalled the goose chasing after Tona as she did laundry, its throat gurgling—had that been the bird whose injury was healed? The realization struck me. Thinking it would never withstand a weasel’s attack, I had resolved to turn it into a specimen at once—but seeing how effortlessly it recovered depending on treatment, I understood there must have been birds among those lining my room that could have retained their lives without being taxidermied at all. Lost in these thoughts, I hurried along the path behind Z.

“Who knows—Granny Oufuki might be at Kitsunezuka.” “These days her massage work’s dried up—I hear she’s been busier helping pound New Year’s rice cakes.”

At the Kitsunezuka teahouse, there was Yuzuta’s mistress. Yuzuta was already over forty, yet remained unmarried—ashamed of the one eye that refused to close even in sleep. He feared sleeping beside his mistress there, fleeing back over the mountains to Oninamida even at midnight. For Yuzuta, the path to Kitsunezuka posed no hardship, but shepherding such a feeble-legged companion must have felt excruciatingly dull. “To think she can still pound rice cakes at her age!”

I marveled at the old woman’s formidable strength. Before long, my voice no longer reached Yuzuta. From the depths of the oak forest, gunshots occasionally echoed. Because we were descending the ravine, their reverberations overlapped manifold above our heads and resounded like lightning. Each time, the hindquarters of Z—walking ahead of me—would leap slightly, while on that slope’s rocky, uneven gradient, his listless hooves grew prone to stumbling. And the empty saddle clattered as it bounced upward.

“No matter what… I can’t ride that.” If I fell too far behind, Yuzuta would try to seat me on that saddle—so I strained to keep just enough distance to hear his words as I trailed after them, though at times I had to break into a jog merely to keep Z’s shadow in view. The sight of myself lurching along with such dubious steps could be no different from that goose who had only just recovered from its injury—this thought filled me with grief. My breathing grew ever more ragged, leaving me steeped in bitter shame over having rashly undertaken this march.

From this point onward, moving at such a pace, I was seized by dread that we likely wouldn’t even reach Oniryuu by dusk. Tatsumakiyama, Kijigafuchi, Ikariuta, Yagurasawa, Kitsunezuka, Fubukigawa—the path that would eventually lead to Oniryuu Forest—but merely reciting these names now filled me with a dizziness as if the ground had turned to waves. Still—why must the names of these local inns be written with such bizarre characters? As I let my thoughts wander to such irrelevant matters, those villages appeared before me like demon-haunted hamlets piled along the path of fairy-tale warrior apprentices.

In my healthier days, I would catch my breath at Oniryuu’s post town, then tighten the reins and plunge down to Itachidani in one go—cutting through Rakan Forest, following the riverbank from Nioumon Gate to whistle through the three-mile embankment leading to Otonashuku. But comparing that past vigor to this present frailty—was it not as different as the tortoise and the hare? Even when opting for detours to avoid steep slopes as much as possible—resting to drink water, soothing my chest—my staggering gait resembled that of a stroke patient. Now, merely descending to Kijigafuchi and ascending to Ikariuta seemed precarious enough that I lost count of how many times I resolved to call Tona and Yuzuta back. Yet compelled by the vanished figures ahead and terrified by the nightmare of solitude’s shadow, I dragged my legs forward with labored gasps.

Yuzuta—who had been waiting for me to catch up while tapping out his pipe beside a roadside stone monument—observed my breathless state with thorough absorption and sympathized.

“After all, you can’t manage without a palanquin.” “Endure until Kitsunezuka.” “Once we reach there, even if turning back, they’ll prepare a palanquin—” For those too ill to ride horseback through these mountain paths, the traditional mountain palanquin remained the only option. The scenery consisted solely of trails my grandfather had walked and natural vistas likely unchanged to this day. This remote region held no notable landmarks—a backwater so thoroughly rustic that electric lights weren’t even deemed to reach Otonashuku. Beneath Yagura Pass’s Japanese larch trees where my grandfather had been constantly transformed by foxes, countless absurd and tragic tales still lingered on people’s tongues. Before us now stretched that very pine, its branches arcing skyward like a leaping dancer, ethereally beckoning winds—a scene ripe for pouring mountain spirits’ hypnotic spells into a neurasthenic’s solitary path. Even as constellations shifted, the flow of time between me—standing at the roots of a larch oblivious to changing forms—and my great-grandfather’s generation remained an ancient mountain trail unnoticed even by myself.

Even if by some chance we were to borrow Kitsunezuka’s mountain palanquin and reach Oniryuu by day’s end, descending to the town where Mother lived would require me to rise at dawn the next day and first head toward Otonashuku to find the bus route—a plank walkway along a gorge that would still set even a healthy person’s heart racing perilously, making most choose to walk instead. Thus of course I would have no choice but to continue riding in the palanquin for half a day or more, until finally tracing my way toward Yamakita Station where train whistles could be heard. In the environs of Oninamidanuma and Kitsunezuka, such mountain palanquins are hardly considered strange—but to head toward a bustling station road where automobiles and locomotives raise the smoke of civilization as they come and go, hoi-hoi-hoi! No matter how dashingly spirited such rallying cries may be, in the end I simply cannot muster the courage to ride forth boldly into their midst. In this day and age, is this not the very height of shame?

In any case, even if it took me several days, I had no choice but to set out for Yamakita Station with my cane.

Even so, each time I watched my toes charting their course forward step by step, my heart seemed inversely attuned to the calls of horned owls and jays summoning me back to Oninamida’s dim attic. Though I was one who ought to return for the ancestral spirits’ festival, as my mother’s phantom—drawing nearer to reality—gradually took shape before me, the visions that had swelled into myriad forms were suddenly severed like straw beneath a sickle, shattered into fragments and scattered across the gale-swept sky.

Tona had shot down three bulbuls in addition to the pheasant and was suggesting they would make good souvenirs, “Alright, no more dawdling around. I’ll have you lead Z ahead.” and shouldered her rifle before climbing into the saddle. “At this rate, we’ll barely reach Kitsunezuka before nightfall.”

“Your walking’s so damn sluggish, I started dozing off mid-stride!” Yuzuta began to retort but immediately stopped himself, fearing others might imagine how his glass eye would appear if he dozed off. Instead, he blinked his narrow eye fiercely and set about preparing the lunchbox. Z, despite being a horse, had displayed signs of dejection over such a short journey just like me—though his was mostly that lazy penchant for exaggeration!—but when Tona took the reins, he raised his head with a goodwill he’d never shown in my case. As I tried to rise, seething with hatred and glaring sideways at the beast’s eyes with a fierce glare, Z snorted contemptuously—

“Get moving already—you’re in the way!” Snorting as if swatting a horsefly, Z shook his muzzle and tried to nudge my shoulder—I started in surprise and leapt forward. In the moment I twisted away and slipped beneath his jaw, I sorely wanted to deliver a swift slap across his cheek—but the sticky strings of drool foaming around his muzzle were too repulsive to touch.

The shaded mountain path from Ikariuta to Yagura Pass was especially steep; a narrow yellow earth slope path, like a belt, lay buried in deep withered grass. “See here—walking like this shows you’re plenty sturdy. Being too cautious does more harm than good.” Tona called out from behind me with encouragement laced with derision. “At this rate, you might even stagger all the way to Yamakita in three days or so.” “I can walk perfectly well.” “Three days or four—it makes no difference... Just keep moving straight through to Odawara...”

Odawara was the destination.

The path had gradually narrowed until it became barely passable, and already the distant mountain range was tinged with dusk’s hues. I now maintained complete silence, focusing solely on climbing—yet only my exhaled breath remained vivid, sinking deeper into a snail’s crawl with each passing moment. Whenever I reached a bend in the lightning-shaped mountain path, I drew a deep breath and tilted my canteen. But before I could hesitate, Z’s lukewarm breath—reeking of bestial stench—billowed thickly against my neck. Startled, I had no choice but to leap forward like a frog. The beast too seemed thoroughly exhausted by now, blowing bubbles of fatigue—each snort assailing me with a tactile sensation akin to a fox’s tail brushing skin—and with every one, my entire body erupted in gooseflesh. My entire body trembling, I thrust my neck forward like an injured mantis—yet each time my straw sandals sank into frost-heaved earth and stuck fast, my hips would sway helplessly. The moment I dawdled, Z’s muzzle thrust over my shoulder—and before I could even register the steam erupting from both nostrils—it collided with upward-sloping frozen ground, rebounding onto my face like water from a pump striking a wall. I suffered this dismal blinding assault and began choking.

“Look out, look out—you’ll be crushed under Z’s belly.” “If you don’t walk faster—” Tona pretended not to see the pitiful states of Z and me—stretching up sharply—for Yuzuta had already arrived beneath the Japanese Red Pine, burning dead branches to warm sake! She kept urging us to hurry ahead. If I could just climb this, today’s ordeal would be over! Gritting my teeth, I had barely managed to wriggle out from under Z’s jaw and escape the steam’s blinding assault when—its snort now stretched three to five feet to assail the nape of my neck. I instinctively drew my neck in like a turtle retracting into its shell and writhed to stretch my legs beyond that ghastly breath’s reach—but my limbs soon refused to lift, as though forged from iron bars.

Though I kept throwing myself down with half-formed urges to turn back, it was only through the beast’s relentless pursuit that I had reached this point. Now trapped on a slope so steep that wavering even slightly would see me kicked away by Z’s hooves, I became frantic—sank my teeth into withered grass stalks like a lion and devoted myself to the piston of my breath with desperate ferocity as if this were my final stand.

As we climbed, the path narrowed increasingly, and withered miscanthus plumes overhanging from both cliff sides brushed against Z’s flanks left and right. Z let out a guttural neigh identical to when I’d pranked his nostrils with a bird feather, then began continuously farting. I involuntarily gasped “Ugh!” The moment my breath caught, I pressed both palms over my nose and mouth with all my strength. “Shoo! Shoo-shoo!”

Even Tona was now utterly panicked and kicked Z’s belly in one swift motion. As we neared the pass, sunlight began to filter through, and when that steam struck the ground beneath my armpit, a hole formed in the frost columns—just large enough for my straw sandal to sink into. Z’s anguish reached a ghastly extreme, the sound of his breath alternately expelled toward sky and ground was as clamorous as a locomotive’s smokestack.

The exposed earth was flesh-colored red soil, and my straw sandal caught in a hole had etched upon the frost-covered ground a waterfall rendered with vigorous brushstrokes. I gasped—Hot!— In that instant I stretched all four limbs beneath Z’s nose. Later according to Tona’s account, Z—desperately trying not to trip over that object ahead while irritably monitoring its movements—had appeared far more wretched than pitiable. Yet at that moment the beast’s dejected exhalations reeking of raw offal poured ceaselessly from nostrils and maw draped over my neck pressing me flat like a plank until finally a viscous ribbon of drool began oozing down my nape. My entire body felt tickled by centipede tentacles more repulsive than any fox’s tail. The rancid icicle slid slowly from my back through armpits curved around my chest then extended probing feelers toward my lower abdomen. This torture alone proved truly lethal for me.

Truly, when I recall the eeriness and suffocation of that time, no matter how many preposterously exaggerated adjectives I conjured, they still fell woefully short of capturing that purgatorial torment. When I recall how that filthy horse's drool oozed repulsively into my very core, even a million times over I'd shudder—in an instant, I'd likely transform into some long-necked monster. Collapsed like a frog, I nevertheless tried to rise again, and as I drew two, three furious waterfall patterns on the frost with my alternating straw sandals, Z's hoof finally crushed my thighbone with all its might.

After over two hours of death, I revived beside a bonfire blazing like an eerie flame within the deep evening haze. The great Japanese red pine—said to have once ensnared my grandfather’s soul with a mountain spirit’s malevolent aura, causing him to lose himself in delusions of pitiful revelry at its base—stood alone atop the bald peak, its mighty arms outstretched as though conjuring a giant’s frenzied dance. The trunk of the great tree swayed in the thousand-year wind sweeping up from the eastern plain, as though so astounded by the splendor of stars in the vast sky that it had arched back its chest and spread its arms wide in dumbstruck awe. The moment I revived, I thought—could this be some unseen corner of death’s realm? What magnificent giant stood beside me—what could it possibly find so astonishing? In such a state of mind, I gazed vacantly at that same distant sky. In the east, Pisces’ stars glimmered faintly. The town ahead lay by a sea still unseen, far to the east.

Yuzuta carried me on his back and descended the pass. “It hurts! It hurts!” I screamed with all my might and shouted, “No more of Oufuki’s bone-setting treatments…!” “If it ain’t Granny Oufuki, we can’t manage it,” “Like it or not, get your whole body worked over and moxa set—then you’ll quit complainin’.” Yuzuta charged down the slope in a headlong rush.

“When we near Fox Mound, just bear with the wailing.”

Tona whispered from Z’s saddle and then dashed past us, plunging into the evening haze.

“No! No!”

“No more massage!” I kept resisting frantically, but Yuzuta’s strides sliced through the air in bounds that even Z couldn’t match. Starlight fractured through my tears as Z’s figure retreating through the dimness appeared to my eyes like something dancing with glee. Was I an adult? An infant? Or had I ceased being human altogether? With this unfathomable frenzy and grief tearing through me, I screamed with all my might and kicked Yuzuta in the flank.

＊

As for me—still breathing without having died like that—surely a brief postscript would suffice here, without needing to conclude this like a proper novel. I remained sitting among the taxidermied birds in the Oninamida waterwheel shack. And yet, even though that long winter had passed and summer now surrounded me with fireflies dancing, all I could summon to mind was how those perilous mountain paths still lay far beyond reach in snowmelt depths too treacherous to cross—as if even the most human of worries had been forgotten. At times, Yuzuta’s single eye—appearing to vent grievances about his lot in life—would glint sharply, chilling my chest to numbness. Yet once I recognized it as his glass eye, my dread dissolved. In the dimness, assured he wouldn’t notice, I calmly gazed at his face lost in midday slumber—at that suddenly illuminated gleam in his opened eye—as though observing an unfinished bird specimen. Tona was gathering fireflies to send to friends in Tokyo, but all the while she carried a rifle to shoot weasels, presenting a bizarre figure that seemed less like a firefly hunt and more like some grim slaughter. Though I had yet to work on any animals, I found myself hoping that if a weasel were successfully killed, I might venture into creating animal specimens starting with it—all while listening to the chattering stream below the window. One leg remained impaired, requiring crutches for even moderately long distances.

If another specimen were added they would form a pair; the male goose—its unbalanced base still unadjusted—tumbled over as always when the waterwheel began turning. And the revived female goose had begun laying eggs.