Pathway to Japanese Literature

March 6th The novel he had meant to finish by yesterday hadn't even reached one-fifth completion. This too filled him with profound unease. When you write down your thoughts only to feel they're lies upon rereading—is one's heart impure? Yet these days, I wasn't entirely without things I wanted to write.

Couldn't I find any words?! Now that today had come, he would have to abandon all those things—and yet when he belatedly realized this, he was struck by a frantic sense that those formless matters might take shape at any moment; no sooner had this thought come than he instead felt refreshed and exhaled lightly. How terribly anxious Mother must be! How long she must have been waiting in vain! Out of such consideration, he had forced upon himself a sort of bureaucratic discipline to stretch things out until today—but it had been a foolish thing.

Being nothing but worthless manuscript pages that should be discarded—dirty scraps of paper that brought no emotion other than boredom when he thought of continuing them—he hadn’t even had time to burn them, so he carelessly tossed them into his desk drawer. And then, he deliberately fanned the flames of his childish excitement. “Once the ninth is over, I’ll leave on a trip right away.” I should return as soon as possible—I thought. If it had come to this, it would have undoubtedly been wiser if I had left Tokyo then, as planned during New Year’s. And yet, I was struck by the contradiction of having become 'non-artistic' instead since throwing myself into my novel.

When I resolved myself, I nevertheless felt a refreshing clarity devoid of anything one might deem worldly. In a room at a hot spring inn along the stream, the figure of myself—who would likely continue writing ceaselessly about matters now beyond even my wildest dreams—appeared vividly in my mind. After all, carrying a pen and embarking on a journey was something I had never done before.

“You all can stay in Odawara, you know.” “That’s fine.” “Shall we return here around May?” Because we had missed the train we had decided to take by a mere minute, we had to wait at the station for nearly two hours. If we go now, we probably won’t reach home until around midnight—should we try again tomorrow? And how about we go see the town tonight? When he turned to his wife to consult her, she shook her head nervously. She had refused.

“If we fail to go today, it’ll mean terrible trouble.”

"But tomorrow…" It had been nearly half a year since he last rode a train. Though he had ridden one before, that too had only been as far as Odawara. From Tokyo. There was nothing particularly unpleasant about it, but what if he were to pass straight through on an express train without turning onto that △△ Line? Would he feel like getting off?

"I suppose I'd want to get off there," I thought. Even my very ideology seemed contaminated by such sentimentality.

“I feel like there’s not enough time to eat, and…”

“There’s still two whole hours!” “Well, it just feels somehow unpleasant...” “So we’re just going to stand here like this for two whole hours?” “So, well...” “Do you plan to keep drinking even after we get home?” The wife brought up the matter of alcohol with a slightly anxious look. “Why must you ask things like that immediately?!” “……” “Even so, two hours feels rather half-hearted, doesn’t it? Something like this?” “I wonder if that’s the Marunouchi Building over there?”

“A far longer journey would have been more convenient, actually… I should’ve left when I had the chance before…”

"I don't know." As they kept arguing and dawdling over such things, their five-year-old child—who seemed to have already absorbed his father’s dilatory nature— “Let’s eat our lunch!” “Let’s eat our lunch!” he shrieked in his practiced shrill voice—a daily imitation of station attendants’ calls—as he kicked at his mother’s legs with his shoe tips, thump thump. At home she would have remained unfazed by such behavior, but here she put on an odd air and burst into a booming laugh. Then her face turned red. He too felt his own face redden slightly,

“You idiot!” I admonished in a somewhat self-conscious manner, as if worried about others watching. “You’re the much bigger fool,” retorted the child. The child thrust out his chin with a resentful glare. Lately he often got into fights with neighborhood children. I had frequently witnessed such behavior but never once admonished him. Moreover we as a couple often had violent quarrels. Overcome with vexation she turned to me,

“You’re the much bigger fool, I tell you,” she had once stated with suppressed bitterness.

The wife picked up the child and rushed out of the waiting room. While I thought her actions seemed unnatural and contemptible, I hurriedly grabbed the bag and followed after her. "He won't come out—it's truly a problem—"

“That’s not true.” “When we go out, he seems to deliberately not listen.” “Maybe a little—that might be true. Outside, it’s because you don’t scold him…” When he said this, the wife forced an unpleasant smile. He did likewise.

We were not the sort to wait two hours in a deserted corridor. We lingered restlessly with unsettled minds.

When they suddenly noticed, the child was stomping into the restaurant right before them with self-consciously exaggerated strides—a habit he had whenever acting up, straining to plant each foot down hard. —There’s always something forced about my state of mind when returning home, something akin to that pretense—I abruptly thought. Earlier in the waiting room, having found nowhere to sit, we had stood among the crowd while he dashed around benches like at a horse race, charging out to the corridor and back through the entrance. He must have entered this restaurant assuming it equally packed as before. We clicked our tongues and pursued him.

Though spacious, the dining hall here was packed nearly to capacity—scarcely an empty seat remained. We stood frozen at the entrance, quite without meaning to. The child’s figure appeared shorter than the tables; sweeping my gaze back and forth like a searchlight, I couldn’t even spot his head. I tried to call my child’s name, but it wouldn’t come out. Scanning the entire dining hall seemed like too much trouble, I thought. I stiffened. Even in places like this we couldn’t blend in; merely entering made us grow somewhat rigid.

Around the time they passed Yokohama，the Child fell asleep. From now on I'll go out anywhere as casually as possible—maybe I'll take you all and leave Odawara on the evening of the ninth—there are so many tunnels! Though the Atami route's a bit gloomy... when you go to Yamakita，weren't the locomotives coupled front-to-back? That's right，wasn't it? When I said these things，the wife stared wide-eyed with curiosity and insisted she absolutely must come along.

She had grown weary of shuttling between Tokyo and Odawara.

“Mr. X is here.” When we exited the ticket gate, my wife pointed at the car driver standing there. ...When their dormitory had collapsed in the great earthquake, our house in that town happened to remain standing, so we had offered most of it to Mr. X and his group. We ourselves had become bustling through this arrangement, saved from that anxiety. Mr. X had been our young driver acquaintance ever since. He drove us slowly through Baraku’s midnight streets. As we rode, we wondered why we hadn’t visited since last summer! We talked about this very matter. Mr. X deliberately took a detour for conversation’s sake. He dropped us off before Little Baraku at the town’s edge, but even when my wife tried stuffing the paper-wrapped fare into his pocket, he kept refusing—Aha-ha! Laughing all the while—and since the road didn’t permit turning back—he drove straight onward without pause.

We banged on Baraku’s gate, from whose cracks light was leaking.—“Who’s there?” A voice challenged us, but pretending not to hear, I kept knocking relentlessly.

"I never truly thought you'd forget—but then again, being you..." This thought had caused me considerable anguish—yet Mother treated me with a sort of easygoing indulgence. Hearing that "Well, it's just like you—" even from my own parent made my skin crawl. What's more, she'd make these arbitrary demands like "Don't bother sending letters—writing replies is such trouble," so I'd been restraining myself—though come tomorrow, I'd planned to send a telegram...

"But well, it worked out in the end," Mother said, laughing as she repeated this twice. We talked mostly about laughable trifles without any real effort.

“We hold the memorial service the day before and visit the grave on the ninth—I know perfectly well how it’s done! But when [Name] claims we can manage everything on the ninth alone… such obstinacy!” “That’s been our custom since—” “No—they only said it was done that way in my father’s country, Mother.” “I sent out the letters yesterday under your name—meant to discuss the rest after you returned, but with today being what it is, I can’t wait any longer—so I’ve settled most of it—”

“Well, that’s really—Ha….” “That’s why I—well, I just thought I absolutely hadda go back today no matter what…”

“What if you’d missed the train?!”

We talked endlessly about trivial matters and went to bed as dawn was breaking.

March 7th

I woke up around noon. When I suddenly opened my eyes, I thought it was my usual Tokyo room. Merely being here was enough; since I had no other business, I took a small sum of money from Mother and went out into town.

The weather was fine. When I thought about how I'd fidgeted irritably at my desk in the Tokyo house, it struck me as somehow absurd—now I felt a calmness that might actually let me work with composure.

But here I resolved not to think about "work". When I thought of that, "household matters" became a hook caught in my upper jaw. And I suppressed all other fantasies. Who on earth cast this fishing hook?! Still, there’s no doubt he must be a rather skilled angler—skillfully manipulating the rod, even teasing the line and threading it through seaweed. Hiding among the rocks and having grown somewhat accustomed to the pain, just as I tried to slip into a dream—Not so fast! —he gave a yank. He gave no chance to shake free—Yank! I won’t thrash my head or kick my tail anymore, so if you’re going to haul me up, just haul me up already—stop being so damn careful—

And yet—wasn't spring coming after all? As I vented such absurd complaints, my thoughts kept shrinking worm-like.

Those works of mine were nothing but the wail of a fish that had swallowed a hook—thrashing about as it wallowed in mud. Emotions were attempting to congeal in their warped state. With jaw suspended and mouth agape, it would yawn—on rare occasions even hum a ditty to pass the time—yet from a mouth denied opening or closing, no clear voice could emerge, only the undulations of a conch shell's drone. When I returned in the evening, the aunt from Shizuoka had also come. She was the widow of T, the paternal second son who had died five years prior. T had been a doctor. This aunt now single-handedly ran a pharmacy in the Shizuoka countryside.

I mentioned my intention to visit Shizuoka soon. In Shizuoka lived the aging geisha Ocho. Of course I'd likely never written to Ocho either, but thinking she'd surely attend Father's memorial tomorrow, I'd visited Onoe Villa during my earlier walk to inquire after her. Talking to anyone felt tedious. Moreover, none of the household sat fidgeting. Only Mother—(when had she started wearing glasses?)—kept accounts by the tearoom hearth.

I decided to retreat into the box-like back room and sit down at the desk. The fact that I felt not the slightest urge to drink struck even me as strange. Here, sitting at the desk like this was something I hadn't even considered until just moments ago.

I took out a pen and paper from my briefcase and spread them across the desk. I tried to think of writing—but only stale, crippling thoughts spread across my vision, blocking any peripheral view. And yet I remained leaning against the desk. During the day, I drank a bit at Osono's place, but now it felt as insipid as water and I'd completely forgotten it. I wished I hadn’t gotten drunk at that house like I did at home—but even as I thought this, vivid recollections of all the drunken antics I’d performed there and here in my own house came flooding back and made me shudder.

“Where did X-chan go?” “Did he go out?” I heard Mother ask my wife. A lively dinner had begun. “I only had a little sake, but my face ended up this red.” The wife who came to check on me asked about my meal, to which I replied that I’d already finished eating alone, wearing the same curt expression I always had when facing my desk. She made a strange face and retreated.

Undoubtedly, my eyes were shining with a suspicious glint. ―I looked around my surroundings with the timid, dreamless demeanor of a criminal, while keeping an eye on the peaceful confusion in the distance.

The doll box that Mother said she had tidied away the previous day was placed in the tokonoma. Since I had no sisters, these were all old dolls from my grandmother and mother’s time—it was surprising such things had survived. I tried to forcibly bind my heart against their allure. “If you don’t display the dolls,” Grandmother used to tell me when I was young, “they’ll throw open their tsuzura trunks at dawn on the festival day and march in procession to drink from the well.” I had tried to immerse myself in these pleasant doll memories. Yet Grandmother’s tales still unsettled me even now.

Last night when I abruptly asked Mother about that story, she smiled bitterly and said—as if grasping for solace—"I decorated them with such anticipation. That night I stayed awake until nearly midnight..." Now that only Mother and Jiro remained in this house, what must their Doll Festival eve look like?... When Flora returned to America, we had sent her dolls once before. Though Mother made a disapproving face, I had blended in a pair of her old dolls and playfully appended that tale from Grandmother—does she remember it?

I propped my cheek on my hand and tried to summon the most carefree memories possible, yet my heart stubbornly refused to purify itself. I found myself horribly transfixed by Mother's writing box in the tokonoma's shadowed corner. This was the camphorwood box I'd known since childhood. When had my mind first begun fixating on that object? Even my fantasies of travel might have merely been excuses to flee the self-condemnation rotting in this accursed skull of mine.

I trembled with violent pulsations as I unsteadily reached my hand toward it.

Lost in writing—incompetent! Stuck! Pathetic excuses!

I, who had recently published a novel titled An Unfilial Man in literary circles only to provoke much ridicule and censure, now extended my hand like a thief once more.

"Ah..." I let out a despairing sigh. —My hand turned to dead wood and would not move. I stared at my bony hand exposed under the bright electric light. I bent my fingertips into the grotesque shape of a rake and clenched them, staring fixedly at nothing but those fingertips. My head was nothing more than a dull, stupid lump. ―Before long, my arm turned into a stupid hag's firewood-like arm severed by Watanabe no Tsuna's rope and tumbled down lifelessly.

While thinking itself felt cursed, I had fixated solely on that thing this whole time. It seemed I'd been indirectly deluding myself all along. Yet my heart remained clenched at its very root by that obsession, feeding on its grotesque void. "When it finally came to it—" Deep within my chest where a creator should dwell, some feral-eyed shred of hope had taken root. So even in Tokyo, sighing as I did, I'd nursed this uncanny calm somewhere inside.

But now that it had truly come to this, I found myself inadvertently solidifying my arm. My right arm had transformed into that grotesque form and lay sprawled lifelessly. ―I picked up that firewood-like arm and, making hollow thudding sounds, was tapping my wooden fish-shaped head with vacant persistence. ……“Ah, I must go on a trip to be saved.”

Mother had been keeping a diary since long ago. That writing box was supposed to contain Mother’s diary from this year. I had planned to steal a glimpse of it. I would steal a glimpse and plot to use it as material for my novel. Why did Mother’s diary compel me to such ugly curiosity—to a temptation that was anything but novelistic for me yet somehow novelistic in nature? Why do I feel such shameful agitation? I will omit the explanation here, but those who have read An Unfilial Man might perhaps imagine it. Lately, even from friends I correspond with closely: "What you’ve been writing these days is no good—boring!" I’ve been told.

Mother had kept a diary meticulously since long ago.

At year’s end, Mother would take my hand and go to the bookstore—

“Hakubunkan’s daily diary—” she would habitually inquire. On New Year’s Eve, when she finished the final page of that year’s volume—I remember—Mother would close it with a resounding snap unlike her usual motions, heavy with ceremony, then unlock the black writing box with its cabinet-style hinged lid and solemnly store it away. And when she returned to her seat once more, she opened this writing box’s lid and put away the replacement new diary. Every night, I would sit beside Mother at the desk, listening to her explanations of elementary textbooks like the National Reader and Swinton Reader, along with the Analects—yet during that time Mother would fastidiously keep her diary right before me.—This is a trivial aside, but Mother pronounced “reader” as “riido.” With the accentless pronunciation she had supposedly learned from the elderly Japanese Roman Catholic missionary who first brought English to our town, she would recite phrases like *Shiida Booi Endo Da Gaaru* (“See the boy and the girl”), *Supuraashyu Do Da Ootaa* (“Splashed the water”), and *Supin Aato Tsupu* (“Spin a top”) in the same monotone cadence as reciting the *iroha* syllabary. I came to remember spinning tops as *Aato Tsupu*.

"A diary isn't something meant for others to see," she said. "You should keep one freely—write down your thoughts and experiences without hiding them, regardless of whether they're good or bad." "I do the same," Mother had instructed me, though I never maintained one beyond a month. I would deface my diaries with drawings, yet Mother never once laid hands on hers. "As proof of that," she would ask, "are you keeping one now and then?" When questioned thus, I lied—though my deceptions had never been found out. And each year, I too received a fresh volume. Though we never spoke of it aloud, we had grown naturally accustomed to this unvoiced understanding: diaries existed neither to be shown nor looked at.

We harbored no anxiety that our diaries might be seen by others, even if left unattended. That writing box behind the doll cabinet did not grow any older than it already was, retaining a conveniently sized glossy luster. My eyes - like those of a drowning man clutching at straws - remained obstinately bewitched by that thing. Again I extended my arm. But my fingertips that touched the lid trembled violently and would not obey me no matter what. They trembled so chaotically it verged on absurdity.

March 8th

The small number of invited guests welcomed at noon mostly departed before sunset.

―I had finally stayed up all night and remained awake since, yet felt no drowsiness. I hadn’t drunk any alcohol either. “Mother, are you still keeping a diary?” I asked casually, in the tone of an affectionate chronicler of memories. “Yes,” Mother nodded.

“All this time?” “Well…” Mother smiled. “Never taken a break?” “...I can’t keep up like I used to. It’s just... well—” “Hmm… You’ve kept all the old ones?” “They must be there.”

“There must be quite a lot of them... Where do you keep them?”

"The older ones must be in the nagamochi—" "Do you ever look through them?" "Hardly ever, but sometimes—"

“Are they interesting?” “Don’t be absurd—” “Do you intend to keep them forever?” “Should I just bundle them all up and burn them someday? I’ve been thinking.” “Why—” “Because they’re in the way.” Even as the conversation progressed that far, Mother seemed not to have considered the idea that they might be read by others. “What about you?”

“…………” “Aren’t you keeping one?” “Sometimes—” I muttered in a small voice. The novels I write these days are like a diary, I secretly justified.

I retreated alone into that box-like room just as I had the day before and lay sprawled over my desk. I wanted to hide it away where none could see, but such a thing wasn't possible. —I was still being tempted. No other thoughts arose beyond that.

“Is ×× not here?”

The elderly uncle was asking Mother about me.

“He said he’d been studying all night last night, so he’s likely resting in the back room.” “What nonsense—studying at a time like this? Though I suppose it beats him getting drunk, hah…” “Lately, it seems he hasn’t been drinking much either.” “Drinking or not drinking at his age?… What absurdity.” Since they appeared to be speaking unaware of my eavesdropping, I thought about going out to join them.

“But he’s thirty-one now, after all.” “My, has he already reached that age…” After some time had passed, Mother slid open the paper door asking “Are you asleep?” I lay slumped over my desk with convincing realism—feigning sleep complete with soft snores. Despite having been on the verge of going out to join their carefree gathering just moments before, I found myself unwittingly staging this pantomime and immediately regretted it. —Mother gently draped the haori over my back and left.

Before long, I had truly fallen asleep. I dreamed of hina dolls forming a procession and coming to drink water at the well beside the garden pond. This was not the first time I had seen this dream. I had seen the same dream as a child, yet it remained etched in my memory with peculiar clarity.

March 9th

I slept until around three in the afternoon. The family members had all returned from visiting the graves. It was my father's third-year memorial service.

I went with the wife who had been waiting to visit the graves on foot. At the temple, I encountered Oson and Ocho.

*

“March XX”

For reasons unknown even to himself, he had spent from the 7th to this day writing the above matters in agonizing torment, working through sleepless nights at his family home in his hometown.

He received a letter from A in America. A, concerned about his residence in Tokyo, had sent the letter addressed to his hometown. Among the discarded drafts and paper scraps he had cast aside long ago were passages like the following.

"The other day I saw off my friend A, who was going to America, at Tokyo Station. A friend going to America—such matters had burdened me with foolish sentimentality owing to certain family circumstances. I’ll spare the reasons, but I found myself transformed into a peculiar breed of sentimentalist rather than an ordinary well-wisher. This was A’s first journey. Ever since the decision was finalized, he had been ceaselessly restless day and night—his heart pounding with unpleasantly garish intensity, irritably, as though sitting in a parlor where a broom lay carelessly discarded, as though a dusting cloth were pressed against his breast—he would often tell me with strangely mournful dissatisfaction that these were the only metaphors he could devise. 'Somehow I can only confess these feelings to you,' he would declare whenever drunk. To his restlessness so pronounced it verged on illness, to his sentimentality, to those clandestine farewell gatherings held time and again, and even to his drunken tears—I acted in painful brightness alongside him without a shred of shame. Which of us was the one leaving? And which the one remaining? In the end, even I had forgotten such distinctions."

“Your feelings boarding the ship with me and arriving there—when I think that way, it feels somehow uncanny.”

One evening he said such things and gazed at my face. During that period, it may have been I who was the peculiar patient. I, who had always been lounging around the house, suddenly became an avid outgoer, so eventually my wife began wearing an anxious expression. I had never witnessed the spectacle of a ship’s departure, so I thought of going to Yokohama to see it, but recalling things like the tape-pulling ceremony made me end up not going.

“A, you must have reached that shore by now, while I remain… Soon I shall write you a strange letter, but you must devote your first Sunday there to me—” A’s letter described meeting Flora’s family and his sister H—the sibling who shared only the father he had ever known through photographs. They were still believing in his maritime arrival—that too stood written.

* He abandoned the planned trip to △△ Hot Springs—a trip he himself had requested his mother to inquire about lodgings for—and suddenly—

"I'll return to Tokyo tomorrow," he said. Upon hearing this, the one most disheartened was his wife. Rather for his sake, she could not bear to witness his listless life in Tokyo. He could do nothing but shift his attention to the dozens of fragmented manuscript pages—scarcely a single sheet fully filled with text—and the discarded drafts left behind in that dreary house in Tokyo’s unpleasant outskirts. All of them were nothing but feeble, dreamlike murmurs. Yet these were nothing but fabrications—nowhere within them did any of his fellow writers appear.

And yet he sensed some positive reason within himself—this self that sought to abandon the △△ trip and return to Tokyo. "So what on earth had I been scrawling?" Even when I tried to think back, they were nothing but feeble attempts I couldn’t recall. When his mental state was at its most pitiable, he would often fall into the habit of concocting mere title-like things—empty vessels devoid of any substantive content. Admittedly, this was not a habit he had developed upon becoming a novelist; since childhood, he had possessed a similar tendency.

Whether with paintings or novels, when he conceived the title first, he had scarcely ever experienced the work reaching completion. It was no wonder—they were bad, childish sentiments utterly devoid of substance, mere superficial constructs pretentious in their technical affectation. Therefore, whenever he conceived the title first, he found it difficult to hastily erase it. On rare occasions he would pander to contrived titles and craft convoluted prose, but there was never any chance of completion.

"What on earth had I been thinking? What on earth had I written?" he muttered but couldn’t recall a thing.

“Winter Wind Chime” I remember putting such things to paper, but as always, there wasn’t a single word of substance.