Pathway to Japanese Literature

1

To rouse my endlessly dazed head that felt like no matter how much I slept, it was never enough, I often resorted to various measures.

Because when my head was dazed, I feared that I would always repeat some outrageous blunder.

“Because you clearly nodded along going ‘Uh-huh,’ I’ve been waiting at the station this whole time as promised.”
“Don’t look so crushed! How awful—you’re still really asleep?!”

Mori!
Startled by this realization, I leapt from my bed.
But upon reflection, I felt so unsettled that I quietly slipped back under the covers and pretended to still be asleep.—It seemed to be beautiful weather.
The window curtain was saturated with lapis lazuli light.

“What! You made such a promise?”
“We didn’t know a thing about it!”
“If we had known, such a thing wouldn’t have happened,” Yukiko replied.

“If we told them, they’d want to tag along and make a fuss—so we agreed to slip out quietly by ourselves.”
“How awful!”
“It’s your punishment!”

“Thanks to you, I’ve ruined my entire day today.”

There was a sound like a bundle of books being tossed aside.
The sound struck my chest painfully.

Mori was a university student who commuted to Tokyo by train.
I had completely forgotten that the previous day I had made a promise with Mori to go together to watch a baseball game.

“Well then, I’ll treat you—do stay and enjoy yourself until evening.”

“It’s dull work, but there’s no other choice…”

“You’re saying such awful things!”

I sat up halfway and tried shaking my head. My mind remained dazed as if in a dream. When meeting others with this fogged head, I couldn’t begin to guess what failures I might repeat.

It was only because it was Mori that things turned out alright! Muttering something like that, I stroked my chest. Moreover, I couldn’t do my own work unless I regained a clear head.

“I came here nervously worrying we might miss each other along the way—had to check.”

Mori kept repeating such things.
Mori lived in a town three or four stations up the line where my family and others resided.

“If we were to miss each other, then so be it—wouldn’t that be fine?”

Perhaps it was my imagination, but Yukiko spoke in a tone that seemed to somewhat suppress her voice.

I imagined Yukiko and Mori’s expressions.

“…………”

There was no reply from Mori.

I couldn’t muster the courage to get up and show myself there.

"At any rate, with my head being this foggy, there’s no helping it."

I muttered to myself.

I quietly got down from the bed, changed clothes, and then—like a thief—stealthily climbed over the window.
Then, circling around the backyard and peeking through the kitchen entrance, I saw the wife—who had come four or five days before—peeling potatoes while singing a song; covering my mouth, I moved quietly, quietly!
With timid glances darting about and using hand gestures, I signaled for someone to bring me my shoes!
I conveyed the meaning of "Bring me my shoes!"

“I’m going out for a short walk,” I whispered through a throat that sounded like someone whose voice had failed.
Then, pointing toward the garden where Mori and the others were, I mouthed the secret with my fingertips like a stage villain plotting some misdeed.

I changed from slippers into shoes, slipped through the mandarin orchard in the back, took a long detour, and emerged onto the main road.

My chest was thumping as if I’d committed some real crime, while my head felt as though it weren’t there at all. For no reason at all, I was struck by an unbearable, karmic feeling.

A white bus came passing by.

I ran up and jumped on it. When I suddenly realized, I didn’t have the clasp purse. Floundering, I was thinking about jumping off again when—

“Mr. M, there’s a seat open here.”
“Do sit down now.”
“Are you heading out?”
“I’m going too—let’s go together! Today isn’t some idle amusement for me—no matter what, I must win today or I’m no man!”
“There’s this splendid reason, you see—come now, do sit here! Meeting you here is an excellent omen—there’s something I want to ask you.”

—Suddenly, fluent and cheerful words bound me.
It was the owner of Lotus—a bar named after a flower—that I had been frequently visiting lately while hiding from my wives because there was an extremely lovely hostess named Yuri.

The female conductor was punching tickets in front of the Lotus owner.
The Lotus owner took out commuter tickets,

“Two tickets,” he said, punching them for me as well, then continued his relentless chatter that left absolutely no room for me to get a word in edgewise.

I dazedly sat down beside him.

The Lotus owner continued to chatter excitedly.
He reeked terribly of alcohol.

“I’ve got to hit a massive underdog or there’s no backing down now!”
“This morning, I ended up wide awake from the crack of dawn and caused quite a ruckus.”
“I left everything at the shop to my wife and ended up having to buy out all our profits—‘This is too much! If you’re going to do something this stupid, I won’t let you set up shop at any racetrack! You need to get a grip!’”
“So when my wife dug her heels in like this—what the hell are you saying?! Using racetrack liquor profits to redeem pawned items—as if that’d bring us luck! The one nitpicking like this should get out right now!”
“As if declaring my stance, I struck a dramatic pose—but my wife wouldn’t back down quietly…and that’s how we ended up in one hell of a marital quarrel!”

There was horse racing today.
The bus passengers all seemed to be people heading to the races—I’d been completely unaware there was horse racing at all.
"If I went to the 'hot spring pool' in Yumura along the way and swam myself ragged, I might actually feel clear-headed!"
With that thought, I’d leapt aboard.

I finally arrived at the racetrack.

II

When I got off the bus，the old man’s figure immediately vanished somewhere.

I entered the Lotus outpost.

“Mr. Aono has been looking for you since earlier，” Yuri said.

Aono was my friend who owned horses.

I was happy because Yuri was there.

“I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet，” I said to Yuri，who had come offering me a beer.

“You’ve completely become a horse racing fan now，haven’t you？”

The previous night, I who had accompanied Aono appeared at Lotus, got drunk, became engrossed in Aono's brave horse racing stories, and imitated a galloping horse while whinnying "Hee-haw!" Yuri conveyed all that.

I had forgotten everything and everyone.

"Hey!" Aono tapped my shoulder and firmly gripped my hand, his eyes dashing. "I’ve been waiting for you and Fuyuko to show up since earlier—you’re late, you know? Rude, huh? Fuyuko, Fuyuko! I found you!" he called.

Fuyuko, who came running while flapping her skirt with a whip, also took my hand.

“Sleepyhead!” she said. She was Aono’s sister who had graduated from a women’s university and was now idling around. “We had a promise to come to our house this morning, didn’t we! You were the one who first suggested we all gather together, raise a toast for Traveler, and set out together!”

“I ended up staying up all night studying last night…” I excused myself. There was indeed a part of me that genuinely felt that way. “My eyes just won’t stay open— Sorry, Fuyuko?”

Fuyuko was clearly showing signs of displeasure, so I became flustered and let out a pitiful voice.

“What an appalling liar you are! You were making a ridiculous scene at Yuri-chan’s shop until past midnight last night! Hey, Yuri-chan?”

“Absolutely…” Yuri chimed in. “To think you can spout such utterly baseless nonsense with that straight face—how you manage to spew these blatant lies so effortlessly! You good-for-nothing playboy!” In this manner, Yuri gazed at my face.

―I must reform my life!
And so I suddenly thought.
I found myself liking both Yuri and Fuyuko almost indiscriminately, so much that it troubled me... Yet always, at the slightest provocation, my head would grow dazed until I felt as though I'd forgotten everything—only to repeat strange blunders again and again—and when I thought such things, I was suddenly overcome with pity for myself, then sank deeper into bewilderment.

I want to dream.
Amidst the terrifyingly noisy crowd, even as I stood there, my head remained strangely white and quiet—when I began drifting off, beautiful dreams would appear vividly before my eyes.

I am a king who has come out to hunt; the clip-clopping sound of the horse’s hooves is truly delightful!
I applied the whip and spurred the horse into a gallop.
Swift as the wind!

“Hurrah, Traveler!”

I inadvertently shouted.

“What a…!”
“Oh my, still trying to cover things up at this point?”

The one who had said that was Fuyuko before my eyes.

“Don’t fuss so much, Fuyuko!” Aono admonished, then took up a wine cup together with me.

“Well then, I’ll also—”

Fuyuko took a wine cup and said, “Yuri-chan, you have some too—let’s switch this to cider instead. Brother, wait a moment—”

“Cheers!”

I shouted.
Because my voice came out too loud and off-key, Aono flushed red with embarrassment.

“Victory shall shine upon thee.
O Valiant Traveler of ours!”

I continued—for me still lingered the dream of a king charging through morning mist.

“I hate when you get drunk—in a place like this—”

“Please don’t take that flower yet—there’s no replacement!”

Fuyuko and Yuri interrupted me one after another.
I had picked up the tulip flower placed on the table and was trying to pin it to my chest while muttering something.

I forgot to mention earlier—Traveler was the name of Aono’s horse that had seldom won.
At Aono’s house were two horses called "Asakaze" and "Traveler"—the former being a celebrated swift runner, but I had a particular fondness for "Traveler".

III

“What a disgrace! —Missed the mark completely, agh!”
“Yuri, call Mother.”

Yuri’s father entered with a face that seemed both tearful and demonic.

“Oh, Father!”

Yuri wore a pitying expression as she gazed at her father’s disheveled figure—he looked like someone who’d been brawling—

“If you’d just stop already—”

“If you would just stop already—” she had been advising him.
“Don’t say such things—I’m begging you, call Mother here!”

Yuri’s father came to my side while wailing like a spoiled child,

“At the very last moment… I lost it all!” he groaned and collapsed onto the table.
I didn’t know the details, but he had apparently agonized over a horse called Yamazakura and staked every possible bet on it, only for the race to begin before he could settle on a strategy—leaving the horse trailing by nearly half a lap until the very end.
When he said something like “At the very last moment—” I’d genuinely thought the horse had stumbled right before the finish line!

“That was truly regrettable.”

“I can’t even cry—”

He clawed at his chest,
and then,

“Alright—I can’t stay like this!” he resolved again, then dashed into the kitchen concealed behind the curtain.

I felt deep sympathy for him.

“I hope another quarrel doesn’t start.”

Yuri worried.

From behind the curtain came the old man’s desperate entreaties—“It’s Gosei!” and “I’m begging you—this is my final plea!” and “Couldn’t you at least try to understand what’s in my heart here?”—his voice leaking through pitifully.

“It’s impossible, Papa—”

Yuri informed me.
“……The horses he picks are utterly hopeless—they never win even once!”
“And yet he looks so greedy—deliberately targeting only poorly-rated horses to bet on.”

Yuri’s face clouded over as she pinched the edge of her apron.

Aono and the others had gone toward the stable, leaving me waiting there.

I found Yuri’s look of worry unbearably touching and lovely.
Truly, Yuri’s anxious face was beautiful!

“Calling someone greedy like that—you shouldn’t say such harsh things.”
“Favoring poorly-rated horses—isn’t that the mark of a gallant man?”

I was impressed by my own clever words!
I had never before experienced skillfully comforting a lovely girl with words.
Far from being dazed—I’m quite the dashing fellow, I must say!
I thought.

“But it’s just too much!”
“It’s no wonder Mother makes a displeased face—that’s what I think.”
“But that’s…”
I faltered.
I downed the Western-style goblet in one gulp,
“You mustn’t worry about such things, Yuri.”
Even so, I had completely run out of words—yet I felt strangely happy, and somehow, dazedly, in a cheerful dreamlike state, I grew bold,
“My pick is Aono’s Traveler.”

Muttering such things, I gently placed my arm around Yuri’s shoulder and looked up at her lowered eyelids.
And the moment I tried to take hold of the hand resting on Yuri’s lap, I—

“You!”

Struck by a voice sharp as an unsheathed sword, I spun around as if jolted by live wires.

My wife glared at me with a terrifying expression that seemed ready to pounce at any moment.—Then—how unfortunate—Yuri, who might have escaped unscathed had she simply smiled, turned bright red and fled behind the curtain.

My wife thudded her fist against my shoulder,

“Liar!” she snarled.
“You said you were going out for a short walk, so I waited without eating—and here you are sauntering around a place like this…”

Yukiko and Mori were there too…… I nearly collapsed.
The three solemn figures appeared before my pitiful eyes like prosecutors awaiting my suicide.

“……This time I’ll definitely win!”

“Spare me.”

“If I lose this one, I’ll give up horse racing for life—”

“Hey, I’m begging you—it’s exactly as I say!”

That was Yuri’s father’s plea from behind the curtain—a plea as if coughing up blood.

IV

Before long, Yuri’s father—
“It’s ours now!”

No sooner had he shouted than he came bursting through the curtain in a posture reminiscent of Horibe Yasubei,

“Traveler! Traveler!” he kept shouting as if signaling to me, then dashed past us at breakneck speed.

“Traveler!”

I, too, jumped up in a frenzy and responded in kind.

Without giving my flustered wife and the others even a moment to react, I suddenly snatched the imitation leather handbag my wife had tucked under her arm—

“Traveler! Traveler! It’s ours now!”

And I too shouted as if unconsciously and dashed off at full speed.

I had absolutely no experience buying what were called betting tickets until now.
What was what—of course, even I felt completely chaotic inside.

V

What a tremendous commotion this was!

The crowd stretched their money-clutching arms skyward, jostled one another, and shouted horses’ names as they surged toward the ticket windows.

I couldn’t afford to lose sight of Yuri’s father!

Thinking this, I stretched out one arm and firmly grabbed hold of his obi.

“Mr. M, are you with Traveler too?”

He barely managed to turn back and, as if calling out to a comrade mid-charge,

“Steady now! See it through!” he said.

When I came to my senses, it was all just mismatched words that refused to cohere.

“We’re solid!—Our folks back home came to root for us, so Traveler’s win is ours!”

“Exactly.—Make sure to tell Mr. Aono too.
And let him know I’m Traveler’s number one backer.”

“You too?!
I’ve been dreaming about nothing but Traveler these past days.
That beast can’t possibly lose!”

“That’s precisely why we both came here together—”

“You bet it is! This horse race alone’s the crossroads of our fate!”

Feeling utterly tragic, I declared these words with all my might.

“Thank you, Mr. M—”

Tears threatened to spill as I trembled with excitement—and my head, which had remained stubbornly foggy since morning, began gradually clearing like pale dawn breaking through.

After all, this affliction of mine—whatever its true nature—would always start lifting whenever I threw myself into violent physical exertion.

VI

We stationed ourselves on the lawn opposite Lotus’s outpost.
That spot had the thinnest crowd, and I figured it would give us a decent view—

Yuri’s father irritably gulped down liquor.
Then he offered me some too.

On the sunlit track, horses emerged in scattered groups, and for us diehards, watching them frenzy at the starting line became completely unbearable.

Number 3—Traveler—controlled by a jockey in crimson jacket, appeared on the field and began rampaging wildly.
She proved especially unruly; even when the other horses had barely lined up and the starting flag was ready to drop, she’d veer sideways making proper alignment impossible.—Among spectators too she drew the worst reputation.

Unable to bear my anxiety, I took the binoculars from Yuri’s father’s lap and peered at the storefronts across the way. Yuri, my wife, Fuyuko, and the others seemed unaware of our presence as they chatted away in a friendly manner. I felt relieved to see that Yuri wasn’t being excluded from the group. When I looked some distance away, Yukiko was leaning against the wooden fence with her arm on Mori’s shoulder. There were those who had seen these two strolling along the coast on moonlit nights—or despite leaving separately, meeting at a café in Ginza to conspire about something in hushed tones! Having heard such rumors, I had dismissed them with jealousy, but their affectionate attitude before my eyes undeniably left my heart cold. Now that you mention it, when I had been listening in the next room earlier, they—

“Actually, I’m happier this way.”

“I came rushing here in a panic!”

The memory of them exchanging those words—followed by that eerie silence being sustained—returned to me with pointed significance.

―Yukiko was a girl who took care of me while learning oil painting, but according to persistent rumors—because I had been unreasonably kind (though I hadn’t noticed)—she had completely transformed from six months prior into a wild modern girl under the hedonistic influence she received from me.
I had never seen her paintings.
When I asked about it, she would answer that her claim of studying painting was all a pretext—that she had deceived everyone to come play in this hot spring town.
And she frequently visited places like the dance hall at the hotel on the mid-slope of the cape.

Just as I was beginning to feel uneasy about Yukiko, a deafening roar erupted around us.

Yuri’s father sprang up as if launched.
――The one at the front was Traveler.
When Traveler—who refused to calm down easily—finally faced forward, he stood far ahead of the other horses, and so the starting flag was waved just like that.

But before I knew it， my excitement had completely subsided.

——“He won!”

The Lotus Owner shouted and dashed off again in a frenzy—and I followed suit—but recalling my earlier mad behavior filled me with such mortifying embarrassment that I couldn’t bear returning to Yuri’s shop where my wife and the others were.

VII

“We won, didn’t we!”

The first to come running up to me and firmly take my hand was Fuyuko.

Following after her came my wife,

“I’m sorry about earlier.”
“I had no idea you’d become so engrossed in horse racing lately, so I ended up making such a face!”
“I completely understood after hearing from Yuri-chan.”

She said that and laughed.
My wife believed that my tendency to become half-crazed when engrossed in something was a favorable trait.

What could Yuri have said? I wondered, but I tried to immediately divert the situation.

“I’ve been dreaming of nothing but Traveler for days now. How about that? Pretty great, huh?” I roared at my wife,

“Hey Mr. Mori! My apologies for earlier!”
“How about that? Pretty incredible, huh?”

And then he hurriedly turned away,

“Yuri-chan! Yuri-chan!”
“Your earlier prayer worked out perfectly, didn’t it?” I said to Yuri, my eyes sparkling,

“Let’s all head back to Aono’s place now, Fuyuko-chan.”
“And Traveler’s…”

“Aono! That guy won because Lotus and I cheered him on!”

While chattering rapidly about this and that, I shook hands with one person after another.

No doubt Lotus would come back in a frenzy—then I’d join the uproar too—and once we reached ecstasy, that strange sense of self-reproach, as if I’d deceived someone, would surely vanish—thinking this while lying in wait for Yuri’s father, he soon returned with a sullen face.

“What’s wrong?”

Despite my inquiry, he didn’t answer and stomped off behind the curtain.

At the same time,

“You idiot!”

“Cheapskate!”

“Even winning was all for nothing!”

His roaring voice escaped, shouting things like—

When I inquired about the circumstances, it turned out Lotus’s wife had given him only one yen earlier.
The frenzied owner, mistaking it for a ten-yen note, had been clutching a single ticket until now.—So when I finally checked my own tickets for the first time, I found myself holding two.
Here, one ticket cost one yen.
My wife’s handbag had contained only two yen.—In any case, both the owner and I must have been terribly frenzied in our own ways.

I mediated the marital quarrel and took the owner out to the front of the shop.

“For Aono’s sake—” we said, toasting heartily.

“Who’s the stingy bastard here, you greedy old man! Serves you right!”

In her frustration at being slapped across the cheek, the Lotus owner’s wife shouted from the shadows.

The owner no longer had the energy to resist; forcing a lonely-looking bitter smile, he steadily drank his sake.

“When he gets engrossed in something, my husband forgets everything else but that one thing.”

My wife was giving that response after being asked something by someone.

“We can’t just make promises carelessly, can we!” said Mori while looking at Yukiko’s face.

I too looked at Yukiko’s face.

“Thank you,” Yukiko said to me with an artificial smile.
“This was far more entertaining than you all going off to Tokyo today.”

Yukiko then turned to my wife and,

“They were planning to watch baseball together secretly and visit Musashino Hall on their way back without telling any of us,” she said. “Because it’d be troublesome to tell those people, they claimed they were going to the races and left, planning to meet at the station! What an audacious promise they’d made!”

I started and looked at my wife’s face.

“Go look in the room,” she said. “It’s covered with horse photographs—you’d better not make any other promises while those are up.”

My wife said all that in a perfectly calm tone.
“But really, if you don’t stop this horse racing business after all this commotion, it’ll be trouble…”

—I felt an even more agonizing weight.
I felt a guilty darkness toward my wife that I couldn’t begin to explain.
Beside the horse photographs, every single one had Fuyuko’s figure lined up beside it.
The fact that my wife appeared utterly oblivious to how I’d lined them up out of captivation with Fuyuko’s equestrian figure—that burden pressed down on me.

"If what my wife said was true, then what on earth had I been so obsessed with lately? I found myself wondering."

There's nothing!
Just to awaken this endlessly dazed head of mine...

That this situation—so unlike my usual string of blunders—should resolve everything so harmoniously—what a rare phenomenon this was!

Look—that composed figure of my wife!
Mori and Yukiko's cheerful forms!
The glitter of Fuyuko's eyes!
I simply kept watching their vivid figures parade before me.

Before long, my head had cleared completely like cloudless blue sky.

“Let’s all gather around Traveler and take a photo!”

Aono, who had gone to the stables, came to invite everyone.
—Everyone immediately agreed and stood up.

“Yuri, please wake your father.”
“There’s no reason Traveler’s glorious patron shouldn’t be in this photo.”

I asked Yuri to deal with the owner, who had sheepishly pretended to be asleep.

A crimson jockey mounted Traveler.
Aono and Fuyuko took hold of the bridle from either side.
My wife, clutching her handbag, drew close to Fuyuko.
Mori and Yukiko were peeking out just their faces from behind them.

I was directing each person’s placement.

Since Yuri’s father was completely unsteady and his footing was shaky, I had him sit cross-legged in the front.
I had Yuri hold Takuko’s no-longer-needed tulips and line up next to Papa.

It was the grassy hill of early summer where clover grew thickly.

I sat cross-legged between the owner and Yuri—that is, at the center of the photograph—squaring my shoulders and crossing my arms like a judo athlete or something,

“This should do—” I signaled.

I thought I would hang this photograph on my study wall for the time being.