Pathway to Japanese Literature

I It was twenty years ago, when I was thirteen, that I relied on my uncle and went alone, unencumbered, from a remote village in Noto to Kyoto.

My father was born in Kyoto, where he had two older brothers and one older sister. The eldest brother had succeeded the main family line and ran a Buddhist altar shop on Mannendōri Street; the second brother operated both an inn and a pharmacy by Shijō Bridge, while my sister managed an inn before the gates of Rokujō Hongan-ji Temple. Three years earlier at age thirteen, my sister had gone to Kyoto to become an apprentice at our aunt’s house in Rokujō. I had been sent to live with my uncle in Shijō. This uncle from Shijō first visited Noto in early summer that year. Having convalesced at Yamanaka Hot Springs in Kaga with his concubine after an illness, he had stopped alone at his younger brother’s—my father’s—home on his return journey.

Given my uncle’s spoiled, willful, and difficult city-bred disposition, this dirty, inconvenient, desolate fishing village must have seemed utterly unbearable to him; yet whether it was due to the good air or the abundance of fresh fish, he ended up staying there for about a month. He said whatever selfish things he wanted and indulged in as much luxury as the countryside allowed— At that time, I was ill and lying in bed. The joint in my left knee ached, the muscles stiffened, and my leg wouldn’t straighten—to the point where I couldn’t walk. I was being carried on my father’s back every five or seven days to a doctor’s office in a village over two ri away, but the doctor would say it was arthritis and apply something like iodine tincture for me.

“Such a country doctor is no good. Once you’ve recovered a bit, come on over to Kyoto. Uncle’ll get you into a hospital and cure you proper, I tell you.” At some point, these words my uncle had said lodged themselves strangely in my mind. Even after Uncle had left, I took pleasure in thinking about this matter constantly. This was not solely to have my illness treated; there were other reasons as well.

I thought Uncle was quite a wealthy man. I had heard such rumors beforehand from my father and others, and it could also be imagined from Uncle himself proudly and boastfully describing his extravagant lifestyle in Kyoto. He spoke of how his house stood in Kyoto’s most prominent location—a grand three-story building where he ran a thriving business with nearly ten servants; how he entrusted the shop to his manager and spent his days sightseeing with his wife and concubine; how even for brief outings, he wore nearly a thousand yen worth of valuables; how there was no one in Kyoto who did not know him as the Master of Naniwatei; and other such matters of the same nature. He spoke of how, while staying at a mountain hot spring, he had specially ordered the first harvest of large Shinden watermelons from Kyoto just because he craved them; how, upon visiting the village, he gifted manju sweets to every one of the over hundred elementary school students as souvenirs; how he’d declared, “I’ll pay any amount—go buy me a horse!” on a whim to ride one, thoroughly troubling my father (my village being a fishing community where not a single horse was kept)—such ludicrously extravagant antics made my younger self marvel thoughtlessly, “How grand!” And if I were to rely on this uncle and go, I was made to think that he would surely allow me—despite having resigned myself to it as an impossible desire due to my family’s poverty—to attend the middle school I had yearned for.

Moreover, I had lost my mother in the year I was born and was soon raised by a stepmother, but as she already had three children by then, our relationship was never harmonious. Because I was there, the house remained perpetually gloomy and damp, and even my father must have been enduring emotional hardships no one else could see. Though still a child, I sensed this keenly while passing my days in dreary solitude. This loneliness grew especially acute after my sister—my sole ally with whom I had shared mutual commiseration over our unfortunate circumstances—left for Kyoto. Though parting from my father pained me beyond measure, the thought that if only I weren’t here lingered constantly. I too would go to Kyoto; this would be better for Father and myself alike. At that precise moment, Uncle arrived to kindle this resolve within me—in some sense offering what felt like a guarantee for my future. Secretly I had determined to flee at once should my illness ever heal.

It was around noon on the fifteenth day of Obon according to the old calendar. While my father and stepmother were away visiting the temple, I held a small cloth bundle, boarded a small fishing boat loaded with dried fish bound for Kanazawa in Kaga, and bid farewell to my hometown's mountains and rivers without expecting to see them again. Only my father knew about this matter. After my uncle had left, my illness soon improved, so I quietly told my father of my wish.

“So… you’ve made up your mind to go, then?” After letting out a deep sigh, Father wore a troubled expression, deliberately avoiding my eyes, and spoke while glancing around as if wary of their surroundings. I nodded. “If you’ve made up your mind to go, then you might as well go. You’ve got your sister there, so you wouldn’t be lonely.” Father spoke as though granting final permission, but his voice grew husky, and tears welled in his eyes. Rather than parting with me, it was likely Father had sensed the resolve in my heart to go to Kyoto and been moved to pity; he covered his face with those large, sinewy, gnarled hands of his.

Due to various circumstances, having conspired in advance with my father, we arranged it—for my stepmother’s sake—to appear as though I had run away in complete secrecy from everyone, in the manner popular among village youths at the time. “Well, this is the last time we’ll see each other!” That morning, while my stepmother was out retrieving her temple visit clothes from the main family’s storehouse where they were usually kept, my father called me into the dimly lit Buddhist altar room, took out a paper packet containing travel money from his pocket, and said. And he gestured with his eyes toward the Buddhist altar. I perceived what my father meant by that, sat properly before the Buddhist altar, and reverently paid my farewell respects to my deceased mother’s mortuary tablet.

“Then stay safe and sound, y’hear? Don’t you go lettin’ your spirits drop.” (Meaning: Don’t get sick.) Father whispered to me in a hoarse voice, as though someone were in the next room. “Yes—” I muttered those words under my breath and lay facedown. I felt neither sad nor lonely—it was an indescribable emotion.

“I’ve already properly asked the boat crew, y’hear? So…”

Just as he was about to say something more and I sensed my stepmother returning, he gestured with his eyes toward the money packet and whispered hurriedly, “Now quick—put that away!” Then repeating “This is the last time we’ll see each other!” once more under his breath while picking up a hand broom or something lying there—as if hiding embarrassment—he walked purposefully toward the entrance. I deliberately sat down at the desk there and opened a book.

After my father and mother had left, I paid my respects at the Buddhist altar once more, then left the house. And then I headed toward the shore. For both lunch and dinner, it had been arranged that the boatman would specially prepare my portion of the meals.

The boat left the shore, exited the inlet, and gradually grew distant from the village. The sea was calm, and the midday late-summer sun scorched my back relentlessly. When I looked back, in a hollow along the steep cliff-like slope rising abruptly from the coast, less than a hundred houses—surrounded by a grove of trees—were clustered as if someone had grabbed a handful of pebbles and placed them there. The sunlight shone directly down on them, and here and there the white plaster walls glittered. It was a compact, beautiful midday scene.

To my eyes, my own house was first pinpointed. I thought of the empty house where no one remained. The scenes of every room could be seen vividly down to their very corners. In the hall, even a kitten sleeping atop the stove lid—closed for summer—was visible. This quiet, empty house made it seem as though even the Buddhist altar in the inner room had been left unattended. In my eyes, it also seemed that the doors of the Buddhist altar were open. Through the blue gauze of the middle doors came into view Amitabha Buddha's image on the innermost hanging scroll, the offered rice before it, a vase, a candlestick with a crane perched atop a tortoise, and a ring-shaped lamp. Those brass Buddhist altar fittings—which I had polished two or three days prior for Obon—were gleaming.

I imagined that numerous living spirits resided within this Buddhist altar. Taking advantage of the emptiness, they seemed to emerge like imps from folktales—appearing in halls, storerooms, and kitchens—hopping lightly about as they advanced. The sight burned vividly behind my eyes. I also saw the towering roof of a temple rising conspicuously among the small houses. The sermon there must have begun by now. Men and women of all ages packed the hall, listening intently. Among them sat Father in his iron-gray shoulder garment. He likely heard none of the priest’s words. Instead, he must have kept turning to gaze seaward—picturing me in this little boat being steadily carried across sunlit waters. … I wondered whether he had slipped out to stand on the temple veranda, watching our sail’s shadow shrink toward the horizon.

“Oh, he’s leaving now. “Even so, the calm was a mercy.”

While muttering this, he looked up at the sky. When I strained my eyes, I felt as though I could see that figure. It was over twenty ri by sea to Kanaishi (approximately 78.5 kilometers).

I stepped onto the sandy ground there in the predawn of the following day. My hometown village appeared in the distance amidst clouds and mist as a faint ink-painted cape. The Fuji-shaped mountain that towered at the tip of the cape, half-submerged in the sea, was Mount XX, located three ri inland from the village. I was accompanied by the boatman and went by horse-drawn railway carriage to Kanazawa. The boatman accompanied me all the way to the station. And he bought a ticket and put me on the train.

At that time, the Hokuriku Line trains only went as far as Kanazawa. At last, I was alone. No longer did thoughts of Father or the village rise in my heart. Only anxieties about the present and future flitted through my mind. The train was supposed to arrive in Kyoto by midnight. I huddled small in the corner of the train car. Though not particularly crowded, everyone aboard kept staring at me with puzzled looks. My heart trembled inexplicably. I became convinced they were all pickpockets.

“Don’t let pickpockets steal your money.” Father’s words came back to me. Father went to Kyoto every one or two years. And whenever he returned and told us about Kyoto, he would always recount stories of pickpockets. We too would eagerly ask him to tell us those stories. Father likely simply repeated others’ tales to please us, but I believed them. I felt as though both the train and the streets of Kyoto were teeming with pickpockets. When boarding the train, the boatman had asked a man in his forties sitting in the seat next to mine to look after me, so this person would occasionally ask me various things and kindly attend to me, but I instead feared him. When I was seven and went to Kyoto with my uncle from the countryside, I became separated and lost. A man who claimed he would kindly take me to an inn dragged me around town, only to finally strip off my haori and leave. Remembering that person, I suspected this man might be of the same ilk and barely spoke a word. I occasionally reached into my inner pocket and touched the money pouch to check.

II

It was nearly midnight when I arrived at Kyoto Station. However, since my aunt’s house where my sister stayed was an inn and I knew they would be awake late into the night, I remained relatively composed. Though my memory of visiting here at age seven was hazy, I had a general sense that the house was near the station and roughly where it was located—yet I took a rickshaw exactly as father had instructed. I knew how to hire rickshaws.

As expected for the late hour, only two or three inns in front of the station remained open, and the streets were dark and lonely. The street where the rickshaws carrying those who had just alighted from the train were rattling back and forth (there were no rubber-wheeled vehicles at the time) was not one strangers would traverse. My aunt’s house was a rather high-class inn even among those in front of Hongan-ji Temple, so when I mentioned its name, Kagiya, the rickshaw driver immediately understood. After running along the streetcar tracks for just a brief moment, the rickshaw turned right onto a branching track and continued straight. Or rather, it was plodding along at a walking pace. Because I was a child and a country bumpkin, I felt a slight resentment in my heart, thinking the rickshaw driver was looking down on me.

As we approached Hongan-ji Temple, the rickshaw driver slackened his pace further still. Then from the passenger seat he asked where I was from. I ought to have told the truth, but thinking how declaring myself from Noto would only make this city man take me for some country simpleton to be mocked all the more... “I’m from Kanazawa City,” I declared with particular emphasis on ‘City’, putting on airs of urban sophistication. “Even if we go to Kagiya now, they’ll be shut up tight for sure. How’s about I take you to some other fine inn instead? And wouldn’t it be wiser to go first thing come morning?”

After moving forward a short distance, the rickshaw driver stopped and turned to look back at me. I suspected he was trying to trick me with these suggestions. I’d heard from Father and others about the kickback schemes between station rickshaw drivers and nearby inns, but only now did that knowledge surface in my mind. I put up my guard. “Well, my family goes there regular,” I said, putting on a grown-up voice. “They know the place fine.”

“Even so, it’s past midnight now—they’re sure to be asleep and won’t get up for you,” the rickshaw driver said. I increasingly doubted the rickshaw driver’s intentions. Though I had stubbornly insisted, in reality there wasn’t a single house still awake in that inn district, which made me feel no small unease. “Well then, if I go try waking them and they don’t get up, I’ll take you somewhere else.” The rickshaw driver spoke as if he’d unilaterally decided matters. I trembled utterly with anxiety.

When we arrived at Kagiya, sure enough, the front door was tightly shut. The rickshaw driver, without even letting me out of the carriage, supported the shaft with one hand and with the other began banging on the door, as if declaring he’d known all along it was pointless. But there was no reply. “See? Told ya,” he said. “No matter how you knock, it ain’t gonna open.”

The rickshaw driver looked back at me as if to say “See? I told you so.” I was frantic with worry and begged him to knock louder. The rickshaw driver pounded on the door even harder.

“Who’s there?” came a rasping woman’s voice from within. I felt momentary relief. “Got a guest from Kanazawa here! Open up!” bellowed the rickshaw driver.

I suddenly realized my mistake, but it was already too late to take back. After a short while, “We decline,” came a voice—clearer and louder than before.

Upon hearing this, the rickshaw driver showed signs of trying to pull me back. I hurriedly stopped the rickshaw and jumped down. And,

"I'm from Noto. Asajirou," I called out my father's name in a loud voice. "What's this? Mr. Asa from Noto?!" said the voice from inside the house in a tone of surprise and suspicion. I thought she was my aunt. At that, I finally let out a sigh of relief.

“I’m Asajirou’s child!” I corrected myself with all my might, though my voice trembled nervously.

The rickshaw driver was taken aback and muttered something incoherently. He must have thought it strange that I had lied about being from Kanazawa. Before long, the front door opened with a heavy thud, and a shaft of light suddenly streamed out from within. I reflexively stepped back a pace or two. And there I saw the aunt in her nightclothes. I lowered my head and stood awkwardly. Whether she hadn’t heard my earlier correction or had simply convinced herself I was my father, the aunt—expecting to see her brother but instead finding this small child like me standing there like some beggar—exclaimed in bewilderment, “What in the—it’s you?!”

"Uh," I answered inwardly while trying to approach, whereupon Aunt retreated back into the house,

“Hey, hey, O-Kimi! O-Kimi!” she called out, trying to rouse my sister. Then she came back out and ushered me inside. I timidly trailed behind her into the house. “What in the—Kyouyan?!”

My sister O-Kimi rushed out in disheveled nightclothes, her sleepiness forgotten as she widened her eyes and let out a shrill cry. "Why did you come all the way here?" "Did you run away to get here?" I could only stand there smiling sheepishly, thoroughly embarrassed. "But still—you managed to come alone! That's incredible." My sister said this in rapid succession. With a nostalgic air, she smiled warmly and peered intently at my face. She had already transformed into a fully sophisticated young woman.

“Well, you’ve come all this way, haven’t you?” Aunt chimed in, explaining to Sister: “The rickshaw driver said it was a guest from Kanazawa, so I told him we weren’t accepting visitors—but then this child here claimed to be Asajirou from Noto. Quite strange, really.” “Oh? Did he really say that?” There, I briefly explained my situation. “Even so, my—showing such consideration at your age!” Aunt said admiringly.

“As expected of a boy,” my sister said with apparent delight. “This child has been clever since he was little, you know.” Just then, a night-udon vendor happened to pass by, so Aunt called him in and served udon to my sister and me. As I ate, I briefly talked about my hometown, the reason for coming to the capital, and what happened along the way—simply answering their questions as they asked.

And that night, I entered the mosquito net where the maids and others were sleeping and slept while being held by my sister.

The next day, led by my sister, I went sightseeing toward Higashiyama starting in the morning. From the nearby Great Buddha and Sanjūsangen-dō Temple area, we walked sequentially to Kiyomizu, Kōdai-ji Temple, Gion, Maruyama, Chion-in Temple, Taikyokuden Hall, and all the way to the canal district. My sister O-Kimi was genuinely delighted by my arrival. While showing sisterly affection, she guided me around with an experienced and mature demeanor—caring for me, comforting me, and shielding me all the while. Yet for us, walking together like this while sharing personal stories felt more enjoyable than visiting famous historic sites. Like orphaned siblings wandering through an unfamiliar land—

The conversation did not end. They talked again and again at that time about father and stepmother, about when both had been younger children living together in the countryside—about village acquaintances, those stories they had told almost without sleeping the previous night. Those stories, no matter how many times repeated, always stirred fresh interest and deepened the nostalgia. “Father must be so lonely.” I couldn’t tell how many times my sister had said such things.

When I spoke of the time I parted from my father, she said she could see his lonely figure and wept. And she stopped by the roadside and hugged me tightly.

“Even if we went back to Noto, Mother isn’t there anymore—we should become Kyoto people now.” My sister also said such things.

On our way back, we detoured through Kyogoku, took in some sideshows, ate zenzai, and returned to the Rokujo house at dusk. After dinner was done and my sister had finished her tasks, I was taken to Uncle’s house in Shijō. I rode a streetcar for the first time. Each time we approached Yotsutsuji crossing, an apprentice boy holding a red signal flag and fire lantern would leap down from the driver’s platform to warn pedestrians ahead—running before us like a carriage outrider—a sight that struck me as marvelously novel at the time.

We got off at the Shijō Kobashi tram stop. Uncle’s house was very close by. It was the large three-story house at the west corner of Shijō Ōhashi Bridge. We deliberately passed by the front of that familiar pharmacy facing Shijō Avenue, went all the way to the bridge, and from afar, my sister had me look at it as she pointed. With my heart pounding, I looked up at the building. The large, square building, towering above its surroundings with its brightly lit second and third floors, appeared to my eyes like a castle. The area around the bridge was one of Kyoto’s most beautiful and bustling streets, but my heart was in such turmoil that none of the surrounding beauty—whether as a city of lights or a city of people—nor any of the liveliness entered my eyes or ears.

“It’s lively here, isn’t it?” Since I kept silent, my sister said this encouragingly. She must have thought the beauty of the capital’s summer nightscape and its bustle had surely left me—a country bumpkin—awestruck. The very reason she had taken me all the way to the bridge must have been to show me that view. And she likely wanted to bask in eliciting my wonder and admiration. “Until just the other day, they held evening festivities here on this riverbank—it was truly lovely. But then this recent flood came and washed everything away. With nights not being what they used to be, it’s gotten so lonely now.”

However, I did not look back. My heart was filled with vague anxieties and fears—about becoming part of this large house looming before my eyes starting tonight, and living among many unfamiliar people.

"I'm about to step out into the world now. What fate awaits me?" Of course, my child self didn't have such clear awareness, but when it came down to it, I was entirely filled with those very feelings. A few minutes later, I entered Uncle's house, clinging to my sister's back as if hiding myself. On one of the pillars of the grand entranceway lining Pontocho hung an elegant hanging lantern inscribed "Ryokan Naniwatei" beneath a diagonally drawn gourd. When I stood on the wide, slick step that made the soles of my feet itch unbearably and saw my own diminutive figure reflected in the large mirror facing the entryway like a withered seed, I felt a chill run through my body.

Uncle’s living room was located between the inn’s front desk and the pharmacy. In the center of an eight-tatami room spread with Chinese-style mats lay a futon where Uncle sat wearing a flat-sleeved nightgown, his bony chest exposed as he sprawled cross-legged, having his shoulders massaged by a beautiful pale-skinned woman around thirty years old with her hair in a round chignon. Beside him sat another woman nearing forty, also with a round chignon—her round face slightly dark and her demeanor simple-looking—smoking tobacco through a long-stemmed pipe.

The fact that I was coming tonight had been notified by the aunt from Keya while we were out sightseeing during the day, so as soon as we entered, "So this is the child? You've come all this way, haven't you." "Is this O-Kimi's younger brother?" the middle-aged woman said in a polite tone. "Yes, such a boy has come out here, you see." "Please take good care of him," said my sister in a mature tone.

“Hmm.” She nodded to herself. “Still so small, aren’t you? How old are you?” “Thirteen.” “He’s thirteen, but ever since he was little, this child has been sick all the time—he just hasn’t been able to put on weight.” “Ever since I was back in the countryside, he’s been such a pale little thing.”

My sister rattled off this explanation, then suddenly seemed to remember something. "Haven't you greeted Uncle and Aunt yet?" she said, turning to scold me. Then, addressing everyone present, she added: "Since he's still a country bumpkin who knows nothing at all, please scold him properly and put him to work." I kept silent and bowed my head. "He'll grow accustomed soon enough—such a fine apprentice he'll make."

At this moment, the woman who had been massaging his shoulders interjected. Uncle, perhaps in a bad mood, had been making a stern, bitter face from the start and, while forcefully tapping his Hatsugetsuhō with a thick silver pipe, seemed to glare at my face from time to time. Though he had just passed forty, his face was terrifying—all his upper and lower teeth gone, both cheeks sunken into deep pits like craters, his skin sagging and sallow and gaunt, with two large eyes glaring fiercely from that darkened face. He asked me only one thing—"Has your illness improved?"—and didn’t even say something like "You’ve come a long way." It was an utterly cold, stern demeanor—as though reprimanding a wayward son. Based on how Uncle had been when he visited the countryside, I had expected a warmer, kinder uncle and had come seeking his protection, but now faced with this cold, stern demeanor of his, I felt not a little disappointed and uneasy.

“Uncle from Noto, are you well? The other day, when our master went, he caused you quite a bit of trouble, didn’t he?” said the woman who had been massaging his shoulders, continuing with her pleasantries. I thought that this woman must be Uncle’s concubine. That she was not the legal wife was something I simply assumed without any reason. She was far younger and more beautiful than the other woman, with an air of refinement in both her demeanor and appearance. She had an oval face, a sharply defined nose, and glossy cheeks. However, compared to the older woman, she seemed to me then to have less kindness.

After this sort of formal introduction was over, I was taken by my sister again to the bustling nightlife of Kyogoku, which wasn’t far off.

Due to journey fatigue, sleep deprivation, and having walked around since morning that day, I felt utterly exhausted. The abnormal mental excitement and nervous tension of recent days had barely kept me upright, yet I kept nearly staggering and collapsing amid the bustling crowds. I thirsted for rest and peaceful sleep, but these were denied me. Uncle, the women nearby, and even my sister all urged me to go sightseeing. This was kindness born of their goodwill. Rather than saying “You must be tired—go rest early,” they spoke as if declaring “You’ve come from the countryside to see the sights—we’ll give you just tonight off to enjoy yourself.” I rejected this notion yet lacked the familiarity with these people to voice my selfish desires—like wanting to sleep alone in some corner of a room. I went out with my sister feeling like one compelled to perform an unpleasant duty against their will.

“I’m sleepy and tired, so I’m going to bed.” For example, if I were to say this,

“Yeah, go to sleep, go to sleep.” I desperately wanted someone who would indulge me like this.

My sister seemed completely oblivious to such matters. She seemed to have both the intention of showing me the lively and beautiful streets of Kyoto and also wanting to indulge herself in a night of liberation. And so, she seemed dissatisfied with how I wearily and reluctantly followed behind her, occasionally scolding me with, “Hurry up already!” The evening streets of Kyogoku were churning with a sea of people. And the bright, dazzling light of the lamps was so intense that it made it unbearable for me to keep my tired eyes open. My eyelids stung with a prickling pain, my body swayed unsteadily, and I kept bumping into people. I found it unbearably hateful how my sister kept standing in front of the display windows on both sides or lingering to gaze at the show billboards. However, even when I tried to urge my sister to go back, there was nowhere to return to. When I could no longer endure it and said I would go back, his sister frowned and...

“Even if we go back, you won’t be able to sleep anyway.” “Master Naniwa-tei stays up late, you see.” “The store won’t close until twelve,” she said in an irritated tone.

I was perplexed. The thought that I would now have to return home and sit properly on that stiff Chinese-style mat in front of Uncle and the others, battling idleness as though subjected to some dreaded punishment, felt utterly unbearable.

“Ah, I’m done for!”

I sighed as if on the verge of tears. “In that case, let’s do this,” she said. “Let’s go into the vaudeville hall—I’ll listen to rakugo while you sleep there in the meantime. If you kick, I’ll wake you up.” My sister spoke in a tone suggesting she’d hit upon a brilliant idea.

I went along with it.

It was a little past eleven when I was escorted back to Uncle’s house by my sister again. “I’ll treat you as a guest just for tonight, but starting tomorrow, you’re an apprentice.”

Having been told this by Uncle, I was soon led to the second-floor guest room. My sister, acting like one of the house maids, laid out bedding for me and sat by my pillow for a while as if tending to a patient before eventually leaving. They gave me various instructions—to wake up early each morning and work diligently by obeying what everyone in the household said. Then they explained about that older woman being O-Fumi-san—Uncle’s legal wife who lived separately for certain reasons—and about the woman who had been massaging his shoulders, who, as I had guessed, was Uncle’s concubine O-Yuki-san but had now become the household’s mistress managing everything.

I could not help but harbor doubts about Uncle’s relationship with those two women, but what unsettled me more was how even Uncle and my sister O-Kimi had not asked a single question about my purpose for coming to Kyoto or my hopes for the future—as if they had decided from the very beginning, of their own accord, that I had come here to serve as an apprentice. And now that matters had reached this point, I found it intensely frustrating that there remained neither means nor opportunity to convey my true feelings.

Before long, a maid came and laid out another bedding beside me. I was feeling uneasy about who would come when, before long, it was Aunt O-Fumi who entered. I thought it strange that this woman, who was Uncle’s legal wife, had come here to sleep instead of staying by her husband’s side. And I wondered if that concubine O-Yuki was sleeping by Uncle’s side. “Can you sleep, huh? What did you say earlier, Kyouyan?”

Aunt O-Fumi said this while changing into her sleepwear. I muttered “Hmph” under my breath. “Sleep well.” “You must be tired, mustn’t you?” “Did you have O-Kimi take you around to see the sights?” “That was good, wasn’t it?” “It was lively, wasn’t it?” “Sleep well.”

She said all that quickly and got into bed. She had barely chanted a few lines of Buddhist prayer when she started snoring. Outside, there was still a bustling flow of people. The rumble and clatter of cart wheels crossing the bridge—sometimes near, sometimes far—constantly made the pillow tremble as if shaking it. The light from the arc lamp at the bridge’s end shone through the glass doors of the veranda into the darkened room where the electric lights had been turned off, illuminating it blue and bright like moonlight, making the two beds within appear as though small boats were floating there.

I suddenly found myself wide awake and couldn’t fall asleep no matter how hard I tried. I was reminded of my father. After returning from the temple, they must have noticed my absence—I wondered how Father and Stepmother were talking about it. That I had fled my hometown—I imagined it had become the talk of the entire village. Because of this, Stepmother was being dragged into all sorts of conversations—I could picture her making rounds to relatives and neighbors to explain herself on her own initiative.

But more than that, I grew even more anxious about the life awaiting me tomorrow. "Starting tomorrow, you're an apprentice"—Uncle's words had seized nearly my entire mind at that moment. It felt somehow terrifying, yet I couldn't deny there was also a flicker of excitement. My chest heaved fiercely. All through the night, the clatter of carts crossing the bridge clung to my ears. As if half-sleeping on a train while hearing that heavy rumble somewhere distant, I passed an uneasy night adrift between dreams and wakefulness.

From the very next day, I was already an apprentice at Naniwadō (the pharmacy was called that) Pharmacy. Everything was a first-time experience for me. First, under the direction of Aunt O-Yuki, the concubine, I opened the shop doors and hung various medicine advertisement signs in front of the store. Among them were some large, heavy ones that I could barely lift even with all my strength. After that, I swept about half of the storefront thoroughfare on my side and then began cleaning the store. I was shown how to hold a feather duster for the first time then. That was by no means an easy task. I had to dust the display shelves and glass doors of cabinets, but the tattered end never quite spread out properly, and at times I clumsily ended up clattering the glass doors with the sharp tip of the nail that held it in place.

“Clumsy, aren’t you? Haven’t you ever used a feather duster before?” “You’ll break the glass now.” Aunt O-Yuki said, not quite scolding. My clumsiness must have irritated her, who seemed short-tempered, but since I had just come from the countryside and was also Uncle’s relative, I thought she refrained from scolding me outright. “Here, let me have that.” Aunt O-Yuki took the feather duster from me and demonstrated how to use it with deft skill. However, without teaching me the proper technique, she would simply say, “Now, show me how you dust,” and hand it back to me. I had no choice but to fumble awkwardly.

Using a palm-fiber broom with a long bamboo handle was also a first-time experience for me. I was told not to put force on the broom’s tip but on the handle and to sweep lightly outwards, but it handled differently from the straw and millet-stalk hand brooms I was accustomed to using back home—the tip strangely lacking resistance, so I couldn’t manage to use it well no matter how hard I tried. Then I was scolded for things like the dust not coming off or the broom’s tip bending. The broom had only about an inch of its palm-fiber bristles exposed, with the rest covered by a chintz-patterned bag. It somehow resembled dressing a monkey in a kimono, and I found it peculiar.

It took me considerable days to fully memorize the countless medicine names and their storage locations. But that wasn't particularly troublesome. What truly troubled me was interacting with customers. Of course I struggled to clearly hear their words, but even uttering the basic greeting of "Welcome" proved impossible. The simple farewell phrase of "Thank you for coming" was something I simply couldn't force out. During those first few days while still unfamiliar with shop affairs, Aunt O-Yuki would emerge front whenever customers came. Following her lead while burning with self-consciousness, I'd mumble responses under my breath. But when finally left alone, such embarrassment and discomfort overwhelmed me that no words would leave my mouth.

III Four or five days later, I had completely—both in clothing and hairstyle—become the very image of a merchant’s apprentice. I wore a twin-striped unlined kimono fastened with a black Kogura sash, my hair shaved around the sides like an infant’s while leaving the center tightly molded into a manju-shaped bun. It looked exactly like someone had placed an inverted bowl lid atop my head. Yet having always kept my head fully shaved before, what little hair remained now grew too short—unlike the other apprentices whose locks fluffed up with each step into proper style—leaving mine so unsightly I burned with shame at my own appearance. This unmistakably marked me as a green apprentice fresh from the mold. All this resulted from Uncle personally taking me to the barber.

“You’ve become quite the proper apprentice now, haven’t you?”

At that moment, Aunt O-Yuki said. Uncle remained silent and was smiling. In this way, I lost forever the opportunity to express my hopes.

In such a state, I was stationed at the shop from early morning until late at night. The shop had a wide frontage, with glass cabinets occupying the upper half of part of the front and both side walls, while the lower half featured medicine shelves lined with numerous small drawers arranged continuously along the walls. At a central position, as if to anchor the expansive storefront, black-lacquered lathe-work display shelves stood one each to the left and right. I sat listlessly at the accounting desk behind the leftmost shelf, half-hidden in its shadow. Other than recording each sold item’s name and price in a horizontally bound ledger, there was no particular work.

My body was truly at ease. Compared to my former self in the countryside—when I would rush to the shore after school to help with fishing tasks, work in the fields, or fetch water from distant valleys—this ease was utterly incomparable. However, this bodily ease was by no means a source of joy for me. I soon began to be tormented by boredom and constraint. The store was large and its location couldn’t have been better, but since it primarily sold medicinal products with cosmetic appeal, there simply weren’t many customers to be had. Rather, it was on the idle side. However, I could not leave the shop even a single step. On the hard Chinese-style mat, I had to sit rigidly, unable to bear the numbness. Initially, a cushion had been placed in front of the desk, so I sat down on it without any particular thought, hesitation, or reservation—as if it were only natural. Then Aunt O-Yuki saw this and said, half-chuckling to herself as if not quite scolding, “How grandly you’ve laid out a cushion there.” But sometime later, without my knowledge, it had been taken away. It was meant to imply that an apprentice had no business using a cushion like that. Even with a child’s mind, I inferred its meaning. And for a while afterward, I acted as though I had done something terribly wrong, nervously watching Aunt O-Yuki’s expression.

One time, when my legs hurt too much, I secretly stretched them out under the desk and was rubbing my shins when, as luck would have it, Uncle came out and—

“What’s this posture! Is that how you conduct yourself?!” he rebuked me harshly. Another time when I sat on the shop’s entrance step swinging my legs, Aunt O-Yuki spotted me and reprimanded me. Unlike Uncle’s direct scolding, she made oblique insinuations instead. She remarked that behaving so would make the shop appear idle and unprosperous—an intolerable impression. I came to dread Aunt O-Yuki’s veiled criticisms more than Uncle’s blunt reprimands.

In such a manner, without a companion or anyone to talk to, I had to keep watch over the shop all day long, utterly alone. Not only was I unable to relax my body, but similarly, I couldn’t let my mind rest for even a moment. It was out of vigilance—not so much because customers might come at any time, but rather because items might be pilfered at any moment. Around that time, beggars would often walk around with bamboo sticks tipped with birdlime and pilfer lightweight items stacked at the storefront—things like bags of tooth powder or bundles of toilet paper. However, I had never once encountered such a situation. I was futilely straining my empty mind to stay tense as I watched the passersby. I kept my eyes trained solely on whether anyone among the throngs of passersby might occasionally step away from the crowd toward the storefront—

It was truly monotonous and tedious. The hustle and bustle of the streets had almost ceased to capture my interest. It was nothing but the same kinds of people and vehicles in a dizzying throng. It was always the same thing. Nothing happened. The only thing that somewhat caught my attention was spotting boys among the throng of people who looked just like apprentices. They all had the same bowl-cut hairstyles. And they wore similar fine twin-striped garments with black Kogura obi, clattering along in black leather-thonged geta as they walked hurriedly while leaning forward. Some carried large furoshiki bundles. Others were empty-handed. There were also those pulling box carts bearing shop names from behind men with close-cropped heads who looked like senior clerks. Their hairstyles and physical appearances had completely transformed into those of full-fledged apprentices. Someone like me—a complete novice—was nowhere to be found. Every time I saw their figures, I couldn’t help but reflect on my own situation. And before I knew it, I found myself reaching a hand to my head. They too seemed to glance back in my direction as they passed. I envied them. I thought how good it would be if I too could be given errands to run like that. I even began to think that rather than sitting silent all day in near idleness without freedom like this, it would be better to be cruelly driven and worked to the bone.

One time, I stealthily ran off to a bookstore just two or three shops away and bought a boys’ magazine that I had loved reading since my days in the countryside and had occasionally contributed writings to. And then I leaned against the desk and read it eagerly.

“Hey! What’re you doing?!” Suddenly, Uncle’s booming roar shouted from behind. Startled, I frantically shoved the magazine under the desk and sprang up like a wound coil. “You idiot?!” Uncle’s eyes stabbed into mine. I stood frozen there, nailed to the spot. “What’s that?” “……” “Who told you to read that crap! If a customer comes, what’ll you do?”

“…” “When did you go buy such a thing?” “Just now…” I finally managed to say only that. Then Uncle scolded me even more harshly, saying I’d left the shop unattended during that time. And while berating me, he even accused me of buying it with the shop’s earnings. I explained I’d bought it with allowance money received from my father. “Carryin’ money around just makes you buy snacks an’ nonsense! Hand it over t’Uncle.”

Uncle said this somewhat gently. Not only was my magazine taken away, but even the meager allowance money I had received from my father was confiscated. Later, Aunt O-Yuki came out and tried comforting me in various ways, but I found myself suspecting her—without any real reason—of having reported me to Uncle. At first I managed to stay alert, but as I gradually grew accustomed to my surroundings—perhaps because some slack had formed in my mind—I began dozing off occasionally. When night deepened and closing time approached, my eyes would grow unnaturally sharp, but during those first few evening hours I felt unbearably sleepy. The storefront’s bustle no longer held any interest for me, and the clamor of the busy street sounded like something from a distant dream world. No matter how wide I opened my eyes, I saw nothing—my mind kept dissolving listlessly, sinking deeper into some dark abyss. However vigilant I tried to remain, I would inevitably end up slumped over the desk behind the display shelf or lying stretched out before it. And so I was often scolded. Countless times Uncle struck my head with a sharp slap or kicked me awake with his foot. My face would be smeared with ink, I’d be tied to the desk with a cord attached to my belt, or have an abacus fastened to me. Then I’d suddenly be roused—startled into panic—only to become the butt of everyone’s raucous laughter.

One time, Aunt O-Yuki quietly shook me awake, “Uncle is calling for you, so go quickly now,” she said gently in a low voice. I hurriedly rubbed my eyelids, adjusted my appearance, and went to Uncle’s room with a composed expression. Uncle was puffing away at his tobacco, but the moment he saw my face, he suddenly— “What’s with that face?!” he bellowed, and then—quivering as if his anger were utterly unbearable—thwacked my head with the thick silver pipe he held.

“Agh! Ah-ah-ah!” I screamed silently through clenched teeth while clutching my head. My head throbbed with a deep reverberation that made my vision swim. “You fool!” Uncle roared. I couldn’t make a sound—could only grit my teeth and hold my breath. Had someone come to shield me, or had Uncle worn a gentler expression, I might have burst into loud sobs. But knowing tears would invite fiercer blows, I endured. Jewel-like drops fell plop-plop onto the Chinese mat with hollow echoes. I didn’t understand why I’d been struck. Trembling yet rooted in place, I braced for another hit. Had I wailed and fled like a child then—that artless display might have softened Uncle’s rage—but courage failed me. Innocence had long since withered. Instead, some sly instinct whispered that flight would compound my guilt. There I remained—frozen, hands still pressed to my skull.

“What are you doing just standing there? Still don’t get it?” “You fool!”

Uncle kept shouting in an increasingly furious tone. “That’s enough now, Uncle. Do show some mercy,” Aunt O-Yuki said as she entered the room at that moment. Then she told me, “Go wash your face right away.” For the first time, I realized. My face had been smeared completely black with ink. “You’ve been napping too much, see? From now on, stay alert.”

After going out to the shop later, Aunt O-Yuki said. “You see, since Uncle took ill, he’s grown short-tempered—that’s why he scolds everyone so harshly.” “But he’s a good soul at heart, see? Don’t take it ill—just bear with it.” “It’s for your own sake, see? Auntie’s telling you this for your good,” she said in a gently protective tone.

But at that time, I did not believe Aunt O-Yuki. I feared her. Aunt O-Yuki had smeared ink on my face and deliberately sent me to Uncle. However, because Uncle’s scolding turned out harsher than Aunt O-Yuki had anticipated, she began to feel a slight unease toward me. Because she herself felt guilty, she said such things to explain herself. In this way, I suspected.

Uncle’s smile was rarely seen. I didn’t know what ailed him, but he always appeared utterly exhausted and listless, leaning on an armrest atop his futon, his face contorted into a bitter, terrifying expression as he stared fixedly in one direction. In the dim room enclosed by walls on three sides, I would shrink back whenever I encountered those glaring, fearsome eyes. Even when seated in the shop, I felt as though those sharp eyes might pierce through the wall from the adjoining room. I sensed their weight upon my back. From time to time, heavy sighs seeped through the wall. Each instance made me start.

Uncle’s ill humor seemed to stem mainly from his physical condition. However, there were occasional times when his mood improved, and during those moments, “Kyoukou, I’ll take you to Gion,” he would say, taking me along as a companion on his walks. These outings usually occurred in the early mornings, with Uncle wearing light hemp-soled sandals and strolling leisurely while carrying his walking stick. We sometimes went from Gion to areas around Kiyomizu, took the streetcar to visit Kitano Tenjin Shrine, or he even brought me to To-ji’s morning market. As he showed me the bustling temple fairs,

“So, Kyoukou, which is livelier—this or the Tomari Market?” he teased. “Tomari Market” was a week-long festival held in autumn in the town of Tomari, located about four kilometers from my hometown village—the very market whose bustling scene I had proudly described to Uncle when he visited that summer. Uncle was forty-four or five—an age when most men are still in their prime—but due to the excessive expenditure of energy since his youth, he already appeared at first glance like an old man nearing sixty. Even among his tall siblings, Uncle was the tallest, but he had grown as gaunt and frail as if he had withered away to the utmost limit. His hair had thinned, now turned salt-and-pepper, and particularly, with not a single tooth remaining in either his upper or lower jaw, it all made him appear all the more aged. His cheeks were deeply sunken, his eyes hollowed, his cheekbones unnaturally prominent. When he inserted the full dentures—which he normally kept out—during meals, pursing his lips tightly to expose the teeth as denture-wearers often do, those unnaturally white, youthfully aligned dentures disrupted the harmony of his entire visage, rendering him as ghastly as a skeleton.

IV

It was something I gradually came to understand later—Uncle had been such a troublemaker since childhood that even his own parents couldn’t handle him. Stubborn, selfish, obstinate, vain, quarrelsome yet weak-willed—his mother had apparently worried greatly and feared for his future prospects, wondering whether he might become some terrifying villain who would commit robberies or murders. He ran away toward Osaka at sixteen. What kind of life he had lived after that remained largely unknown, as there had been no further contact. It was said he had become a delivery boy for an udon shop; that he worked as an errand boy at a geisha house in Shinmachi; there were even rumors he had joined a gang of ruffians.

Seven or eight years later, he unexpectedly returned to Kyoto. And he stayed temporarily at his sister’s house—Rokujō no Kagiya—where she had married before his departure. On his parents’ side, they had officially disowned him, so they would not take him in. When he returned to Kyoto, he had a tidy sum of money in his pocket. He never told anyone how he had obtained it, but he soon used that capital to start an udon shop in front of the station.

Surprisingly, it succeeded. Within a few years, he started another cattle shop in the Gojō area. From then on, things progressed smoothly. In Shichijō Shinchi, a brothel; in the Sanjō area, a bird shop; in Nishishigematsu, a kaiseki restaurant; in Ponto-chō, a geisha house—in this manner, he took in new concubines one after another, each time having them manage a new shop. And finally, at this Shijō no Hashizume, he had his newest and most favored concubine, Aunt O-Yuki, start an inn.

However, when I came to Kyoto, only this Shijō house remained. Though he had operated on such a large scale, I never knew why he abandoned it. Many of the women too seemed to be leaving. Apart from Aunt O-Fumi—the legal wife who had run the restaurant in Nishishigematsu—among what were said to total seven or eight concubines, only Aunt O-Yuki now remained.

Aunt O-Fumi, as the legal wife, was registered in the family registry but lived separately in Miyagawachō with an adopted daughter named O-Fuku. She occasionally visited the Shijō shop but rarely stayed overnight. O-Fuku, that adopted daughter, also came from time to time. She was a beautiful, slender woman in her early twenties with an oval face—a woman with long, elegantly shaped eyes, a sharply protruding nose, and features that held a blade-like keenness. In contrast to Aunt O-Fumi’s round visage with its calm, amiable appearance, hers was sharply defined, giving the impression of someone capable and resolute. In this regard, she resembled Aunt O-Yuki. She was said to have been a fairly renowned geisha in Gion but had since retired and was being kept by a patron. She referred to Uncle as “Father” and called Aunt O-Yuki “Sister.”

Uncle did not have any children of his own but had adopted several. Besides O-Fuku, he had adopted a girl named O-Taka and placed her at a geisha house in Ponto-chō. At the time I went to Kyoto, O-Taka was working as a geisha in Fukuchiyama, Tanba, and was not in Kyoto. This too was something I heard later: Uncle had doted greatly on O-Taka and had planned to eventually marry her to Kousaburou—the adopted son at the Shijō house—but when O-Taka herself insisted on becoming a geisha and refused to comply, even he could not bring himself to send her away from the area. Instead, he placed her at a geisha house run by an acquaintance in Fukuchiyama.

Mr. Kousaburou was Aunt O-Yuki from Shijō’s adopted son—the child of a geisha house in Osaka’s Shinmachi—who had been conscripted into military service at the Fushimi Regiment around that time. He would return home every Sunday on leave, always cheerful and amiable—a fine upstanding man. Before my arrival, he had apparently worked at the pharmacy; upon returning home, he would change into a kimono and sit at the shop desk like a head clerk wearing a maedare apron. He was kindhearted and gentle, often comforting me in a soft womanly tone: “Kyouyan, you’re not lonely? You want to go back home? Heard from your father?” “Even if it’s hard—endure.” That I was his adoptive father’s nephew—that we were step-cousins unlike ordinary apprentices—must have partly explained his kindness. Sometimes he’d say: “Brother—I’ll mind the shop—you go play awhile.” “Head to Kyōgoku or somewhere.” “Don’t fret.” “I’ll explain properly to Father,” he’d insist—and send me out to play. He’d have me buy sweets then take just one or two himself—leaving me the rest time after time.

I cherished Kousaburou-san as if he were my real brother. I could hardly wait for Sundays to arrive.

Now another—also as a child of this Shijō Aunt O-Yuki—was a woman named O-Nobu-san who had been adopted. O-Nobu-san had apparently been doing something like overseeing the maids at the inn until just before I arrived. However, by the time I arrived, she was no longer at the house.

It was not long after I arrived. One day, I was sent on an errand. Carrying a bundle—larger than my own body—wrapped in bedding within a single-bolt furoshiki cloth dyed white with "Naniwa-tei" at one end and a four-eyed crest at its center, I shuffled westward as instructed, squinting at street names posted on telegraph poles at every crossing. That became my first experience running errands. At a dilapidated house deep in a narrow alley near Shijō Avenue's edge, I lowered the massive bundle. Though I didn't enter properly, standing in the dirt-floored entryway I glimpsed a young woman lying in back like someone who'd just given birth. Only later would I understand this had been O-Nobu-san.

O-Nobu-san was the child of beggars. This, too, was something I came to hear about later. It was said that Uncle had taken pity on her and taken her in when she had been living with her parents under the bridge in the riverbed right in front of the house, coming to the back door twice a day, morning and evening, to receive leftover food from customers. That was when she was twelve or thirteen years old. On a cold winter night, Uncle secretly brought her into the house without alerting the neighbors, let her bathe, and had her change into O-Fuku-san’s old padded kimono, but she had apparently been bitten by lice and her entire body was swollen.

Her parents had vanished from the riverbed from that day onward. And after that, they never showed their faces again. As three or five years passed, O-Nobu-san grew into a remarkably fine young woman. Her complexion grew fairer, her hair darker and longer. Her nose was slightly upturned, but her round face, with its large dark eyes, had charm. From around sixteen or seventeen, she began mingling with the maids and appearing before guests, but as the family’s adopted daughter with her petite, charming figure, she was greatly doted on by the customers.

In the midst of all this, she became involved with a man named Morimoto—a telegraph technician who had come on assignment from Tokyo and stayed for over half a year—and became pregnant with his child. From around the time her belly became noticeable, she was sent to Aunt O-Yuki’s sister’s house. The time I was sent on the errand was exactly when a child had just been born, and I had brought along items like the infant’s swaddling clothes and futon. The fact that O-Nobu-san had become involved with Morimoto was something I later came to know through people’s various rumors about Aunt O-Yuki’s infidelity—that she had cleverly orchestrated it to cover up her own misconduct. Initially, it had been Aunt O-Yuki who was involved with Morimoto, but when rumors began reaching Uncle’s ears, she skillfully engineered a relationship between O-Nobu-san and Morimoto. Thus, she sought to substantiate the household’s existing misconception that Morimoto had been involved not with her but with O-Nobu-san. Aunt O-Yuki’s scheme succeeded brilliantly. O-Nobu-san became pregnant—unfortunately for herself but fortunately for Aunt O-Yuki. And everyone came to regard their prior belief in an affair between Morimoto and Aunt O-Yuki as a mistaken assumption. Yet those who knew, knew.

I often heard these kinds of rumors about Aunt O-Yuki’s infidelity later, when she became the target of our relatives’ criticism due to certain circumstances—that she had continued a relationship with a man from before coming to live with Uncle; that when burglaries frequently occurred during the inn’s early days and police officers constantly came and went, she had an affair with one of them; that she had also become involved with a man named Ikeda, a friend of Uncle’s who worked at an insurance company; and furthermore, with the father of Kousaburou, the adopted son—.

It was also after Aunt O-Yuki came into the picture that several of the concubines left Uncle. Until then, they had interacted with each other as friends and relatives and come and gone amicably. However, after Aunt O-Yuki entered the household, they gradually drifted away from Uncle as if by prior agreement. It was said that Aunt O-Yuki, sheltered by Uncle’s special favor and despite being a newcomer, behaved haughtily toward them, and that they formed an alliance out of resentment against this. As for why Uncle allowed those concubines to turn against him and leave without protest—it was said he had been completely ensnared by Aunt O-Yuki and was now under her control as she desired; it was also said Uncle himself had grown physically weaker and no longer possessed the strong attachment, passion, or energy required to try to stop them from leaving him.

However, at that time, I knew nothing of such things. As for Aunt O-Yuki's personal circumstances and the complicated relationships and situations between Uncle and those around him, I naturally knew nothing of such matters. The only thing I wondered was why Aunt O-Fumi, who was the legal wife, did not live together with Uncle and instead lived separately.

V

Three months had passed. My hair grew quite long. Even when I walked outside, there was no longer that unsightliness which would make people turn to look. Trying to sense the rustling spread of hair atop my head, I deliberately shook it as I walked. Using Kyoto dialect no longer felt particularly awkward. My complexion—once darkened by salt winds—had grown somewhat fairer. "As expected of Kamogawa's water! When you first came here your face was like corridor floorboards—now you've turned quite fair."

Half-serious, half-teasing, Aunt O-Yuki said such things on one occasion.

In this way, I had now completely become an apprentice. "You’ve become quite the fine apprentice now, haven’t you?" One day when I went on an errand to Rokujō no Kagiya, my aunt said such things. Then my sister O-Kimi came rushing out, "You’ve really become quite the fine apprentice!" "It hasn’t even been that long yet—if Father saw you now, he’d be so surprised!" she said with a gentle smile, as joyfully as if it were her own affair. "At this age, they change quickly." "It’s not about words or anything," Aunt said.

“That’s true indeed,” Sister said admiringly. “I wonder if it was the same when I came here?” “You, eh? You’ve been here three years and you’re still such a country bumpkin,” Aunt said with a laugh. “Eh-heh,” Sister also laughed. However, I didn’t feel happy at all. The more I was praised for becoming a good apprentice, the lonelier I felt. It felt as though this was contrary to my own wishes. Working as an apprentice at the pharmacy like this, a vague thought about what would become of me in the end lingered dimly in my heart. No one ever asked about my wishes, and it was maddening how they had arbitrarily decided—as if I had come here from the start intending to become an apprentice—without a word from me. And being unable to say a single word in response, having to silently obey whatever others did was painful.

However, my life as an apprentice did not continue for much longer.

From mid-autumn of that year, Uncle had begun building a new house in the direction of Kiyomizu. Uncle intended to quietly recuperate his body there—weary from a half-lived life and his post-illness condition.

Commonly known as Sannen-zaka Slope and associated with a legend that those who fell there would die three years later, on one side of Sannen-zaka Slope—where a bamboo grove had once stood—the land was cleared, and soon an elegant villa-style house rose there. We—Uncle, Aunt O-Yuki, and I—moved there around the beginning of December. The house in Shijo had found a good tenant and was transferred as-is with all its fixtures intact.

Midway up the slope stood a house atop a high stone wall built in castle style, set slightly back from the edge. A neat garden planted with pines, plums, maples, and higan cherries spread before it, while behind lay a thick grove of Moso bamboo. From midway along the stone wall, Z-shaped stone steps wound through the garden to guide visitors toward the entrance. Before this entrance—which seemed carved from the center of a mouse-gray plastered wall—a hedge bore white sasanqua blossoms. On either side of the entrance walls sat small oval windows framed by two smoked bamboo poles, appearing almost like the house's own pair of eyes. In this neighborhood of nothing but pottery shops and gourd shops, this villa-style structure stood out conspicuously. Passersby all paused at the slope's crest to gaze up at it as they went.

Though it was now a season when Higashiyama sightseers had dwindled, even so, the sound of people ascending and descending that slope—which served as the thoroughfare connecting Kiyomizu to Kōdai-ji Temple and Maruyama—never ceased during the day. All day long, one heard the peculiar clatter of geta—people walking step by step, carefully treading on the slick, hard stones that seemed ready to send them slipping at any moment. Occasionally, rickshaws would clatter loudly with each step as they went up and down. Among them, there were also rickshaw pullers who carried their vehicles on their backs while navigating the slope.

Across the slope, on the opposite side, there stood a renowned gourd shop. It was said they served as talismans against fatal falls—in that slope-ridden area crowded with gourd shops, this one on Sannenzaka Slope stood out as particularly large. Gourds of every shape and size hung filling the entire shop. “Step right up! Gourds here! Buy your gourd and be on your way!”

A portly housewife in her forties and her younger sister—a middle-aged woman with owlish eyes—took turns manning the shopfront, ceaselessly calling out to customers. Uncle and the others' living quarters were positioned as if atop a high cliff, commanding an expansive view. Directly below eye level lay a deep valley, with a section of Higashiyama looming tall beyond it. The roof tiles of Kōshō-ji Betsuin, head temple of the Takada sect, glimmered amidst a dense stand of trees at mid-slope. Nearer the valley floor-like area stood the renowned ×× pottery kiln, its rising smoke trailing along the mountain's foothills in the evening dusk. When he turned his gaze, Yasaka Pagoda soared high in the crisp winter sky before him, from where portions of Shijo's streets stretched distantly into view. At night, lights flickered like stars through gaps in the thickets.

We quickly settled into our new residence. And we became acquainted with the neighbors as well. The main ones among them were the people from the gourd shop across the way, those from the shichimi chili pepper shop at the top of the slope, those from the pottery shop at the bottom of the slope, and then the elderly couple from the salt cracker shop a little further on. These households had grown familiar because Uncle had frequently visited them during the construction period. Especially with the gourd shop, they had grown particularly close, and from the very start of their move, their relationship had become as if they were old acquaintances.

The gourd shop had only the sisters and their elderly mother, with no men around to speak of, and the fact that both women had husbands seemed to make Uncle all the more inclined to become familiar with them. “Miss! Miss! Miss Gourd Shop! If Master doesn’t come tonight, I was thinking I might go stay over—what do you say?”

“Oh, thank you kindly.” “Please do come over.” “Master hasn’t come around at all lately—it’s just too lonely to bear, I tell you.” In the evenings, when foot traffic had dwindled and the gourd shop across the way was about to close, they would nonchalantly exchange such banter back and forth—loudly and without restraint—from our window and their storefront.

It was a peaceful, uneventful life—yet monotonous, boring, and lonely. When evening fell, the foot traffic would abruptly cease, leaving the surroundings as silent as a forest. At times, only the crisp rhythmic sounds of extracting gourd seeds from across the slope could be heard. This only deepened the winter's loneliness. "Kyouyan, come here once you're done." Uncle called me to their side in a caressing tone. After finishing my tidying around the sink area, I would go to Uncle and Aunt's room and sit between them like their own child, warming my hands over the long brazier. Since moving to Kiyomizu, I was no longer treated as an apprentice. Instead of scoldings, I now received frequent caresses. For Uncle—who until then had thrived at the heart of bustling city life with his many employees, maintained a hectic schedule since youth, and basked in vibrant sensual atmospheres—the desolation of this convalescent lifestyle struck all the more keenly. And even someone like me must have served some purpose in soothing Uncle's ennui and dispelling his solitude.

Uncle went to bed early every night. “Come on, Mama, give me a rub-rub,” he would plead with Aunt O-Yuki in a tone like a child coaxing its mother. “Good boy, ready for bed already? Wait, no—I’ll give you a rub right now.” Aunt O-Yuki also spoke in such a manner, as if soothing a child. And I, by their side, would read the newspaper serials aloud to them—this became my usual routine.

At such times, reminiscences of their youthful, vigorous days were often exchanged between Uncle and Aunt O-Yuki. Most of them were stories about women. "I used t'visit three or four houses in a single night back then, an' it didn't faze me one bit—but these days I can't manage a thing, Mama... Do I get on your nerves?" Uncle said, seeming quite content as he took deep, puffing breaths. Aunt O-Yuki smiled and nodded,

“That’s right—you’ve gotten so weak.” “Guess this is the price for havin’ too much fun back in the day.” “To think I’ve gone and gotten this weak already at my age.” “That ain’t the case,” Aunt O-Yuki said with a laugh. “Your body’ll be better soon.” “Then you’ll probably get your energy back like before.” “If you rest here in this quiet place for a year,” she said soothingly. “It’s quiet enough, sure, but lonely as can be.” “I wonder if I can endure this much longer.”

“There’s no need for you to endure such things.” “I’m right here with you, you know.” “Mama must find me bothersome now that I’ve no energy left.” “Are you joking with me?” “You’ve no cause to fret over such things.” The two carried on these exchanges despite my presence at their side. I lived a life neither quite servant nor master. There was no proper work to call my own, yet neither did I have moments of true respite. As I swept inside and out, cooked rice, washed bowls thrice daily, fetched water from the well below the slope, and went marketing for side dishes, the brief winter days slipped away unnoticed.

Since I had experience cooking rice from my time in the countryside, I was praised for being good at it. I quickly learned to prepare simple side dishes as well.

The well was located quite far away. It stood down Sannen-zaka Slope, requiring a right turn and half a chō walk along a small stream. Called Hamaguri Well for its clamshell-purple water—plentiful and pure—it served as the communal water source for nearby homes. A large camellia tree by the wellside scattered red petals across the ground. I shouldered an oversized bucket to draw water countless times daily. Bath preparations demanded five or six trips at once. Amid Higashiyama sightseers flowing up and down the slope, my child self would gaze mournfully at this figure—water bucket-laden and trudging upward. Evenings at the well rinsing rice brought unavoidable self-reflection. One hand clutching a rice-filled pail, the other gripping a zinc-lined colander with fine mesh—this was how I went.

At that time of day, the neighborhood housewives would also come to rinse rice. Sometimes two or three of them would gather together. At such times, I would wait until those people had left. I was truly embarrassed. “Kyouyan, it’s impressive for someone so small!” “You rinse rice so skillfully, you do.” The housewife from the pottery shop at the foot of the slope and the old woman from the rice cracker shop would often say such things while watching, with genuine admiration, the timid way I gingerly rinsed the rice. Being told that made me feel even more awkward.

Because water chores had suddenly multiplied, my hands became covered in chapped cracks. To say they were covered was no exaggeration at all. By nature I had rough skin—ever since my country days, winter would split open cracks on my hands and feet that defied all remedy. Various medicines proved utterly ineffective. There was talk of human fat being curative; once when a relative died, Father took me to the crematory during bone-collecting rites and, while waiting for the remains to be prepared, dipped a bamboo stick into sizzling drippings from the pyre to daub on my foot cracks. Even such extreme measures proved futile in the end.

My feet were in tabi socks and, unlike when I lived in the countryside, weren’t getting wet, so they weren’t too bad—but my hands were more severe than ever before. “Ouch! That hurts!” “It’s like being rubbed with pumice stone!”

Whenever my hand happened to touch Aunt O-Yuki’s by some chance, she would cry out exaggeratedly like that. “If your hand touches mine, it’ll peel the skin right off me.” Aunt O-Yuki had skin far more delicate than most—she took pride in it and always kept it meticulously polished, so her fingertips were as slender and lovely as whitefish and as soft as velvet. But my hands were so terribly chapped that even her harsh words felt justified. My fingertips stood jagged like shark skin, their backs swollen, with only the outer layer darkened and stiffened like stone—truly resembling pumice or a crab’s shell. And at nearly every finger joint, deep cracks had opened like gaping mouths. Occasionally, red blood would drip from the knuckle of my little finger. During the day, while doing water chores and keeping busy, it was bearable, but come nightfall, after climbing up from the kitchen and sitting by the hibachi awhile, as my hands gradually dried out, they began to sting sharply all over, as if set aflame. I had made it my habit to hide both hands beneath my apron whenever appearing before Uncle and the others, but they would flare up with such heat that I even imagined hearing them crack audibly as they dried and split. If my fingers were extended, they had to stay extended; if bent, they had to remain bent. To move them even slightly, I had to endure the pain with tears in my eyes. Mr. Kousaburou, who had been in the Fushimi regiment, took great pity on me—since he worked as a nurse’s aide there—and often brought me medicine; but since I was using water from morning till night and exposing myself to cold winds, it had no effect at all.

“I ain’t never seen hands as rough as yours,” said Aunt O-Yuki while I served dinner, her face twisted like she’d bitten something sour. “What’s got ’em like this? Nothin’ but trouble.” I knew it wasn’t pity making her scowl like that—my cracked, grimy hands just offended her spotless ways. “His ma croaked right after whelpin’ him,” Uncle cut in, jabbing his chopsticks my way. “No tit-milk means no fat on his bones.”

“Is that so?” “It’s pitiful, but there’s nothing to be done.” “We don’t put him through such hard work though.” “With that constitution of his, letting him idle about won’t fix it.” "There’s no way that’s true," I refuted Uncle’s words inwardly, though voicing them aloud was out of the question. Stitching rags and picking apart old garments became another of my nightly duties.

“Kyouyan, if you’re bored, why don’t you stitch some rags or something?” It began one evening, four or five days after we had moved to Kiyomizu, as I sat blankly beside Uncle and the others, stifling yawns out of boredom, when Aunt O-Yuki said those words. “Even for a man, learning to handle a needle isn’t a bad thing.” Uncle agreed with her. In this way, I was first taught to hold a sewing needle. Using a long, thick rag needle—the kind used for sewing sandals—threaded with hemp, I would stitch cross-shaped patterns like kasuri weaving onto rags whose edges Aunt O-Yuki had sewn for me. At first, I couldn’t handle the needle properly and my stitches went crooked, but I gradually improved. Then I was taught how to stitch shapes more complex than crosses—ones resembling stacked stone walls and hexagonal tortoise-shell patterns. I was also instructed in edge-stitching to turn unraveled kimono fabric into stiff linings and shown simple ways to thread cords. And so I came to take considerable interest in this kind of work.

“My, that’s quite something! Even better than the girls. At this rate, you’ll be sewing your own clothes in no time.” One time, Aunt O-Yuki watched me doing my edge stitching and spoke in a flattering tone. By then, I had already started wearing a cardboard thimble on my right middle finger and was using a proper needle. “Well, they say even when it comes to sewing, men do it better,” Uncle remarked while observing my work. “How about it, Kyoukou—want to apprentice at a tailor’s shop?”

I didn’t take Uncle’s words seriously, but at that moment I thought that even doing something like that would be better for my future than living here doing water chores like a maid and learning a proper trade. I had long since abandoned my initial hope of attending school, but after moving to Kiyomizu I began worrying even more about my future. "What was the point of doing these trivial tasks?" "Why not just return to my hometown and learn to be a fisherman instead?"

Such thoughts now passed through my heart even more frequently than before. I once—this was when I was still living in Shijō—sent a letter to my father back home, laying out my hopes and current circumstances, and asked him to request Uncle to at least let me attend night school. But Father replied that since he had already entrusted all matters regarding my future to Uncle, I should stay quiet and endure it patiently for now, adding that Uncle would surely not handle things poorly. I had believed that to some extent. But Uncle still hadn’t said a single word about my future. That left me dissatisfied. At times, I would be seized by a sense of dread—wondering if Uncle thought something along the lines of, “Since this nephew of mine has come all the way from the countryside, let’s just keep him fed by having him tend the cooking fires or something.”

One time, I resolved myself—truly resolved myself—and asked Uncle to let me attend night school. I had naturally expected it would not be permitted, but through that, I aimed to uncover what thoughts Uncle held regarding my future. It was something I had thought through and mustered all the wisdom I had at the time to do. “You idiot!” Uncle rebuked with a single bark. He contorted his toothless mouth into an unnatural snarl, veins bulging on his forehead as he fixed me with a terrifying glare. Though I had anticipated it, I quailed at the unexpectedly ferocious force of Uncle’s bluster.

“What nonsense are you spouting, acting all high and mighty?” “I’ll thrash you!” Uncle continued scolding. It was not so much my actual request that provoked Uncle’s ire as the mere fact that I had dared make such a demand. Even without your impudent mouthing off, I’ve got proper plans laid out! Such an expression seemed written plain across his face.

I remained silent, trembling. “You shouldn’t say such things. Even if you don’t make excuses or bold claims, Uncle will handle everything properly. Just keep quiet.” Aunt O-Yuki interjected from beside us, as if to admonish me while soothing Uncle’s anger. “Please forgive me.” I muttered the words under my breath and bowed my head.

Uncle said nothing, appearing thoroughly irritated as he let out a sigh and puffed on his tobacco. “I can’t stand folks who go on about studying.” After a moment, Uncle spoke in a somewhat calmer tone. “If you’re set on making something of yourself without book learning, there’s no limit to how far you can go.” “…………”

“Me—I can’t even write a proper letter…” Even he faltered there. And then, “You came to Kyoto plannin’ to study?” he shifted the subject.

“It’s not like that, but...” By now, I could no longer claim that was truly the case. A silence lingered between us.

“If you dislike staying at home like this, feel free to go wherever you please.” Uncle finally said dismissively yet gently. Though outwardly cold, I sensed a hidden warmth beneath. He seemed to be scolding me in his heart—this fool who didn’t even understand his own feelings—while pitying me at once. Even young as I was, I understood that. A sudden tightness gripped my chest. A vague sadness and helplessness welled up inside me, and tears began flowing of their own accord. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t suppress the sobs.

Six

My illness recurred not long after that. It came on entirely suddenly. And all the symptoms were the same as when I had been in the countryside that summer. The muscles of my left leg convulsed, and I felt intense pain in my hip and knee joints. However, since it was a busy time with New Year just five or six days away, I kept silent and worked on my feet, enduring as much as I could. Limping, I went to fetch water. I even went shopping. I went outside and, grimacing with each step, stifled a sob in my throat. But I finally could no longer endure it and complained to Aunt O-Yuki.

“It must’ve gotten chilled. I’ll set up the kotatsu tonight—sleep warm.” “That’ll fix it.”

Aunt O-Yuki said offhandedly. I could not stand on my legs as they were. I spent the entire next day in bed, but the pain only grew more intense.

That evening, in the inner room separated by a single paper door, Uncle and Aunt O-Yuki were having the following conversation. "When I went to Noto, he was lying there just like that too, but this isn't the same illness." "It probably won't get better quickly." "Hmm, this is troublesome." "It's almost New Year's—having a sick person here brings bad luck, doesn't it."

“There’s nothing to be done.” “Should I put him in the hospital or something?” “What if we notify Noto? And have Asan come here.” “If we do that, either Asan will take him back home or they’ll put him in the hospital—I wonder which it’ll be.”

“Hmm,” Uncle let out a deep sigh. “I can’t do something so heartless.” “I must at least notify them, but that’d be after putting him in the hospital or such.” “I suppose I must do what I can for him.”

Thus, the next day, I was taken by Uncle to the prefectural hospital in the direction of Kyoto. The doctor said I must be hospitalized and undergo surgery immediately. I was carried to the hospital room just as I was. It was the surgical third-class ward, with five white beds arranged in two rows facing each other. I lay on one of the beds at the far end for over seventy days thereafter.

On the morning after being hospitalized, I was carried to the operating room. The surgery proved relatively simple and quick despite how I had been trembling violently in fear of it. They made a hole large enough to admit an index finger near the lymph nodes in my left hip joint and drained the pus from there. However, as the pus seemed lodged quite deep, they inserted a rubber tube about four or five sun long to draw it out. The name of my illness was never disclosed to me, though its source appeared to lie in either my hip bone or spinal cord. They said things would improve if only this pus stopped flowing—but that would take at least two months.

That afternoon, my sister O-Kimi came to visit and said: “What are you going to do? Father must be so worried—there’s no telling how much!” The moment she arrived, my sister suddenly said such things in a tone as though I were guilty of some crime and she were reproaching me for it. “We need a heap of money, you. Father doesn’t have that kind of money. Since Father hasn’t been here long enough for that, I don’t know if Uncle will give us the money. Because Uncle from Shijō is shrewd, even if he covers the cost now, without a doubt he’ll make it all Father’s debt in the end.”

To my sister, nothing seemed to concern her more than the hospital fees. But there was nothing I could do. I was too young to worry about such matters. More than anything, what I hated most was how my sister would blurt out such things without regard for our surroundings amidst all the other patients and attendants.

The three months of hospital life became something I would look back on fondly. Though my only visitor was my sister O-Kimi on rare occasions, I never once felt lonely or anxious. This was because the life I'd lived until then had been far lonelier and colder than this hospital existence that nobody from my past knew about. At the hospital, I finally experienced warm human compassion that had been absent from my previous world. I came to prefer staying in the hospital, truth be told.

On every bed lay injured patients unable to walk freely. Yet those who appeared critically ill were few. In one corner of the ward were a full-body burn victim admitted around the same time as myself and, facing him, a pitiful figure swathed in bandages from head to face—only eyes visible—breathing through a hole in his throat; these two alone occasionally moaned in pain. Most others were convalescents—men who had lost legs, had large back abscesses lanced, or whose immobilized bodies no longer suffered active pain. They were all fast friends with one another. Sitting up on their beds, neighbors and those across the aisle chatted cheerfully about matters wholly unrelated to illness, laughing together. To hear their banter, one would never guess them patients. Though boredom and lassiness hung about them, life's deeper agonies seemed absent from their world. Only bright, carefree talk filled that space. This ward, which should have been a den of misery thick with suffering, instead glowed like the happiest of realms—warm and luminous.

They would customarily gather in groups of five or six at certain times of day, such as after their evening meal, to converse together. A large brazier had been placed in the middle of the corridor, steam vigorously rising from a big copper kettle atop it; two or three relatively mobile patients would deliberately come out to this spot and let their cheerful conversations blossom around the brazier. At night they sometimes called the nurses together and enjoyed playing karuta cards with some joining in. The young patient who had his right leg amputated above the knee always served as the reader.

The fact that I, a young patient, had joined their midst seemed to offer fresh interest for those who had grown weary of their monotonous days. During my first four or five days in the hospital, conversations largely centered around me. They inquired about my illness. They asked about my hometown. They questioned me about my parents, siblings, and present circumstances. I recounted my life story as they prompted. They all showed me sympathy. And they comforted me in various ways. They gave me sweets and fruits. I quickly became fond of them.

The nurses’ kind words and treatment, rich in sympathy, made me intensely happy. Groups of four or five nurses took turns managing the hospital room each day, yet they were all uniformly kind and gentle. I even began to wonder if they were doing this especially for me alone. Their tender care—whether resembling a mother’s love or womanly affection in general—compelled me, who had starved and thirsted for such warmth or rather never known it at all, to behave like an infant clinging to its mother. Even I—with all my bitterness, warpedness, and stubbornness—could strip myself bare and hurl myself into their embrace. And there I steeped in their tender compassion.

Among them all, the nurse named Fujimoto treated me with the utmost kindness. She was still young, around eighteen or nineteen years old. She was a dark-skinned, petite woman. She had acne and wasn’t beautiful, but she was a simple, honest, and approachable woman. I preferred having her take my pulse and measure my temperature more than anyone else. I could ask her without hesitation to handle tasks like assisting with urination and defecation or any other unpleasant things. When she entered the hospital room with a smile, my heart fluttered. And when she wasn’t there, I felt a vague sense of emptiness. Day by day, such feelings grew stronger.

I would wake up early in the morning, usually around three or four o'clock, and then lie awake troubled by my inability to fall back asleep. Winter nights were slow to give way to dawn. How I must have yearned for daybreak and the nurse's arrival. At such times, when she—Nurse Fujimoto—came on night duty or some other reason to check the hospital room at first light, I felt like leaping up with joy. She would enter on tiptoe, trying not to rouse the sleeping patients.

“Are you already awake?” she whispered in a low voice, peering into my face. “Oh, I’ve been up for ages—” I nodded while looking at her with a nostalgic gaze. “I’ve been waiting so impatiently for you to come.”

She must have read such words in my eyes. “Would you like to wash your face now?” “Shall I bring hot water for you?” Before long, she entered carrying a washbasin billowing white steam, placing it on a small table. Then she wrung out a warm towel for me. At such times, I wished the other patients wouldn’t wake. The secret knowledge that she tended only to me filled me with particular joy. I desperately wanted to believe her heart was devoted solely to me. I secretly hoped she too harbored such hidden feelings toward me. These love-like emotions had begun budding in my chest. Were I ever asked about my first love, I would speak of those guileless feelings I held for her then.

About two weeks had passed.

One day, suddenly and completely unexpectedly, Father arrived, brought by my sister O-Kimi.

“Oh, Kyōzō! Poor boy!—” When Father saw my face, he said this in a voice that was nearly weeping. And he let his tears stream down steadily. I too was moved to tears. And I couldn’t say anything.

“I was worried! When I heard you’d been admitted to the hospital, I kept thinking how bad it must’ve been.”

Father stroked my face while saying this. And he went on. “Where did they cut you? Around your groin or something, they say?” “Does it hurt? Has it gotten much better?” “You’ve gotten quite thin, poor dear.” “Ah!” “Even so, seeing your face put my mind at ease.” “I thought I might never see your healthy face again—worried and worried—”

Father saw my condition and was completely relieved. In the evening, along with my sister, the three of us as parent and children ate the hospital meal. Father had my sister O-Kimi secretly buy a two-gō bottle of Masamune and bring it, then under my bed, facing the wall, he drank it cold as it was, pretending as if drinking tea, stealthily from a rice bowl.

“Ah, how happy I am! Now I can rest easy about you.”

Father, in a manner that truly showed his mind was at rest, let out a great sigh of relief while repeating once more what he had already said many times over. That his two children, who had grown up in obscurity and thus stirred even deeper affection in his heart, had come together in such a place filled him with boundless joy. That it was within the hospital made him feel a sense of complete satisfaction, more harmonious than at Uncle’s house, Aunt’s house, or any other place whatsoever. Father could envelop us two children completely freely within the warm wings of his love without being disturbed by anyone. Even if I was bedridden with illness, Father in that situation seemed to be happiness itself. He became blissfully and pleasantly tipsy as he talked at length about their hometown. He spoke of how my running away when I was barely thirteen had greatly surprised the villagers; how Mother, bound by duty, had been terribly afraid people might think the blame lay with her; how she had complained this must mean Father had secretly conspired with me; how she had gone around apologizing to everyone she met; how this had caused discord between them for a time; and even how the boatman who took me away came to be resented. Upon hearing this, my sister O-Kimi vehemently berated Mother, but I couldn’t help feeling somehow responsible.

From that night onward, Father stayed at the hospital for about a week under the pretext of being an attendant. He would lay thin rush matting under my bed and sleep curled up on a thin futon atop it. There were times when I awoke late at night and, gazing down from my bed at Father’s ruddy face illuminated by the bright electric light, I would inadvertently moisten my pillow with feelings of longing and gratitude.

The progress was so unexpectedly favorable that even the doctors were surprised, and by the time Father came, I was already on the verge of being discharged. The pus had almost stopped coming out, and the wound was mostly closing up. The rubber tube that had been inserted into the wound grew thinner and shorter day by day, and by the day after Father arrived, there was no longer any need to keep it in.

Father, now completely relieved and citing his busyness with preparations for the spring fishing season, suddenly decided to return home without waiting for my discharge, which was now just two or three days away.

I was reluctant to part. Father, too, seemed truly reluctant to leave and could not easily rise to his feet. “Maybe I should wait until you’re discharged.” Even after finally deciding to return and with the time for parting drawing near, Father still deliberated while saying so.

“Please go back home.” “It’s nothing serious.” “Don’t worry about me,” I said in an adult-like tone. “Then I’ll be goin’ home, I will.” “It’s not that I’m not worried, but I’m busy myself, ’cause.” “Take good care of yourself even after ya leave the hospital.” “I’ve already asked Uncle properly ’cause, so don’t hold back and focus on gettin’ better.” “You don’t need to worry even a bit about money or anything!” “I’ve already talked to Uncle and made sure everything’s set up proper ’cause—even if you get lonely, bear with it and work hard.” “Even if you were to return to your hometown, there’d be no use in it, ’cause.” “Even if ya became a small-time fisherman back home, ’twouldn’t do ya no good.” “I don’t want to make you into a fisherman.” “When you said you wanted to go to Kyoto, I thought you’d said something really good for me, ’cause.” “If you stay in Kyoto—what with Aunt and Uncle being there—nothing bad’ll come of it in the end, I tell ya.”

Even when it was already time to leave, Father once again earnestly repeated what he had already said up to that point.

“Well then, I’ll be off.” Finally standing up, Father bid a polite farewell to each of the nurses and fellow patients in the room, and entrusted them with my care. And then he came back to my side,

“Well then, this’ll be goodbye for now. Stay healthy,” he said as he left the room, but came back once more to add, “Once you’re discharged, send a letter straightaway—I’ll be waiting. And tell Mother properly now.” “Don’t forget,” he reminded me before reluctantly stepping outside the door, looking back again and again with eyes brimming tears.

Seven

It was two days after Father had returned home. The wound had closed, and I was scheduled to be discharged in a day or two. But that morning, when I tried to get up to use the bathroom, I felt a strange, intense pain in the joints of my left knee and hip, making walking excruciatingly painful. I immediately reported this to Nurse Fujimoto. The nurse tilted her head slightly and said, “This is odd,” then massaged my thigh herself before joking, “Perhaps someone’s trying to keep you from being discharged,” adding, “In any case, I’ll inform the doctor,” as she left.

During the afternoon rounds, the deputy head of surgery came and conducted a thorough examination. He deliberately massaged the same area where Nurse Fujimoto had been massaging, then briskly inserted something like a syringe needle there. By the time I let out a small cry and grimaced, the Deputy Head Surgeon had already withdrawn the needle. He held up the blood drawn into a slender glass tube to the light, examining it intently. “Hmm,” he murmured with a grave expression, “This requires immediate surgery.” “I did think the recovery was progressing too quickly,” he said and left.

In that instant, I jolted as if cold water had been poured over my entire body. After some time had passed, an internal medicine doctor came to examine me. And after particularly thoroughly examining my chest, he left without saying a word. Before long, Nurse Fujimoto returned and, “It looks like there’ll indeed be surgery tomorrow after all.” “But it should be brief,” she said, then promptly left as though to avoid being asked any further questions by me. That evening, I was not given a meal. Not only that, but I was even administered a laxative.

Everything felt unnervingly strange. For some reason, I trembled with fear that I might be subjected to a major surgery. I kept feeling terribly forlorn, thinking how much better it would have been if Father had stayed instead of leaving. I spent an anxious, sleepless night. “Come along now.” In the afternoon, an elderly nurse named Inoue came and said so. I was placed on a stretcher. And I was pulled along the long corridor with a rumbling sound. I kept my eyes closed the entire time.

When they took me into a certain room and I opened my eyes, it was not an operating room but a bathhouse. In the boat-shaped bathtub, crystal-clear water filled it to the brim. I was first placed into the bath. Then I was led to an adjacent small room that seemed partitioned off from the corridor. There, two nurses shaved me from my waist down to my lower abdomen and then from my groin to my left leg, disinfected me, and finally wrapped bandages around the entire area. When one of the doors opened, a nurse appeared halfway through the doorway and made a gesture. And I was led in that direction.

That was the operating room. But this operating room was completely different in structure and equipment from the previous one. Partitioned by three pale gray walls and dimmed by the dull light streaming through the high frosted-glass ceiling, the room—resembling both a large box and the bottom of a deep pit—stood empty and vast. At its center lay only two simple operating tables like narrow chopping boards, covered with black paulownia oil paper and placed like discarded stools. I was first overwhelmed by the solemn atmosphere of the room. My heart had turned to stone, and even when I was placed on the hard, cold operating table, I felt almost no emotion.

Behind my head against the wall came a constant hissing and bubbling sound like boiling water, perhaps from sterilizing instruments. Beside it, three doctors were disinfecting their hands while whispering in hushed tones. Occasionally, the clatter of geta worn by nurses walking across the washed plaster floor echoed sharply in my ears. Lying on my back atop a hard wooden pillow, I alternated between staring at the glass ceiling and closing my eyes. Soon a doctor approached my side. Three or four nurses surrounded me. Before long I was completely wrapped from forehead to crown in white cloth. Then they began cutting away the bandages around my left leg from knee to thigh. The cold metal back of scissors touched my bare skin. In that instant, I was pinned down with such force across my shoulders, arms and legs that I couldn't move a muscle.

The surgery was performed under local anesthesia, with an incision of about three sun made in the thick flesh between the knee and thigh. How terrible it was—I cannot describe the scene. But for me at that moment, time felt excruciatingly long. It seemed to have taken over an hour. And during that time, I continued to cry and scream.

“There was a huge wolf in the operating room.” After returning to the ward, I was teased by the elderly ward nurse who had been waiting outside the operating room. I cried and screamed so violently. However, despite that, during the surgery—what kind of mental process it was—a strong desire to witness that scene arose. I desperately fought against an indescribably violent pain while shouting, “Let me see! Let me see!” And within the wrapped cloth, I shook my head from side to side, struggling to push away the hands of the nurses pressing down from above.

“You can’t! You can’t!” The nurse pressed down even harder. “I can’t breathe—it’s burning—I’m dying—dying!” I screamed on and on as if mad. Without any intention whatsoever, those words had come out on their own. Then, whether she had obtained the doctor’s permission or not, the nurse removed the cloth from my face. Trembling with fear and curiosity, I tried to lift my head and peered down at my legs.

Blood! A sea of blood! Everywhere was filled with red blood. That's what I thought in that moment. The three doctors, their hands crimson up to the wrists, kept working almost indifferently despite my screams, murmuring something under their breaths. The deputy director in charge thrust his hands deep into the wound up to his wrists as if trying to grasp something, then scraped it out with what resembled a rake. At times, I felt coursing through my entire body a grotesque, indescribably violent pain—as if someone were seizing my muscles and yanking them out by force. Each time, I let out a scream: "Gyah!"

Yet even amidst all that, a strange calm arose within my heart. Compared to before I had seen the actual surgery, both my fear and pain had become far less. “It’s almost over, almost over.” “It’s halfway done.” In this manner, the doctor continued his unsettling work. For two days, I continued to suffer. Lying on my back with weights like counterweights attached to my feet—stretched out and unable to move—the pain gradually grew intermittent, but I couldn’t endure the wound’s agony that assaulted me at times as if being drilled through.

“It hurts, it hurts, oh it hurts!” I shouted involuntarily. “Does it hurt? It’ll be over soon now—just hang in there a bit longer. With this, you’ll be completely healed now.”

Sometimes the nurses came and comforted me like that. But I felt unbearably anxious. The fact that Father had returned home just a day or two earlier even made me think it might be some kind of ominous portent. Moreover, around that time, I found it strange that Nurse Fujimoto, whom I liked, was nowhere to be seen. When I asked about her, it turned out she had taken a week-long New Year’s leave starting from the very day of my surgery, as part of a rotation. This made me feel even lonelier, more anxious, and more unhappy. The fellow patients in the room also seemed afraid to speak to me. As if they thought it wrong to comfort me at all, they all maintained a silence toward me as if by prior agreement. Even when talking among themselves, they would exchange hushed whispers as if apprehensive of me. A tense, cold air—solemn, like that at the bedside of someone on their deathbed—filled the hospital room.

I couldn't help but desperately desire someone—anyone—to cling to their chest and let me pour out my pain as I wished. However, my condition improved day by day, and after a week passed, the pain in the affected area almost subsided, allowing me to turn over in bed. Moreover, Nurse Fujimoto returned, and I felt happier and more reassured than anything else.

“You’ve been through an awful ordeal, haven’t you? How are you feeling now—does it still hurt?” One morning, she finally revealed her cheerful smile again after so long, a thermometer tucked under her arm as she spoke. She took my wrist and began checking my pulse. While lost in that sweet sensation of having my hand held as if by a lover, I stared at her wholesome face—her eyes fixed on the small watch dial. The warmth from her fingertips traveled through my hand straight to my heart.

“Your temperature and pulse are normal.” “You’ll be feeling better soon.” “Take good care of yourself.” She fastened my gown and said while lightly covering me with a quilt. “Are you feeling lonely now that your dear father has gone back?” “Not at all—I’m not lonely——” “My, how brave you are!” “………” Even so, I couldn’t bring myself to say it was because Nurse Fujimoto was there. Starting from thin rice gruel to rice porridge with egg, and then to regular meals, my diet gradually progressed, and after two weeks had passed, my energy had completely recovered.

Having often seen Nurse Fujimoto leaning against the hibachi in the hospital room reading books, one day I asked her, “If you have any books, please lend me some.” She soon brought a book. “This is all I’ve got right now. If you’d like, go ahead and read it. It’s mine, so take your time reading it.” That was Volume I of Kōyōsanjin’s *Golden Demon*. Despite there being many parts I didn’t understand, captivated by the beauty of the prose and the intrigue of the plot, I read through it in one go, tracing the ruby characters as I went.

“Did you finish reading it already?” “My, how impressive!” “If you’d read so eagerly, you’ll get a fever—how are you feeling?” “Was it interesting? My, poor Mr. Kan’ichi is.” “I tell ya, no matter how many times I read it, it makes me cry.”

Nurse Fujimoto took the book from me and said. “My, *Hototogisu*’s so pitiable too.” “I love it.” “Next time I’ll bring it from home and lend it to you.”

A few days later, she brought Roka’s *Hototogisu* and lent it to me. I read that one too. For the first time, I was able to satisfy my long-thirsted desire to read. And after that, every time the rental bookstore came, I would read Bakin’s *Eight Dogs*, other Edo-period novels and kōdan books, or new novels—choosing nothing in particular, just picking them up one after another as they came. Before long, I became able to stand somehow or other. At first, while clinging to the bed, I tried walking around its perimeter, but after two or three days, my waist had steadied, and I became able to go to the bathroom alone by supporting myself against the corridor walls. Once my recovery period began, since I was still a boy on the verge of growth, my recovery progressed twice as fast as others. One month after the surgery, I was already allowed to take walks within the hospital. I would often beg Nurse Fujimoto to take me on walks through the corridors and other places. Wrapping my arm around hers and walking gradually while pressing close together was my greatest happiness.

In early March, approximately seventy days after being hospitalized and over forty days after undergoing the second major surgery, I was finally to be discharged. The day dawned clear from the morning, and it was a beautiful day that seemed to herald the arrival of spring. Around noon, Uncle came and completed the accounting and other discharge procedures, and by around two in the afternoon, we left the hospital gate in a line of cars.

“Congratulations.” “It’s so hard to say goodbye. When you come for your outpatient visits, do stop by.” That morning, starting with Nurse Fujimoto, the other nurses too came one after another to offer their greetings in the same manner. “Do let me come by again—I’ll be visiting every other day, I tell you.” I bid farewell like that. It was a peculiar feeling—something akin to happiness yet tinged with regret at parting. “Goodbye—take good care of yourself.” At the hospital entrance, four or five ward nurses stood lined up and sent me off in unison; their voices lingered long in my ears.

The more than three months of hospital life left me with a strangely vivid impression. After that, I continued going to the hospital every other day for about another month to have my bandages changed. I looked forward to that. About once every three visits, I would go to that memory-filled hospital room, check on the patients I knew, and drop by the nurses’ station. To tell the truth, I was looking forward to seeing Nurse Fujimoto. When her figure was nowhere to be seen, I couldn’t bring myself to ask others about her, and harboring a sense of dissatisfaction, I would typically take my leave here and there.

One day, after my bandages had been changed, I stopped by the usual nurses’ station. At that very moment, Nurse Fujimoto was there. However, unlike usual, she wasn’t wearing her nurse uniform but was dressed in civilian clothes, talking with the other nurses in a strangely sentimental tone as though reluctant to part. I stood there feeling awkward for a while, but when I was about to leave, she said, “Leaving already? Just a moment.” “I’ll come with you,” said Nurse Fujimoto.

I waited awkwardly for a while, feeling something was off, until she eventually gave her colleagues what seemed like a prolonged farewell—polite and filled with genuine emotion—then said to me, “Apologies for making you wait. Let’s go,” and left the room. “I’ve left the hospital, I tell ya.” When we passed through the hospital gate, Nurse Fujimoto suddenly declared.

“Oh! Is that so?”

I was genuinely surprised. In that instant, I realized that from now on, my reason for going to the hospital would be gone. I was suddenly struck by a lonely feeling.

“And what will you do? Where are you off to?” I asked. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying at home.” “Aren’t you going to get married?” “You’re tellin’ lies! You say such disagreeable things.”

She glared at me. But she immediately changed her tone and said, “If you come to the hospital, please drop by my place too.” “It’s right there, I tell you.” Then, after walking five or six steps, “How about it—why don’t you come now?”

“Sure, thanks a lot.”

Without any deliberation, I followed her with a feeling of being drawn along. After walking what seemed like four or five blocks, her house came into view. A woman who appeared to be the mother and a fourteen or fifteen-year-old sister were at home. I was shown magazines and novels, but merely flipping through the pages without purpose in a completely unsettled state of mind, I stayed for a little over thirty minutes before taking my leave. As I was leaving, she gave me a bookmark knitted with lace thread in a red-and-white floral pattern, saying it was a memento.

“Please come again. I’m always at home, I tell you.” She saw me out to the gate with those words. On my way back, I kept taking out the bookmark from my pocket to look at it again and again. However, after that, I never visited her again. And I never met her anywhere else either.

Eight

Life after returning to Uncle’s house remained completely unchanged from before. From the day after I was discharged, I did cleaning, cooking rice, and other water-related chores. Indeed, they didn’t make me fetch water at first, but when I saw Aunt O-Yuki coming up the slope—her sleeves tied back with a tasuki cord, her delicate hands carrying a bucket filled to the brim with water that seemed impossibly heavy, while sightseers streamed past—I couldn’t just sit still. So after four or five days, I took it upon myself to go fetch water.

“I wonder if this is too much for you?” Aunt O-Yuki said with apparent sympathy, yet in a tone that suggested she wished for me to continue if at all possible.

“The doctor said you shouldn’t lift heavy things or do hard labor for about a year even after recovering—but I suppose it’s fine for you now?” “Well, if that’s how it is… I guess there’s no helping it…” Aunt O-Yuki made no effort to forcibly stop him.

Although a small amount of pus still oozed out intermittently, all pain had completely vanished and he felt no difficulty walking; yet his post-illness weakened body found carrying heavy water buckets up the slope quite painful at first. He suffered severe shortness of breath too. However, as five days passed and seven days went by, his strength gradually returned. Because of this recovery process, nothing particular occurred to aggravate his condition—at least not directly before him. Uncle’s health had steadily improved since moving to Shimizu. Once restored, his enterprising nature left him unable to remain idle. At the time of my discharge from hospital, he had already begun constructing a large building on the vacant lot next to our house—land he’d previously purchased with its thicket intact and later cleared when building our residence. Uncle planned to establish it as a ceramics Kankōba (crafts market), having already secured agreements with four or five major Shimizu-yaki pottery shops. Since no ceramics Kankōba existed in Shimizu then, Uncle naturally believed it would succeed—though more than profit margins, he seemed to derive profound satisfaction from pioneering such an enterprise itself. To fund this venture, he mortgaged both our Shijō house and Shimizu property.

In early autumn, around the time when tourists from local areas were gradually increasing in number, the large two-story building was finally completed. Uncle invited people from local pottery shops to a certain restaurant within the precincts of Kiyomizu-dera Temple and held a grand opening banquet. At the time of its opening, business was very prosperous. Those coming down from the top of the slope and those climbing up from below all streamed in through both entrances and overflowed out. “It’s going well.”

Uncle muttered with satisfaction, over and over. He spent much of the daytime peering through the entrance window at the people ascending and descending the familiar Z-shaped steps in droves like a procession of ants.

However, after a little over a month, something entirely unexpected occurred. The opening of that Kankōba dealt a major blow to the numerous pottery shops not involved with it. Thereupon, they began discussions. And they plotted to lure customers away by giving rickshaw drivers and guides who brought in customers a significantly larger share than before.

Most consisted of local tourists，and those led by rickshaw drivers and professional guides were gradually drawn away to that side． For example，whenever customers said they wanted to enter the Kankōba， “This place is too pricey．” “There’s a place over there with plenty of good stuff—you should buy there．” With that，the rickshaw drivers and guides pulled them away． Even if some entered，they were made to purchase at other shops as much as possible；without a single recommendation，they simply passed straight through．

In this way, though customers suddenly dwindled for a time, during that period they too implemented substantial countermeasures, so that within two or three months—while business naturally never regained its initial vigor—it came to enjoy considerable prosperity. Though called a Kankōba (crafts market), it differed from ordinary ones in that it merely had the outward appearance of such shops. The exhibitors did not maintain separate stores within the building; instead, each brought their own products to be conveniently displayed, making it akin to a large ceramics store functioning as a joint-stock organization. Therefore, no harmful competition arose among the exhibitors, and it was managed smoothly. Uncle, being one of the principal capitalists from the start, had structured it such that instead of fixed rent for the building, he received a certain percentage of the sales.

Three office workers and four apprentices worked at this Kankōba (crafts market). I was also one of those four apprentices. It was because I had gone to help as a lookout in the hall during the initial opening period that I was subsequently made into a proper apprentice. The store opened at eight every morning, but I hurriedly finished cleaning the house and kitchen chores before then and went to the Kankōba. And I would only return home briefly for lunch, then stay there until the store closed in the evening.

It was a rather busy working life. I worked all day at the Kankōba, and even after returning home in the evening, I still had to fetch water and cook rice just as before. However, I was happy with this life. While at the Kankōba, I felt carefree and unconstrained. There was always work to do—dealing with customers, preparing straw packages—but my mind remained at ease. Instead of feeling stifled in front of Uncle and Aunt O-Yuki, I could frolic with fellow apprentices, listen to lewd talk among the older clerks, and during idle moments freely enjoy reading magazines and novels. This would never have been permitted at home. Though Uncle was uneducated and illiterate—or perhaps precisely because of it—he detested my reading or writing practice. He harbored an almost pathological aversion to such things. Before the Kankōba opened, I hadn't received a single rin in pocket money and couldn't buy magazines, but there even apprentices like me were put on a wage system, allowing me to earn a small amount. I handed all my earnings to Uncle, but from that sum—though it was mere pennies—he gave me a portion specifically as allowance, citing my need to keep up with peers. In essence, it amounted to what remained after deducting my food expenses from the wages.

“From now on I’ll be giving you an allowance, so you’re not to go buying snacks or anything.” The first time, Uncle said that and tossed two or three silver coins in front of me. That was the first money I had earned through my own work. I was happy. However, I felt awkward about receiving it. Even if legitimate, being given money or goods by someone gave me a prickly feeling. I couldn’t decide whether it was acceptable to take it or not, and for a while I just fidgeted there, unable to reach out.

“Hurry up and take it.” Being told this by Aunt O-Yuki, I blushed and gathered the silver coins scattered before my knees like a mouse dragging something away, moving timidly. And then I went toward the kitchen and, smiling in the dim light, repeatedly clenched and opened them in my hand.

In that manner, I received a small amount of money each month, and from it I bought one or two boys' magazines every month. However, I did not bring them home; instead, I hid them at the Kankōba and read them during my free time. My body—which until now had been afflicted by chronic illness and weighed down by heavy mental oppression, unable to grow taller or fill out, shriveled small like a plant in the shade—now that my sickness had completely healed and I began working at the Kankōba, perhaps because both body and mind were liberated more freely than before, suddenly began growing visibly rapidly. Though I remained as thin and slender as ever, my height alone shot up like a bamboo shoot.

“You don’t look fourteen anymore. If you keep growin’ like this, that kimono won’t hold up.” When four or five months had passed since returning from the hospital, Aunt O-Yuki remarked in apparent surprise. Until then, I had worn a short-sleeved kimono that hung too short on me, but come autumn that year, I was made to wear a proper adult kimono with full sleeves. Having shaved my head into a buzzcut during my hospital stay, I now looked sufficiently grown-up that no one would take me for an apprentice anymore. “Seems your illness kept you from puttin’ on weight after all,” said Uncle.

Not only my body, but along with it, my mind too grew. Looking back now, those seventy-odd days in the hospital may have been—for my precocious self—a transitional period both physically and mentally, poised on the cusp of shifting from boyhood to adolescence. Perhaps hospital life had accelerated that transition somewhat beyond the ordinary. After returning from the hospital, I realized that a different window had been opened in my mind’s eye. A sweet emotional bud—something like an innocent longing for the opposite sex—began imperceptibly to sprout within me.

While at the Kankōba crafts market, I would listen intently from the shadows whenever the young clerks engaged in their favored talk about women, taking particular interest in such conversations. When beautiful female customers entered, I would follow after them before anyone else. I would stand by a woman’s side, staying close enough to avoid her notice, and take pleasure in catching whiffs of her elusive fragrance. From time to time, Nurse Fujimoto’s figure would float into view in the sky. I gazed spellbound at her smile brimming with kindness. There were more than just one or two times when I saw her likeness in my dreams.

At night, I would sometimes massage Aunt O-Yuki’s shoulders. Even through her kimono, I could touch her supple, plump body and delight in its warmth. I worked my hands eagerly down from her shoulders to her back, then toward her waist. “Oh, that feels good!” Aunt O-Yuki closed her eyes (which was clearly discernible even from behind) and exhaled with deep, forceful breaths, looking utterly content.

"You're quite skilled at this, Kyouyan." "Better than a proper masseur." Though aware I was being buttered up, I let myself weave sweet daydreams as I worked my hands all the more earnestly, savoring every moment.

It was around that time that my smoking urge, which had been suppressed for a long time since coming to Kyoto, revived with tremendous force.

From early childhood onward，I had harbored an almost pathological craving for tobacco. My first taste came when I was about ten years old. Since my father didn't smoke，our home contained neither pipe nor tobacco—until one day old sailor Yaichi forgot his tobacco pouch，and half in mischief，I took two or three puffs．That marked the beginning． Once I'd experienced that indescribably sweet—or so it seemed then—intoxicating flavor，tobacco held an irresistible allure． In those days，after returning from school，I'd regularly go coastal fishing with my father．Old Man Yaichi served as sailor on our family boat，coming daily to our home for work． Thus I'd sometimes beg him in beach shacks or aboard the vessel：＂Let me smoke．＂ At first I kept this secret from my father．But one day at the beach，having pilfered Yaichi's tobacco pouch（a frequent act）and stolen away to a shed，I was furtively smoking when unexpectedly he appeared． Flustered，I hid the pipe and tried wafting away smoke．Yet rather than scold，my father simply smiled gently—

“It’s fine. Go ahead and smoke,” he said. After that, I began smoking openly even in front of Father. He had never encouraged it, but neither did he try to forcibly stop me. Though he never bought me a pipe or tobacco himself, he silently allowed me to smoke ones I received from Old Man Yaichi or others—even when I did so inside the house. At times, when visitors came and smoked while talking with Father, I would gaze longingly at them,

“Please let our Kyou have a smoke too—the boy’s so fond of tobacco it’s a problem. Who does he take after?” he said to them. “To think there’s such a child. It’s an illness, isn’t it?” The person said this while superficially allowing it with good grace. Later, I bought a brass nata-mame pipe, made a container from old newspapers and thick paper, and began carrying it in my pocket as I went about.

“What do you think you’re doing letting him smoke now?” “The audacity!” “His face is turning pale!” “You’re going too far! No matter how you look at it, how can you just stay silent and let this happen?!”

On one occasion, Stepmother complained to Father. Then Father retorted, “It’s fine, I tell you. It’s not him smoking—it’s the bug in his belly that craves it. There’s children who eat incense or gnaw on plaster and mud—this is no different. It’s an illness,” he defended me. After coming to Kyoto, I struggled for some time to restrain that desire. Especially after moving near Kiyomizu, where I was constantly around my tobacco-loving uncle and Aunt O-Koto and perpetually smelled its fragrance, I sometimes felt overwhelming temptation. Yet I had kept suppressing it all along.

However, once I began working at the Kankōba and gained some degree of freedom, I finally succumbed to that desire. One time, watching a clerk stick his half-smoked cigarette into the hibachi, I waited until he left before creeping over. Panicking as if committing theft, I lit the stub and inhaled fiercely and greedily. Suddenly my head spun dizzyingly—yet I couldn’t forget that intensely fragrant aroma. After that, I bought my own rolled cigarettes and smoked them inside the Kankōba. However, still wary of others, I would hide in a corner while doing so.

“Cheeky brat!” one of the clerks scolded at one point. “It’s because of riffraff like you smoking that tobacco’s getting so dear!” I kept it secret from Uncle and Aunt O-Yuki. At home I endured as best I could, hiding in corners like the kitchen nook or the narrow alley between the main house and Kankōba to smoke. Whenever I went to fetch water from the well, I always made sure to smoke a cigarette at the wellside first thing. When I woke each morning, I absolutely had to have that first smoke before anything else—otherwise my nerves wouldn’t settle. I’d throw open the front door and step right out into the garden, taking fierce pleasure in drawing deep lungfuls of fragrant rolled tobacco along with the crisp morning air. I’d stay planted there outside until I’d finished every last shred of that cigarette.

“Kyoukou!” “What are you doing?” “Hurry up and open the storm shutters!” Since I wouldn’t come back inside for a long time after opening the front door, Uncle would sometimes shout from his bed. “What do you always do after opening the door?” At times, I would slip away from Uncle and Aunt O-Yuki’s watchful eyes to the long hibachi and secretly smoke cut tobacco using Aunt O-Yuki’s pipe. Keeping this absolutely hidden from them made working in their presence at night most agonizing. I had made it routine to visit the toilet nightly to satisfy this unbearable craving, though only once per night. During desperate moments when Uncle had fallen asleep and Aunt O-Yuki conveniently went to relieve herself, I would peer at Uncle’s sleeping face like a thief and hastily take a couple of puffs from her pipe. At such times, I buried the butt deep in ashes to prevent smoke, returned the pipe precisely, and feigned innocence. When Aunt O-Yuki retrieved her pipe afterward, I trembled watching her expression—terrified she might notice the warm bowl or detect disturbances in the carefully smoothed ashes.

I began to fear my breath might smell greasy. I paid meticulous attention to prevent Uncle and Aunt O-Yuki from noticing. When speaking, I made sure to keep my distance and turn sideways. When forced to face them directly, I tried not to exhale. And I also had to take care that my behavior wouldn't arouse their suspicion or seem deliberately affected.

It was a certain winter morning.

I had made it my daily habit to rise while dawn still lingered dimly, but that morning found myself gripped by an overwhelming urge to smoke right there in bed. The more I struggled to suppress this craving, the more fiercely it intensified until it became utterly ungovernable. Uncle and Aunt O-Yuki had already awakened and were rhythmically tapping their bedside tobacco pipe. The rasp of match strikes and clacks against the Hatsugetsuhou abnormally grated on my nerves, further inflaming my desire. I retrieved the rolled cigarettes hidden beneath my futon and pondered how to light them. Having prepared the kotatsu earlier, I now detected residual warmth within. I rose. Peeling back the bedding, I inspected the hibachi. The charcoal briquette's remnants glowed faintly crimson, maintaining their circular mound undisturbed. I prodded the ashes with my cigarette tip. They yielded softly without resistance, revealing a faint ember at their core. With a jolt akin to leaping upright, I frantically scooped aside ash and lit my cigarette. Then plunging my head into the kotatsu's wooden frame and fully enveloping myself in futon, I greedily inhaled while choking on stifling carbonic fumes. Smoke saturated the bedding until my eyes and nose burned fiercely, breath grew labored, and violent coughs wracked me. Through clenched endurance, I kept smoking.

“Kyoukou, aren’t you getting up yet? What are you doing?” Uncle’s voice came from beyond the sliding door. Startled and panicking, I thrust the half-smoked cigarette into the hibachi and scrambled to my feet. Smoke that had crept out from gaps in the futon billowed thickly through the room.

IX

Spring had come around once again. It was the second spring since coming to Kiyomizu. From the bamboo grove behind the house came the cheerful chirping of small birds all day long. In response, the Japanese white-eyes kept at the house raised their voices in high-pitched song. Beyond the bamboo grove behind us, across the valley where plum trees stretched—marking a shortcut from Kōshōji Betsuin to Kiyomizu-dera—the blossoms neared their peak. Stepping onto the inner room’s veranda revealed it all as clearly as if held in one’s palm: red blankets draped over folding stools, small red and blue flags stenciled with “BEER” and “CIDER” peeking through branches, and plum-viewers carrying gourds wandering in twos and threes through this tapestry. Higashiyama’s sightseers multiplied daily too—the clack of geta on the front slope and rumble of carts now rang peaceful and lovely from dawn till dusk. Across the way at Hyōtan-ya, voices endlessly hailing customers swelled with vigor like birds straining for high notes. And of course, day by day more patrons came streaming into our Kankōba.

I had turned fifteen. I had now been in Kyoto for three full years. From around that time, over the course of more than half a year, various incidents occurred one after another both at Uncle’s house and in my own surroundings.

O-Shin, who had been entrusted to Aunt O-Yuki’s sister’s house and had hardly ever shown her face until then, began coming to Kiyomizu little by little around that time—what had become of the child? She always came alone. And there were times when she stayed for several days. On evenings when she was here, I always withdrew to the kitchen. Uncle and the others were always whispering about something in the inner room. I leaned against the wall and strained to listen, but could only catch words like "child" and "Morimoto," unable to make out anything clearly. At times, O-Shin’s sobbing voice would faintly reach my ears. Were they consulting about her situation? Aunt O-Yuki’s voice interjected with phrases like “Don’t you worry” and “We’ll take care of it,” which I could hear mixed in.

It was not long after such things had occurred. Whether by coincidence or because they had arranged it beforehand, Morimoto, O-Shin's lover, came from Tokyo. He said he had been transferred to something like the Shanghai Submarine Telegraph Office and was on his way to his new post. It was my first time seeing him, but Morimoto was a fair-skinned, handsome man of twenty-seven or twenty-eight. He wore gold-rimmed glasses and had neatly parted hair.

He stayed one night and departed first thing the next morning.

At that time, despite Uncle’s refusal, O-Shin—fuming and crying in protest—declared she would see him off to the station and rushed out still in her everyday clothes. And after that, she never returned. She did not return to Aunt O-Yuki’s sister’s house either.

Uncle became extremely displeased. He hardly spoke a word all day, doing nothing but let out deep sighs while glaring wildly around with terrifying eyes. This made the house even darker and more oppressive than if he had been shouting loudly. Sometimes, as if talking to himself, he let slip curses like “*Chikushō!*” (“Damn it!”) or “*Gokudō!*” (“You scoundrel!”).

Aunt O-Yuki kept silent every night too. If she had said anything to Uncle, he likely would have showered her with a rain of pipe blows immediately, so she stayed in constant dread while trying to read his mood. A yearning, hostile silence - the sort that might erupt at any moment - claimed the house for days on end.

It was not even a month after O-Shin had run away from home that Uncle’s legal wife, Aunt O-Fumi, died. After we moved to Kiyomizu, she hadn’t shown her face as often as she used to when we lived in Shijō, but around the time the Kankōba was established, she began coming every four or five days. From around that time, her behavior became slightly strange. She was said to do nothing but make temple visits every day, and she ceaselessly chanted Namu Amida Butsu. As if it were a habit, she would say something and then invariably clasp her hands together and chant a Buddhist prayer afterward. She earnestly preached to Uncle and Aunt O-Yuki about the Buddha’s merits and the value of the priests’ sermons. And she urged them to visit temples as well. Uncle would always turn his face away with a bitter smile.

One time, she stood leaning against a veranda pillar and muttered something in fragmented soliloquy toward the Japanese white-eyes in the cage hanging under the eaves; then, clasping her hands together and bowing to the birds, she repeated Namu Amida Butsu over and over. “What are you doing there, Sister?” Aunt O-Yuki said with a laugh. “Bowing to the white-eyes now?” “Here, Yukyan, look at this,” said Aunt O-Fumi, briefly turning this way before facing the white-eyes again.

“One Mr. White-eye here is eating his mash with all his might, and the other one’s dunking his head in the cup’s water for a bath.” Aunt O-Fumi used such polite language toward the Japanese white-eyes—speaking as if they were human—and precisely because she did so with utter sincerity, it struck those listening as comical. “What’s the matter with that now? There’s nothing wrong with it at all—you’re saying such strange things,” said Aunt O-Yuki.

“Now, isn’t it a blessed thing.” “Namu Amida Butsu.” “What on earth are you talking about?!” “Isn’t that right? Even such a small bird knows perfectly well how to eat and take baths, don’t you think?” Aunt O-Yuki involuntarily stifled a laugh. But Aunt O-Fumi continued speaking with utmost seriousness. “My, isn’t it something—they know all this without anyone teaching them.” “How mysterious it is—all of this must surely have been taught by Amida-sama.”

Having said this, she once again clasped her hands and bowed her head, continuing to chant Namu Amida Butsu. “What a strange person!” Aunt O-Yuki muttered under her breath in a scornful tone, not even engaging with her. “Amida-sama’s divine virtue is so great, isn’t it. “Now, Yukyan, isn’t it true that even we live thanks to Amida-sama’s grace? Whether it’s Mr. White-eye or Mrs. Canary, they’re all the same—it’s such a blessed thing, isn’t it?”

“I suppose that’s so, isn’t it,” Aunt O-Yuki responded reluctantly.

Uncle said nothing, made a bitter face, and occasionally let out sighs. Aunt O-Fumi had become a Buddhist prayer fanatic. I didn’t know what had caused it or whether something like “prayer madness” truly existed, but everyone was saying so. Whenever she saw someone’s face, she would clasp her hands together and chant a Buddhist prayer. “Fukuyan, Amida-sama is passing by now. Since he’s calling for me to come, I’ll just go and be right back.” Having said this in her usual tone to her adopted daughter O-Fuku, who had come to her bedside, she was said to have passed away peacefully.

It was a warm evening when the night cherry blossoms of Maruyama and Miyako Odori had lured the hearts of Kyoto's people to gather in a corner of Kamogawa East. Uncle and Aunt O-Yuki had been at Aunt O-Fumi's residence in Miyagawachō since that morning. I had taken the day off from Kankōba and kept night watch alone, but when late at night came news of Aunt O-Fumi's death along with word that Uncle's party wouldn't return, I couldn't sleep a wink from loneliness and creeping dread. The memory of Aunt O-Fumi bowing to those Japanese white-eyes kept haunting my vision unbearably. I waited for dawn while trembling with fear.

Aunt O-Fumi’s death seemed to have deeply moved Uncle. The fact that they had lived separately in their later years and never shared a marital life appeared to make his emotions all the more poignant. He would occasionally let slip remorseful phrases like “Poor O-Fumi” or “How pitiful she was.” “Even if she’d gone mad like that, it still would’ve been better if she’d stayed alive.” “I just can’t bear this loneliness.” “Do you think O-Fumi resents me?”

One night, Uncle said to Aunt O-Yuki. “That’s ridiculous! Such things don’t happen!” Aunt O-Yuki brushed it off, though even she seemed to harbor some self-reproach, her tone faintly straining to dismiss such thoughts outright. “It’s because O-Fumi was a timid woman that she ended up so fixated on prayer, don’t you think?” “I don’t think such things!” Aunt O-Yuki said sharply, cutting Uncle off mid-sentence.

“…………”

Uncle remained silent and let out a deep sigh.

Uncle fell into deeper silence than ever before. And he constantly wore a clouded expression, absorbed in some thought. But his heart somehow grew calm and fragile, and even toward someone like me, he began showing a kindness he’d never displayed before. “There’s no one left now.” “You’re the only one left now, Mother.”

One night, Uncle said to Aunt O-Yuki with deep emotion. “Are you dwelling on such things again?” Aunt O-Yuki asked, furrowing her brows. “Let it be—those meant to die will die, those meant to flee will flee. There’s no helping it.” Uncle fell silent once more. He seemed to have more to say but couldn’t bring himself to voice it, ending instead with that familiar deep sigh rising from his gut. Just then, the tenant of their Shijō property requested early termination of the lease. They’d converted the former pharmacy section into a fruit shop while keeping part as an inn, but neither venture had prospered.

“What perfect timing. Why don’t we go back to Shijō and start some kind of business?” said Uncle without much thought, almost as if the idea had just occurred to him.

“That’s true—that might help take your mind off things,” Aunt O-Yuki agreed. “After all, that’s better for me—I’m not cut out to be idling around in a place like this.” Such casual tea-drinking talks became the trigger, and suddenly things began moving forward rapidly. They spent four or five days discussing what business would be best, but ultimately decided to combine a Western restaurant with a beef shop, since the restaurant business offered existing experience, good economic prospects, and the location was ideal. They even roughly decided to assign the second floor to sukiyaki by year-end and the third floor to a Western-style restaurant.

Soon, they began those preparations. I continued working at Kankōba as before, but Uncle went out to Shijō nearly every day to oversee the house renovations. For utensils and such, he intended to have specially made items crafted with novel designs not commonly used by competitors, so merchants in that field were constantly coming and going, filling the house with an unaccustomed liveliness. To open by the summer cool season, he rushed all preparations. Uncle appeared rejuvenated and invigorated by his new aspirations.

The renovation work on the Shijō house also progressed as planned. Only the ground floor had been entirely rebuilt, while the second and third floors merely had their ceilings, pillars, eaves, and railings scrubbed down. Yet the grand structure—encircled by a high fence of thick, dark ship planks crusted with oyster shells, tall enough to reach up to the second-floor eaves—had utterly transformed its former appearance, standing imposingly and overwhelming its surroundings. Yet the color of those high fence planks, their uneven surfaces, and the elegant entrance—carved out precisely at the midpoint of the wall facing the bridge—had been crafted with such excessively sober taste that, depending on one’s perspective, they felt vaguely gloomy and slightly discordant with the bustling, bright atmosphere of that area.

The interior furnishings had been nearly completed, and the procurement of various utensils proceeded smoothly, so plans to open by the summer coolness season had been established as scheduled. They had already begun making arrangements for hiring cooks and maids in those respective areas. However, just at that critical juncture, an unexpected misfortune occurred, bringing this new venture to an abrupt halt. This was because Aunt O-Yuki, who was crucial to the venture, had contracted typhoid fever and been admitted to an isolation hospital. Needless to say, Aunt O-Yuki was the heroine of this new business endeavor—without her, opening the shop simply couldn’t be done.

Uncle looked deflated and crestfallen. For Uncle, this misfortune—striking suddenly just before what was likely his final new venture, having its auspicious beginning thwarted—loomed like an ill omen, making him dread and fear for the future of this new enterprise.

“How ominous!” Uncle muttered habitually.

Uncle muttered as if by habit. But there was nothing to be done. In any case, they had to wait until Aunt O-Yuki was discharged from the hospital and her health recovered.

Uncle kept lonely watch over the house with only me as company every day, wearing a troubled expression. At times, he would go the entire day without uttering a single word. As soon as dusk fell, he would have me lay out the bedding.

“You should go to bed early too.” With those words, Uncle entered the mosquito net alone with a lonely air. But it seemed he couldn’t fall asleep easily, for when I woke in the night and casually glanced toward him, I could see through the mosquito net the glow of his cigarette flickering in the darkness. Even with a child’s heart, I empathized with Uncle’s feelings and faithfully tended to him. Uncle, too, seemed to rely on me as if I were his sole support. Even for small tasks, rather than issuing commands, he would ask in a considerate yet hesitant manner.

“Since Aunt’s away, it’s been rough on you.”

Uncle kept saying such things to me.

I was no longer going to Kankōba. After the renovations on the Shijō house were completed and its opening was imminent, I had been helping with various tasks there as well. One day, Uncle had me sit before him and spoke in an earnest tone. “I’m asking you now—when the Shijō shop opens, don’t think of yourself as a servant. Work as if you’re part of the family.” “In our family, you’re the only one left now.” “Kousaburou says he wants to re-enlist, so he won’t be handling the shop duties. Once you’ve gotten a bit used to things, I’m thinking of putting you in the accounts office.” “With that in mind, don’t show that servant mentality—work your hardest.” “In return—if you just keep working hard until you’re twenty-five—I’ll give you a branch of my shop, I tell you. Whether it’s a Western restaurant or a beef shop, I’ll let you open whichever you like.”

I hung my head and listened in silence. I felt Uncle’s kind words—words that seemed to both care for me and rely on me—seep deeply into my being. I resolved to devote myself wholeheartedly to working hard. Though I didn’t take at face value those words hinting that I might run a Western restaurant or beef shop if I worked faithfully until twenty-five, and though I thought such a thing ten years hence was unpredictable, those words never faded from my heart afterward. I neither rejoiced nor grieved over it, but with an indescribable feeling, would occasionally recall those words. And as I kept turning this over in my mind, I began to feel I would inevitably become just such a person. It seemed my future fate had already been decided thereby. I smiled to myself imagining scenes of my future self—wearing a pale yellow happi coat with the shop crest dyed white on collar and back, a white apron over it, cutting beef at the shopfront as a young man; or else posing as owner of a grand restaurant, resplendent in head-to-toe silks, strolling carefree through Gion’s night blossoms and Kamo River’s summer coolness with a young beautiful wife. While envisioning this transformed self bearing no resemblance to my initial scholarly aspirations, I felt not the slightest regret.

“Ten more years…” I sometimes thought such things. Then I remembered that my father too had first awaited his own house at twenty-five—a recollection that struck me with an uncanny feeling. Father had been born in Kyoto only to be sent off to a remote Noto village. I was born in that remote Noto village and fled to Kyoto, my father’s homeland. That both of us would come to possess houses at twenty-five—this symmetry felt like some karmic thread binding us across generations.

Aunt O-Yuki was finally discharged and returned after about three months. It was the beginning of September. Since her postoperative progress had been good, when preparations began again to open the shop in October, she unfortunately developed an eye disease in succession. As it was a rather severe case, they said there was a risk both eyes could be ruined if they were careless. Because of this, the opening had to be postponed once again. Aunt O-Yuki urged Uncle to proceed without her involvement, but Uncle refused on grounds of inauspicious timing. Since they had already missed the right moment anyway, he kept saying it would be better to wait until the bustling year-end season. The ill-omened start—particularly damaging for an auspicious business venture—had further eroded Uncle’s resolve, and now he seemed to have little enthusiasm left. He even went so far as to suggest abandoning it altogether depending on circumstances.

The aunt from Rokujō’s Kagi-ya passed away right around that time. She had not yet turned fifty by many years, but after losing her husband several years prior, she had become a devout follower of the Shin sect. Entrusting the business to her eldest daughter, O-Tami, she spent her tranquil remaining years visiting temples and managing certain groups at Honganji Temple. It was due to a mere cold that she developed pneumonia and suddenly passed away.

The death of the aunt from Kagi-ya also proved a severe blow to Uncle given the timing. Uncle respected and trusted the Kagi-ya aunt most among his siblings—though these consisted only of the Mannenji uncle who had inherited the main family and my father, his younger brother. The Mannenji uncle, though wealthy, was considered stingy and cold-hearted, making him the least favored among the siblings—so much so that they hardly interacted. Yet between Uncle and the Kagi-ya aunt—a spirited, strong-willed woman with chivalrous warmth who doted on her younger brother—there existed a profound kinship. Uncle deferred to her judgment in all matters. He constantly called her “Elder Sister” and refused to act without her approval. Even when launching this new Western restaurant venture, Uncle first consulted his “Elder Sister,” secured her endorsement, and procured part of the funding through her mediation. In truth, she was his sole advisor and confidant. None but this blood sister wholeheartedly shared his joys and sorrows. Thus her sudden death plunged Uncle into deep mourning. He declared he had lost all purpose. Through tears, he lamented having wished at least to open the Shijō shop and let her see its success before she died.

“What an ill-fated year. We won’t open the shop this year. Next spring, we’ll do it properly when business picks up.” Uncle declared one day with finality. “I’m so sorry… After all the trouble of getting everything ready, it’s all because I had to fall ill.” Aunt O-Yuki apologized as though confessing a crime. Her eyes showed no improvement. She began wearing black-framed glasses for her daily hospital visits—the condition neither worsening nor healing. A leaden silence reclaimed the house. For days on end, the three of them continued to sound out each other’s hearts while tiptoeing around the unspoken tensions.

In the plum grove visible from the inner room lived a hermit-like old man who wasn’t exactly its caretaker. He was a famous ascetic in that area, tending to a small shrine deep within the plum grove. By his own account, he was already over ninety years old. His back was bent double like a shrimp’s, and as he stroked his long white beard that nearly brushed the ground, we occasionally caught sight of him shuffling unsteadily through the plum trees. Every morning before dawn, preceding the bells of nearby temples, he would blow his conch shell trumpet with deep, resonant blasts. That eerie, ominous sound echoed through the valley and shattered people’s predawn dreams. And in the evening, he did the same.

It was not long after that when Aunt O-Yuki began secretly visiting this mystic without Uncle’s knowledge. One evening when Uncle was out, the mystic from the plum grove came to the house. He walked silently through the rooms shaking his head like a stroke patient, small bells resembling those carried by shrine maidens chiming softly in his hand. Before long he decorated the tokonoma alcove with ritual paper streamers, arranged offerings of white rice and salt before them, and prayed silently for a considerable time. Throughout this, Aunt O-Yuki sat behind the old man with her face lowered to the tatami mats.

“Keep it quiet from Uncle.”

After making me promise to keep quiet like this, Aunt O-Yuki went toward the plum grove with the old man. Before long, the familiar conch shell trumpet resounded all around with low, mournful blasts that quivered through the parched autumn twilight air. Later, Aunt O-Yuki confessed the matter to Uncle. According to the old man from the plum grove, all these misfortunes and obstacles arose because—first—the house’s alignment was inauspicious: its entrance faced due north, and the toilet lay in the demon’s gate direction. Furthermore, when building this house—after clearing thickets and leveling the ground—they had neglected to perform the groundbreaking ceremony, and this too was being held responsible. If left in this wretched state, even greater misfortunes—calamities that would directly befall Uncle himself—were sure to occur, he had declared.

“What foolish nonsense you’re spouting! As if such a thing could be true!” Uncle said mockingly. “Who’d be such a fool as to believe the ramblings of some beggar like that?!”

But Aunt O-Yuki pressed on. Her eye condition wasn’t an ordinary ailment, she insisted—it was retribution for past sins, beyond any famous doctor’s cure. Only the plum grove ascetic’s prayers and his divine medicine could heal it. “Such nonsense...” Uncle scoffed, yet his tone and manner betrayed an unmistakable dread lurking in his heart. He recognized it clearly within himself, yet fought to suppress it.

“If you want prayers done, go ahead—I don’t believe in that nonsense,” Uncle said obstinately. Afterward, Aunt O-Yuki invited that ascetic to perform demon-banishing prayers and such, and began visiting the plum grove herself. Uncle, however, stayed silent and pretended not to notice. Aunt O-Yuki came to fully trust that ascetic. She stopped going to the hospital entirely and started taking the “medicine” he prescribed—drinking a decoction of charred hair ash and dabbing water from cooked rice into her eyes. This “water from cooked rice” meant placing a bowl beneath the rice container’s base when transferring rice from the pot; upon later removing the container, four or five drops of clear liquid would pool in the bowl. Though the container’s underside showed no dampness or steam, she marveled at these droplets as if they were divine miracles. Convinced they formed an unparalleled elixir, she’d reverently raise them to her forehead before moistening her pinky tip to apply them to her eyes.

After continuing such practices for a month, Aunt O-Yuki’s eyes strangely began to gradually improve (or so she herself claimed). She increasingly believed in the plum grove ascetic. And she began visiting the plum grove even more frequently than before to have prayers performed for her.

Uncle did not interfere in the slightest and tacitly permitted Aunt O-Yuki’s actions. However, despite Aunt O-Yuki’s persistent urging, he would not consent to changing the position of the house’s entrance or the toilet. There was some reluctance to admit defeat, but he still remained half-convinced of the ascetic’s claims.

That year too was already nearing spring. Aunt O-Yuki’s eyes gradually improved until she could walk without glasses. Since things were progressing well, Aunt O-Yuki proposed opening the shop before year’s end, but Uncle—claiming this year was ill-omened—remained unperturbed and insisted they should rather postpone it until the following spring.

10

One day, Uncle went to Rokujō’s Kagi-ya, and when he returned in the evening, he said to me: “Kyoukou, at Rokujō’s house they told me to have you come once. Go tonight—O-Kimi seems to want to meet you too. Take your time coming over; it’s fine if you stay the night.”

And Uncle was whispering something in hushed tones with Aunt O-Yuki. While feeling uneasy about Uncle’s suggestive urging and recalling that I hadn’t seen my sister O-Kimi since Aunt’s funeral, I hurriedly finished tidying the kitchen and set off toward Rokkō. “Kyouyan, you still don’t know, do you?” After exchanging greetings, when I sat down at the front desk by the entrance, Kagi-ya’s O-Tami said with a smile while looking at my face. “What is it?” I asked suspiciously.

“O-Kimi isn’t at home anymore.” “Huh?!” “What’s happened to her?”

O-Tami smiled hesitantly for a moment, but

“She’s had a bit of a mishap, you know. Now that I’ve told you, you ought to go to O-Kimi’s place—go and see her.” Having said this, O-Tami called one of the maids. I had no inkling of what was happening. My heart pounded wildly as I feared something dreadful might have occurred.

With an anxious heart, I was guided by the maid and soon arrived before a small inn not far away. It was indeed a regular lodging for Honganji pilgrims, but compared to places like Kagi-ya, it stood as a filthy, shabby establishment. On the aged vermilion-lacquered latticework of closely spaced vertical bars at the entrance hung a sooty paper lantern inscribed with “Honganji Pilgrims’ Regular Lodging ×× Branch,” casting a feeble glow. My sister O-Kimi had been staying in the room beyond that latticework. I climbed up from the dimly lit earthen passageway into the room, and upon opening the partition to the next chamber, found an antiquated two-panel folding screen standing there—its sooty backing revealing patches where the surface had peeled and torn. A putrid stench resembling spoiled food assailed my nostrils.

“Please come in here,” came my sister’s weak-sounding voice from within. I edged my face around the screen with hesitant trepidation akin to peering into forbidden space. The utterly unexpected sight struck my chest so sharply that I instinctively turned away my face. In the dim haze of an oil lamp’s glow lay her figure—emaciated like a specter. Hair hung disordered like flax fibers; a pale yellow handcloth bound about her forehead formed a sweatband. She sat slanted slightly rightward against stacked futons, cradling something round and bundle-like upon her lap. When our eyes met, she curled her lips into an unsettling half-smile—

“Oh, Kyouyan! So you’ve come, haven’t you,” she said. I took one look and immediately understood the situation. O-Kimi had given birth to a child. I sank down there without a word. “I messed up, you know,” O-Kimi said, her face reddening slightly as she grinned again to hide her shame. And then, as if to hide her embarrassment, she bared a large breast from her chest and let the infant on her lap suckle.

I could not raise my face. Like a criminal, I trembled violently with shame and remorse, staring fixedly at the seams of the tatami. Tears unexpectedly started to well up. It was as if black, filthy mud were being forced down my throat—I could only feel suffocating anguish, with no room left for thought or reflection. “Here, eat this,” O-Kimi said as she placed a tin containing biscuits before me. I returned to Kagi-ya in haste, hardly uttering a word.

“There’s nothing to be done—anyone can make missteps, you know,” O-Tami said to me, as if to explain herself and console me. I felt a shame as deep as if it were my own—no, deeper still.

“Your sister gave birth to a bastard child.” I felt as though everyone despised and shunned me. I couldn’t bear having O-Tami or anyone at Kagi-ya look upon my face. I wondered who my sister’s lover might be. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to ask O-Tami about it. The shame made it impossible to voice the question. That summer when I first came to work at this house, I had seen O-Kimi at the entrance of the detached room down the passageway—her yukata hem hitched up to her knees as she sat carelessly laughing with a young carpenter sharpening his plane before her. I even suspected it might have been that man. This carpenter frequented Kagi-ya—I’d glimpsed him two or three times before. They called him Yonekichi or such—a short man of twenty-five or twenty-six with a slight stutter.

“Oh Kyouyan’s hairline—that hairline! A Fuji forehead! If only mine were different.” “A Fuji forehead, eh.” “If only mine were different.” Lately whenever she saw me, O-Kimi would often say such things—fretting over her slightly protruding forehead or lamenting the scar on her cheek from when a boil had been lanced in her childhood—but looking back, my sister had already taken a lover by that time…… Recalling my sister’s indecent behavior from that time, I felt an unbearable loathing. I could not help but feel an intense sense of humiliation, as though my own pure life had been soiled and trampled.

“Oh, come now, why don’t you stay over? I’ve already properly asked Uncle for time off, so take a proper leave and relax here.”

Though O-Tami-san urged me like this, I declined and left.

The world suddenly narrowed and darkened. I walked silently along the dark night road toward Kiyomizu, my head bowed deeply like a criminal's.

Eleven Aunt O-Yuki’s eyes had nearly fully recovered, and the Shijō store was finally opened at the end of March the following year, when spring in the capital was at last in full bloom and scattered news of blossoms began to be heard. The name was derived from Aunt O-Yuki’s “Yuki” through a play on words and was named Yūkitei.

That day dawned bathed in gentle warmth, a clear and radiant morning from the start. On the south side of the entrance, straw-wrapped barrels stood piled high while red festooned lanterns hung from second and third-floor eaves, lending bustling vitality to the premises since daybreak. The small red and blue pennants adorning the stacked barrels fluttered gracefully in the morning breeze. The broad entrance paved with ceramic tiles had been scrubbed clean and arrayed with mounds of purifying salt, its gleaming appearance refreshing to behold. Around nine o'clock, after the Tōzaiya contingent departed noisily, the house brimmed with heightened excitement and animation. From cooks to dishwashers—five men and six female attendants alike—all enlivened by celebratory chilled sake, their cheerful voices calling back and forth amid laughter swelled outward from the kitchen's heart.

Uncle and Aunt O-Yuki were seated side by side at the cashier’s desk. As the footwear attendant, wearing a white apron over my light blue dyed happi coat, I sat perched on a small stool in the corner of the entrance, waiting for customers. From around noon, customers began trickling in. And by evening, the wide entrance had become nearly full, and I lined up footwear even out onto the street. “Step right in—.” “Step right in—.” “Thank you for coming—.” I kept raising my voice and calling out without pause.

(Taishō 7, October-November)