Pathway to Japanese Literature

On the second floor of the diner, apart from myself, there stayed an unemployed tailor called Mr. Nonbiri—a man suffering from heart trouble and beriberi, with perpetual greasy sweat on his forehead, who would mutter “I’ll just kill myself then” while trudging up and down the stairs whenever pressed for rent; yet regarding the diner’s daughter running away, he tersely concluded that having a fourth-year girls’ school student deliver lunch boxes was entirely to blame. At that turbulent age when meeting friends on the street would make her feel ashamed—that’s why he said this. If they’re going to send her to girls’ school, working her to the bone in front of the stove would be one thing—but making her deliver lunchboxes is utterly improper. Therefore, she became a delinquent girl—that was his opinion. Indeed, I thought, impressed—each person has their own analysis of family life, derived from their own experiences.

The daughter was seventeen.
Even if you called her a delinquent girl, she wasn’t yet old enough to commit any serious transgressions.
She was at that impudent age where she’d do things slightly outside the norm—nothing more than that.
She was a good-natured girl, without any twistedness, who simply longed intensely for affection.
It was because of their peculiar parent-child relationship.

The daughter was the child of the diner proprietress's sister.
The proprietress had taken her in when she was about three years old.
Whether they truly loved her or not—I couldn't begin to guess.
When they finally tracked down the runaway daughter and dragged her home, they demanded I determine whether she'd taken a lover and whether her virginity remained intact.
The daughter had run away once before that.
At that time, she had secretly worked at a coffee shop.
She insisted she absolutely couldn't stand being in her parents' house.
At that time, however, the matter had been settled without much trouble, but this time, the daughter's attitude showed something far more decisive.
She showed clear hostility toward the father and mother.
The daughter did not utter a single word in response to anything her parents said.
Yet her entire body overflowed with hostility brimming with confidence.
Such things can never arise unless one possesses, somewhere outside, an object of affection that provides ample support.
At their wits' end with their daughter—who continued her silent protest without shedding a single tear, her resolve etched deep—they came to seek my help.

Virgin?
When I heard those words, I was startled.
Because the animalistic intensity contained within them had flashed through my mind.
This differed entirely from what "virgin" meant when I, as a man, observed and discussed women.
It was purely the "virgin" that only parents would pray for their child to remain.
I sensed something like fervent religious devotion—words so abrupt they would never have occurred to me, a man without children.
I felt I had perceived humanity's most bestial essence.
Humans are animals after all.
That such instinct-bound faith truly existed—I stared at the two parents in shock, though more accurately, I gaped at these two beasts that had suddenly manifested before my eyes.

I reluctantly called the daughter to my room and questioned her.
The man was a preparatory student at Ritsumeikan University named Yamaguchi, she said.
"Even if they kill me, I won't stay in this house," the daughter declared, her resolve unmistakable.

I reported everything exactly to the parents.
There would be no point in hiding it.
Given how she detested the house, they should accept there was no bond and let the daughter go.
I never neglected to add my opinion in this way, but the parents paid no attention whatsoever to such words.
The moment they heard my report, the two parents—these animals—found their thoughts grinding to a complete halt.
The parents locked their sharp black eyes on each other.

“We shoulda sold her off to a brothel sooner.”

The old man uttered some words, but the proprietress did not respond.
Undoubtedly, in that moment, the old man could think of nothing beyond what he had just uttered; likewise, the proprietress found herself overwhelmed by too many dreadful thoughts to speak.

The old man had only ever thought about one simple thing regarding the child.
She was originally the child of the proprietress’s sister and thus no blood relation to the old man.
Thus, setting aside any notion of affection, they had raised her solely to receive care in their old age—the parent-child relationship was strictly limited to just that.
“If she’s been given to some no-good bastard from god-knows-where, wouldn’t that be a loss? Truly, we’ve been made fools of,” the old man kept muttering incessantly.
The notion of 'loss'—abnormally persistent—whirled like a demon through the old man’s mind, I realized.

“Understood.”
“Truly, Mr., you’ve done so much for us.”
“I’ll give up now.”
“Everything’s settled now.”
“Ah…”
“Truly, this is quite the mess, Mr.”

The proprietress forced a bitter smile as she spoke these words, but in the next instant all color drained from her face—You damn beast, what’ll it take to quell this fury inside me… Her features contorted, teeth splayed across the lower half of her face, eyes snapping wide and wild.
If we were to sell her off to a brothel, I absolutely couldn’t endure it.
“Unless I take even crueler revenge, I couldn’t quell the rage in my gut”—she muttered neither to Father nor to me.

A world of faith and prayer belonging to animal instinct—that’s what it was.
To put it plainly, I was a cripple in this regard—could do nothing but flounder, utterly incapable of mounting any resistance.
If this temporary frenzy subsided, each of their thoughts would likely change.
So it was decided that until the deranged frenzy of both parties subsided, the daughter would temporarily reside on the second floor, and that even as parents, they would not ascend upstairs under any circumstances.

However, this agreement came to nothing.
As soon as matters were settled, I promptly began my afternoon nap and was drifting off when the proprietress crept upstairs with muffled footsteps.
A shrill scream like rushing wind erupted—desperate struggle palpable yet grappling sounds faint, breaths rasping savagely.
"It hurts."
"It hurts."
"Hurt." The Daughter's voice came at dull intervals like timber snapping.
With no alternative, I rose from my futon and went to the adjoining room.

I stood dumbfounded, utterly powerless to do anything but watch.
The proprietress had mounted her, yanking out clumps of the Daughter’s hair while pinching every part of her body with full force—perhaps one specific spot.
It appeared to be a vital spot where pain pierced to the very marrow; the Daughter, who had once shown such overflowing hostility without a trace of fear, now clenched her teeth, released only ragged breaths like gusts of wind, and convulsed, no longer possessing even the strength to writhe.
It was my first time witnessing women engaged in such a serious grapple, yet it fundamentally differed from those blind, wild brawls—the kind devoid of any purpose.
Despite having absolutely no training in fighting, they instinctively knew their opponent’s vital points; once the grappling began, there was no useless process—they would immediately and instinctively assault those vital points in a clash overflowing with animality.

Several years ago, I was living in the countryside. At that time too, during an afternoon nap, a cicada's shriek suddenly erupted from the plum tree right by my window. The hollow flapping of wings mingled with its shriek. Thinking it must have been caught in a spider's web and wanting to free it since it disturbed my nap, I poked my head out—only to startle. A mantis had pinned an oil cicada against the plum tree. It climbed onto its back and sank its jaws into one spot at the nape of the neck. This appeared to be a vital point; the cicada was gradually losing strength. They fell together to the ground, yet the mantis's grip never slackened. I stood transfixed. Though the cicada was far larger and more robust-looking, that damned mantis inherently knew its prey's weakness from birth. I thought animals were unfathomable monsters—but watching this parent-child quarrel unfold, the diner's proprietress became that very mantis.

With a “Hahahahaha,” a blast-like roar of laughter suddenly erupted in the room.
It was the Daughter.
A roar of laughter rising from the pit of her stomach—no—her entire body had transformed into a single explosive burst of sound.
She’d gone mad—no, such a simplistic explanation couldn’t possibly suffice.
This was laughter erupting from her very core—a declaration of utter delight.
“I’ve destroyed your most precious thing.”
“How’s that?”
“Do you get it now?”
It carried the unmistakable meaning: “Look at your disgrace.”
Gritting her teeth as if repeating “Is this all? Is this all?”—the proprietress had now become fully deranged.
Suddenly reaching for her head, she pulled a pin from her curly hair and gripped it reverse-handed.
Grabbing that wrist, I twisted it upward.
With near-kicking force, I finally drove the proprietress down the stairs.
Even after she descended and everyone left, the Daughter’s roaring laughter showed no sign of stopping for five full minutes.

When I went to the Daughter’s room, only the figure of the mother who had been straddling her was gone—everything else remained exactly as before. Lying on her back, she filled the room with a contained roar as she writhed from side to side.

On the evening of the following day, when the parents went out to deliver boxed lunches, the Daughter vanished completely, taking with her a single bundle of her kimono.

When the Daughter first ran away, Father came upstairs and said, “Mr., I hate to trouble you with this mess, but do you have any leads on how to search for her?”
I was ill at the time, and even had I been well, I had no inclination to search for some delinquent girl’s whereabouts. Since the second-floor parlor of this diner had become a go club frequented by regulars—among them a quiet Tokkō detective who composed haiku—I suggested we ask that man instead.
Yet Father would look around my room with eyes wide as if it were some unfamiliar house, gaze out the window at Mount Hiei’s peaks as though seeing them for the first time, mutter things like “Mr., you see anythin’ red on them mountains there? What could that be now, really…”, and wouldn’t budge an inch until I grunted in acknowledgment.
Having no choice, I took out a whole pile—truly a whole pile—of the Daughter’s letters and searched for clues.

I read for the first time correspondence exchanged between fellow delinquent girls and found myself utterly astonished.
Just what sort of letters do fourth-year schoolgirls typically exchange?
Among those I read, there was not one that didn’t mock my common sense and chill me to the bone.
"When I tried dating that prep school guy after stalking him three times at festivals," one wrote, "he turned out so repulsive I got sick of him."
There was also business-like correspondence stating: "Since you said he’s handsome and seemed jealous before, I’ll hand him over if you trade me a third-year middle school boy."
Another document read: "I’ll introduce you to a fourth-year middle school boy soon at skating"—this 'skating' frequently appeared in their writings referring to Shijō Kawaramachi rink that served as their trading ground—"but don’t you dare make advances on him! Since you stole my lover, I’ll thoroughly repay you with revenge."
All were exchanges between delinquent girls—not a single letter from boys—except over a dozen lengthy ones sent by someone calling herself a nurse; these alone weren’t from delinquents.
They contained impassioned lines like how your figure kept haunting her sleepless nights yet brought happiness, or how streets walked together now felt transformed—always followed by pages detailing her hospital’s dreary life through sigh-filled diary entries.
What happened with patients today? What incidents occurred? How colleagues acted? What doctors did?—such were her mundane reports.

I had been completely deceived by these letters.
The writing was atrocious yet perfectly imitated feminine penmanship; having accepted them at face value as lesbian correspondence, we later tracked down this individual only to discover he was a fifth-year middle school student—a delinquent boy.
In essence, the meticulous hospital descriptions were nothing but a deceptive ploy, utterly meaningless—only that final line specifying when and where to meet held any true significance.
He wasn’t even a doctor’s child—the son of a master carpenter.
If even delinquent boys could devise such documents, one can only imagine what schemes might lurk within encrypted diplomatic papers.

Implored with abnormal persistence by the old man and his wife, and having exhausted all other options, I requested assistance from Mr. Miyake, who was then a script department member at JO Studios.
Thus, using the letters as clues, we began conducting door-to-door visits throughout Kyoto to track down delinquent girls and boys.
Everywhere, it was our crushing defeat.
Though they were all seventeen- or eighteen-year-old girls, we grew utterly disgusted by the transparent falseness inherent in women.
They would stubbornly lie and never tell the truth—this was equally true of delinquent boys—but delinquent girls showed no outward obstinacy whatsoever. They refused to give proper answers to our questions, instead delivering beautifully phrased lengthy condolences regarding the Daughter’s disappearance with such heartfelt sincerity that they seemed genuinely invested, all while gradually steering the conversation far from their own circumstances—yet astonishingly divulging countless pieces of information.
Each matter was ostensibly serious, yet upon closer inspection, none bore any connection to this case.
After parting with the girls, we would ultimately realize that no matter which girl’s story we had just heard, each was merely declaring herself to be the sole pure and innocent paragon of virtue.
They showed no consideration whatsoever for the trouble they caused others, treating matters like the Daughter’s disappearance as utterly inconsequential.
The delinquent girls were all pretty-faced daughters from respectable families—or rather, they could only be perceived as better-mannered than average girls—and there were even those so exceptionally beautiful they seemed noble.
However, given that we had thoroughly read through all their astonishing secret documents and fully grasped when and where they had done what, we couldn’t be easily deceived. That said, they possessed the skill to express heartfelt concern with the same beautiful phrases they had agreed upon among themselves, nonchalantly revealing one gravely significant event after another—events containing lives too significant to even write about here—with such casualness it left us dumbfounded.
Now, when I calmly synthesized all this, I saw that every last one of them had masterfully constructed nothing but defenses solely for themselves.

A decisively solitary nature paired with unflinching betrayal of others.
Though furious, in this girl’s unrestrained demeanor—throwing off every innate quality with such brutal candor despite her youth—I occasionally sensed a woman capable of jolting one awake.
The exceptionally beautiful girl appeared again the next day clad in yuzen-dyed kimono, bearing dahlias and other blooms to renew her condolences.
She showered the mother with artful words of comfort before deliberately summoning us to spill unasked secrets, once again casting herself as the sole paragon of virtue before leaving with refreshing nonchalance.
Faced with this girl’s uncompromisingly self-determined life, we seemed nothing but pitiful afterthoughts by comparison.
I let out a strangled cry while Mr. Miyake—who taught theater history to starlets at the studio—groaned, “Hell! Next to these delinquents, our actresses are daikon-radish hacks!”

In Kyoto, fugu cuisine had been prohibited until that year, but the first restaurant serving it opened in Shijō Teramachi.
That night we went there for the first time and ended up completely drunk, demanding they serve us the most lethal parts to eat and such.

In the end, I still cannot comprehend what is called the true nature of affection between these parent and child.
I simply cannot reach any definitive conclusion.
One member of the family disappeared.
Merely having someone leave on a trip and vanish would make the loneliness stand out like a missing limb from the body.
Yet despite this diner’s mere three-person family having their only daughter run away, I couldn’t detect any trace of that fallen-away emptiness or loneliness.

"Honestly, even that idiot—without 'er around, there ain't... no point no more—" Mother muttered.
"That'll do."

"Quit that kinda talk—" Father said irritably.

That was simply and persistently the scene following their only daughter’s disappearance. It was not in the slightest a performance meant to be seen by others, but a scene where the gloom of the only daughter’s disappearance lingered unmistakably. However, even that—the great emptiness and desolation left by a family member's absence—I still could not persistently share in.

It required considerable time before I could believe that the old man and his wife of this diner were truly genuine spouses. Father was sixty-three, but looked seventy-three—no, even older. A small man under five feet tall, his front teeth gone and the remaining ones jutting out like fangs, his face covered in thick dark wrinkles within which nestled trachoma-ridden eyes and a nose. He perpetually wore his obi sloppily tied and walked around delivering boxed lunches while wiping his nose with his sleeve. When walking through town he didn't seem particularly bad, but upon returning home appeared utterly exhausted—inside the diner he wandered about groaning "Ugh... ugh... ugh..." to keep rhythm, and when going to fetch things like newspapers or tobacco from distant parts of the room, he started crawling from where he was sitting and crawled back again.

The proprietress was forty-three.
She appeared appropriately middle-aged for her years, but compared to Father, she could only be perceived as a daughter.
She was a true beauty—over five feet four inches tall with a slender, elegant figure—but her hair was a mass of red curls tied up in a Kuwai-style bun resembling bundled firewood.
All year round, with a wild horse’s snort, she strained her screeching voice while driving Father hard before the stove.
Her face and figure were beautiful, but her thin chest area lacked a womanly feel; her movements and temperament held no gentleness. Yet she most frequently—and earnestly—poured out absurdly outlandish reflections like 'I’m just a woman at heart' or 'I’m too soft-spirited.'
It was unsettling.

I don't know exactly what circumstances led these two to begin cohabiting, but it's said that long ago, when the proprietress worked as a shopgirl at some stall, the old man became infatuated and persuaded her into it.
At that time, the old man had a wife and children along with a splendid shop, but he discarded them all and started this business.
He must have been a man of extraordinary passion in those days, but not a trace of that remained now.
What remained was nothing but a grotesque old frame, and the feeling of being a death-defying remnant pervaded everything.

The regulars of the second-floor parlor go club and familiar patrons of this diner would say to the Old Man’s face that he was a death-defying remnant.
"Despite having one foot already stuck in his coffin, he still puts on such airs," they’d remark.
"Really now, isn’t he one tenacious bastard?" someone or other would say this at least once a day.
And then, leaving the rest to take care of itself, they’d jeer, "Why don’t you just hurry up and die?"
Needless to say, it was all in jest.
Far from malice, they might have intended it as flattery—implying his wife was beautiful—or perhaps as goodwill, urging him to rejoice in his fortune since they envied him so deeply.
But what would actually happen if the old man died?
A pig-like fat man known as the Stonemason from Fushimi came to drink once a month.
For about fifteen years now, he had reliably made these monthly rounds.
On those days, he would drink leisurely from morning until late at night for fifteen or sixteen hours, confirm that the Old Man still hadn’t died, and then head home.
Then there was the showman boss who patrolled Inariyama—he’d sometimes come barging in energetically with his lackeys in tow.
The proprietress would abruptly begin applying makeup, shutting out all other customers from the inner parlor.
When the boss grew drunk, his subordinates would leave, and the Old Man too retreated to the second-floor go board.
The Old Man fell silent, playing go at an abnormal speed without glancing around.
"Ah, that guest again," the regulars would immediately realize, but none showed sympathy.
Not a soul cared.
That this old man had such an utterly mismatched wife without this situation arising—everyone considered that the true wonder of this world.

However, if the Old Man were to die... Though no doubt the proprietress herself desired this outcome most of all, yet should he actually die... even she would likely have no confidence whatsoever.
It was self-evident that neither the portly stonemason nor the showman boss possessed sincerity sufficient to entrust their old age with, and first and foremost, the proprietress harbored an instinctive aversion to adults and the elderly precisely because all so-called adults had thoroughly experienced life’s bitter hardships and duplicities.
She had been kindly attending to young unmarried railway employees—regular customers for their boxed lunches—with the intention of finding a husband for her daughter, but in reality, this was not for the daughter’s sake but rather the proprietress’s greatest solace.
Yet even that, she had come to keenly realize, could never become a true beacon for the future.
The old man and his wife urged me to marry, but whenever they did so, the proprietress would always say this to me:
“Any woman would do just fine for ya, but look at you—you’ve aged five or six years already! Bein’ all alone’s so dreary, you can’t really go on livin’ like this, can ya?”
Probably the proprietress felt this most acutely.
Humans possess what might be called the consciousness of age.
Independently of the mind’s thoughts, age itself began to contemplate—and I too had come to faintly perceive that inescapable darkness, that physical weight of those very thoughts bearing down.
The terror of aging disgracefully now crystallized vividly before the proprietress’s eyes—any man would do, even a death-defying remnant; she had to cling to something.
Because Father loved her with mad intensity, he was unbearably irritating and loathsome—yet she could not help but cling to him.
It was not the voice of love, but the voice of age and flesh that had begun to decay.
Despite her utmost distrust and continued prayers for the Old Man’s demise, she could not bring herself to sever the hands that moved to keep hold of what she clung to.

They said they wanted to take a son-in-law for their daughter and live out their remaining years in peace, but this was pure falsehood.
The proprietress contorted herself in anguish over managing her own vital energies, reduced to a state beyond struggle.
"Stop this nonsense," I thought—but my eyes could only ever gleam coldly, powerless to intervene.
How much they loved that daughter—I did not know.
What manner of desolation the daughter's running away had wrought—that too remained beyond my grasp.
Perhaps it constituted some desolate state of mind that someone like me—a mere drifter through life—could never begin to comprehend.
But however profound their desolation might be—what significance could it possibly hold?
Let them at least manage their own wretchedness.
Emotional concerns ranked lowest of the low—in this diner, the hollow absence left by the runaway daughter passed utterly unnoticed, while the forty-year-old woman's physical form roamed through every room like a restless ghost.

The daughter who had completely disappeared was caught under strange circumstances around the tenth day.

Mr. Miyake and I, having been asked by the Old Man as usual, spent about two days half-heartedly searching for leads.
Relying on someone called Yamaguchi from Ritsumeikan's preparatory course—since we had two friends teaching there—we had them show us the entire preparatory class roster but found no likely matches.
As we glared at the list groaning, a well-built teacher—I didn't know what he taught—approached looking concerned and asked, "When did your daughter run away?"
"Yesterday."
"Then you—" the teacher said emphatically, "there's still time."
"You need to contact Kobe and Shimonoseki immediately."
"If you lock down this area she'll definitely be caught," he declared with a self-satisfied nod before briskly walking off.
We also checked cafés that served as delinquent girls' hideouts.
There was a waitress who'd reformed from delinquency into adulthood; she'd been something of a mentor figure to the daughter. Being an adult now, though her own transformation into a good girl remained inconsistent, she still told us truths that weren't lies.
She said delinquent girls that age rarely get physically involved even when messing around with boys.
They instinctively avoid dangerous men.
But even if they do cross that line, it's not particularly strange... The Female Boss stared hard at us before saying that among the men the daughter associated with, two could lead to such situations—then wrote down their addresses and full names.
They were at opposite ends of Kyoto.
One was a prep student; the other a middle schooler.
During our talk, two groups of the Female Boss's regulars came in signaling her insistently, but she coolly ignored them while giving detailed tips about delinquent youths' inner workings.
When parting she said: "Your mother must be so worried—if I had time I'd go check on her myself."

She accepted neither payment nor tip.
I had thought her a reliable woman, but later when the Daughter heard this story, she coldly remarked, "That person's a fox."

We visited the delinquent boy at the edge of Kyoto as instructed, but it was a fruitless endeavor.
That day coincided precisely with New Year’s Eve.
The streets were filled with year-end decorations, and in those ornamented shadows, intimidating or cajoling summoned delinquent boys became something that made one want to die.
Utterly weary of being alone, I said we should stop—and Mr. Miyake agreed with remarkable ease.
"If it were a delinquent girl we were dealing with, going out to search might be worthwhile"—I tried to laugh it off with such remarks, but only felt increasingly and peculiarly disheartened, unable to muster even a laugh.
Mr. Miyake was scheduled to enlist early in the new year, and that evening, Mr. Fukamoto and Mr. Yamamoto from Ritsumeikan—four of us in total—were supposed to gather to hold a New Year’s Eve banquet celebrating his send-off.
After finishing our interrogation at the edge of Kyoto, utterly exhausted and considerably behind schedule, we finally managed to reach the venue.
In Kyoto, there exists a custom from late New Year’s Eve into the early morning of New Year’s Day where people transfer the sacred fire from Yasaka Shrine to a rope about three shaku long, adjust it to keep burning, swing it while dangling it down, and return home to light their New Year’s hearth fire.
When we stumbled outside drunk, the sidewalks on both sides of the road were already filled with people dangling rope-bound flames, snaking in an unbroken stream.
The fact that I didn’t even have a home—though I had no memory of ever feeling sorrow over this—somehow struck me with acute intensity now.
“Hey, let’s go meet some gangsters!”
“Let’s go to the bar where the gangsters are.”
Mr. Fukamoto bellowed.

“Let’s go!”
“Let’s go meet gangsters!”

We turned into a bar-crammed alleyway, ignoring the snaking streams of rope-bound flames, and shouted—"Aren't there any gangsters here? Gangsters, come out!"
It was truly a disgraceful New Year's Day.
From that day on, we abandoned the search for good.

The ones who caught the Daughter were the family of the master carpenter.
The master carpenter’s family was that of the aforementioned “Nurse,” who—having first learned of their son’s misconduct—had made concerted efforts by way of apology.
The daughter’s lover was a hardline delinquent student: the very man who had assaulted the “Nurse.”
It was through this connection that they managed to find her with unexpected ease.

That evening was the day Mr. Miyake departed for his hometown for enlistment.
He came to visit me, and we drank together in the inner tatami room of the diner.

Just then, the master carpenter’s family came surging in with a clamor, dragging along the male and female offenders.
The drinking party instantly became a makeshift courtroom. The male and female offenders remained surprisingly composed, doing nothing but staring fixedly at something with piercingly sharp gazes, while the master carpenter’s family clamored relentlessly—shouting this, declaring that—their demeanor so ferocious they seemed ready to cut the man down on the spot. Amid the uproar, my impromptu role as magistrate left everything utterly unresolved.
Amid the tremendous commotion, the train’s departure time arrived, and Mr. Miyake hurriedly dashed off to the station.
I ended up being unable to even see off the gallant man’s enlistment.

The man was twenty-one.
He had left middle school in his fourth year to wander, working as a photographer of famous sites and historic ruins, but returned home, was forgiven, and entered a school in Kyoto.
However, he had failed to pay tuition and was currently on a leave of absence.

When we called just the two into a separate room and questioned them, we found they had only known each other for about two weeks.
One evening after staying out late at the skating rink—dreading punishment upon returning home—the daughter encountered three middle school students she’d previously known.
She was lured to their boarding house and assaulted by all three.
The next morning, when she’d become half-mad with distress, this man happened to appear.
He was their gang leader.
He took her back to his lodgings, nursed her wounds, and tried restoring her spirit.
Though they stayed there five days, he never treated her as an object of carnal desire.
Her body healed completely until she wished to remain there forever.
After being caught while shopping and dragged home—where I interrogated her—her romantic resolve crystallized utterly.
The following dusk, seizing her family’s moment of distraction, she bundled clothes and marched straight to his dwelling this time.

Only I knew the full story.
Though denounced as utter villains by the master carpenter’s family, this man offered not a single word of excuse—he merely bowed politely to the parents.
This man likely hadn’t brushed his teeth in years—his breath was unbearable—but beyond that left no unpleasant impression.
His eyes were startlingly deep and clear.
He harbored not a trace of timidity, no cunning, not a shred of lust.
When resolved, he overflowed with mental strength to confront even supreme agony.
I thought those eyes were preternaturally clear.
It was a masculine beauty of face that recalled rugged southern men.

It was the Daughter who had completely devoted both body and soul to the man.
I had never before seen the figure of a woman who so completely devoted both body and soul, relying with single-minded faith.
I thought she would not enter the adult world.
I thought it was the world of a seventeen-year-old girl—the world of Yaoya Oshichi.

Setting aside all past circumstances, I told him to spend tonight reconsidering—if he truly wished to marry her, he should return properly tomorrow—and sent the man away.
The man answered, “I won’t come tomorrow, but I will definitely come the day after.”

On the promised day, the man came.
The man showed his student ID.
The date was still fresh from that very day.
He had returned home to raise funds, paid the overdue tuition fees, and obtained his student ID.
He was still a twenty-one-year-old preparatory student.
I had never believed from the start that their love would last forever.
But if it were this man, even when the time came for their life together to collapse, the Daughter would be able to grasp some treasure from their shared existence before parting.
I resolved myself and persuaded the parents.
The parents reluctantly consented. The Daughter took her bundle of clothes. Seen off only by me, the two departed forever.

After that, there was a letter saying she wanted her kimono, and I delivered it twice.
The Daughter gave no thought whatsoever to the old house she had abandoned or to her parents.
Because she did not keep them so vividly present in her thoughts—to be honest, I was somewhat moved by how little she dwelled on them.

It was just before I left Kyoto when a third letter arrived, asking if I could deliver the final kimono.
The Proprietress—who claimed she would never see the Daughter again and considered her dead—now said she wanted to go along.
I was not in agreement.
But I lacked the confidence to decisively tell her to stop.

At that time, the Daughter was living in a quiet room amidst fields near Ginkaku-ji. The Proprietress decided to wait about a block away, and I delivered the baggage. When I warned her—“Mother has come this far”—the Daughter’s face—her entire body—fossilized in terror. Trembling, she asked: “Will she come to this room?” Nostalgia—there was not a trace of such a thing. I parted ways without giving the Proprietress a single report, immediately circled around Ginkaku-ji on my way back, but found myself furious at the temple’s garden—a trivial thing like a miniature garden.

Meddlesome.
I hadn't troubled myself over that.
Strangely, I was confident.
It wasn't about the future of those two young lovers.
I felt no responsibility whatsoever for such matters.
My confidence lay solely in the wandering ghost of the Proprietress's flesh adrift through the diner.
Sentiment comes last.
That act of sneaking up to the daughter's wretched dwelling near Ginkaku-ji and getting misty-eyed reeked of execrable taste.
You weren't in such a place.
Your blood seethed madly within the diner, your wraith grinding teeth beneath layers of curses and regrets—this I found rather profoundly pitiful.
Father too was most pitiful.
When leaving Kyoto, I'm certain the Proprietress threw amaguri and yatsuhashi into my train window.
Thus I bade farewell to Kyoto.

O pitiful people.
Goodbye.