Pathway to Japanese Literature

During the three months since December 8th, one of the things that became the most talked-about subject in Japan and that people most wanted to know about was you all.

You all were nine.
You all had not received orders.
Several of you all had proposed and recommended it yourselves, and it was said to have met with the Commander-in-Chief’s approval.
For the next several months, you all devoted yourselves to rigorous training in secret.
By now, you all were single-mindedly devoted to nothing but training.

Until this war began, I had vaguely thought that Parisians and Yankees might be surprisingly strong in warfare. While Parisians went off to war humming tunes and cracking jokes, Yankees—since they made no distinction between war and sports—I had imagined them dashing through bullets as if scoring a touchdown. However, war was not as simple and innocent as the conclusions we reached at our peaceful dining tables. Or rather, human contemplation of death—these thoughts about death—were not as simple and innocent as the conclusions reached at peaceful dining tables. People cannot go to their deaths while humming a tune. War was not so innocent that one could leap into a pillbox as if executing a touchdown.

I had been told this exact same experience by several returned individuals of differing professions and backgrounds—the soldiers claimed that the agony of marching seeped into their very bones more profoundly than war itself. They were utterly spent. As they walked, they dragged their feet in half-sleep. When enemies suddenly emerged and gunfire crackled, they would drop prone to return fire while paradoxically feeling relief. What they sensed wasn’t war but respite. When foes retreated without resistance, they’d groan things like “Not another march…” and slump in despair, or so it was recounted. This experience held immense value. These people had paid the ultimate sacrifice attainable to humankind to obtain it.

However, as to whether this constituted the entirety of war, I thought there would be room for debate.

In other words, when we spoke of war, we immediately associated it with death.
We feared death.

However, when they actually went to the battlefront, life there turned out to be surprisingly carefree, lacking the tense atmosphere one would expect when heading off to war.
Paratroopers jumped down with chickens clucking beneath their feet, and when they woke from a nap and stretched with a yawn, they found themselves clutching bananas.
In the end, after being utterly exhausted from marching, the hail of bullets ended up serving as nothing but rest.
"Huh, so this was what war was like? When I thought that, dying wasn't as scary as I'd expected—it was just absurdly calm, wasn't it?" I found myself thinking.
But of course, this was undeniably war—yet war in its entirety couldn't possibly be limited to just this.

Did "death" truly exist for the soldiers finding respite beneath the hail of bullets? Even if there were in fact several deaths, had the soldiers' hearts truly been gazing at "death"? If the soldiers were finding respite beneath the hail of bullets, then even if they harbored some anxiety that "we might die," in their unconscious conviction they must have convinced themselves that "we probably wouldn't die." Even if they were struck by an enemy bullet by chance, until that very moment, their hearts had neither confronted death nor gazed upon it.

When there was such leeway，even Yankees could advance humming tunes using touchdown tactics．
“You will die without fail．”
When the time came，how many people could advance while humming a tune？
At that moment，those who could advance were none but supermen．

In other words，a portion of war—though temporally speaking it constituted the majority—required no particular attention to detail even when accompanied by humming．
However，the final key to victory did not lie there．
Holding bombs，they leaped into pillboxes，and airplanes charged headlong at the enemy．
Even when “certain death” had been decreed，they still had to advance．
In this way，by piling up the very flesh and bone of supermen，precious war results expanded．

Generally, when Japanese people thought of war, they mostly considered this desperate tactic.
And so, they were tormented by anxiety—could even they accomplish such a bold feat?
Therefore, when called to duty and departing, they were never optimistic.
But Parisians and Yankees were optimistic.
Being showered with kisses by girls, they marched off humming a tune.
This humming was born from a subconscious conviction that “they probably wouldn’t die,” and was not the heart of those who confronted death as they went to their nation’s peril.
The Japanese people responded to conscription by gazing upon death with greater urgency, making their demeanor not cheerful but grave; yet as for which attitude proved more dauntless and resolute on the battlefield, the great war results of the Greater East Asia War bore witness.
If desperate tactics had not been part of the rules of war, world conquest could have been achieved even through touchdown tactics.

A person who could advance even when certain death had been decided was no ordinary person.
Moreover, when this was accomplished not through momentary fervor but through calm, unwavering conviction, one had to be called a great person.
There were countless people who prided themselves on discarding ideologies, duties, faiths, and even their lives—yet how many among them had faced death itself pressing upon them and still upheld those beliefs?
Only an extremely small number of great individuals had ever trodden such a path.

The idea that someone who’s normally a drunkard could discard their life when pressed, or that someone habitually gloomy could muster vigor when Kamakura calls—this is the sort of thinking we readily voice in our daily lives.
Due to a drunkard’s bad habit, I am particularly prone to raising such reckless bravado all too easily.

However, though we contemplate death in the present moment, the fact that we never truly "confront" it means there exists a decisive deceit at the foundation of this thinking.
We who think based on a consciousness that *we probably won't die*—no matter how perfectly we might negate the fear of death within that thinking—it remains not an actual thing.

You were, so to speak, immersed in training for death.
Ahead on that training path lay only ten thousand deaths—not even a one-in-ten-thousand chance of survival existed.
You devoted yourselves to training in seas unknown to us, away from prying eyes—yet from your daily lives following that training, one could no longer detect any trace of pathos or emotion.
You were thoroughly devoted to meticulous training without reserve.
And so, your hearts had ceased to gaze upon death, but in its place, the two characters for survival had been utterly erased from your subconscious convictions.
For us, it was a mysterious fact as elusive as a dream.
Even if soldiers on the battlefield were gazing upon the anxiety of death, their subconscious convictions must have always contained the two characters for survival, keeping the light of hope burning.
Yet you immersed yourselves in training without reserve, no longer gazing at death—and yet, in every corner of your unconsciousness, the two characters for survival had been meticulously wiped away. At your departure, you uttered carefree remarks like, “We really should wear our uniforms, but it’s hot—hope you’ll forgive us for going in work clothes.”
Since you had nothing to gaze upon but death, death had become a part of your limbs—it was likely no longer anything special at all.
You had become able to think only of boring holes into the enemy’s main battleships.
Even that, you were so brimming with confidence that there already appeared to be not a shred of anxiety.
“Carrying lunchboxes, holding cider, even receiving chocolate—as if heading out on a field trip,” you eagerly boarded the boat.
However, in your farewell upon deployment, you did not say, "I’ll go and come back."
You only said, “We depart.”
And thus, you aimed for Pearl Harbor and submerged your figures straight into the depths.

On the afternoon of December 6th, after receiving money from Daikandō, I was supposed to go to Odawara to retrieve my dōtera. The dōtera and bedding I had left at Miyoshi Tatsuji’s house had been soaked in a summer flood, and Garandou was supposed to have dried them. To be precise, Garandou was the proprietor of Garandou Kōgeisha and a sign painter by trade. He was also a childhood friend of Makino Shin’ichi and roamed along the Tōkaidō—from Atami to Tsujidō—to paint signs. Having internalized this man’s calligraphic style, I would sometimes encounter his signs in unexpected places along the Tōkaidō and burst out laughing. Occasionally he would inscribe something like the art name “Yūsui.” When combined into a single character, “Yūsui” becomes “sake”—a rather dubious pseudonym. That said, he didn’t go around using such art names year-round. While painting signs now and then, depending on the day’s weather or his stomach’s condition, he would suddenly think of it and write. There was indeed a sign bearing “Yūsui” at the souvenir shop in front of Kōzu Station.

In October and November, I went to Odawara to retrieve my dōtera.
However, since it wasn’t yet the season when a dōtera was necessary, I would invariably grow lazy and always return having forgotten the dōtera.
Since winter had finally come, I absolutely had to go retrieve my dōtera.

However, on the evening of December 6th, I ended up drinking with the owner of Daikandō, couldn’t go to Odawara, and wound up staying at some friend’s house.
Since this kind of thing happened often, I couldn’t clearly recall whose house it was—probably Mr. Wakazono’s or Mr. Matsushita’s place.
Causing trouble in the middle of night almost always ended up being at both of their houses.
I had been staying at Mr. Ōi’s place until noon on December 6th.
I had definitely finished writing the manuscript for Gendai Bungaku, visited Ōi Hiroshi, stayed for two or three days, and then must have gone out to Daikandō.
At Ōi Hiroshi’s place, the three of us including Hirano Ken had a contest to guess the culprit in a detective novel, and I think that was probably the day I suffered a crushing defeat.
This is because I only remember Hirano Ken being present when I went out to Daikandō.
This time I suffered a crushing defeat, but the next time Hirano Ken was mercilessly defeated, Ōi Hiroshi suffered a moderate loss, and I achieved a perfect victory.
Therefore, from December 5th into the 6th, we didn’t sleep a wink.
I was asked by Mrs. Ōi to buy fish when I went to Odawara.

In the end, I arrived in Odawara on the evening of December 7th.

Garandou had gone out to Kōzu for work and was not home.
At that very moment, his household was holding a coming-of-age celebration for their eldest son (I’m not sure what exactly it entailed, but since Garandou had described it that way, it was probably a genpuku celebration).
(the eldest son being seventeen) had just concluded, and the aftermath lay scattered with remnants of dozens upon dozens of bottles—sake, beer, shōchū, counterfeit whiskey—gathered from neighboring villages, including unopened ones; I drank them, and by the time Garandou returned from work, I had reached a state of utter intoxication.
Garandou had also been drinking in Kōzu on his way back from work and was thoroughly drunk.
"I carried about ten red sea bream for the kids’ dinner that I found in Kōzu, but they say there’s no fish in Odawara—it’s ridiculous," he said.

When I saw the red sea bream, I suddenly remembered Mrs. Ōi’s request and asked if there was any way to obtain live fish. The response came that while impossible in Odawara, in Kōzu or Ninomiya it would be as certain as drawing a golden dagger. Garandou decided to alter his next day’s work schedule to paint a doctor’s signboard in Ninomiya and accompany me on this fish-seeking mission.
Under these circumstances, I couldn’t very well walk the Tōkaidō with the dōtera slung over my shoulder, so the matter of the dōtera was postponed until next time.
I had lost sight of why I had come to Odawara, but such reversals of priority were ever-present wherever I went—there was nothing to be done about it.

The next day, I woke up past seven o'clock, and sensing this, Garandou's wife came upstairs to inform me that the old man had gone out early in the morning to run an errand at Kansuirō in Hakone but would return by noon. Then she added that he was going to Ninomiya next—but he'd put on my Western clothes and left all dressed up.
"Huh, is that so?"
Somehow they're saying the war's started, but our radio stops working during the day.
……

In the streets of Tokyo, such a strange occurrence couldn’t have been possible.
However, in Odawara where many radios went silent during the day, being in the back second floor of Garandou’s workplace meant no sounds could be heard.
Mrs. Garandou’s report was delivered in a similarly dispassionate tone, and based on the news from those past few days, I convinced myself it was probably just some minor skirmish along the Thai border, spending over three hours reading whatever books were at hand.
There was a somewhat cold wind, but it was perfectly clear.
Through the western window, Myōjōgadake stood out clearly.
I thought that if Garandou was going to Kansuirō, I might as well go with him and take a bath there, but...
I have acquaintances at Kansuirō.
Though I am by nature a homebody, on fine days in Odawara, I find myself suddenly wanting to walk toward the mountains.
This area probably has little mist in the air.
The contrast between light and shadow was extremely sharp; the road gleamed, and the shadows were vividly black.

Since it would be inconvenient to cross paths with Garandou, I abandoned plans to bathe in Hakone but resolved to at least shave my face and dispel some of that traveler's gloom.
It was ten minutes before noon when I ventured into town.
In Odawara's Mejirushi shopping district, foot traffic remained sparse.
National flags fluttered from every eave along Odawara's streets.
A news bulletin plastered to a street corner utility pole—bathed in glaring sunlight and snapping loudly in the wind as it proclaimed war against America and Britain—found me its sole reader amidst completely deserted surroundings.

I looked for a barber shop with a radio.
Soon there would be news.
I was the only customer.
As the barber shaved my cheek, the reading of the Imperial Rescript commenced, followed by Prime Minister Tōjō’s address.
Tears flowed.

A time when words were unnecessary had come.
If necessary, I must offer up my life.
Not a single enemy soldier must be allowed to set foot on our soil.

When I returned to Garandou’s shopfront，there was a large man sitting with great self-importance on an empty confectionery box about thirty ken down Ōmichi Street，as if it were his own garden．It was Garandou．He was beckoning repeatedly．When I went over，there was a radio at that confectionery shop，and just then，the war news began．It was then that I first heard about Hawaii’s surprise attack．The news at that time reported two battleships sunk and several others severely damaged，but regarding your circumstances，there had still been no coverage whatsoever．At such a moment，I felt somewhat constrained by our Japanese disposition—this inability to unhesitatingly shout “Banzai．” Though Garandou had gone out of his way to beckon me over，he himself maintained an utterly composed demeanor，not even listening to the news．He cracked some joke with the confectionery shop owner，then said，“Should we head to Ninomiya soon？I called ahead to the fish shop．”

The bus traveled along the Tōkaidō.
Except for a policeman stationed at the pine-lined avenue, the Tōkaidō remained entirely unchanged from its usual state.
Sagami Bay churned with white-capped waves across its entire offshore expanse; though the weather was clear, the waves ran high.
Therefore, on this day, they couldn’t fish, and there were no local fish in Kōzu or Ninomiya.
At Kōzu, a military train filled with soldiers passed by heading west.

We transferred buses in Kōzu and went to Ninomiya.
We got off midway and went to a Zen temple.
There was a tomb of someone related to Garandou, as it was the death anniversary or something.
The temple priest was apparently Garandou’s friend.
Garandou opened the main hall’s door and loudly asked, in such an odd place about such an odd thing, “Haven’t you got any liquor lately?”
In front of the main hall stood a cactus four or five shaku tall.
We went to the cemetery.
There were small Edo-period graves everywhere.
Fresh flowers and plants were adorned on the grave related to Garandou.
There were old graves there as well.
Garandou was kicking and stomping on the garbage cans around the graves, but he didn’t offer any prayers.
He didn’t bow his head in the slightest.

Garandou was fast on his feet.
We passed through the back of the cemetery and emerged at the Tōkaidō Line.
Turning around, he said, “There’s gonna be something interesting soon.”
In Ninomiya, quadruple-tracking expansion work was underway, and the cemetery of a certain temple that had been situated along the railway was being acquired—precisely during its relocation.
Garandou’s objective was that very place.

Indeed, the cemetery was being excavated in all directions. Between mounds of earth, incense smoke wavered as dozens of people in twisted headbands swung hoes at their ancestors’ graves.
There was also a group wiping their sweat and saying they’d dug down nearly ten feet before finally striking bone.
This nearby region had maintained the custom of burial in the ground until recently, so there were also people at a loss over excavating the newly deceased.

Garandou paid no attention to the excavation of bones.
While parting the mounds of upturned earth with his hands, he kept searching for and gathering what appeared to be fragments.
“This was a place where earthenware emerged—I’d had my eye on it for ages—and I’d just heard about the cemetery’s relocation.”
Garandou looked up at me and said.

“This is a stone tool.”

Garandou kicked the slender stone—about three inches long—that had emerged from the earth.
Before long, when he gathered the fragments, a somewhat complete jar-like object took shape.
Nor was it quite a pot.
There was a jar-like mouth.
Quite intricate Jōmon patterns were engraved.
However, as they were being broken apart by excavation hoes intended for a different purpose, they became fine fragments scattered in all directions; even if searched meticulously, they could never regain their complete form.

The workers with twisted headbands all gathered around Garandou.

“I’m the one who dug it up,” he said. “You didn’t even realize—broke ’em with hoes and scattered ’em around. Fragments all over the damn place. Ignorance can’t be helped, eh?”

The mustached old man stroked the fragments regretfully.

“They came up from about three or four shaku down.”

“Right,” Garandou nodded. “Four shaku or so.”

“Next time you find something,” the old man advised, “dig it out carefully by hand.”

Garandou left these words behind, and we departed the cemetery.
Garandou liked excavating earthenware.
Sometimes, he would shoulder a hoe and set out to excavate a hill he had identified.
He possessed several self-excavated earthenware pieces he called the Garandou Collection.
Admittedly, it wasn’t something worthy of being called a collection.

In the mountainous areas open to the sea around Odawara, there were many ruins of the indigenous people.

At Ninomiya’s fish market, there was a shark about twelve feet long that had been landed.
We reached the intended fish shop, but in the end, there wasn’t a single local fish.
“The day’s bad.”
“Ain’t no one lookin’ for fish on a day like this,” said the fish shop owner, scratching vigorously around his ear, but he nonetheless took out a tuna for us.
There was only one type of tuna.

The fish shop owner brought out the specially rationed shōchū intended solely for laborers and made us all drink it.
When mixed with cider and drunk, shōchū took on a refined quality.
It was one of the drinking methods Garandou had imparted to us.
At that moment, it was exactly four-thirty.
The sun was sinking in a blazing crimson, and the fish shop's storefront bustled with people coming and going for evening meal shopping.
Because an odd pair was getting drunk on cider and eating tuna sashimi at the storefront, there were wives who turned their faces away in surprise.

I was certain there would be an air raid.
The enemy was a nation that boasted large aircraft renowned worldwide.
They had bases in every direction.
Having been hit at Hawaii, they couldn’t possibly retreat.
Enemy squadrons were likely flying over the Pacific at that very moment.
Would I actually make it back to Tokyo?
Near which railway bridge would the train get cut off?
If it came to that, I resolved to walk while gnawing on tuna.
A boy laborer in work clothes was taking down the streetlight’s bulb.
Garandou brought over a bundle of green onions from somewhere and declared we should use the leftover sashimi pieces for negima.

Exactly when night had fully fallen, I parted with Garandou on Ninomiya’s platform.
I was drunk on shōchū.

December 8th, 4:31 PM.
When I was drinking shōchū at Ninomiya’s fish shop, that was exactly two minutes after moonrise in Hawaii time—9:01 PM.
Some of you lurked within the bay during daylight hours, calmly awaiting sunset.
At last, night fell, and the moon rose.
You carried out the final attack.
The Arizona-class battleship caused a massive explosion; flames surged skyward as scorching iron fragments scattered high into the air, but in an instant the flames vanished—and simultaneously, the enemy, mistaking this for an air raid, commenced wild anti-aircraft fire.
The allied forces stationed far outside the harbor recognized this.

At 6:11 PM Japan Standard Time, some of you were still alive.
From one of your boats at that time came a radio message announcing the attack's success.
At 7:14 PM, transmissions ceased.
Not a single one of you returned by boat.
There had never been any expectation for your return.

On December 10th, the Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk.
When the naval planes that had carried out this attack returned, army air corps personnel who had been using the same airfield lost all composure and surged toward the landed aircraft.
Those who disembarked from planes with stilled propellers were all youthful naval falcons.
No sooner had they alighted than—as if by prior arrangement—they circled their beloved aircraft while gazing at them, returned to the prows, then sat down cross-legged before the machines.
They lightly closed their eyes, thrust out their chests, took deep breaths, and reportedly uttered just one phrase: "We're exhausted."
This account came from an Army Air Corps warrant officer.
Those who had fulfilled desperate missions were worn down to their physical and mental limits, likely leaving no room even for emotional reflection.

The story jumps ahead slightly, but after Jabbie had initially failed in the hundred-hour flight between Paris and Tokyo, there was also a pair who, though they managed to reach Japan, made a forced landing on Tosa's coast and swallowed their regret.
Though I've now forgotten his name, he was a stout, energetic man who bore a striking resemblance to Balzac and, just like Balzac, adored coffee—gulping down nothing but coffee even during the flight.
Since French coastal soil was generally firm enough for airplanes to land, they assumed Japanese coasts were the same, attempted a landing on a sandy beach, and ended up flipping upside down into the sea.
At this moment, a fisherman who had been nearby was the first to rush over.
From the overturned plane, a single large foreign man crawled out, clasped his hands behind his back, walked about ten steps along the coast, then turned back.
Unaware of the fisherman's approach, he merely kept walking back and forth in the same spot.
Because they couldn't communicate verbally, the fisherman held up one finger and then two, asking whether there was one person or two.
Then the foreign man also understood the meaning and answered by holding up two fingers.
The fisherman, in shock, boarded the overturned plane and rescued the injured engineer.

This aviator too had risked death and flown recklessly toward Tokyo.
For nearly a hundred hours, he had not gotten a decent amount of sleep.
Just Tokyo.
That was all there was.
In an ordinary plane crash, one would first jump out and, upon spotting any residents, naturally run toward them.
However, he didn’t even notice the fisherman approaching.
The thought of calling for help never even occurred to him.
He had even forgotten about the friend with whom he had shared life and death.
And so, he merely kept pacing back and forth along the same stretch of beach.

When a resolve that stakes one’s life meets futile defeat, one cannot help but feel this ferocity is inevitable.
This is what it becomes when one pours their life into their work.

It was merciless.
Simply intense.
There wasn’t a trace of anything so carefree as to express disappointment or sadness through their true expressions.
The armchair idealism of tatami mats could not exist in such moments.

When a submarine discovered an enemy ship and fired a torpedo, it became the most dangerous moment for both the enemy vessel and the submarine itself. Yet submariners were gripped by the desire to confirm their torpedo's results for even one second longer. This was a torpedo imbued with their very souls. Their souls now raced toward the enemy ship. They listened intently. Every fiber of their being became ears. A blast. A perfect hit. Then only deeper silence ruled them for a time. They appeared devoid of both words and expressions.

I think you all were also like that.
The roar of the explosion resounded through the bay, and scorching iron fragments scattered high into the air.
However, in an instant the flames vanished; already the enemy ship's form submerged beneath the water.
You were simply silent.
However, that too would not last long.

The long day spent lurking within Pearl Harbor.
The excursion had apparently ended.
At last, you were returning from your excursion.
You were returning toward death.
You had nothing left to regret.
For you all, it was truly nothing more than returning from an excursion.

On December 8th, the air raid we had braced ourselves for never came.

When the night of March 4th arrived, an air raid alert was issued.
At that time too—having started drinking since the previous day’s literary society gathering—I was somewhat drunk.
The three of us—Ōi Hiroshi, Mikumo Shōnosuke, and I—were walking through Asakusa and debating at the entrance about whether to enter the Kinryūkan.
The lights of Asakusa went out, vanishing from the ticket booth windows.
As we began wandering aimlessly, the sound of planes reached us.
“Enemy planes?”
We stopped and looked up at the sky.
Then the three men who looked like cooks talking at the street corner turned around.

“No, that’s our motor’s sound.”
“Shouldn’t we shut that thing off?”

The cooks began their discussion.
A ridiculously bright full moon was beginning to rise.
It was a tailor-made day for an air raid.
At last, they steeled themselves for their arrival tonight.

As I was walking through Tajima-cho, on a dark street, a bicycle and pedestrian collided. The bicycle’s large cargo went tumbling, and the two began grappling in a fight.
Mikumo the painter became as worked up as the combatants themselves, pushing through to separate them as he barked harshly, “Hey! What do you think you’re doing fighting at a time like this?”

The next morning saw the first air raid siren sound, yet still no enemy planes appeared.
The announcement of your military exploits came at 3 PM on the day following the air raid alert.
I heard it on the seven o’clock radio.

A wealthy man who rose from nothing to amass a vast fortune died, leaving a will that asked for his bleached bones to be scattered in the flower field of his own Mount Akaishi.
He was an old man over eighty.
They say he ate eel every day, but by then he surely had no room left for affectation.
He must have been a man brimming with confidence, as if he had always carved his own path through life.
It remains unclear why this will was never realized—though the man himself likely had no particular attachment to seeing it fulfilled.
Being the sort who would leave such a will, he held no attachment to the afterlife whatsoever.
When he imagined his bleached bones being scattered by capricious winds across that flower field—finding it rather neat, a clean vanishing from this world—he thought.
This person wrote his will; during his brief remaining life, merely feeling satisfied with that sudden inspiration must have sufficed.
He died in truth—a life brimming with confidence where what came after mattered not at all.

You all were still under thirty in youth, yet yours was a life brimming with confidence.
You all sang of scattering and shattering into pearls, but unlike the bleached bones in the flower field, you were ones for whom shattering into pearls was something visibly certain.
The old man could not scatter his own bleached bones across the flower field, but for you all, shattering into pearls with your own hands was the predetermined path.
And thus, your very bones and flesh turned to dust, meant to scatter across Pearl Harbor’s seabed.
I think you all must be satisfied.
However, while the old man must have had moments of happiness when he felt poetic affection for his unrealized death and the bleached bones meant to be scattered across a flower field, you all—persisting day and night in steel submersibles with sweat-stained work clothes—hardly troubled your hearts over flesh fragments destined to scatter across Pearl Harbor’s seabed.
When you forgot the very concept of survival, you forgot death itself.
Truly, you all went on your excursion.