Pathway to Japanese Literature

It was a desolate island.

In the center of the island, taro fields were neatly arranged, their surroundings encircled by a windbreak of mixed trees—pandanus, lemon, breadfruit, and ukal. Beyond that lay another coconut grove, and then came the sequence of white sand beach—sea—coral reef. A beautiful yet lonely island.

The islanders' houses were scattered among the coconut groves on the western shore. The population numbered around 170 or 180. I had seen many smaller islands. I also knew of islands where taro—which served as the islanders’ equivalent of rice—could not grow at all because their entire land consisted solely of coral debris with no soil. I had also seen desolate islands where all coconut trees had withered due to insect damage. Yet excluding B Island with its population of merely sixteen，there was no island as lonely as this one. Why was that? The reason was but one. It was because there were no children.

Well, there were children—in a sense. There was only one—a girl who would turn five that year. Beyond that child, not a single soul under twenty remained. They hadn’t died out; they had simply stopped being born. For over a decade before this girl’s birth (since no other children existed, let us avoid cumbersome native names and simply call her “the girl”), not one infant had come into the world on this island. Since her arrival, none had been born since—and likely never would be hereafter. At least, so believed the island’s aged inhabitants. Thus when the girl was born years prior, the elders reportedly gathered to venerate their island’s final human—an infant destined to become its last woman. As the first must be revered, so too must the last. As the first endured suffering, so too must the last taste bitter anguish. Muttering these words, tattooed old men and women were said to have bowed before the child with mournful devotion. Yet this concerned only the elderly; I heard younger folk had clamored noisily to glimpse this novelty—a human baby unseen for years in their midst. Two years before the girl’s birth, a census recorded three hundred souls; now barely a hundred seventy remained. Could such rapid decline be possible? When deaths alone thin ranks without plague or pestilence? Those elders who once worshipped the infant must all have perished by now. Still their teachings endured—for even now, this girl meant to be the island’s final inhabitant was cherished like a Living Buddha of Tibetan Lamaism.

A lone child among only adults would normally be doted upon, but in this case, this was compounded by primitive religious awe and sorrow. Why were no babies born on this island? Everyone asked whether there was no spread of venereal diseases or practice of contraception. To be sure, venereal diseases and lung diseases were not absent; however, this was by no means unique to this island—if anything, they were comparatively fewer here than on other islands. As for contraception, those fighting against their island’s impending extinction would never resort to such measures. There were also those who claimed the cause lay in a bizarre custom of performing unnatural procedures on parts of women’s bodies, but since no population decline was observed in the outlying islands of the Truk region—the originators of this practice—this speculation did not hold. Compared to other islands, taro yields were abundant; coconuts and breadfruit trees bore plentiful fruit, leaving food supplies more than sufficient. They had not been struck by natural disasters or calamities. Then why? Why were no babies being born? I didn’t understand. Perhaps it was because God had resolved to eradicate this island’s people. Even if ridiculed as unscientific, there seemed no other way to think. As I gazed upon the well-tended taro fields and beautiful coconut grove under the blinding midday sun, contemplating this island’s fate, I recalled someone’s words—that all truly significant things occur “despite everything.” I recalled someone’s words—that all truly significant things occur. I thought—is this what it’s like when things perish? Scientists smugly pointed out various causes when observing traces of extinction, but unbeknownst to them, what they called causes were often not causes at all—merely results.

Just as an unexpected large bloom might appear on the last rose of late autumn, I—harboring a rather romantic notion that perhaps this island’s last daughter might prove an extraordinarily beautiful and clever child (by the islanders’ standards, of course)—went to see the girl. And I was thoroughly disappointed. Though plump, she was an ordinary islander child with a somewhat grubby, vacant-looking face. Her dull eyes held a faint glimmer of curiosity and fear as they fixed on my figure—that of a mainlander rarely seen on this island. She had not yet been tattooed. Though cherished, it seemed only Franpeshya could be performed. Her arms and legs were riddled with festering sores. Nature appeared less of a romanticist than I.

In the evening, I walked alone along the beach. Overhead, stately coconut trees swayed their large fan-like leaves as they sang in the Pacific wind. As I tread upon the damp sand left by the receding tide, I noticed something flickering incessantly around me—heat-haze-like or perhaps shadow-like forms darting back and forth. They were crabs. Countless small crabs—neither gray nor white nor fawn, nearly indistinguishable from the sand, somewhat resembling cicada husks—were fleeing in all directions. In the South Seas, one finds fiddler crabs everywhere—those red-and-blue painted creatures abundant in mangrove areas—but these pale shadow-like crabs were a rarity. When I first saw them on Garaldo Coast of Palau's main island, I couldn't discern individual forms—only the sensation of sand scattering like flickering illusions around me, leaving me trapped in hallucinatory deception. Now I was seeing them for the second time on this island. When I stopped and stood still awhile, the crabs' frantic flight ceased. The swiftly darting gray phantoms too vanished instantly. After the islanders have died out—a near-certainty already—will these shadow-like sandy specters of crabs come to rule this island? Contemplating the day when ash-white swaying phantoms alone would reign here sent an uncanny chill through me.

In southern climes devoid of twilight, when the sun sinks into the sea, darkness falls instantly. By the time I had made my way around from the desolate east coast to the west coast where houses clustered, night had already fallen. From the low houses beneath the coconut trees, lights flickered faintly. I approached one of those houses. In the kitchen at the back—called *um* in Palauan, though I don’t know what they call it here in these southern outlying islands—a flame burned soundlessly. In the pot hanging above it were probably taro or fish. When I entered inside, the old woman by the fire looked up in surprise. The sagging, tattooed skin flickered red in the swaying flames. When I gestured asking for food, the old woman immediately lifted the lid of the pot in front of her and peered inside. In the sloshing broth were three or four small fish, but they didn’t seem cooked yet. The old woman stood up and brought a wooden plate from the back. On it lay sliced taro and what appeared to be smoked fish cuts. I wasn’t particularly hungry. I simply wanted to know the types of food they ate and their flavors. After pinching a bit of both to taste them, I thanked her in Japanese and went outside.

When I reached the beach, far in the distance, the small steamship’s lights—the same one I had come on and would board again within a few hours to depart—were glowing brightly afloat on the dark sea, illuminating only that spot. I stopped an islander man who happened to be passing by, had him paddle a canoe, and returned to the ship.

The steamship would depart this island at midnight. Until then, it waited for the tide.

I went out onto the deck and leaned against the railing. When I looked toward the island, five or six lights flickered faintly in the darkness, much lower down. I looked up at the sky. Far above the black shadows of masts and rigging, the southern constellations burned beautifully. Suddenly, the words of an ancient Greek mystic about "the wondrous harmony of the celestial bodies" came to mind. That wise ancient had thus expounded. The countless stars comprising the celestial bodies surrounding us perpetually rotate while emitting a colossal sound—nay, an immensely harmonious and grand chord befitting the structure of a harmonious cosmos—yet we terrestrials, having grown accustomed to it since time immemorial and being unable to experience a world without it, ultimately remain unaware of this wondrous cosmic grand chorus. Just as I had earlier imagined this island after the islanders had died out while standing on the evening beach, now I tried to envision the orderly operation of a dark celestial body after humanity’s extinction—unwitnessed by any observer—the state of countless spheres rotating while emitting the colossal sound described by Pythagoras.

Something resembling a violent sadness seemed to abruptly well up from the depths of my heart.

Woman of the Oleander House

The afternoon. The wind had completely ceased breathing. Beneath thin clouds blanketing the entire sky, the air lay saturated with moisture—heavy and stagnant. It was hot. Utterly, inescapably hot. In a lethargy as if I had stayed too long in a steam bath, dragging my heavy feet step by step, I walked on. The heaviness in my legs came partly from dengue fever that had kept me bedridden for a week and hadn’t fully subsided. I was tired. My breath felt stifled. Feeling dizzy, I halted. I pressed my hand against an ukari tree’s trunk by the path to steady myself and closed my eyes. The hallucinations from days earlier—when dengue’s forty-degree fever had left me delirious—seemed about to resurface behind my eyelids. Just like then, within closed-eye darkness, a scorching platinum vortex emitting blinding light began swirling round and round. No good! With that thought, I snapped my eyes open.

Not a single fine leaf of the ukari tree stirred. Below my shoulder blades, sweat welled up, and I could clearly feel it form into a single bead that trickled down my back. What stillness! Was the entire village asleep? Neither people nor pigs nor chickens nor lizards—neither sea nor trees—uttered a single cough. When some of my fatigue eased, I started walking again. It was a smooth paved stone path characteristic of Palau. On a day like today, even walking barefoot on these stones as the islanders did would likely not feel particularly cold. After descending fifty or sixty steps and arriving beneath a luxuriantly dense great banyan tree shrouded in climbing vines like a giant’s beard, I heard a sound for the first time. It was the splashing of water. Thinking it must be a bathing area, I looked beside me to see a small path diverging slightly downward from the stone-paved road. The moment I thought I glimpsed a naked shadow through giant taro leaves and ferns, a sharp coquettish cry pierced the air. Then came sounds of splashing water as someone fled, mingled with stifled laughter; when they subsided, the original stillness returned. Exhausted as I was, I felt no urge to banter with the girls bathing in the afternoon. I continued descending the gentle stone slope.

When I reached the front of the house where oleanders clustered their red flowers, my fatigue—or rather, lassitude—had become unbearable. I thought I would ask to rest at that islander’s house. In front of the house was a large stone pavement built to a height of slightly over one shaku (approximately 30 centimeters) and spanning about six tatami mats in area (roughly 10 square meters). This was the ancestral tomb of the household; passing by its side and peering into the dim interior of the house, I found no one there. On the floor laid with thick round bamboo, only a single white cat lay stretched out. The cat opened its eyes and looked my way, but after merely wrinkling the bridge of its nose as if in mild reproach, it narrowed its eyes and went back to sleep. Since it was an islander’s house and there was no particular need for reserve, I decided to sit down on the edge of the raised floor and rest without ceremony.

While lighting a cigarette, I gazed at the large flat tomb in front of the house and the six or seven slender, tall trunks of betel nut palms standing around it. The Palauans—no, not just the Palauans— All Caroline Islanders except the Ponape people—since they habitually chewed betel nuts mixed with lime—always planted several of these trees in front of their houses. The sight of the betel nut grove—far more slender and gracefully tall than coconut palms—standing erect possessed a rather elegant charm. Alongside the betel nut palms stood three or four much shorter oleanders in full bloom. Pink flowers lay scattered across the tomb's stone pavement too. The strong sweet scent drifting from somewhere was likely coming from India jasmine planted behind here. The scent was so intense that on a day like today, it practically gave one a headache.

There was still no wind. The air grew thick and heavy, liquefied into a viscous mass, then clung stickily to the skin like lukewarm paste. The lukewarm paste-like substance permeated into my head, casting a veil of gray haze over it. Each joint felt leaden, as if decayed.

As I finished smoking a cigarette and flicked away the butt, the instant I turned to glance inside the house, I was startled. There was someone there. A woman. From where—and when—had she entered? There had been no one here moments before. There had only been a white cat. Now that I noticed, the white cat was gone. For the briefest moment—truly just for an instant—I felt that perhaps that earlier cat had transformed into this woman (my mind was indeed addled).

My startled face—the woman stared at it without so much as a blink. Her eyes were not those of surprise. I had the feeling she had been watching me this way the entire time I was gazing outside.

The woman was completely naked from the waist up, sitting with her knees splayed outward like a kite’s talons as she cradled an infant across her lap. The infant was terribly small. The baby probably wasn’t even two months old yet. It slept with the nipple in its mouth. There was no sign of it sucking. Startled and impaired in speech, I failed to apologize for intruding on the empty house to rest and instead stared mutely at the woman’s face. No woman keeps her gaze so unwaveringly fixed like this. It would be fair to say she was practically fixing her gaze. Even something feverish and abnormal seemed to drift within the light of her eyes. I began to feel somewhat unsettled.

The reason I didn't flee was that while there was something abnormal in the woman's gaze, I saw nothing ferocious within it. No—there was another reason: in that silent confrontation, a faint yet unmistakably erotic interest had gradually arisen within me. In truth, one could rightly say that young wife was a beauty. Her facial features—unusually taut for a Palauan woman—suggested she was likely of mixed heritage with a mainlander. Her complexion wasn't the typical glossy black but rather a dullish tan that seemed to have lost its luster. The absence of tattoos anywhere on her body was likely because she was still young and had received Japanese public schooling. Her right hand pressed down on the child at her knee, her left hand braced diagonally behind against the bamboo floor—but that left elbow and forearm bent outward in an L-shape contrary to normal joint articulation. This manner of joint articulation is seen only in the women of this region. In that slightly arched posture, her underbite lips half-parted, with her large, long-lashed eyes, she stared vacantly this way. I did not avert my eyes from hers.

This may sound like an excuse, but one factor was indeed that afternoon's temperature and humidity, and moreover, the strong scent of India jasmine permeating everything—none of which were favorable. The meaning of the woman's prolonged gaze had finally dawned on me. Why a young islander woman—one who seemed to have recently given birth at that—had developed such feelings; whether my convalescent body warranted that sort of gaze from a woman; or whether such things were commonplace in the tropics—none of this could I grasp. Yet despite all uncertainty, the meaning behind this woman's present stare had now become utterly clear. I saw a faint flush rise to her sun-browned face. In some recess of my considerably clouded mind, I remained aware of the gradually intensifying sense of danger—though naturally, I clung to confidence in my ability to scoff at it. Yet within that state, I began to feel myself becoming peculiarly bound.

It was an utterly ridiculous story, but when I later reflected on that drunken, peculiar state of mind, it seemed I had fallen under a touch of tropical sorcery. What saved me from that danger was the weakness of my post-illness body. Since I was sitting on the veranda edge with my legs dangling, I had to twist my body to face diagonally backward to look toward the woman. This posture exhausted me terribly. After some time, the muscles along my flank and neck began throbbing intensely. I involuntarily returned to my original posture and directed my gaze toward the outside scenery. For some reason, a deep sigh escaped with a low sound from the depths of my abdomen. Instantly, the spell was broken.

Considering my state from just moments before, I couldn’t help but smile a bitter smile. I stood up from the veranda edge and, with that bitter smile still on my face, said "Goodbye" in Japanese to the woman inside the house. The woman gave no answer. As if subjected to terrible insult, she glared at me with unmistakable anger, maintaining the same posture as before. I turned my back to her and started walking toward the oleander at the entrance.

Under the giant Amiaka and mango trees, following the stone pavement, I finally returned to my lodging. My body and nerves were utterly spent. My lodging was the house of the islander who served as this village’s chief. I asked Madarei, the islander woman fluent in Japanese who took care of my meals, about the woman from that house earlier. (Of course, I hadn’t told her all of my experiences.) Madarei laughed, her black face revealing pearly white teeth, and said, “Ah, that Miss Beauty.” Then she added: “That person likes men. She likes any man from the mainland.”

Recalling my earlier disgraceful behavior, I smiled bitterly again.

In the room where the damp air hung utterly still, I lay my exhausted body limply across the goza mat spread over the wooden floor and slipped into an afternoon nap.

Had about thirty minutes passed?

A sudden cold sensation startled me awake. Had the wind picked up? When I sat up and looked out the window, every leaf of the nearby breadfruit trees was fluttering with their white undersides fully exposed. Thinking gratefully while looking up at the suddenly ink-black sky, a ferocious squall struck. Pounding the roof, striking the paving stones, battering the palm leaves, knocking down oleander blossoms—with a terrific roar, the rain washed the land. People, beasts, and plants all finally revived. The scent of fresh soil wafted from afar. As I watched the thick white rain shafts, I was vividly recalling the term "silver bamboo"—a poetic expression the Chinese once used for rain.

When I went outside some time after the rain had cleared, the Woman of the Oleander House came walking along the still-wet stone-paved path from the opposite direction. Perhaps she had put the baby to bed at home before coming out; she wasn’t carrying the infant. She passed by me but didn’t even glance my way. It wasn’t an angry expression, but rather a composed, expressionless face that showed no recognition of me whatsoever.

Napoleon

“We’re going to apprehend Napoleon,” the young policeman said to me.

This was taking place on the deck of the small steamship Kunimaru, which served Palau’s southern remote islands.

“Napoleon?”

“Yes, Napoleon,” the young policeman said with a laugh, as if anticipating my surprise. “Though he’s called Napoleon, he’s an islander.” “It’s an islander child’s name.”

The islanders have quite a variety of unusual names. In the past, since they often had Christian missionaries name them, there were many like Mariya and Francis, and due to having been a German territory before, there were sometimes ones like Bismarck as well, but Napoleon is rare. However, compared to other islanders’ names I knew—Shichigatsu (likely born in July), Kokoro (Heart?), and Hamigaki (Toothpaste?)—it was undeniably a far more imposing name. Admittedly, its very excessiveness in grandeur made it undeniably comical.

Under the canvas awning stretched over the deck, I heard the story of the dark-skinned delinquent boy, Napoleon. Napoleon had lived in Koror until two years prior, but during his third year at public school, he committed a viciously sadistic prank on a younger girl that nearly brought her to death’s door. He had caused two or three other similar incidents and apparently committed thefts as well, until at thirteen years old two years prior, he had been exiled as punishment for minors to S Island, far south of Koror. Though nominally part of the Palau Islands, these southern remote islands were geologically distinct, and their inhabitants—descendants of Central Carolinian peoples from far to the east—shared neither language nor customs with Palau. Even the notorious delinquent Napoleon seemed quite daunted at first, yet he appeared to possess a peculiar talent for adapting to—or rather overcoming—his environment, and within less than half a year, he began running rampant again even on S Island, proving too much to handle. It was said that a petition had come from the island’s village chief to the Palau Branch Office some time ago, stating that he was causing trouble by threatening the island’s boys and engaging in improper conduct toward girls and married women. One would think such a delinquent should be disciplined within the island, yet apparently, it was the island’s adults who were instead cowering in fear. S Island had an extremely small population that was decreasing year by year—a place nearing abandonment, one might say—yet its residents seemed so listless they couldn’t even restrain a mere fifteen- or sixteen-year-old boy.

The reason the policeman I was currently speaking with had come to apprehend Napoleon was that the Police Affairs Division of the Palau Branch Office, having judged this boy to show no signs of repentance, had decided to extend his period of exile and furthermore change his place of banishment to T Island, located far to the south of S Island. The policeman, combining this task with another—collecting the head tax from remote outlying islands—had brought along an islander patrolman and boarded this small vessel on the remote-island route, a ship that mainlanders hardly ever rode and that made only about three trips a year.

When I said, “Professor Napoleon, will he obediently board this ship and be transferred to T Island?” the policeman retorted vehemently, “Come now, however bad he may be, he’s merely an islander child. It’s not a problem.” In his voice, unlike the tone of our previous conversation, I detected an unexpected hint of indignation, and I realized—ah—that my words might have constituted some insult to this policeman, who held absolute authority before the islanders.

Even if S Island sent Napoleon to T Island because they were troubled by his presence, T Island—undoubtedly another gathering of similarly listless people—would surely struggle with this boy as well. Was there really no other way? Like putting him to work under strict surveillance in Koror, something along those lines. And what law in the world was imposing this antiquated punishment of exile on the boy? What laws had been established for these islanders who didn't hold Japanese nationality, particularly their minors? Though a fellow South Seas official myself, being in an entirely different department—and a complete novice at that—I knew nothing about such matters. I had wanted to ask more, but sensing I'd already somewhat offended him, and out of consideration for the islander patrolman standing nearby, I decided to hold my tongue.

“The captain said we’d reach S Island around noon, but after that time we drifted half a day and overshot – you can’t really rely on it.” The policeman changed the subject with these words, stretching as he turned his gaze seaward. I too found myself following suit, squinting at the dazzling sea and sky without particular intent. The weather was mercilessly clear. What a blinding blue radiance – both sea and sky. The crystalline azure of the atmosphere dissolved near the horizon into a haze of smoldering golden particles, only to have vibrant ultramarine waters surge upward from below – waters so intense they might stain one’s very being with a single glance. An opulent indigo disc brimming with inner light swelled monstrously above and below the ship’s white railings before plunging ponderously downward. I recalled the term “ultramarine demon.” Not knowing what manner of demon this referred to, I idly imagined countless pale imps dancing wildly within that blazing platinum glare – perhaps they could conjure this sea and sky’s splendor.

After a while, when I averted my eyes from the sea due to the overwhelming glare and looked ahead, the young policeman who had been speaking with me until just moments before was already breathing in contented slumber, still reclined on the cloth deck chair.

Around noon, the ship passed through the fissured channels of the coral reef and entered the bay. This was S Island. It was Elba Island—where the little black Napoleon was said to reside.

A low, small coral island—completely devoid of hills. The sand of the gently curving beach—coral fragments—lay blindingly white, painful to the eyes. A row of aged coconut trees towered majestically in the blue midday light, while islander huts peeking through beneath them appeared pitifully low and small. Twenty or thirty islander men and women had come down to the beach, squinting their eyes and shielding their hands as they watched our ship. Due to tidal conditions, docking at the pier proved impossible. When the ship anchored about fifty meters from shore, three welcoming canoes came cutting through the water toward us. A robust man with a splendid coppery-bronze complexion rowed closer wearing nothing but a bright red loincloth. As they drew near, I could see black earrings dangling from their ears.

“Well, I’ll be off,” the policeman said, picking up his helmet in greeting, then descended from the deck with the patrolman in tow. The ship was scheduled to stay at this island for only three hours. I decided not to go ashore. This was solely due to my fear of the heat.

After finishing lunch below, I came back up to the deck. Completely different from the deep indigo of the open sea, the water inside the barrier reef was jade dissolved in milk. The area shaded by the ship appeared especially clear and transparent, its hue resembling the cut edge of thick glass. As I looked down at black fish with showy vertical stripes resembling angelfish and slender amber-colored fish like saury swimming vigorously below, drowsiness began to overtake me. I lay down on the deck chair where the policeman had slept earlier and immediately fell asleep.

When I awoke to the sound of footsteps and voices ascending the gangway, the policeman and patrolman had already returned. Beside them was an islander boy wearing nothing but a loincloth.

“Ah, this one?” “Napoleon.”

With a “Hah” nod, the policeman shoved the boy toward the corner of the deck where ropes and rigging were piled. “Sit down over there.” From behind the policeman, the patrolman—a dull-looking youth who might have just turned twenty or not yet—said something briefly to the boy. He had probably interpreted the policeman’s words. The boy cast a sullen glance our way, then sat down on a wooden box there and turned to face the sea.

By islander standards his eyes were quite small, but Napoleon’s face was not particularly ugly. That being said (though most wicked faces possess some cunning intelligence), his was not the face of a crafty schemer. While his face showed not a trace of what could be called intelligence—being one of utmost stupidity—it completely lacked that comical dullness commonly seen in ordinary islanders’ faces. Malice devoid of meaning or purpose—nothing but pure, unadulterated malice—was clearly etched upon that foolish face. The cruel acts of this boy in Koror that I had just been told about by the policeman—indeed, looking at this face, one could believe him capable of such things. However, what ran counter to expectations was the smallness of his physique. The islanders generally reach full physical maturity before twenty, so by fifteen or sixteen, many already possess remarkably robust physiques. Particularly for a boy so precocious as to commit sexual crimes, I had thought his physique would surely be correspondingly well-developed—yet here was this scrawny, wizened monkey of a youth. That a boy with such a physique could instill fear among the islanders—who still valued physical strength second only to lineage—was truly perplexing.

"Thank you for your trouble," I said to the policeman. "Nah. Since ships are rare here, the bastard had gone down to the beach with the villagers, so we nabbed him right away." "But according to that man"—he pointed at the patrolman—"there's a problem," continued the policeman. "That Napoleon bastard's apparently forgotten all his Palauan now." "No matter what we ask him, he doesn't understand a word." "But could such a thing really happen?" "That he'd forget every last word of his birthplace's language in just two years?"

It was said that after two years of using only Trukese on this island, Napoleon had completely forgotten Palauan. If he had forgotten the Japanese he had studied for about two years at public school, that would have been understandable. But to forget even the Palauan he'd used since birth? I tilted my head. But then I thought—perhaps it wasn't entirely impossible after all. However, who could say whether it wasn't a lie to avoid the policeman's interrogation? "Who knows?" I tilted my head again.

"I gave him quite the grilling myself, thinking he might be lying," the policeman said as he wiped sweat from his brow, glaring resentfully at Napoleon who sat with his back turned to us. "In any case, he's a sulky, impudent bastard. Even though he's just a kid, there's no one as stubborn as this brat."

At 3 PM, it was finally time to depart. Along with the rumbling engine noise, the ship's hull began to rock gently up and down.

I was leaning against the deck chairs with the policeman (since we were the only first-class passengers, we inevitably ended up together all the time) looking toward the island. At that moment, the islander patrolman who had been standing beside us let out a startled cry—"Look!"—and pointed behind us. The moment I turned toward that direction, I saw the retreating figure of an islander boy who had just leapt over the white-painted railing into the sea. In a panic, we rushed to the railing. Already, the escapee had swum seven or eight ken away from the ship and was circling around the stern through eddies, swimming vividly toward the island.

“Stop! Stop the ship!” the policeman shouted. “Napoleon has escaped!”

Instantly, the deck of the ship became a scene of chaotic uproar. The two islander sailors who had been at the stern jumped into the sea from their spot and pursued the escapee. Both appeared to be robust young men who had just passed twenty. The distance between the escapee and his pursuers seemed to shrink rapidly before our eyes. The islanders who had been seeing off the ship from the beach finally seemed to notice as well, scattering across the white sand as they dashed toward where Napoleon was trying to swim ashore.

At this unexpected spectacle, I leaned against the railing and held my breath. This was yet another South Seas pursuit unfolding against a world of eye-searingly vivid colors. I must have been watching with an unmistakably delighted expression. "Quite entertaining, isn't it!" came a voice that made me realize the captain—who for some reason never appeared without at least a hint of alcohol about him—had materialized beside me unnoticed. He too was leisurely puffing his pipe while watching the nautical drama below with the detached pleasure of someone viewing a film. Recognizing that I'd apparently been hoping Napoleon might successfully reach shore and disappear into the island's forests, I smiled bitterly at myself.

But the outcome proved surprisingly anticlimactic. In the end, when Napoleon had come to a place about twenty ken from shore where the water was shallow enough to stand, he was overtaken. The result went without saying when pitting a single boy smaller than average against two strapping youths of imposing stature. The boy was seized by both arms and dragged along—their progress remained visible until they reached the shore, but once the islanders immediately swarmed around them, I could no longer see what followed.

The policeman was in an extremely foul mood.

Thirty minutes later, when Napoleon—restrained by the two meritorious sailors—was brought back to the ship via the island’s canoe, he was immediately dealt three or four vicious open-handed slaps in rapid succession. Now, this time (they hadn’t used ropes earlier), after having both his hands and feet bound with the ship’s hemp ropes, he was rolled into a corner between what appeared to be coconut baskets filled with provisions for the islander sailors and peeled young coconuts for drinking. “Damn it! Making us go through all this extra trouble!” the policeman said, though he finally seemed relieved.

The next day was also perfectly clear.

Without sighting land for a day, the ship raced southward.

As evening finally drew near, we entered the atoll of Uninhabited Island H Reef. I thought they were approaching the uninhabited island to check whether there might be any castaways—because I remembered such provisions being written in some mandated shipping route’s regulations. However, in reality, it had not been out of such naive humanitarian consideration. The purpose, it was said, was to crack down on poachers at the request of the South Seas Trading Company, which held exclusive harvesting rights for taka shellfish here.

Viewed from the deck, a vast flock of seabirds blanketed this low coral reef island. I was invited by two or three sailors to go ashore and look around, and was even more astonished. Behind rocks, on trees, across sand—nothing but birds, birds, birds, along with bird eggs and bird droppings. And yet, even as we approached, those countless birds showed no intention of fleeing. When we tried to catch them, they merely staggered two or three unsteady steps away. From specimens as large as human children down to sparrow-sized ones—white, gray, pale brown, faint blue—tens of thousands beyond counting, dozens of seabird species flocked there; yet regrettably, I (nor the sailors with me) could name a single one. I grew inexplicably giddy and ran about wildly chasing them. Endlessly—absurdly endlessly—they let themselves be caught. When I seized a large white bird with a long red beak, it struggled somewhat and pecked me, but I shouted gleefully like a child while catching and releasing dozens upon dozens. The sailors, unimpressed by novelty, showed less enthusiasm than I did, yet still wielded sticks to commit considerable unnecessary slaughter. They brought back three moderately sized birds and about ten pale yellow eggs to the ship for eating.

When I returned to the ship as satisfied as a schoolboy after a field trip, the policeman who hadn’t disembarked said to me: "That bastard—Napoleon—has been sulking since yesterday and won’t eat a thing." "We give him taro and coconut water and untie his hands, but he doesn’t even glance at them." "There’s no knowing how far this stubbornness will go."

Indeed, the boy lay in the same spot and position as the day before. (Fortunately, it was a place untouched by sunlight.) Even when I approached him—though his eyes remained wide open—he refused to turn his gaze toward me.

The following morning—that is, the second morning since departing S Island—the ship finally arrived at T Island. It was both the terminus of this shipping route and the boy Napoleon’s new place of exile. The shallow green waters within the barrier reef; the distant view of pure white sand and towering coconut trees; several canoes swiftly paddling closer toward the steamship; islanders climbing aboard from those canoes to exchange their brought chickens and eggs for the sailors’ offered cigarettes and sardine tins; and then, islanders standing on the beach gazing curiously at the ship. They were no different on any island.

When the welcoming canoe arrived, the patrolman informed Napoleon—who still lay in the same position among the coconut baskets (apparently having stubbornly gone without a single bite or drink for two full days)—of this fact, untied the ropes binding his legs, and pulled him up. Napoleon stood up obediently, but when the patrolman still tried to take his arm and pull him toward the policeman, he pushed the islander patrolman away with his stiff elbow, his face contorted in anger. I did not miss the momentary look of fear mixed with surprise that appeared on the dull face of the patrolman who had been pushed away. Napoleon descended the gangway alone, following behind the policeman. I watched from the deck as he moved to the canoe, then disembarked onto the shore, and along with two or three islanders, following the policeman, disappeared into the coconut grove.

As seven or eight islander passengers were loading coconut baskets into dugout canoes and disembarking there, over ten others intending to head for Palau from that spot came aboard carrying similar baskets. They wore glossy coconut-shell rings dangling from unnaturally stretched earlobes and bore undulating tattoos spanning from neck to shoulders and chest—a pure manifestation of Trukese custom. About an hour later, the policeman and patrolman returned to the ship. They had explained Napoleon’s exile to the islanders and entrusted his custody to the village chief.

Departure came in the afternoon.

As was customary, islanders seeing us off were lined up in a row along the beach, bidding farewell. (Since the large ship—one that could only be seen departing three or four times a year—was setting sail.)

Wearing sunglasses for sun protection, I gazed at the beach from the deck and spotted a boy who looked very much like Napoleon among their ranks. When I thought “Huh?” and checked with the patrolman next to me, he confirmed it was indeed Napoleon. Since he was quite far away, I couldn’t make out his expression, but now completely freed from his bonds, he somehow appeared brighter and more spirited. Seeing him there with two slightly smaller children beside him, occasionally conversing—had he already, within just three hours of landing, managed to form alliances?

When the ship finally sounded its whistle and began turning its bow toward the open sea, I clearly saw Napoleon waving toward the ship together with the islanders standing lined up. That stubborn, sulky youth—why on earth would he decide to do such a thing? After landing on the island and eating his fill of taro, had he forgotten all his resentment from the ship and hunger strike, simply wanting to imitate people like a boy would? Or perhaps, even if he had already forgotten their language, he still felt nostalgic for Palau and ended up waving at the ship heading back there? I couldn't tell which it was.

The Kunimaru hurried northward with single-minded haste, and Saint Helena for Little Napoleon soon became a gray shadow, then a threadlike wisp of smoke, until finally, after an hour, it vanished completely beyond the great azure-flaming disk.

Midday.

I woke up. "Mmm," I stretched contentedly after sufficient sleep, and beneath my limbs and back, the sand—white fragments of flower coral—sifted down softly. A few meters from the tideline, beneath the thicket of a large Taman tree in deep eggplant-colored shade, I had been taking my midday nap. The branches and leaves overhead grew so densely intertwined that scarcely any filtered sunlight reached the ground.

When I sat up and looked out to sea, the vividness of the vermilion triangular sail cutting through the mackerel-blue water sharply roused my eyes. The sail-bearing dugout canoe was now just entering the breach in the barrier reef from the open sea. Judging by the angle of sunlight, it must have been just past noon.

I lit a cigarette and sat back down on the coral fragments. It was quiet. Apart from the rustling of leaves overhead and the lapping water sounds of the shore, there was only the occasional faint sound of waves beyond the barrier reef.

In this island where time flows idly and lazily—untroubled by deadlines or transitions between seasons—Urashima Taro was by no means merely a folktale. It was simply that we could not find within this island’s dark-skinned, sturdy girls the charm that old tale’s protagonist had discovered in its heroine. Did “time” even hold meaning within this island’s lexicon?

A year ago in the cold northern mists—what had I been tormenting myself over?—I suddenly wondered. Somehow it seemed like an event from some distant previous life. The winter sensations that had once seeped into my skin could no longer be vividly recreated in memory. Similarly, those numerous torments that had plagued me in the north now remained mere factual recollections, leaving only faint shadows beyond a pleasant veil of forgetting.

So, was this the southern bliss I had envisioned before embarking on my journey? Could this be it—the pleasant awakening from midday slumber, this quiet oblivion and idleness and rest upon coral fragments?

"There was something within me that clearly denied this—" "No—that's not it. What you had expected from the South was surely not meant to be this idleness and weariness. Wasn’t it supposed to be about throwing yourself into a new and unknown environment, fully testing those latent powers within you that even you hadn’t yet discovered? Or wasn’t it also an expectation for adventure—anticipating that this place would naturally be chosen as a battlefield in the imminent war?"

That's right. Certainly. And yet that yearning for something new and austere had long since melted into the pleasant sea breeze, leaving only dreamlike ease and indolence—languid, pleasant, utterly without regret—to envelop me. "Without any regrets? Is that truly so?" asked that malicious part within me again. "You don't care whether it's laziness or idleness. If you truly have no regrets at all. If you're truly liberated from the specters of the artificial-European-modern. But in reality, wherever and whenever you are—you remain yourself. Whether shivering through false chills in Meiji Shrine's Outer Garden where ginkgo leaves fell, or gorging on stone-baked breadfruit with islanders—you remain yourself. You haven't changed one bit. It's merely that sunlight and hot wind have cast a temporary thick veil over your consciousness. You think you're now gazing at glittering sea and sky. Or perhaps you flatter yourself that you see through islanders' eyes. Nonsense! You aren't truly seeing sea or sky. Merely staring into spatial distance while mentally chanting: Elle est retrouvée! — Quoi? — L'Éternité. C'est la mer mêlée au soleil. (Found it! What? Eternity. The seascape merged with sun) like some incantation.

You aren't truly seeing the islanders at all. You're merely looking at Gauguin's reproductions. You aren't even seeing Micronesia either. You're only seeing faded reproductions of Polynesia as depicted by Loti and Melville. With eyes crusted in such pallid shells, what could you grasp of eternity? "Pathetic wretch!"

"No, watch out," came another separate voice within me. "Savagery is by no means healthy. Just as idleness isn't healthy. There exists nothing more perilous than a deluded escape from civilization."

“That’s right,” answered the earlier voice. “Certainly, savagery is not healthy. At least in modern times. But even so, isn’t it still more vigorous than your civilization? No—fundamentally, health and unhealthiness have nothing to do with civilization or savagery. Those who do not fear reality—those who see clearly with their own eyes, unclouded by borrowed lenses—remain healthy in any time and under any circumstances. But when it comes to that ‘quack sage in ancient Chinese robes’ or that ‘cunning-looking jester wearing a Voltaire mask’ inside you—what then? You teachers may now be staggering drunk on the southern heat, but considering the wretchedness of your sober state, being intoxicated still seems preferable, doesn’t it?…”

Three or four tiny hermit crabs in unfamiliar shells came near my feet, but sensing human presence, they stopped, observed the situation briefly, then hurriedly scurried away.

The village now seemed to be in its nap time. Not a soul passed along the beach. The sea—or at least the waters within the barrier reef—slumbered thickly in emerald green. Only occasionally did it glint dazzlingly as it reflected the sun. When something like a mullet leapt above the water’s surface now and then, it seemed only the fish remained awake. The sea and sky were bright, calm, and vibrant. Somewhere in these waters, Triton—half-emerged in the lukewarm brine—was blowing his conch shell with resonant force. Somewhere beneath this cloudless sky, Aphrodite was being born anew from rose-colored foam. From among the navy-blue waves, a siren’s sweet song tried to tempt the wise king of Ithaca. ……Mustn’t! Yet another specter. Literature—or rather, the pallid specter of so-called European literature.

Clicking my tongue, I stood up. A faint bitterness remained in some corner of my mind for a time.

When I stepped onto the damp beach, countless hermit crabs and small crabs—blue and red like toys—scattered away in unison. When I kicked a fallen coconut with a five-inch sprout, it rolled into the water with a splash.

Now that I think of it, something strange happened last night. As I lay sleeping on the floor of an islander house—its surface made of aligned round bamboo poles—with a single thin mat woven from *tako* leaves spread beneath me, I suddenly and without any prompting recalled the brightly decorated storefront of Kabukiza’s souvenir shop in Tokyo (not the theater itself, but the shop selling *arare* rice crackers, candies, caricatures, and bromide photos), and the well-dressed crowds passing before it. The gaudy boxes and cans and hand towels scattered with actors’ family crests, the eye-shadowed likenesses of kabuki performers, the harsh white electric lights illuminating them, even the sight of girls and apprentice geishas gazing intently—all rose vividly in my mind, down to the palpable scent of their hair oil. I do not particularly like kabuki theater itself. I should have no interest in souvenir shops or such. Why would such a meaningless, hollow fragment of Tokyo life—this flimsy sliver of existence—suddenly resurface in my mind here, in a thatched native hut roofed with coconut leaves on a tiny island encircled by the Pacific’s surging waves, as I listened to the thudding sound of coconuts falling around the house? I have absolutely no idea. In any case, it seems all sorts of strange beings are jumbled together in disarray inside me. Even contemptible wretches deserving of scorn.

When I reached the edge of the tamana tree shade along the coast, a small naked boy came running across the sun-scorched sand from the opposite direction. When he came before me, he stopped, neatly aligned his feet, bowed so deeply his head nearly reached his knees, and announced that the meal was ready. He was the child of the islander house where I was staying, eight years old that year. An emaciated child with large eyes, a protruding belly, and suppurating tumors covering his body. When I asked if there was some special dish prepared, he said his older brother had earlier speared a Kamuddukuru fish and they'd made it into Japanese-style sashimi.

When I followed the boy and took a step onto the sunlit sand, a single white Sohosoho bird—called so by islanders for its cry, though mainlanders named it airplane bird for its shape—flapped noisily up from a taman tree's crown and vanished into the high, dazzling azure sky.

Maryann

Maryann was the name of an islander woman I knew well. Maryann meant Maria. That Maria was the Maria of the Virgin Mary. Islanders in the Palau region all spoke with nasal pronunciations, which made it sound like "Maryann."

I did not know how old Maryann was. It wasn’t that I had been intentionally avoiding the question; I simply had never asked. In any case, it was certain there remained a gap before thirty.

Whether Maryann’s features were considered beautiful in the eyes of the islanders—this too I did not know. At the very least, I didn’t think she was ugly. Her face bore not the slightest trace of Japanese influence, nor any Western affectation either—(in the South Seas, those considered even remotely good-looking usually had mixed blood from one or the other)—yet this purely Micronesian Kanaka countenance struck me as remarkably noble. Racial limitations were unavoidable, but within those constraints, I thought her face truly vibrant, carefree, and full of vitality. However, Maryann herself seemed to consider her own Kanaka-like features somewhat embarrassing. This was because, as would be discussed later, she was highly intellectual, and the content of her mind had almost ceased to be Kanaka. Furthermore, in Koror—the cultural center of the South Sea Islands—where Maryann resided, even among the islanders themselves, the standards of civilized beauty held sway. Indeed, this town called Koror—where I had stayed the longest—seemed to harbor a kind of chaos arising from the fact that, though tropical, temperate value standards held sway. When I first came to this town, I hadn’t felt it so keenly, but after leaving here once and traveling through islands where no Japanese people lived before visiting again, this matter came to be perceived with extreme clarity. Here, neither tropical nor temperate elements appeared beautiful. Or rather, the very concept of beauty—whether tropical or temperate—simply did not exist here. Things that should have possessed tropical beauty here withered under the emasculation by temperate civilization, while things that should have possessed temperate beauty merely displayed an incongruous frailty under the tropical natural climate—particularly its intense sunlight. All that existed in this town was a poverty that felt thoroughly like a colonial backwater—decadent yet marked by a strangely ostentatious pretense. In any case, due to being in such an environment, Maryann did not seem to take much pleasure in the Kanaka-like richness of her facial features. When it came to abundance, however, her physique was undoubtedly richer than her facial features. Her height must have been no less than five shaku four sun (approximately 5’4”), and she once mentioned her weight being around twenty kan (about 75 kg) when she had slimmed down a bit. Truly, hers was a physique magnificent to an enviable degree.

The first time I saw Maryann was in folklorist Mr.H's room. One night, as I sat talking with Mr.H in a cramped bachelor quarters—its floor covered with thin rush matting instead of tatami—a shrill whistle suddenly sounded outside the window. Through the narrow gap of the barely opened window (having lived over a decade in the South Seas, Mr.H had grown utterly unbothered by heat, finding mornings and evenings so cold he couldn’t keep windows open), a young woman’s voice asked, “May I come in?” “Oh! This folklorist Mr.H proves quite guarded after all,” I thought in surprise—but when the door opened to reveal not a mainlander but a statuesque islander woman, I found myself astonished anew. “My Palauan language teacher,” Mr.H introduced her to me. Mr.H was then collecting old ballads from the Palau region and translating them into Japanese, but this woman—Maryann—came to assist with this work only three fixed days each week. That evening too, keeping me at their side, the two promptly began their studies.

In Palau there was no writing system. All old ballads were ones that Mr.H traveled around inquiring of village elders and transcribed using the alphabet. Maryann first looked at the notebook of transcribed Palauan old ballads and corrected any Palauan language errors written there. Then staying by Mr.H’s side as he translated，she answered his occasional questions． “Oh，you speak English?” I remarked with admiration． “Well，she’s quite proficient at it．She attended a girls’ school in the mainland，you know，”Mr．H said with a laugh，looking toward Maryann． Maryann parted her thick lips with a hint of bashfulness but made no move to contradict Mr．H’s words．

When I later asked Mr.H about it, he said she had attended a girls’ school somewhere in Tokyo for two or three years (though she apparently didn’t graduate). “Even without that, she can speak English because her father taught her,” Mr.H added. “Though I say ‘father,’ he’s her adoptive father, you know. “Why, you see, William Gibbon has become her adoptive father.” When told “Gibbon,” I could only recall the author of that monumental History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. But upon closer inquiry, this Gibbon turned out to be a well-known mixed-race intellectual in Palau (of English and native parentage) who had served continuously as an interpreter during the German colonial era when Professor Kreemer, the folklorist, conducted his research. To be fair, he apparently hadn’t actually known German either, conducting matters with Professor Kreemer in English as well. But being the adopted daughter of such a man, her fluency in English was only natural.

Whether due to my cantankerous nature, I could never form truly amicable relationships with colleagues at the Palauan government office, and aside from Mr.H, there remained not a single person who could be called a friend. As I came to frequent Mr.H's room with increasing regularity, I naturally found myself growing closer to Maryann as well.

Maryann called Mr.H "Uncle". Because she had known him since she was very young. Maryann would sometimes make Palauan dishes at home and bring them to Uncle’s place to treat him. Each time, I would be included in the treat. It was also thanks to Maryann that I first came to know Binrunmu—tapioca dumplings—and Titimur, a sweet confection.

On one occasion while passing by with Mr.H, we stopped briefly at Maryann’s house. Like all other islanders’ homes, it had floors mostly made of round bamboo poles laid side by side, with only a portion being wooden flooring. When we climbed up unhesitatingly, there was a small table on the wooden floor bearing books. Picking them up to look, one was Hakuson Shiroyanagi’s *Selected Interpretations of English Poetry*, and the other was *The Marriage of Loti* from the Iwanami Bunko series. Shelves hung from the ceiling held rows of coconut baskets; clothes hung haphazardly from ropes strung across the room (islanders never store garments properly, instead hanging every piece carelessly like dried fish), while beneath the bamboo flooring came the clucking of chickens. In the corner sprawled a woman—likely Maryann’s relative—who cast a suspicious glance our way when we entered before turning over to face the opposite wall. In such surroundings, discovering works by Shiroyanagi Hakuson and Pierre Loti left me feeling somehow peculiar—a pang verging on pity, one might say. Though whether this pity was directed at the books themselves or at Maryann remains unclear.

Regarding *The Marriage of Loti*, Maryann had expressed dissatisfaction. Her complaint was that the real South Seas bore no resemblance to this portrayal. "Since it deals with old Polynesia—something I don't fully grasp—still, there couldn't possibly have been anything like this," she said.

When I looked at the corner of the room, inside what resembled a mandarin orange crate, various books and magazines still appeared crammed together. The volume resting on top seemed to be an old alumni magazine from the Tokyo girls' school she had once attended. In Koror, there was not a single shop that carried Iwanami Bunko.

One time, at a gathering of mainlanders, when I happened to mention the name of Mr. Yamamoto Yūzō, they all asked in unison, "What kind of person is he?" I don’t particularly believe that everyone must read literary works, but in any case, this town was a place so profoundly removed from books. Perhaps Maryann was—even including mainlanders—Koror’s foremost reader.

Maryann had a five-year-old daughter. Her husband was no longer present. According to Mr.H, it had been Maryann who drove him out. This too because he had been an excessively jealous man. To state this might make Maryann appear some hot-tempered woman—and indeed, by any measure she was hardly meek—but one had to consider her high status among the islanders stemming from lineage. I had briefly mentioned earlier about her adoptive father being mixed-race, but since Palau followed a matrilineal system, this bore no relation to Maryann’s family standing. Yet Maryann’s biological mother came from Koror’s foremost chieftain house—the Ideiz family. In other words, Maryann belonged to Koror Island’s most distinguished family. That she still served as Koror Island Women’s Youth Group Leader owed not only to her intellect but also this lineage. The man who had been Maryann’s husband came from Ogiwal Village on Palau’s main island. (Though Palau observed matrilineal customs, during marriage wives still went to live at their husbands’ homes.) (Should her husband die, she would take all children back to her parents’ house—) Given these family status considerations and Maryann’s aversion to rural life—though irregular—it had been the husband who came to live at Maryann’s home. It was Maryann who expelled him. Physically, he might have been no match for her. Yet after being driven out, the man would frequently come to Maryann’s house bringing consolation money to plead for reconciliation, so she relented once and they resumed cohabitation. But the jealous man’s nature remained unaltered—or rather, it was truly the disparity in their intellectual levels that proved root cause—and they separated again. Thus since then she had lived alone. Due to family status—particularly stringent in Palau—she could not accept just anyone, and also because Maryann had become too modernized for most islander men to match—in the end, Mr.H had said—it might be that Maryann could no longer marry at all. Speaking of which, Maryann’s friends seemed almost entirely Japanese. Evenings would find her inserting herself into conversations on veranda benches among mainland merchants’ wives. Moreover, it appeared Maryann generally held sway over these casual chats.

I had seen Maryann in full ceremonial dress. Her pure white Western-style outfit with high heels and short parasol in hand made for an extraordinary sight. Her complexion glowed with that characteristically vivid—or rather garish—tea-brown luster; from her short sleeves protruded demon-crushing arms of reddish bronze, while beneath her pillar-like legs, the slender high heels seemed ready to snap under their weight. Though struggling to suppress the physical inferiority complex of my frail frame toward such bodily superiority, I couldn't help feeling an absurd amusement rising within me. Yet simultaneously, I truly did re-experience that same pang of pity felt upon discovering Selected Interpretations of English Poetry in her room. Though here again, it remained unclear whether this pity concerned the snow-white dress itself or the woman wearing it.

Two or three days after seeing her in formal attire, as I was reading a book in my lodgings, a whistle I thought I recognized sounded outside. When I looked out the window, Maryann was cutting undergrowth in the adjacent banana field—likely part of the communal labor services occasionally imposed on island women by the town. Seven or eight other island women crouched among the grass with sickles beside her. The whistle hadn't been meant for me. (Maryann frequented Mr.H's room but wouldn't have known mine.) Unaware of my gaze, she kept cutting diligently. Compared to her earlier finery, she now cut a wretched figure—barefoot like any islander, wearing faded work clothes for fieldwork. The whistling seemed to escape her lips unbidden as she worked. When she'd filled the large basket beside her, she straightened up and turned toward me. Noticing my observation, she flashed a grin but made no move to approach. As if masking embarrassment, she deliberately cried "Heave-ho!", hoisted the basket onto her head, and walked off without farewell.

On last year’s New Year’s Eve—it was a pale, beautiful moonlit night—we, Mr.H and I and Maryann, walked through the town, baring our skin to the cool night breeze. We spent time like that until midnight, and at the stroke of twelve, we were to make our first shrine visit of the year at Nanyo Shrine. We walked toward Koror Wharf. At the end of the wharf was a pool, and we settled ourselves on its edge.

Despite being quite advanced in years, Mr.H—who was terribly fond of singing—raised his voice and sang various songs, primarily excerpts from the operas he excelled in. Maryann was whistling all the while. She would blow with her thick lips rounded and pursed into a pointed shape. Hers were not such difficult operas but mostly Foster’s sweet melodies. As I listened, I suddenly recalled that these were originally sorrowful songs of North American blacks.

What prompted it I don’t know—suddenly, Mr.H said to Maryann.

“Maryann! Maryann! (No doubt his unusually loud voice stemmed from that synthetic sake he’d had when leaving home.) If you’re going to take a husband next time, it’s got to be someone from the mainland!” “Huh?”

“Maryann!”

With a “Hmph” and a slight twist of her thick lips, Maryann offered no reply and kept her gaze fixed on the pool’s surface. The moon was nearing its zenith, so the tide was out, and the tide pool connected to the sea had lost nearly all its water, revealing the stones at the bottom. Some time later, around the time I had forgotten the continuation of Mr.H’s earlier remarks, Maryann broke the silence. “But… men from the mainland… after all…”

Oh. Suddenly it struck me—had this one been contemplating her own remarriage all along?—and I burst into loud laughter. And still laughing, I pressed on: “What about mainland men, then?” “Huh?” I asked. Perhaps angered at being laughed at, Maryann turned away and offered no reply.

When Mr.H and I happened to both be leaving temporarily for the mainland this spring, Maryann slaughtered a chicken and treated us to a final Palauan feast.

While smacking our lips at the taste of meat we hadn’t had since New Year’s, Mr.H and I said, “We’ll surely be back by autumn or so.” When we said—and truly, this had been both our plans—Maryann replied with a laugh: “Uncle, since you’re more than half islander now, you’ll probably come back—but Ton-chan”—the troublesome thing was she called me this, having mimicked Mr.H’s manner of address; at first I’d been somewhat annoyed, but in the end could only smile wryly in resignation—“isn’t...”

“Are you calling me unreliable?” I retorted．She replied with rare sincerity，“No matter how close you become with mainlanders，once they return home，none ever come back．”

After we returned to the mainland, it seems Maryann sent letters to Mr.H’s place two or three times. Each time, she had inquired about Ton-chan’s whereabouts.

As for me, no sooner had I landed in Yokohama than I was struck down by the cold and caught a chill, which then worsened into pleurisy. Returning to that land's administrative office again was utterly beyond possibility. Mr.H too had recently settled his marriage—quite late in life—and taken up residence in Tokyo. Of course, having dedicated his life to South Seas folkloric studies, there may still be occasions when he ventures out for research again. Still, this meant he would no longer be permanently residing in those lands as Maryann had anticipated.

What would Maryann say if she heard?

Chronicle of Scenery

Ⅰ

Kusai

When I woke in the morning, the ship appeared to have stopped. I immediately went up to the deck to look.

The ship had already entered between two islands. A fine rain was falling. It was a landscape utterly different from the South Sea Islands I had seen until now. At least, the view of Kusai Island from the deck now was, no matter how one looked at it, not a subject for Gauguin’s paintings. The long beach shrouded in fine rain and the hazy green mountains faintly visible were indeed an Eastern painting. A misty shore where apricot blossoms shiver in the cold rain; dusk clouds swirling around graceful rain-drenched mountains—even with such poetic inscriptions attached, it felt utterly natural—a purely ink-wash landscape.

After finishing breakfast in the dining room, when I went out to the deck again, the rain had already cleared, but smoke-like clouds still drifted through the mountain passes.

At eight o'clock, I landed on Lero Island via launch and immediately went to the police substation. There was no branch office on this island, so this police substation handled all administrative matters. A single police inspector—broad-faced and broad-bodied like the detective from that Crime and Punishment film I’d seen long ago—was handling administrative matters using three islander patrolmen. When I stated that I had come to inspect the public school, he promptly assigned a patrolman to guide me.

Upon arriving at the public school, a middle-aged principal—short and plump, with eyes that behind thick glasses shone with merchant-like shrewdness (constantly observing his interlocutor's expressions), and sporting a short mustache—greeted me with an attitude as though confronting something unsavory. The classrooms comprised a single building with three rooms; one of these had been designated as the faculty room. Since this was only the elementary course, it went up to the third year. As soon as we passed through the gate, dusky-skinned children (though I should note that in the Caroline Islands, skin darkness seems to fade progressively toward the east) jostled to come forward and bowed politely with "Good morning."

The teaching staff comprised one licensed teacher and one islander teaching assistant under the principal. However, that single licensed teacher was a woman—and moreover, she was the principal’s wife.

The principal seemed reluctant to have his classes observed. Especially his own wife’s. I wasn’t so mean-spirited as to force the issue and attempt to observe psychological subtleties. However, I decided to limit myself to hearing from the principal about the characteristics of the islander children here and his years of experience in public school education. Yet what was I compelled to hear? From start to finish, I was made to listen to nothing but complaints about that police inspector I had just met.

This wasn't limited to here alone. On remote islands where both a police substation and a public school existed, friction between the two inevitably arose. On such islands, as the policeman and school principal (many schools having only a principal with no teachers beneath them) were the sole Japanese and government officials on the entire island, a natural power struggle arose. If there were only one authority, it would become a petty dictator’s autocracy—yet paradoxically yield better results.

I had witnessed such things countless times before, but encountering a principal here who would suddenly launch into such vehement attacks against someone he’d just met was a first for me. It wasn’t slander in the usual sense. From start to finish, absolutely everything that police inspector did was bad. That even his poor fishing skills—though I’d heard mackerel scad were plentiful in this bay—would become fodder for slander was something I hadn’t anticipated. Since the fishing story had been brought up last, as I listened in slight panic, there was a risk that the Police Inspector’s poor angling skills might be interpreted as grounds for deeming him unfit to oversee this island’s administrative affairs. As I listened, I began to feel an inexplicable sense of goodwill toward that broad-faced Police Inspector—a man who had left no particular impression on me earlier.

After declining the offer to have the island shown to me and leaving the public school, I went alone to see the ancient castle ruins known as the "Lero Ruins," asking islanders for directions along the way. The sun began to filter through the previously overcast sky, and the island suddenly assumed a tropical visage.

After turning from the coast and walking less than a block, I came upon the stone rampart I sought. Although covered by lush tropical trees and buried in moss, it was a remarkably large basalt structure. Once past the entrance, it was surprisingly spacious. A stone-paved path, slippery with moss, wound sinuously onward. What appeared to be remnants of rooms and well-shaped structures peeked in and out among dense ferns. Whether from the rampart’s collapse or not, here and there, towering heaps of stone blocks were piled. Coconut fruits lay scattered everywhere—some rotting, others sprouting shoots as long as three feet. In the roadside puddles, shrimp could be seen swimming.

In Micronesia there was another similar (and even larger) ruin on Ponape Island, though neither the people who built them nor their age had been determined. In any case, it seemed to have become general consensus that these builders bore no relation whatsoever to the current indigenous people. As for these stone ramparts—with no coherent legends surrounding them—the current inhabitants possessed neither interest nor knowledge of stone architecture; moreover, transporting these massive rocks from distant shores over open seas would have required techniques impossible for any race not wielding a civilization far surpassing theirs in advancement. When had this ancient people with such a civilization flourished? When had they perished? A certain anthropologist, after comparatively studying these ruins scattered across the boundless Pacific—existing not only in Micronesia but in considerable numbers across Polynesia too— (including such famous examples as Easter Island)—hypothesized a common "ancient civilization" that once blanketed a vast region stretching west from Egypt to east as far as the American continent during some distant epoch. He listed sun worship, megalithic construction techniques, agricultural irrigation systems and such as hallmarks of that civilization. These grand hypotheses granted me the most delightful flights of fancy. I could envision brave bands of ancients bearing an advanced civilization that had spread eastward from primordial Egypt. Chasing pearls and obsidian across endless azure tides, they must have sailed under crimson sails—perhaps navigating with reed-stalk charts or guided by Orion and Sirius, those same stars we still gaze upon today. Before awestruck primitive natives they would have erected small pyramids and dolmens and stone circles everywhere, imprinting their indomitable will and desires upon this malarial wilderness. ...Of course, there was no way for a layman like me to judge this hypothesis' validity. Yet there I stood before megalithic accumulations that—after centuries of scorching heat, typhoons and earthquakes—still asserted their enigmatic presence beneath proliferating tropical vegetation; while knowing only these lowly present inhabitants who lacked even basic farming techniques, let alone stone-moving prowess.

Two massive banyan trees covered overhead, vines and creepers hanging densely from every branch and trunk. Lizards occasionally emerged from the shadow of the stone wall to observe my movements. When a stone at my feet shifted with a clatter—startling me—a large crab with a carapace spanning about one shaku (approximately 30 centimeters) crawled out from its shadow. Noticing my presence, it hurriedly retreated into the hollow at the base of the banyan tree. On a nearby nameless low tree perched a jet-black bird twice a swallow's size, pecking at purple fruits resembling cornelian cherries. It didn’t attempt to flee even when seeing me. Sunlight filtering through leaves dappled the stone wall’s top, the surroundings eerily still.

When I looked at my diary from that day, it read as follows: "Suddenly I hear a bird’s strange cry. Once again all falls silent. In tropical daylight paradoxically lingers an eerie aura. Standing there so long that gooseflesh rises unbidden on my skin. I know not why." ...

According to what I heard after returning to the ship, the people of Kusai eat rats.

Ⅱ

Jaluit

Beyond the morning-calm sea—thick as spilled white lard—a single line lay on the horizon. This was our first glimpse of Jaluit Atoll. As the ship drew nearer, coconut trees gradually became visible upon what had seemed a mere band, followed by houses and warehouses. Red-roofed dwellings and white-glinting walls appeared, until finally even the tiny figures of people emerged onto the pure white beach to greet the vessel. Truly, Jabwor made for a neat little island. It resembled a miniature garden artfully arranged on sand with coconut palms, pandanus trees, and houses.

As I walked along the coast, there were houses labeled "Mire Village Communal Lodging" and "Ebon Village Communal Lodging," beside which islanders from various islands were cooking. This place was the central hub of the entire Marshall Islands, where residents from distant islands gathered periodically; thus, each respective island had established communal lodgings for their accommodation.

The Marshall Islanders, particularly the women, were exceedingly stylish. On Sunday mornings, they each dressed in vivid colors and set off for church. Moreover, these were undoubtedly old-fashioned Western-style garments—exceedingly pleated, long-skirted, and luxurious—introduced by missionaries and nuns around the end of the last century. Even from a bystander’s perspective, they looked excruciatingly hot. Even the men on Sundays sported new blue dress shirts with immaculate white handkerchiefs peeking from their breast pockets. For them, the church was truly a delightful club or entertainment venue.

In stark contrast to their extravagantly luxurious clothing, their dwellings ranked as the most impoverished in all of Micronesia. For one thing, few houses had proper floors. They would pile sand or coral fragments into a slightly elevated mound and sleep upon mats woven from pandanus leaves spread over it. If they erected four pillars around the mound and covered them with pandanus and coconut leaves, then the roof and walls were complete. There was no house as simple as this. They did make windows, but positioned them extremely low, resembling the waste holes of toilets. Yet even in such wretched dwellings, there was always a sewing machine and an iron provided without fail. Rather than being astonished at their sartorial indulgences, one might truly have been astonished at the shrewdness of sewing machine companies colluding with missionaries—but in any case, it remained an astonishing matter. Of course, Jabwor Town alone had a fair number of wooden houses with proper floors, but even in such floored houses, residents invariably lived with mats spread beneath the floorboards. Fans and handwoven baskets made from fibers of the Marshall Islands' specialty pandanus leaves were generally handicrafts produced by these residents beneath the floorboards.

When I crossed to Island A within the same Jaluit Atoll on a small pompon steamer, it was amusing to be surrounded by a pod of dolphins, though I felt somewhat in danger. This was because those mischievous dolphins, getting carried away in their antics, would dive beneath the boat's hull only to reappear left and right, making it seem as though the vessel might capsize if one weren't careful. Occasionally two or three of them would leap into the air together. They were creatures with long narrow protruding mouths, small eyes, and mischievous faces. Competing with the ship, they finally followed it all the way to the island's immediate vicinity.

When I went up to the island and looked, students from Jabwor Public School’s supplementary course were engaged in copra harvesting work. This was part of a production drive. I surveyed the entire island to find it densely packed with coconut trees, pandanus trees, and breadfruit trees. Ripe breadfruits lay fallen everywhere, their rotting forms blackened by swarming flies. The insects immediately descended upon our faces and hands as we passed by—utterly unbearable. Along the path, an old woman pierced a hole in a breadfruit’s crown, inserted a funnel-like leaf resembling Fatsia japonica, then squeezed white copra juice into it from above. When stone-baked this way, they say the fruit becomes thoroughly sweetened and exceptionally delicious.

Under the guidance of a branch office staff member, he visited Kabua—the paramount chief of the entire Marshall Islands. The Kabua family was an old aristocratic clan straddling both Jaluit and Ailinglaplap regions, their name said to appear frequently in Marshallese epic poetry.

It was an elegant bungalow-style house. At the entrance hung a nameplate inscribed with the kanji characters "八島嘉坊," accompanied by furigana reading "ヤシマカブア." Apparently following local custom, the kitchen stood as a separate building—a peculiar structure surrounded on all four sides by vertical latticework. Since the master was absent, two young women came out to receive us. Their features made it immediately apparent they were of mixed Japanese heritage, yet even by mainland Japanese standards, both women were undeniably beautiful. That they were sisters became clear at once. It was said the elder sister was Kabua's wife.

Before long, Master Kabua was summoned and returned. He was a dark-skinned man around thirty with an intellectual air, yet something perpetually nervous lingered in his demeanor. His Japanese seemed barely sufficient to comprehend our speech; he volunteered nothing himself, only offering meek nods to each of our remarks. This man—whose annual income reportedly reached fifty to seventy thousand yen (simply from owning an island thick with coconut palms that yielded that much copra annually)—scarcely resembled the paramount chief one might envision. After being served coconut water, cider, and pandanus fruit—and without holding any substantive conversation (given his utter silence)—I took my leave of the house.

On the return journey, according to what I heard from the branch office staff member guiding us, young Kabua had just recently caused a great commotion by having his wife's younger sister—whom I had just seen—bear him a baby.

In the early morning, at a deeply water-filled rocky recess, I beheld a spectacle of unparalleled vividness. While waters so clear that one could almost grasp the sight of schools of fish swimming are hardly rare in the South Seas, never before had I been struck by such kaleidoscopic brilliance as at this moment. Fish about the size of black sea bream—bearing several thick, vivid vertical stripes—were the most numerous, and seeing them frequently emerge from what appeared to be holes in the rocky shadows, I surmised this might indeed be their nest. Beyond these were pale, nearly translucent slender fish resembling ayu; deep green reef fish; flatfish-like broad black ones; gaudy little fish identical to freshwater angel fish; small brown monstrosities that appeared all fins and tail like a single brushstroke; mackerel-like forms; sardine-like shapes; and finally, thick mouse-gray sea snakes crawling along the seabed—all these creatures adorned with dazzling tropical hues swam and frolicked obliviously, glistening with fine scales within a transparent, pale jade-green dreamlike world. What was particularly astonishing was a school of small fish—several times more azure than the blue coral reef fish—adorned in the brightest ultramarine imaginable, each measuring about two inches in length. As their school fluttered and swayed in the water where the morning sun now shone, that vivid ultramarine transformed in an instant into navy blue, violet-indigo, green-gold, and iridescent hues—shimmering so brilliantly it nearly blinded me. These rare fish numbered twenty in species and likely exceeded a thousand in count.

For over an hour, I remained dumbfounded, transfixed in silent awe.

Even after returning to the mainland, I would speak of this dreamlike vista of ultramarine and gold to no one. The more fervently and meticulously I were to speak of it, the more I would likely experience the vexation of those old Eastern travelers who had been mocked as “the Million Marks,” and also because I knew my words’ descriptive power could not convey even a tenth of the actual beauty.

Helmet hats in the mandated territory appeared to be worn exclusively by government officials. Strangely, company-related people seemed not to use these.

Now, I walked around the archipelago wearing a Panama hat of not very high quality. Not a single islander I encountered on the road bowed. When the government official guiding me walked down the path wearing a helmet, the islanders would bow deeply and yield the way, lowering their heads respectfully. Whether it was Summer Island, Autumn Island, Wednesday Island, or Ponape—everywhere, it was exactly the same.

The day before departing Jabwor, Mr. M and I walked around peering into the low-built islanders' houses—or to be more precise, under their floorboards—in search of souvenir handicrafts woven by the natives. As I mentioned earlier, in Jaluit women lounge on mats beneath house floors, many of them weaving with pandanus leaf fibers. Walking about ten paces ahead of Mr. M, I discovered a thin woman weaving a belt beneath one house's stilts. Though the belt seemed far from finished, a completed basket lay beside her. I had the islander boy serving as our guide ask about the basket's price. He said three yen. I instructed him to negotiate lower, but she showed no inclination to concede. Then Mr. M appeared. Mr. M too had the boy inquire. The woman glanced between us—or rather, looked up at Mr. M's headgear, that helmet. "Two yen," she answered immediately. Oh! I thought. The woman continued mumbling uncertainly under her breath. When we had the boy interpret, she was saying, "Two yen... but if necessary, one yen fifty sen would do." While I stood dumbstruck, Mr. M briskly concluded the purchase for one yen fifty sen.

After returning to the lodging, I took Mr. M's helmet in hand and scrutinized it closely. It was thoroughly old—already misshapen—stained in places—moreover emitting an unpleasant odor—an utterly unremarkable helmet. However, to me, it seemed as mysteriously miraculous as Aladdin's lamp.

III

Ponape

Perhaps because the island was large, it was quite cool. The rain came frequently.

If you walked through the jungle of cotton trees and coconut palms, pale pink morning glories dotted the ground, delicate and lovely.

As I walked along the road in J Village, a young voice suddenly called out, "Good day." When I looked, two very small native children—a boy and a girl of nearly identical height—emerged from behind a house on the right side of the road to greet me. They appeared barely four years old at most. Standing amidst the beard-like roots protruding from a large coconut palm's base, their small stature seemed even more pronounced. I instinctively laughed and said, "Good day, such polite children," prompting them to slowly repeat "Good day" while bowing deeply with perfect formality. Though their heads were lowered, their wide-open eyes peered up at me through lifted gazes. Those sky-blue eyes—adorably large—clearly bore traces of white ancestry, likely inherited from whalers of old.

Overall, Ponape appeared to have many islanders with well-formed facial features. Unlike other Carolinian peoples, they did not chew betel nuts and instead partook in a beverage called Shakao, akin to a kind of wine. Since this seemed to be of the same type as Polynesian kava, perhaps the islanders here might have had some Polynesian blood mixed in.

The two toddlers standing at the base of the coconut tree wore uncharacteristically neat little clothes for islanders. I tried to start a conversation with them, but unfortunately beyond "Good day," they knew no Japanese at all. Even their native language remained uncertain. The two of them would just smile, say "Good day" over and over, and bow their heads.

In the midst of this, a young woman emerged from the house and greeted me. Judging from her resemblance to the children, she was likely their mother. In her halting, public-school-style stiff Japanese, she said, "Please come in and rest." Since my throat happened to be parched, thinking I might get some coconut water, I climbed over the fence meant to prevent the pigs from escaping and entered the garden from the rear. It was a house with an awfully large number of animals. There were nearly ten dogs, about as many pigs, and besides that, cats, goats, chickens, and ducks all jumbled together. They must be quite wealthy. The house was dirty but quite spacious. Behind the house, facing directly toward the sea, a large dugout canoe was stored, and around it were strewn pots, kettles, trunks, mirrors, coconut shells, seashells, and other items in disarray. Among them, cats, dogs, and chickens (though the goats and pigs did not come up) came trampling all the way onto the floorboards to run, cry, bark, scavenge, or lie sprawled about. It was a scene of tremendous disorder.

She brought coconut water and stone-baked breadfruit. After drinking coconut water and breaking open its shell to eat the copra inside, I found dogs gathering around begging. They seemed to love copra intensely. No matter how much breadfruit one gave them, they wouldn’t even glance at it. Not only the dogs, but the chickens too seemed to favor the copra. When I listened to the young woman’s halting Japanese explanation, she said that among all the animals in this household, it was indeed the dogs who held the most authority. When the dogs weren’t around, the pigs took charge, she said, and after them came the goats. She also brought out bananas, but they were overripe, and I felt as though I were tasting sweet bean paste. These were of the Rakatan variety, considered the finest bananas on this island.

In the back of the room where the dugout canoe was kept, there was a section with a raised floor where family members seemed to be crouching or lying sprawled about. With no openings to let in light and thus dimly lit, the corners remained unclear, but directly across from where I stood sat an old woman proudly—like a queen, in fact—sitting imposingly as she smoked tobacco. Her eyes, wary of outsiders and tinged with hostility, stared fixedly at me. When I asked the young woman who that was, she answered, "My husband’s mother." "She sure acts high and mighty," I remarked. "Because she’s the highest-ranking," she replied.

From the dim depths, a gaunt girl of about ten would occasionally emerge as far as the other side of the dugout canoe and peer over here with her mouth agape. While everyone in this household was properly dressed, this child alone was nearly naked. Her complexion was unnervingly pale; she constantly stuck out her tongue like an infant, making blubbering noises, drooling, and waving her hands or dragging her feet without purpose. She must have been mentally disabled. From the depths, the queen-like old woman stopped smoking and began scolding. Her tone was fierce. She held a white cloth in her hand and waved it to call the mentally disabled child. When the girl returned to her side, the old woman made her put it on while making a fearsome face. It was pants. "Is that child sick?" I asked the young woman again. “Her head isn’t right,” she replied. "Has she been like that since birth?" “No, she was fine when she was born.”

She was an extremely affable woman, and when I finished eating the banana, she asked if I wouldn’t eat dog. “Dog?” I asked in return. “Dog,” said the woman, pointing to a thin, brown puppy with patchy fur playing nearby. Since it would only take about an hour, she was proposing to stone-roast that as a treat. A whole dog would be wrapped in banana leaves or something similar, buried in hot stones and sand, and steam-cooked. A dog with only its intestines removed would be served just like that—legs stiffened and teeth bared on the dining tray—she explained.

In a flustered manner, I beat a retreat.

As he was leaving, he saw vivid yellow, crimson, and purple croton leaves forming beautiful disordered clusters on both sides of the house's entrance.

IV

IV. Truk

On Monday Island, there were no mainlanders apart from the public school principal’s family.

In the morning, as I was having breakfast at the principal’s official residence, singing voices could be heard from afar. It was the Patriotic March. I immediately recognized them as children’s voices. The voices gradually drew nearer. When I asked what that was, he explained that students from the same direction were made to walk to school together, singing in chorus as they came. When the voices neared the official residence, they stopped. Instantly came a shout of “Halt!” The flag-bearing boy barked a command. Looking out from the entrance, I saw about twenty native children approaching in two orderly columns. The one at the front carried a paper Hinomaru flag on his shoulder. The flag-bearer shouted again, “Left face! Left face!” he barked. They formed a line facing the principal’s house. Then, in unison, they bowed their heads while calling out “Good morning.” Then once more, the boil-covered flag-bearer at the front barked, “Right face! Right face!” “Forward march!” At his command, the procession resumed singing the Patriotic March as they turned toward the school next to the official residence. With no fence around the residence’s garden, their march was clearly visible. Their heights—and likely their ages too—were shockingly uneven, with an exceptionally large boy at the front and those behind being terribly small. Unlike those around Summer Island, none appeared particularly well-kept.

Though everyone wore shirts, the torn sections seemed more extensive than the intact ones, so both boys and girls had their jet-black skin peeking out everywhere. Their feet were of course all bare. Perhaps they were provided by the school, for they seemed to be dutifully carrying only their satchels. Each of them had peeled coconut husks hanging at their waists—these were their drinking vessels. The sight of that ragtag bunch—each dangling their tattered vessels, legs thrust high and arms swinging wide as they marched toward the school grounds under the long morning shadows of coconut palms, voices straining to their limits (and growing louder still as they passed the principal’s official residence)—was rather charming to behold.

That morning, two other groups of similar processions came to pay their respects.

Among the dances of each outlying island I saw at Summer Island, Rousoppu Island's bamboo dance stood as the most remarkable. About thirty men formed two facing rows that curved into a ring, each gripping a bamboo stick less than three shaku long in both hands as they danced and struck them together. They struck the ground at times and clashed their bamboo against their partners' at others, all while circling rhythmically and shouting vigorous calls of “Hey-sah! Hey-sah!” Since the outer ring and inner ring revolved in alternation, their bamboo-clashing partners gradually shifted with each rotation. At intervals, they turned backward, raised one leg, and struck the bamboo of the person behind them through their spread legs—demonstrating acrobatic flourishes. The clatter of bamboo swords colliding like in kendo practice blended with their boisterous shouts, creating an atmosphere of crisp vitality.

The people of the northwestern outlying islands all wore garlands of hibiscus and Indian jasmine on their heads, painted their foreheads and cheeks with vermilion pigment, wrapped young coconut shoots around their wrists, ankles, and arms, and danced while shaking waist skirts also made from young coconut shoots. Among them were some who had pierced their earlobes and inserted hibiscus flowers there. On the backs of their right hands, they had lightly tied young coconut shoots arranged in a cross shape; first, each person would finely tremble their fingers to set them in motion. Then, at once, a subtle sound arose, like the rustling of distant wind. This was the signal, and the dance began. Then, clapping their hands against their chests and arms to create fierce slapping sounds, they twisted their hips, let out shrill cries, and danced wildly with overtly sexual gestures.

Among their songs, those unaccompanied by dance were nearly all melancholic melodies. Even among their titles, there were many that were quite peculiar. One such example. Song of Shuck Island. "Do not think of another’s wife; consider your own."

In the streets of Summer Island, I saw an outlying islander’s ear. Their earlobes appeared to be the result of having stretched them since early childhood, now elongated to about forty-five centimeters like cords. They coiled them around their ear conches about three times, like winding a chain. Four of them with such ears stood lined up, peering into the Western goods store’s display window with an air of composure.

When I asked a certain gentleman who had visited those outlying islands, he said they laughed at humans with ordinary ears—as if beholding jawless creatures. Moreover, those who dwell long on these islands reportedly grow deeply skeptical of beauty's standards. Voltaire declared: "Ask a toad what beauty is. The toad will surely answer: 'Beauty is that female toad with two great acorn-eyes bulging from her small head, a wide flat mouth, yellow belly, and brown back.'" ...

V

Rota

An island of white cliffs—water-rich—teeming with butterflies. In the quiet midday, behind the unpeopled government residence, a pumpkin vine stretched out, and velvety navy-blue butterflies swarmed around its yellow flowers.

The nighttime streets of Sonson, devoid of islanders, felt like a rural town in mainland Japan. A dimly lit barbershop. From somewhere drifted the sound of a gramophone playing a traditional ballad. A desolate-looking makeshift theater displayed a sign for "Kuroda Seichūroku."

The ticket-selling woman’s emaciated face.

Two men squatted in front of the hut, listening only to the sound of the Talkie. Two banners fluttered in the night sea wind.

At the entrance to Tatatcho Village, no more than thirty ken from the sea, lay the Chamorro cemetery. Amidst a cluster of crosses stood a single stone monument. Engraved with "The Grave of Bartolomes Shoji Mitsunobu," its reverse bore the inscription: "Died in Showa 14 [1939], aged nine." He must have been the child of a Japanese Catholic convert. All wreaths hung on surrounding crosses had withered to a dull brown, and the rustle of dead palm leaves in the sea wind carried mournfulness. (Rota Island's coconut trees had recently withered almost entirely from insect damage.) As I gazed at the piercingly vivid blue of the nearby sea and listened to the ancient lament within the waves' roar, I suddenly recalled the Noh play *Sumidagawa* - that scene where the white apparition of a dead child emerges timidly from behind the mound when called by its mad mother, only to vanish instantly when she tries to grasp it.

Later, when I asked an islander assistant teacher at the public school, I learned that this child’s parents (who had been bookbinders, apparently) had left this place not long after being bereaved by their child’s death.

At the entrance of the house assigned as lodging, unusually, lychee vines had entwined themselves, their ripe fruits splitting open. In the back, lemon flowers were fragrant. 'Outside the gate, orange blossoms still glisten brightly; atop the wall, lychees already show mottled hues'—this comes from Su Dongpo (he was exiled to the south), but it was precisely this very scene before me. However, whether the lychees spoken of by the Chinese of old and those we call lychees today are the same—that I do not know. Speaking of which, the vivid red and yellow hibiscus found throughout the South Seas are generally called Fusōge, but I wonder whether these are the same as those mentioned in Wang Yuyang's *Guangzhou Bamboo Branch Songs* where it says "beneath the Fusōge flowers runs a small winding corridor" and so forth. In a place like Guangdong, this gaudy flower would seem perfectly fitting—I can’t help but feel.

VI

Saipan

Sunday evening.

From beyond the flame tree thicket resounded shrill—yet somehow stifled—voices of Chamorro women singing in chorus. It was the evening hymn spilling from the Spanish nuns' chapel.

Night.

The moon was bright. The road was white. Somewhere echoed the monotonous sound of a Ryukyu snakeskin lute. I wandered aimlessly along the white road. Large banana leaves swayed in the wind. Silk tree leaves cast sharp, delicate shadows across the path. In an empty lot, a tethered cow still appeared to be grazing. Something dreamlike drifted through the air, making this white path seem to stretch endlessly under the moonlight. The drawn-out plink-plonk of the snakeskin lute persisted, yet I still couldn’t discern which house it came from. As I walked, the narrow path abruptly opened onto a brightly lit street.

At the corner where I emerged stood a theater, and from within it came the incessant sound of snakeskin lutes. (But this differed from what I'd heard earlier along my way—not the proper lively theater music, but rather an unpracticed hand plucking strings alone in sporadic plinks.) This was a theater exclusively for Okinawans—meaning all performances were staged in the Ryukyuan language. Without particular purpose, I went inside to look. The turnout was considerable. There were two acts. The first was performed in standard Japanese, so I could follow the plot well enough, though it amounted to utterly inane slapstick. When it came to the second act—"Historical Drama: The Stormy Chronicles of Kitayama"—this time I couldn't understand a word. What I clearly discerned were only a few phrases: "TASHIKANI" (this came through most distinctly), "MUKASHI KARA KONO KATA," "Yamamichi," "Torishimari," and little else. It reminded me of when I'd once traveled around Palau Main Island on foot for ten days—every person I asked for directions turned out to be a farmer from Okinawa Prefecture, leaving us utterly unable to communicate.

After leaving the theater hut, I deliberately took a detour and walked home along the seaside avenue lined with Chamorro houses. This road too was white. Almost as if frost had settled. A gentle breeze. Moonlight. Before a stone-built Chamorro house, India jasmine hung pale white and fragrant, and in its shade, a single cow lay lazily. Thinking there was an unusually large dog sleeping beside the cow, I looked closely and saw it was a goat.