Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Sato Koseki

I

In mid-November of last year, I crossed Usui Pass for the first time in ages and journeyed toward Shinano Road.
The late autumn of the mountain country was beautiful.

Together with Mr. Aso Yutaka and Mr. Masaki Fujokyū, I boarded the morning semi-express from Ueno Station resolved to visit some three hundred wounded soldiers awaiting bodily rejuvenation at Togura Hot Springs' Army Sanatorium.
When we emerged from the pass tunnel onto Karuizawa's hazy highland through which we had come by rail until then—the scenery beyond our carriage window had changed its hues as distinctly as a garment turned inside out.
The two men were talking animatedly while smoking tobacco cigarettes—but I remained pressed against my windowpane utterly absorbed in gazing at this procession of passing vistas outside.

This autumn, the weather had been unseasonably late. Normally when mid-November arrived, the mountains along the Joshu-Shinano border would be struck by repeated heavy frosts—their treetops growing gaunt as sparse dead leaves visited the stream banks, or so people said. Yet the brocade hues now adorning Myōgi’s jagged peaks burned with such brilliance they seemed aflame. The mulberry fields around Yokokawa-shuku still bore leaves of glossy green.

The cherry and maple leaves had finally begun scattering as they entered Kumanotaira Station. Though Kirizumi River’s current crashed against its banks, raising white foam that chilled befitting late autumn, the kudzu vines crawling down the cliffs remained stubbornly green—proof that the purple markings upon mountain trout in those deep pools must still gleam with vivid clarity.

However, when we had passed a short distance beyond Usui’s watershed and I cast my eyes toward the foot of Asama, what a desolate sight it was—every plant and tree withered away. The eulalia with plumes withered, swaying in the west wind. The scarves of those walking the path were wound deep around their necks. The larch trees had already become a withered forest, winter’s hues persisting across distant fields to their farthest edges.

The sky was azure, the midday sun shone brilliantly.
In Joshu, we had seen white clouds floating high in the sky, but upon entering Shinshu, not a single cloud remained visible.
Illuminated by that bright sun, I thought the crimson stretching from Asama Mountain’s midslope to Maekakeyama’s summit might be the frost-stricken hues of autumn grasses.
And extending from there toward the foothills, what appeared widely spread in green—could that not have been a black pine forest?

However, even if thick clouds had gathered, it likely would not have brought rain.
It was likely to snow before long.
As I was lost in such imaginings, a memory from nearly thirty years past floated into my mind—of myself walking east to west across this bleak winter field, now cloaked in pure white snow.

No—the truth was that by separating from the two men and becoming transfixed on the scenery beyond the window alone, I had wanted to mentally picture my own figure from that time after so many years and yearned to reminisce. The shadow of my younger self walked past the train window. On that journey of my youth, I wore fair-weather clogs with teeth worn down as flat as a toothbrush's bristles. This was no sightseer's excursion. It was my reality after wandering through province after province—a state of having no place to call my own.

II

Toward the end of the Meiji era, in late November of a certain year, I absconded from my workplace. Fearing pursuers, I fled straight to Tosa Province in a single leap. My choice of Tosa Province wasn’t because I had anyone there to rely on. It was simply because, looking at the map, I saw it as a distant land separated by sea—a place where my pursuers’ reach surely wouldn’t extend.

In Kochi City, I visited labor brokers and applied to be a soba delivery boy, but was turned away because I didn’t have a family register copy. So, having given up on Tosa Province, I crossed over to Kobe. In Kobe, I loafed around for four or five days on the second floor of a labor broker’s place near Honmachi 2-chome backstreet—one with a large low dining table—but even there, I couldn’t find work. Then I visited an old friend in Osaka’s Tennoji, borrowed train fare, and went all the way to Kyoto.

I arrived at Sanjō Station, but there was no one in particular to rely on in Kyoto. All day long, I gazed at the flow of the canal from atop the stone wall of Okazaki Park. When evening came, cold showers scattered down onto the water's surface.

In Fushimi Town, I searched for a secondhand store and sold the trunk with everything inside. Inside was the thick striped lined kimono handwoven by Mother—something I had cherished and resolved never to part with until death. I still remember suddenly becoming sentimental at that time.

With that money, I bought a train ticket to Sōshū Odawara. And from December until February of the following year, I stayed at a friend’s house in Odawara as a dependent lodger. The friend in Odawara was kind to me, who had no home.

However, my friend quarreled with his wife over serving me alcohol. This happened two or three times.

“If you can’t even look after my friend, what good are you?”

When the friend admonished his wife,

“That too is a matter of degree.”

she retorted.

“That won’t do. I forbid you to make such a discontented face over anything.”

“Then our finances won’t hold out.”

“Finances or whatever—I don’t care. Even if we go bankrupt, I don’t give a damn.”

“We don’t have enough property to go bankrupt, I suppose.”

The wife wasn’t yielding an inch to her husband.

“If you hate not having property, then get out!”

“So you value friends more than your own wife?”

“What?!”

“You don’t even know your place—taking in some freeloader like this!”

“How dare you! You impudent—!”

At last, things seemed to have deteriorated beyond repair.

In the adjacent room, I listened to this exchange.
The wife’s tone struck me as deliberately projected for my benefit there in the next room—it made my ears burn with shame.
Yet since this quarrel had sprung from my own presence, I couldn’t feign ignorance and stay silent.
I rushed into the fray,

“Stop it! A marital quarrel isn’t even worth a dog’s attention, as they say—”

There being no way to mediate, this was why I said what I did.

The wife puffed out her cheeks and turned away.
The friend,

“You really shouldn’t trouble yourself over me.”

he said with a strained grin.

I was terribly embarrassed.
I felt as though something had lodged itself behind my breastbone.

The friend worked at the clerical office of a fish wholesaler and was not someone who received a particularly high salary.
If one lodged as a dependent for three full months, anyone would come to understand the circumstances of that household.
Even someone as untroubled by worldly matters as myself felt a profound sense of responsibility.

三

As soon as February began, I left Odawara.
With the money my friend had managed to arrange, I took the train to Takasaki in Kōzuke Province.

The friend in Takasaki was unmarried.
However, this friend, despite his meager income, was struggling to support one dependent lodger.
And so I tumbled into this predicament.
In other words, there was already a senior dependent lodger.

The friend suddenly found himself living with three people.
The two dependent lodgers had nothing particular to do each day, so they thought of nothing but drinking sake.
The friend’s purse, strained from somehow procuring this, ran dry within four or five days.
The friend was called Matsumoto Tamaji; the senior dependent lodger was named Koike Ginpei.
Finally, Tamaji let out a scream.

There Tamaji declared, “If we three keep sitting around here like this, we’ll starve for sure before long.”
“So after racking my brains, what I finally remembered was my friend Inokome Hōta in Nagano City right now.”
“Rumor has it he’s scraping by somehow.”
“Why don’t we go ask that guy to help figure out how we three should get by?”
“It’ll work out somehow.”

But since we hadn’t heard from Inokome in ages, whether he was actually in Nagano could only be known by going there ourselves.
Now there wasn’t a single coin left in my pocket.
If we had no travel money, we’d have to walk thirty-six ri from Takasaki to Nagano—but did you gentlemen have any better ideas?

I knew full well that the two dependent lodgers had no clever plans to offer.
We decided to entrust everything to Tamaji’s guidance.

From the start, Tamaji had been selling off what little household belongings he possessed to survive, so now all that remained were old books.
They were sold to a scrap dealer for fifty sen.
With this, we had to somehow eke out our meager existence all the way to Nagano.

It was the morning of February 8th, when spring had arrived.

Now, the three of them put their heads together.
In the end, from that fifty sen, they went to an antique shop and bought one yatate writing set and ten tanzaku poetry slips.
The plan was formed: we would pose as haiku pilgrims, with me reciting verses, Tamaji—skilled at calligraphy—dashing off poems on tanzaku slips, locating village offices and elementary schools along the way, and Ginpei—with his silver tongue—selling the slips as we traveled.

We left Takasaki before noon.
It was the season of lingering cold.
The lingering cold bit fiercely.
We crossed the cold flow of the Karasugawa River, which streams down from the western foothills of Mount Haruna, and upon entering Itahanamachi Town, bought about five sen worth of sweet potatoes to split among the three.
I think it was after we had passed through the old avenue of trees leading to Annaka-shuku.
We discovered a small elementary school.
There, they finally set about commencing their venture.
As for the haiku verses, I had old drafts, and Tamaji could dash off the calligraphy well enough, but the role that absolutely needed to be handled properly was Ginpei’s responsibility.
However, Ginpei hesitated and wouldn’t budge.

“I’ve lost my nerve.”

With that, he sat down on a roadside stone, faced the sky, and closed his eyes.

“When we left Takasaki, you were breathing fire—what happened?”

“Acting shy like a fool now—that’s not your style at all.”

Tamaji and I teased him like this, but Ginpei kept a straight face,

“I’m no good at this.”

he muttered.

That was only natural.
Having made tanzaku slips with pun-like verses and slapdash calligraphy ourselves, could we really plant ourselves at village offices’ entrances with these?
However pushy someone might be, they couldn’t bring themselves to say “Please buy this.”
Only natural.

“Can’t you muster any courage?”

“It’s no good. Just fire me from sales duty already.”

“I suppose so. I’d be even worse at it myself.”

I offered Ginpei some consolation.
At this, his face abruptly brightened.

“There’s no choice.”
“Well, even if we skip one place—there should be plenty of schools and village offices ahead.”
“But next time you’ll have to give it your all, Koike.”
“I wouldn’t mind wasting these ten tanzaku slips—but if we keep dawdling like this, the hunger gnawing our guts won’t take no for an answer.”

The dependent lodging relationship was formally dissolved when they left Takasaki, making the three of them equals in principle—yet Tamaji’s words still carried significant weight.

IV

When they reached the village of two households—still some one or two ri from Sakamoto’s lodging at the foot of Usui Pass—the early spring sun had already dipped fully into dusk. A cold west wind blew, whipping up dust along the village road.

The desire to find an evening meal and someplace—any eaves they could shelter under—to endure the night’s cold suddenly made them restless. In desperation, they decided to visit the principal of the local elementary school.
However, the School Principal explained that he had only just transferred from Oku-Tone four or five days prior by himself, and was lodging in a neat annex of a farmer’s house.
The old woman from the farmer’s household guided them to the annex.

The three of them haltingly explained to the School Principal in patchwork, clumsy words the reason they had embarked on this journey.
And finally, they timidly made their request, asking if he would purchase these tanzaku slips.

Since this was an era when student freeloading travels had become fashionable, the School Principal showed no particular surprise. He casually—

“I see—I’m fond of haiku myself.”
“Well, let me see them.”

and said, then took up the tanzaku slips,

Pruning quince—thorns cling to roots where flower buds sprout

he read aloud.
And then, after tilting his head for a while,

“Not good at all, this haiku—”

With that, he furrowed his brow between his eyebrows.

“Yes.”

I was ashamed.
My face burned hot.
It wasn’t just that I was ashamed of how poor our haiku were.
Because in this situation, I was thinking—what would we do if we couldn’t get them to buy the tanzaku slips for that reason?

Both Tamaji and Ginpei were on the verge of tears.
The School Principal seemed to take pity upon seeing this.

“Well, never mind the haiku—do you really mean to cross Usui Pass now that it’s grown this dark?”
“You’ll never make it over—how about staying here instead?”
“If you’re set on enduring such cramped quarters, why not lodge here tonight?”

Truly, these were unexpectedly kind words.
The three spoke in unison,
“Yes.”

Without a moment’s hesitation or breath of deliberation, they answered as if their voices were echoes.

“I thought as much.
“It doesn’t look like you’re in any particular hurry.”

Never before had they experienced a joy as profound as in that moment.
They doubted they would ever feel such joy again.

The three of them brushed the dust from their tabi socks and entered the tatami room.
The School Principal poured tea himself from a small Nanbu iron kettle.
He began a discussion on haiku while drinking tea.
However, when we listened quietly, we realized he had a much deeper knowledge of haiku than any of us.
We were impressed and leaned our heads forward.

But twenty or thirty minutes later, I heard my own stomach gurgling.
When I noticed my stomach growling, I began to feel so hungry that my head throbbed.
It was truly inexcusable, but once that happened, the School Principal’s voice began to echo hollowly in my ears.

V

Surely he'd bring up the meal soon somehow—

That was all I could think about.

But people fond of haiku tend to be rather easygoing—they might not notice such things.

I even tried considering such possibilities.
That was a desolate train of thought.
In the end, if the School Principal didn’t notice that point, it meant there was no other course but to have him let us sleep as we were.

However, he probably wouldn’t abandon us so easily.
I reconsidered that making some effort might still be a viable approach.

So I hinted obliquely that for today’s lunch, we had merely bought five sen worth of steamed sweet potatoes and split them among the three of us.
The School Principal, who had been engrossed in haiku theory, had finally realized it.

“I’d quite forgotten—gentlemen, what have you done about dinner?”

he said.

It was fortunate that we hadn’t become disheartened by arbitrarily deciding the School Principal was indifferent.
In other words, my indirect approach had worked.

But then—what on earth was this?
Despite his poverty, Tamaji—a show-off yet bashful type—acted without so much as a glance to consult us,

“Oh no, we already ate earlier on the road.
Please don’t trouble yourself—”

And he pulled it off.
I started and glared daggers at Tamaji from the corner of my eye.
Yet Tamaji remained oblivious to what my expression meant.
The roundabout hints I’d agonized over vanished into thin air.
There was no undoing it now.

“Well then, I won’t insist on it. Let’s converse at leisure until drowsiness comes.”

Those were pathetic words.

Then once more from the School Principal’s mouth began Hekigodō’s new tendency theory.
What followed was an old tale about Shirao—a haiku poet who became Bashō’s disciple at the foot of Usui Pass during the Genroku era—but how interminably those thread-like words spun from his lips stretched on.

My hunger turned into drowsiness.
The sincerity with which I’d listened to the School Principal’s words had vanished.
Only Tamaji kept wiping his glasses with feigned earnestness.

Just then, the old woman from the main house came bringing a large tray piled high with grilled millet cakes to have with tea.
Touching the cold air of this tatami room, white steam rose enticingly from the grilled millet cakes, swaying.

Eyes suddenly lit up.
The three devoured the large grilled millet cakes as if competing—the School Principal watched them with a look of dismay, these three who had claimed, "We’ve already had dinner."

The next morning, she brought out white rice heaped into a large rice tub that looked like it could hold enough to cook one and a half shō.
I still cannot forget the taste of that hot miso soup with Shimonita leeks from that time.

While the old woman who had served us went to replace the miso soup, the three of us whispered furtively,

“As for today’s lunch, how it will turn out is anyone’s guess.
With that in mind, make sure your stomachs are fully prepared.”

we whispered to each other.
The rice tub was bone-dry.
We expressed our deep gratitude.
And when we took our leave to depart, the School Principal,

“This is merely the cost of the tanzaku paper.”

With these words, he took out a paper-wrapped bundle of coins.

We prostrated ourselves again.

After walking four or five chō along the Nakasendō, we opened the paper bundle to find twenty sen inside.

At that time, the School Principal had seemed over forty, but I wonder if he’s still living in good health even now.

VI

From the mountain path of Usui Pass, the overlapping peaks and valleys still wore their wintry aspect of bare trees and fallen leaves. But on the snowless mountainside facing eastward into sunlight, wave-like soft folds ran across its surface, and among the fallen leaves there lingered a certain dampness. Indeed, the seasonal pulse of approaching spring must have been awakening deep within the earth.

The road had not yet been gently improved as it is nowadays, making it quite treacherous.
Legs ill-prepared for travel ached.
But with this morning’s ample meal in their stomachs, they all remained spirited.

When noon had passed a little, they reached the summit of Usui Pass.
Here stood a stone marker denoting the border between Jōshū and Shinano provinces, buffeted by winds sweeping from ridges to plains.
With their backs against the small stone blocks before the marker’s foundation stone, rain falling eastward would flow far to the Pacific Ocean while western raindrops made for the Sea of Japan—each no doubt narrating its own destiny.
Two thread-like grooves scored the roadside’s red earth.
One pointed toward the Tone River, the other yearned toward the Shinano River, each descending fate’s slope in its chosen direction.

We looked ahead from there and were astonished.
When we looked back, the Kantō Plain—vastly enveloped by mountains stretching from Nantai in Shimotsuke to Akagi, Haruna, Myōgi, Arafune, and the Chichibu range—had already lowered a curtain of pale haze in early spring, hazy in the distance toward Bōshū. Yet Shinano Province lay as a single expanse of snowfield glistening silver-blue.

From the shallow snow on the mountainside, dried pampas grasses exposed only their seed heads.
In the deep snowdrifts, larch trees were buried up to their waists.
The summit of Mount Ōasama was shrouded in pitch-black snow clouds, impossible to discern, but in the distant skies of Minami-Saku, the pure white Mount Tateshina drew a sharp line, cutting high into the celestial realm.

It was a vista that induced bitter cold.
With these cloud formations, snow might come swirling again.
The wind stung.
Although we hadn’t even covered half the distance to Nagano, we—without any cold-weather preparations and with chilled pockets—would now have to keep trudging step by step through this accumulated snow.
At that thought, legs froze.

Thus, fearing the cold snow, we could not remain standing there forever. Gathering our courage, we descended the slope toward Karuizawa. When we entered the lodging at Karuizawa, the snow trampled by others had frozen into ice—if one let their guard down, the worn-down teeth of their fair-weather clogs would slip dangerously.

Today’s Karuizawa has become a bustling city with Western-style buildings lining its streets, but in those days it was merely a hamlet within Higashi-Nagakura Village of Kita-Saku District—rows of low thatched-roof houses stretching onward, with only a few scattered foreigners’ summer cottages visible here and there amidst the larch forests, sparse enough to count on one’s fingers. Especially in winter, it was lodging quiet as death itself.

Today again in Nagakura Village, we bought sweet potatoes for five sen and shared them to eat. However, things in Shinano appeared to be expensive. Compared to when we bought them in Itahana, Jōshū, though it was the same five sen, today’s portion was smaller in quantity. Noticing such trivial details, the three laughed. Asama’s gale raged sideways across the snowfield. But as we hurried along with our clothes hitched up, we didn’t feel the cold as much as we had feared on the pass. Instead, a faint sweat began to bead on our foreheads.

By the time we passed Kutsukake lodging, dusk was approaching.

VII

When we arrived at Oiwake lodging, night fell.

As sung in the muleteer’s song:

"Asama-san, why do you burn so?
While holding seventeen at her skirts,"

Passing before the large old post-town brothel—long since fallen into ruin and now uninhabited—known from that song, we discovered the village office’s signboard at what seemed to be the lodging area’s outskirts. When we peered through the gate, inside what appeared to be a janitor’s room, embers glowed brightly in the stove. We thought, *Got it!*

There again, this spurred Ginpei’s resolve. However, it was decided that continually tormenting only Ginpei, the youngest among them, wouldn’t do. And then, the three of us entered the janitor’s room together, and I explained our situation to the janitor,

Spring river—
salmon swarm
ascending

I presented a tanzaku slip bearing the words:
The janitor received it while muttering to himself,

“Things like this have been showing up a lot lately—”

With that mutter, he took it toward the office.
The office was dark, but someone seemed to be inside.

After a while, the glass door of the office window opened, and a voice called out.

“You there, come over here.”

he called out.
We stood in the garden beneath the opened window.
When we looked up at the window, a hand emerged from its darkness,

“Take this with you.”

he said.

“Thank you very much.”

When Tamaji extended his right hand, a palm emerging from the darkness opened, and something gleaming fell into his palm.

“Thank you very much.”

Tamaji reiterated. However, the office was also dark. Outside was also dark. The master of the office's darkness remained an unknowable entity. Judging by the timbre of the voice, they seemed like a young person; yet considering the darkened hue of the hand, they also appeared to be elderly.

Ginpei and I silently bowed our heads in the darkness.
The person at the window withdrew silently back into the darkness without another word.
Returning to the front of the janitor’s room, when we peered at it by the distant firelight, what lay in Tamaji’s hand was a fifty-sen silver coin.

――A remarkable thing――

I was deeply moved and thought this to myself; Ginpei and Tamaji must have felt the same.

With fifty sen, we could rest easy.
After discussing it, we unanimously decided to find some cheap lodging house.
When we asked people traveling along the highway, they informed us that at the western edge of this post town stood Jōshūya—an establishment which in former times, that is before trains came through this region, had been a grand inn, but now while not quite a cheap lodging house per se, was at least an affordable merchant-class lodging we should go visit.
They kindly advised us that if we phrased our request right, they’d cook rice for us and even lend out futons.

At the edge of the lodging area stood one called Jōshūya.
Just as passersby had described, it was indeed a large establishment, but its half-rotted old eaves were tilting.
We entered the wide earthen-floored entrance and requested lodging for the night from O-Kami-san—a woman around fifty wearing a striped cotton-padded kimono, who was warming her hands over a large hearth cut into the floor beside the threshold.

O-Kami-san listened to our request while casting a cold gaze up and down at our appearance, but after some consideration, declared that her establishment did not accommodate traveling performers.
Since late last year, bad characters had been infiltrating the Saku region and causing disturbances everywhere, so police directives had grown stringent.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to seek lodging elsewhere.”
However, hearing their story, she also found them pitiable.
She would quietly let them stay just for tonight.

“Do you have the means to buy rice?”

“We do.”

“Well now, aren’t you fancy.
“Seventeen sen per shō—with three people, one shō should suffice.”
“Hand over the coins here—I’ll go buy it for you.”

“Here.”

“Now then, the lodging fee is eight sen each, totaling twenty-four sen.
“That all comes to forty-one sen.”

She was an old woman terribly adept at mental calculations.
We adopted an attitude of supplication, shrinking ourselves as we perched on the threshold.
Tamaji handed the fifty-sen silver coin he had received earlier to O-Kami-san.

There, having likely assumed we would immediately go buy rice and finally seeming at ease, O-Kami-san smoothed the wrinkles from her face and continued addressing us: “From the look of you, you must be street performers.”
“Not only do I enjoy such acts, but everyone in this village loves them too.”
“Now then, if you all perform a set at my place tonight, I’ll gather a crowd from the village and get you some donations.”
“So, I could return this fifty sen to you—but how about you show some spirit and try performing an entertaining set?”
“I’ll leave the fifty sen here.”

This had turned into an absurd situation.
But perhaps we did look like naniwa-bushi performers.
The three of us had grown our hair long.
Particularly in my case—atop wearing a maroon-colored diagonally striped crested kimono—ever since absconding from my workplace at the end of last November,I had not once visited a barber.
My hair had grown out dirtily,hanging down in frizzy strands to my shoulders.
My fingers were slender too.

“No—we’re not naniwa-bushi performers.”
“No—we’re not! We’re not!”

The three of them protested vehemently, but O-Kami-san remained unconvinced.
Even if they explained they were haiku pilgrims, there was no way this old woman would understand.

“Lying won’t help you—I can see right through you! Do an old woman a kindness and give us one performance.”

Such was the situation.
But in the end, no matter how hard O-Kami-san tried, it proved futile for those who were truly not naniwa-bushi performers.
And so they ended up being allowed to stay just one night.

8

The three were shown to a spacious single room. But to their shock, the ceiling of that room was half-rotted and peeling. In the roof was a large hole through which stars could be seen. Under the peeling ceiling, two or three tatami mats had rotted and melted from the rain. The snow-laden sky that had loomed since they shared sweet potatoes had shifted its aspect, now becoming a starry expanse so dense it seemed ready to pour down stars. Therefore, once night fell, the cold became severe. Even in such a room, there was a small hearth cut into the floor, and O-Kami-san had brought a mountain of embers from under the kettle in a fire shovel, but chilled by the wind passing through the hole in the roof, the room simply refused to grow warm. With hunger compounding matters, their bodies ended up shaking violently.

Before long, warm rice was cooked.
O-Kami-san added a small dish of takuan pickles and fresh miso paste as a courtesy.

When the rice tub lid was opened, Tamaji first used a ladle to divide the rice into two portions, transferring one to the lid. There was a reason for this. By nature, I am a big eater. And I devour food at tremendous speed. If left unchecked, I would likely consume twice what others ate. Tamaji had long known this about me. Therefore, he must have deliberated on how to divide it as fairly and effectively as possible. Having completed this task,

“You, let’s eat the portion on the lid tonight and save the tub’s contents for tomorrow morning. If we devour everything tonight, tomorrow becomes a dire prospect. Is everyone in agreement?”

“Fine.”

Ginpei answered immediately, but I remained silent. Since three strapping young men had eaten five gō of rice, it was like a giant snake swallowing a mosquito. Their stomachs remained hollow, and their bodies gained no warmth.

They placed the empty lid atop the rice tub. Then the three wrapped themselves in wafer-thin futons and slept. When bedding down, Tamaji—claiming the rice mustn’t freeze—clutched the tub into his futon. I thought he might have meant to use it as a foot warmer substitute.

The cold night ended, and morning arrived.
Red morning light streamed through the hole in the roof, but the temperature had dropped enough to make fingertips ache.
No one made any move to go fetch clean water.
There I was, thinking I wanted to have breakfast quickly after being treated to even a single cup of tea by O-Kami-san, but Tamaji and Ginpei remained oddly composed.

“How about it? How about we have breakfast soon, everyone?”

I said.

“........”

Both of them offered no response.

“You’re being awfully composed—there should still be some miso left from last night.”

As I said this and moved to retrieve the rice tub wrapped in the futon Tamaji had abandoned, the two burst into laughter simultaneously.
And Tamaji, wiping his glasses with the hem of his haori,

“There’s no miso or rice left.”

Tamaji said.
Tamaji had a habit of unnecessarily wiping his glasses.

“Why?”

“We went and ate it all up in the middle of the night.”

This was Ginpei speaking.

“Ah! Is that true?”

I stumbled forward and lunged at the rice tub in the futon.
But the rice tub was truly light.
I had become utterly dumbfounded.
When I came to my senses and asked the two of them,

“We thought you might beat us to it—that’s why we got up in the night and ate it.”
“That’s brutal...”
“Don’t hold it against us.”

Ah, it was beyond help.

IX

That day, taking the road from Komoro Town toward Zenkōji Highway, they passed through Ueda Town while parading the shame of their clumsy haiku even at the silk association and post office they chanced upon along the way. We knew perfectly well that Shinano had since ancient times been a flourishing place for haikai with no shortage of accomplished practitioners, but under the pretext of considering it training, we walked about inventing such self-serving rationalizations and discussing them as we went.

The cheap lodging house in Nakajō, Chiisagata District, about one ri west of Ueda, served as their accommodation that night.
There, they heard the lodging owner and his wife engage in a truly urbane marital spat.
The following day, they trudged steadily westward along the Chikuma River through Tokura Village.

Tokura had recently become remarkably bustling since its hot springs were revived, and now there remained no vestiges by which to recall its former days as a familiar post town. Western-style shops lined the street. Neon tubes twisted in shop windows. Back then, how many years had passed since we ate horse meat at seven sen per pot in this village’s rope-curtained eatery and became indignant that at Yoshihara Embankment it was four sen? Where in the post town had that rope-curtained eatery been located? This time, having unexpectedly come on a journey to visit wounded soldiers, I found myself recalling the vestiges of Shinano Road’s ancient mountains and rivers after so long, and wondered whether that youthful vitality from days gone by still lived within me. (15・4・1)