Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Shimaki Kensaku

I This year, rain had been scarce since spring. The sight of elderly father Kompei was painful to behold—day after day, he would traverse the narrow seventy-degree embankment path countless times, hauling a four-to galvanized water tank on his back from the well in the lower paddy fields to their tobacco field carved out of cleared woodland over a hundred meters away. At times, he could be seen watering the tobacco plants while stuffing his mouth with rice balls. Shunsuke Sugino, their son who had entered university that year, showed no inclination to return to Tokyo even after fully recovering his health. He had collapsed after developing pneumonia from a common cold almost immediately after advancing from higher school to university, before the new semester had even begun. At one point it was touch-and-go, but fortunately he survived. As soon as he left the hospital in Tokyo, he had returned to his country home for post-illness recuperation—three months had now passed since then.

Even when vacations came, circumstances did not permit their son—whom they now saw for the first time in nearly two full years—to return home each time like an ordinary student would; and particularly given his post-illness state, while they harbored a genuine desire to keep him by their side even one day longer, the parents grew anxious at being unable to comprehend their son's mind—this mind that kept postponing his departure for the capital day after day without apparent reason. Yet they never once tried to voice that anxiety directly. It was not so much opposed to affection as a kind of reserve or hesitation toward their son—this son who had left their side and, in a different environment, had somehow grown into adulthood before they knew it. The urban mannerisms and intellectual qualities their son had acquired could indeed be called obstacles in certain situations. Yet for the parents, these were obstacles one might even term welcome. There were moments when the fact that such a youth was this household's son felt somehow uncanny, almost like a falsehood. Moreover, their son had forged himself into such a young man almost entirely through his own efforts.

All the more reason why the old father could not help but occasionally say something.

“Shun, you still don’t need to go back to Tokyo? Hadn’t school already started long ago?” The old father could not help turning over in his dutiful heart’s depths the various calculations of this person who looked after his son and from whom they received some tuition fees.

Shunsuke, however, only answered ambiguously. It was not necessarily that he avoided giving a clear answer for some particular reason; rather, even had he wished to respond, he himself remained conflicted about his future course and still could not settle his mind. He wandered about the village every day with a feeling as though pulled by some great invisible force, or as though trying to grasp at something dimly sought within his heart. To observe the life of his birthplace village in this calm, unhurried manner was something he had never done before now. Until now, even when he occasionally returned home, a week at most would be the longest he stayed—holed up throughout that time as well, never engaging in relaxed conversations with neighbors, giving even his parents a profound sense of dissatisfaction before hurriedly rushing off again. He, who utilized his vacations to earn tuition fees, was indeed busy, but it was also because he harbored no particular interest in village life in general. Even if he harbored a reasonless contemptuous eye toward his hometown, he had no sense of attachment whatsoever. Looking back now, he found it incomprehensible even to himself—though being an impoverished student who should have been exceptionally attentive to such matters, and though whenever he returned home he could not have helped but notice it against his will, he had in fact spent those days with only a vague awareness of his family home's circumstances as a farming household. This time, that was different. And this was not necessarily because his previous stays of one week had now been extended to three months. This was primarily due to a change that had occurred within him.

The season reached spring's final days, brushing against summer's edge. Pine cicadas shrilled through mountain forests as noontime heat sometimes matched midsummer's fierceness. Though some wheat fields stood harvested, more remained untouched across the slopes. No household had yet begun cutting—being first felt like overstepping some unspoken boundary. Yet Shunsuke recalled being told how farmers' minds worked: once someone started reaping, others would frenzy to follow lest they fall behind, caught in a "me-too" panic. The sparse numbers in the fields now might reflect this psychology warring with their rain-hungry hearts—eyes scanning skies each dawn for promised storms they hoped would come today or tomorrow. Rain during harvest brings trouble. Cut stalks laid in rows drink moisture slower than standing grain ever did. Bundles stacked high might stew in dampness till kernels rotted at the core—disasters Shunsuke remembered from boyhood summers.

April and May had seen almost no proper rain. The vining plants now at their peak growth—cucumbers and kidney beans among them—swayed their overgrown tendrils far beyond their supports like living creatures in the wind, while their lower leaves scorched and withered into crisped remnants. The cucumbers, their fruits about as thick as a thumb and still bearing remnants of wilted flowers at their tips, stood withered from bacterial wilt. When he stood downwind, the row of sunlit tomatoes gave off a faint scent. A fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy wearing a woven bark hat was pinching off tomato buds and thinning out small yellow flowers.

A group of children came running down the village road, shouting something loudly. They carried buckets in their hands and held baskets. The leading child, charging forward, swerved aside slightly to avoid colliding with Shunsuke, who had emerged from a narrow path between fields onto the village road. The moment he did, the bucket he was carrying shook violently, and something leaped out from within. It was a loach. It landed on the scorched earth along the wheel rut's edge and wriggled in frantic circles. The child glanced up at Shunsuke's face, grabbed the loach with his bare hands, tossed it into the bucket, and ran off while glancing back repeatedly.

Shunsuke was now climbing the winding, sloping path toward the mountain tobacco field, pausing occasionally to press his hand gently against the left side of his chest and listen to the regular beat of his heart. Though naturally somewhat quickened, it pulsed with a robust, elastic vitality. When he had last come here for a walk merely ascending and descending this path had made his heart pound, his breathing grow ragged, his temples throb, and his face burn. Viewed from below at a distance—in that cramped posture as if his feet floated midair—the old father labored between the ridges. The sight struck Shunsuke's chest like watching a water bucket sprout limbs and move autonomously from those shoulders; he had quickened his pace up the mountain path then. Though in that moment he'd wanted to offer taking Father's place one shift out of three, hauling water remained beyond discussion for a body that grew winded even from slight haste.

The tobacco plants had already been transplanted from the seedbed to the main field some time before. They had been planted with precise regularity according to regulations—three-shaku intervals atop soil ridges three shaku four sun wide. They grew four to five sun tall, each with four to six pale gray-green leaves arranged in pairs opposite each node. Early summer noonlight flowed across the ochre slope where tobacco stood in grid formation, casting deep shadows that shimmered with a subdued luster against the parched earth. The sandy loam lay baked dry. The old father's task of watering until the tobacco took root would not end until rain came. Shunsuke sat on the field's edge staring at the old father's movements as he worked with his back turned. He still seemed unaware. Soon he turned around. Spotting Shunsuke, he wiped sweat from his face with a sideways arm swipe,

“How fiercely it’s blazing!” “What’s today’s newspaper say about the forecast?”

Facing the sun directly, his deeply wrinkled face crumpled.

“The forecast says another clear day today. “I checked at the town office radio earlier—still no change.” “They didn’t mention any downpours for certain areas?” “No... Didn’t hear anything about that.”

When he finished a stretch of work, Kompei stopped laboring and came over to Shunsuke's side, sitting down beside him to rest. “Anyway, we’ve got to get some rain soon.” “At this rate, even the roots won’t take hold properly.” “When was the inspection from the Monopoly Bureau scheduled again?” “It’s soon… Once June comes in.” “The date’ll get notified from the Association soon enough.” “How many reserve seedlings did you plant this year?” “In Plot 8,” said Kompei, pointing to one of the furrows.

“That spot there’s for the reserve seedlings.” “Fifty plants.” “Regulations say thirty to fifty reserves’ll do, but if you’re plantin’ ’em anyway, no sense losin’ out by makin’ fewer.”

A voice sounded from below, and his younger sister Jun came up. She came to bring the ten o'clock meal and drinking water. After cleaning his face and hands with a towel soaked in the remaining water from the bucket, Kompei opened a flat lacquered box and began to eat. Seven or eight black barley rice balls coated with black sesame seeds were packed tightly inside. Pickled small turnips in nukamiso and a slice of salted salmon lay atop them. Each time he finished a rice ball, Kompei licked his salt-tinged fingertips and drank from the kettle, refilling it again and again.

“So this is it.” “This year again we’ve gone through hell for water, somehow passed inspection after all that, but just when it’s finally reaching prime maturity – if some big wind comes blowing through now, there’ll be nothing left worth looking at.” “The sixth year of Showa was like that.” “Showa 8 too.” “Last year we scraped through somehow, but who knows about this one.” “Tobacco’s a damn fussy crop, ain’t it?”

Shunsuke also borrowed his father’s teacup. He poured the water and examined it against the light in the shade before drinking. The cold always seeped deep into his core. Condensation formed small beads on the kettle lid’s inner surface. Yet the water looked terribly murky. Shunsuke asked Jun: “Is this water from our well?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s still murky, huh?”

“But this morning all the neighbors came to draw water again—it’s right after that.” “The Suzukis’ well and the Itos’ well too—once you draw from them first thing in the morning, the mud at the bottom gets stirred up and turns them all earthy-colored, so they say you can’t even use it.” “As for the Suzukis—since today’s their turn to manage the bathhouse—they came by earnestly asking us to draw water again tonight.” “But even ours must be scraping the bottom of the well bucket by now.”

“Well, if everyone draws that much, sure—but even so, ours is the only one still usable now.” “Father.” “What do you think?” “Like I said before—why don’t we take this drought as our chance to deepen the well?” “I’ll help.”

Shunsuke turned toward his father and said.

“Right then,” “We’ve been thinkin’ all along we oughta redig that well while these old legs’n backs still hold up.” “Specially this year—water’s been comin’ up so poorly.” “That well’s done right by the village folk all these years, after all.” “But...” Kompei let the words hang, his voice trailing off into the dry air.

“Let’s do it.” “By all means.” “I’ll help,” Shunsuke repeated. He spoke with such eagerness—to an extent that others could scarcely comprehend—about why he was so interested in this kind of work.

“You’ll help.” “Strange one.” “Think it’s as easy as flappin’ your mouth makes it seem?” Kompei laughed.

The Sugino house stood at the mountain’s foot, positioned higher than any other home in the village. The well behind it had been dug deep—nearly four ken down. They had struck a pristine water vein there, drawing from subterranean mountain flows to create liquid as crystalline as jade. None who tasted it failed to praise its quality. In summer months, people came from far off with buckets and kettles dangling from poles across their shoulders, seeking drinking water and coolant for their homes. Unbidden by any conscious decision, with no known originator of the name, it became known as the Jade Water Well—a font that had sustained generations. In parched years like this one, its blessings grew all the more vital. When every other well ran dry, their bottoms churning mud, this one alone remained brimful of clarity. Neighbors relied on it when cooking rice or heating bathwater during their assigned turns—the Jade Water Well saw them through each crisis. Yet over three or four summers now, its flow had visibly diminished. This decline was inevitable. Kompei’s father had first dug this well fifty years past; Kompei himself, then a boy, had helped with that labor. Never since had it been deepened—such was its age. No water vein could stay unchanged across such spans of time. This truth pained Kompei deeply. The guileless old man mourned his inability to serve and gladden others as before. Once prominent in village affairs, Kompei’s father had dabbled in regional politics and thrown himself into community stewardship. But Kompei inherited more than reputation—substantial debts came down with that legacy. He sold off what little land remained after dividing plots among his branch-family brothers, fading into obscurity as a common farmer. Yet for Kompei—who remembered his family’s former standing—this incapacity to aid the village gnawed at him. The Jade Water Well became his meager consolation. This region’s thirst was legendary nationwide—streams barely worthy of the name vanished at drought’s first touch. On summer days, Kompei took quiet pleasure watching neighbors trek to his rear-yard well.

“As one of the tasks we must complete in our lifetime—no matter what—this well has to be dug back out by our own hands.” Whenever he saw the murky water flowing weakly, Kompei would repeat these words. Yet Shunsuke’s fervor for the same work sprang from different roots. The well-digging itself wasn’t essential to him. His family’s wheat would soon be harvested. Before long, the tobacco leaves would need drying too. He meant to join both tasks himself. What he craved now was physical labor—any physical labor. He thirsted for that state where mind and body unified toward a single purpose, that taut sensation of vigor one might call fulfillment. Not through deep introspection, but as instinctive craving. Something demanding total expenditure of strength in rough, headlong exertion—this was the opportunity he sought. Was this merely his young body’s physiological demand after months of convalescence? Perhaps. Yet simultaneously, it stemmed from deeper soil. He sought to sever ties with his past—that self mired in conceptual quagmires with no exit, yet perversely intoxicated by their very inescapability. He couldn’t build upon others’ lived experiences; he needed to live through society himself first. This general resolve had taken form, though had it come seven or eight years prior, concrete paths might have opened before him. Now no such clarity existed. His journey began abstractly—drawn toward life’s tangible substance: things productive and constructive, things rooted deeply without pretense. At precisely this juncture, his village life unfurled before him. It gleamed with fresh allure.

Not even the smallest fragment of village life could fail to awaken vivid emotions within him. “If we just dig deeper to lower the bottom, it wouldn’t be too complicated—but first you gotta clear out all the stones lining the well, then rebuild ’em exactly like they were before.”

The stones lining the well at a depth of four ken had all been solidly built with large natural stones of various shapes. "So if we start like that, it won’t work?"

“Ah. “To deepen a well, first you gotta remove the stone lining—that’s the proper way it’s done.” “Oh.” “You could cut corners and leave the side stones as they are when you start, but if you do that, once the sides start collapsing while you’re digging deeper, there’s no telling if the person working down there won’t end up buried alive.”

“Ah, I see now.” “We’ll just keep digging deeper then. Now, if the bottom gets deeper, that means there’ll be that much more space between the bottom and the stones reinforcing the sides, right? What’s holding up the sides is just the bottom now.” "When that gap forms, the full weight of the well’s stone lining comes pressing down from above." “You wouldn’t last a moment then.” “We folks’ve seen ’n heard plenty o’ such commotions since olden times.” “Just three years back, Yata’s boy from Motoyama Village got crushed like a frog ’n died—that too was from the same cause.” “When diggin’ wells, soil quality’s always a worry—but later I heard Yata’s place was on sandy soil after all.” “That’d be unbearable.” “The old folks couldn’t have been unaware.” “Indeed, it turned out they’d done it while the elders were away in town.”

“But when it comes to soil quality,” Kompei continued. “Ours holds up. “Clay-rich red earth runs through here. “Don’t reckon we’ll get much slippage from above neither...”

He sank into deep thought. Sweat trickling down his nape had pooled in the hollow of his throat; he flicked it away with a broad palm. His bared chest was astonishingly thick and sturdy, but on the slightly sagging skin lay scattered black age spots. At length, he seemed to reach a decision and spoke.

“Well…reckon we’ll give ’er a try then,” he said. “Year after year we keep sayin’ ‘this year for sure,’ but all that puttin’ off’s just made us older—stands to reason these bodies’d weaken.” “Sooner or later, who’s to say when some mishap might leave us too crippled to stand proper?” “If these hands o’ mine can’t see this through, ’twould haunt our line clear down the generations.” “About what you said earlier—how exactly do we pull up them well stones?”

“Well… I suppose we don’t need to pull up all of ’em.” “So then?” “We’ll just remove the upper half. “We’ll leave the lower half as it is and try that way.” “Are you sure?” “It’ll be fine,” he said decisively. “Let’s start first thing tomorrow morning. “As for the tobacco field, I’ll have Mother take over for two or three days. “Jun, you’ve gotta help Mother out.” “That’s right—Jun should help Mother. “I’ll help Father,” Shunsuke said cheerfully.

“Even without the well work, Mother said you’d still need Father to handle the tobacco field for a bit.” “—Never mind about me.” “But Big Brother’s hopeless through and through.” “Why?”

“Why, you ask…” The feeling of scoffing at how absurd manual labor was evident in her tone. “What’s with the cheekiness?” Shunsuke said, laughing. “Well…” “We should ask one more person from around here to help out.” “Nah, I’ll handle it. Father.” “Father.” However, Kompei did not answer; by bringing up another matter, he showed he wasn’t paying attention.

Two

Shunsuke stood with legs apart, puffed out his chest, and swung both arms like a windmill. Then he tightened his belt again. The sensation around his waist was something he hadn’t felt in a long time. From things long stuffed deep in the closet came a faint smell of dampness. On the faded belt floated a bloom of gray mold. He casually rubbed his hand over it, wiped it on his thickly patched trousers, and tucked up the hem of his trousers high.

He wore nothing but a shirt. While tightening the hand towel wrapped around his head, Shunsuke headed toward the doma step. Sunlight streaming deep into the earthen-floored entryway already held summer’s fullness, yet the morning breeze retained a refreshing coolness.

As he fastened the clasps of his work tabi, footsteps sounded behind him—Kompei’s voice came.

“What an impressive getup you’ve got there. “So you’re truly set on doing this, huh?” Kompei too had already gotten ready. A blend of concern and something like teasing surfaced around his eyes and mouth, which when he smiled took on the guileless innocence of a child. It wasn't that he distrusted Shunsuke's arguments from the day before; rather, he wanted to avoid his son still recovering from illness.

Shunsuke remained silent, smiled, brought out the basket from the corner of the dirt-floored entryway, and examined how well it was made. Yesterday, he had cut kudzu vines from the back mountain and brought them back; it was a coarsely woven basket made with his own hands. He examined the hanging strings at the four corners with particular care. “But ’tis a mighty strenuous job after all.” “For someone just recovered like you, this job here’s downright impossible no matter what. I’ve been thinking maybe we should ask Genji from the Terada family for help.”

“Genji?” “Terada’s.” “Ah, right.” “He must’ve grown into a proper young man by now.” “Ah, ’tis eighteen he’s turned after all.” “This year too, if things stay as they are, ’tis likely he’ll get hired for rush harvesting down Okayama way.” “How ’bout we ask Genji for help once.” “Ah, never mind that, Father. “I’ll try doing it myself.” “Even Terada’s lad must still be getting called all over these days—but what’s the going rate for farmhands’ day wages nowadays?”

“Ah, seventy sen’s the going rate now.” “Even at best, it’s eighty sen.” “Until four or five years back, ninety sen to one yen was the going rate, but that fell once the prefecture’s relief projects started up.” “Since the relief projects pay seventy sen, that’s how farmers’ daily wages came to match that going rate.” “So that’s why the relief projects are unpopular.” “Well…” “Lately, seems like there’s a lot of folks grumbling ’bout ’em too.”

Kompei, who had been taking a break in front of the brazier, put away his pipe and stood up. “Aye, ’twas true they put some warmth in farmers’ pockets for a spell, but when all’s said ’n’ done, relief projects ain’t no hundred-year solution.” “But because of that, once farmers’ daily wages fell across the board, ’tis likely they ain’t ever gonna rise again.” “In the long run, ’tis what you’d call ending up worse off.” “Those who both hire and get hired may fare well, but ’tis tough for those who only get hired, I reckon.”

“Aren’t you wearing work tabi, Father?” Kompei, having sat down there to prepare his footwear, wore straw sandals rather than work tabi.

“Well, work tabi’d be too slippery—dangerous as all get out.” “Well then, maybe I should switch to straw sandals too.”

“You can keep those as they are. You’ll be working outside.” “We’re the ones who’ll need to be down in the well, see.”

The two exited through the back door.

The well was right there. The large willow tree beside it stretched its long branches all the way over the well. Until autumn came and the wind dropped fallen leaves into the water, both branches and leaves were left to grow freely as they were. The natural stones that formed the well's walls appeared immovable—even the four-foot section protruding above ground remained massive, moss-covered through years of weathering. Shunsuke placed his hands on the edge and peered inside. More than usual, the water surface appeared profoundly deep and distant. Cold air rising from below brushed against his face. Likely due to the neighbors having drawn water again this morning, the water surface—now noticeably shallower at the bottom—reflected the sky brimming with morning light, shining white. The weeping willow branches and vines that had entwined around the well’s exterior before creeping inward swayed in the wind, and Shunsuke’s face cast a shadow within that whiteness. Shunsuke, feeling like a child, stretched out and called loudly toward the bottom. He absently delighted in the deep-voiced echo that returned three, four times.

He remembered how as a child, he had once taken a carp from the irrigation pond and released it into this well.

“Shall we start?” said Kompei. The tool Kompei held was a single iron lever. He was methodically tapping the narrow gaps between stones with the tip of his iron lever. Snugly fitted together and having endured decades without being cemented in place, there were sections where they appeared as if formed from a single stone. The tip of the iron lever moved as if probing for a vital spot. Then, as a powerful force was applied, it drove into a particular gap. Kompei changed his stance, spread his legs wide, and braced himself. Pressing his chest against the iron lever, he brought the full weight and force of his entire body to bear with a heave. Soil scattered down in dry cascades, and the stone shifted imperceptibly. As it was pried open, the gap widened, and the stone began to lift away.

“Alright—now, let’s get a grip on it.”

Throwing down the iron lever, Kompei said tersely. The first stone that began to move was of a size that one person could never possibly lift alone.

“Ah, you’d best put these on.”

Suddenly noticing, Kompei took out a pair of soiled work gloves from his pocket and tossed them over. Shunsuke pulled them on and grasped one side of the stone. Kompei kept his hands bare. The two lifted it together, carried it to a flat area some distance away, and rolled it down. Even this much proved laborious for Shunsuke. It demanded every ounce of strength he could muster. With that single effort, hot blood surged through his veins. His face burned; his temples pulsed with each heartbeat. Feeling his hips waver, he concentrated sharply on each step while bearing the stone's weight.

“Alright—watch your footing there.” The stone struck the earth with a rumble, gouging a large depression in the ground as it rolled away. Using the momentum to hurl the stone aside and stepping back two paces, Shunsuke felt a dizzy spell like those he often experienced after emerging from the bath. Sweat suddenly poured out. Suppressing any sound that might betray his labored breathing to Kompei, he endured the suffocating discomfort.

“It’s an old story after all. “We were around ten or so back then...” Kompei was recalling when this well had first been dug. Even as he spoke, Shunsuke found himself captivated by his sixty-five-year-old father’s manner—strength tempered with ease—as he deftly wielded an iron lever to dismantle stone after stone. The way he planted his feet, the tension in his arms, every motion radiated such vigor that Shunsuke watched in awe. Try as he might to summon an image of his father lying idle during neuralgia spells, no such memory surfaced.

“There—dropping it now.” When the stones became somewhat smaller, rather than carrying them together as before, Kompei vigorously rolled them down to the ground right there. Having stepped aside and stood gazing vacantly at this scene, Shunsuke found Kompei—

“Hurry up and move these.” Shunsuke started and clung to the stone in panicked urgency. The weight nearly exceeded what his solitary strength could bear. Bent at the waist, he hauled it forward in a posture that threatened to drag him down, but when endurance failed mid-way, he let it drop and resorted to rolling it onward. From behind came Kompei’s voice— “Since you’re hauling ’em back here regardless, line ’em up tidy for easier shifting later!” he barked. Without pause, he resumed his own labor. Shame prickled through Shunsuke. These curt words and bearing from his aged father diverged from what some hidden recess of his mind had unconsciously anticipated—at the very least, they neither coddled nor merely pitied him. Yet he couldn’t deny having vaguely expected solace through such gestures. Kompei’s manner held no cruelty, nor any deliberate pacing to school an unseasoned youth. But within its unrelenting work rhythm lay severity—the natural rigor of ceaseless toil.

“Care to give it a try, just once?” Thrusting an iron lever toward Shunsuke, who had returned after carrying yet another stone, Kompei said with a laugh.

Shunsuke took it and tried using it. He wrung out every ounce of his strength, but the stone remained as immovable as if cast in concrete. Feeling his hands slip, he stripped off the work gloves. Thrusting three times, then four, he finally broke one stone loose before returning the iron lever to Kompei. Just that much left his palms stinging. While rubbing his palms—reddened as if the skin might peel away—he caught a faint metallic tang.

“It’s all in the breathing. This too, you see.” Kompei laughed cheerfully.

When all the stones of the aboveground portion had been completely removed, Kompei prepared to enter the well. Using uneven protruding stone corners as anchors, he positioned a single plank diagonally like a bridge and began descending along the well’s inner wall with this makeshift foothold. With one foot on the plank and the other wedged against a jutting stone edge, he maneuvered boulders weighing multiple kan in this unstable stance. The danger could not be overstated.

“Alright—” “Alright.” Shunsuke’s entire body now quivered with such tension it verged on convulsion. The situation could only be described as desperate. When Kompei lifted stones from below to chest height, the solitary plank bearing their weight appeared ready to snap. Kneeling at the edge of what had become a gaping chasm, receiving stones from above, Shunsuke repeatedly felt the peril of being dragged into the abyss by their mass. Far below, the water’s surface gleamed with an ominous pallor, its radiance nearly blinding. Pebbles whispered down the wellside, their faint clatter echoing as they struck the water, sending tremulous ripples across that ghostly plane.

However, being able to pass stones hand-to-hand from below to above like that did not last long. Kompei's foothold gradually descended until his hands could no longer reach upward. They resorted to hauling up stones using the prepared basket and pulley system they'd readied earlier. The basket was lowered down with a rope attached. Stones were placed inside and hauled back up. This process repeated countless times. Shunsuke became drenched in sweat, enduring fierce heartbeats pounding against his thin chest wall as he mustered every ounce of strength from his entire body. He grew utterly exhausted, his face pale. Yet he had to keep enduring, and as time passed, he gradually found himself advancing into an unexpected state of being. Could it be that once fatigue passes a certain threshold, it ceases to be pain? As though he'd crossed a steep mountain path constricting his chest and emerged onto a vast plain, something akin to post-struggle elation welled up within him. Though he'd expended all his strength, it seemed an inexhaustible new vigor was reviving in its place. Lowering ropes, holding breaths, shouting commands, hauling up and lowering down—through these tasks he entered a self-oblivious state where even this new transformation went unnoticed.

“Alright—I’m lifting this!” He shouted with such rough intensity it seemed to roughen his very voice. He felt a savage, boar-like force—something that wouldn’t relent until it had smashed everything to pieces. He felt a conqueror’s joy—as if he’d grappled with an opponent, thrown them down, and claimed victory. This fullness of strength, this sensation of total exertion, this feeling of hurling his whole body against a single task—these were realms he’d scarcely known these past months. And through recognizing this fact, his joy swelled deeper and greater still. Whenever he hauled up a stone and caught his breath, he’d sometimes shout loudly down toward the well’s depths.

As they descended lower and lower, the stones grew damp with water vapor and moss-cloaked. When he pressed his hand against them, it slid easily from the mineral crust. A many-legged insect that had been lurking in the moss suddenly scrambled in panic toward the bright outer light. “This’un’s a bit bigger down here!” came the voice from below. “Might be the biggest yet, I tell ya!” “They planted these big ’uns here an’ there special-like.” “Did it proper to brace up them walls back in the day.”

Shunsuke responded. And he peered down. Even from above, its size was undeniable. “This one’s going up!” “Mind yourself now!” The moment the rope jerked violently in Shunsuke’s grip, every muscle tensed to breaking. Panic clawed at his throat. This weight defied all previous measure. He hauled with every fiber of his being. The stone crept upward—two shaku gained. He strained again. Another shaku conquered. The pulley groaned; hemp fibers bit into his palms like serrated teeth. No further ascent came. He shifted his stance—knees bent, shoulders braced—all to no avail.

He remained frozen in that position for some time, utterly breathless. He could neither advance nor retreat, pinned in place and writhing helplessly. Sweat streamed into his eyes, yet he couldn't wipe it away. At the base of his shoulder and around his elbow joint, pain and numbness arose simultaneously. The forgotten fatigue suddenly resurged—this time welling from some profound depth within—and the thought "I can't go on" flashed through his fevered mind. What should I do?... A precarious, desperate sense of crisis swept over him like vertigo.

At the very moment this large stone was loaded into the basket, Shunsuke realized Kompei had shifted his foothold yet another level lower. Come to think of it, Kompei’s voice calling out in puzzlement from below—“What’s wrong?”—seemed to be coming from a deeper, more distant place than before. Shunsuke was seized by the terror that his hands holding the rope might let go at any moment. If it proved truly beyond his strength, he could always slowly lower it back down and have Kompei secure it from below—that was how it should work in theory. In theory, that should have been a simple matter requiring no particular effort. But in reality, that proved difficult for him. The act of carefully easing it down little by little was something he simply couldn’t manage. If he tried to lower it even once, the stone’s immense weight threatened to send it plummeting straight down with violent force. It would fall—and his elderly father, who must be directly below it? … The moment that thought flashed through his mind, Shunsuke’s entire body stiffened strangely and refused to move. His stiffened arms felt as numb as a grinding pestle.

“What’s wrong? Huh? Aren’t you lifting it?” came Kompei’s voice from the hole, sounding both distant and fragmented.

As if he had suddenly become aware of that voice, Shunsuke abruptly—

“Jun! Jun! Michiru! “Hey! Isn’t there anyone here?!” he shouted in a strained voice.

After several calls finally drew a response, Jun came rushing out from the back door in disarray. Then her younger sister Michiru followed suit. Jun had gone to the tobacco field early that morning with her mother Omura before Shunsuke and the others had begun their work. She had just returned moments earlier to bring the ten o'clock meal. "What’s wrong... Big Brother." Sensing something gravely amiss, Jun dashed over with a pallid face.

“Pull! Help me pull—this!” Shunsuke gasped out.

Immediately grasping the situation, Jun began to lend her strength. The basket rose slightly—so little it barely counted. But that was all. Jun, her breathing now ragged too, turned around, "Michiru too!" she called. The slender sixteen-year-old Michiru came running and joined them. All three clung to the single rope as if this were their final stand. Though they were women, their combined effort helped Shunsuke regain his strength. The stone-filled basket inched upward. Suddenly a new fear struck him like lightning— What if the rope snapped halfway up?!

However, by that time, the basket had already come right up to the very edge of the hole. The top of the basket came into view through Shunsuke’s sweat-clouded eyes. And with one final heave, it was completely above ground.

“Whew...” As soon as he released the rope, Shunsuke let out a deep sigh and plopped down right there onto his backside. He sat cross-legged, let his head drop heavily, threw his hands limply near his knees, and for a while neither wiped his sweat nor spoke a word. At the bottom of the well, Kompei was shouting something. Having returned in response to this, Jun stared fixedly at Shunsuke sitting motionless like that for a while, then suddenly—

“Hff hff hff,” Jun tried to suppress her rising laughter but finally couldn’t hold it back, bursting out as if giving up the struggle. And once she let out a laugh, she simply couldn’t stop—clutching her stomach in a girl’s laughter that made one imagine, had this been inside the house, she surely would have been rolling about the place—she laughed on and on without end.

“What?” he said, turning a stern gaze in that direction. However, when his eyes suddenly met Jun’s—who had finally managed to suppress her laughter—he turned away awkwardly and burst out laughing. That became the trigger, and he too erupted into loud laughter. Jun also laughed. Michiru, making a strange face as if she didn’t understand what was happening, joined in and laughed.

Shunsuke stood up. He put his hands on the stone in the basket, trying to roll it out. Lifting it up and carrying it away seemed utterly impossible. There was nothing for it but to roll it away. Gripping two corners of its underside, he barely managed to shift the recumbent mass. He rolled the raised stone straight forward—or rather, meant to roll it. As he pushed the stone ahead and tried to release his grip, he felt a sudden slackness pierce the taut tension—like wind rushing through a borehole. At that critical final moment, he must have been dazed, utterly self-forgetful. When he startled back to awareness, his hands had already let go. The panicked realization of his slipping grip coincided exactly with the stone lurching sideways and crashing down.

“Agh!” With that cry, Shunsuke fell sideways. Immediately leaping back as if recoiling, he stood up—then on one leg with the other raised—spun around the area like performing a frantic dance. There was a brief interval before Jun, standing dumbfounded as she watched, realized the leg Shunsuke balanced on was his left one.

“What’s wrong, Big Brother?” Jun shouted as she ran over. By that time, Shunsuke was already sitting on the ground, his right leg stretched out. Jun, flustered, couldn’t tell through her frantic gaze which toe at the tip of the outstretched leg had been injured—she could only see that entire area stained a vivid crimson with blood.

Jun, her face pale, tried to hurry toward the well. From behind her, Shunsuke sharply—

“Jun, be quiet.” He had instantly thought startling the old father in the well might lead to disaster. However, even while remaining silent, Kompei had climbed up. Jun had returned from the tobacco field, and he realized it was already time for the ten o’clock meal. He had climbed up alone without waiting for the rope from above. “Shun, what’d you do?”

Kompei immediately noticed and cried out in surprise. Squinting his eyes against the glare after emerging abruptly from the dark underground into the bright outside world, he scrutinized what had happened. "What in the world happened? Did you smash into something?" Shunsuke tore the hand towel in two and quickly wrapped his foot. A heavy thud echoed through him as pain like an iron bar striking bone shot up his leg. Knocked down once then leaping up again—in that instant, it felt like plummeting from a great height straight to the bottom, his vision swimming. "This must be anemia," he thought through the dizziness threatening to overwhelm him. Yet without collapsing completely, he kept hopping until lowering himself down by force of will—by then the pain had transformed into something searing and stabbing, throbbing so intensely he could barely speak. Goosebumps erupted across his entire body as an internal chill spread through him simultaneously with greasy sweat oozing from deep within his flesh. His limbs trembled violently with chills. Nausea welled up in his throat. Forcing a smile onto his pain-contorted face, he said, "It's nothing—really, just a minor thing." After giving a terse explanation of what happened, he added, "I'll go take care of it," and entered the house. Kompei's voice sounded strangely distant as he called out to stop Jun from following behind—"There should definitely be new bandages somewhere around there."

Things like alcohol, absorbent cotton, and bandages were in the house. Jun said it should definitely still be there somewhere, and searched through several drawers of the small box looking for the iodoform bottle. And she found that too. Taking those supplies, Shunsuke went out to the veranda and began tending to his injury. The blood had seeped through even the multiple layers of wrapped hand towel, dripping heavily. It must have been the corner of the stone that struck him—the wound where skin and flesh had been torn away was near the base of his thumbnail. The wound that the blunt corner had forcibly torn open gaped with flesh as red as a pomegranate. When Shunsuke saw blood, it was normal for nerves from his waist down to his calves to tingle restlessly. However, more pressing than the wound was the thumb’s tip—resembling a crushed viper’s head—which throbbed with critical intensity. That had become a severe bruise. The nail had already turned lifeless, and the flesh had purpled, appearing to swell larger by the moment. The throbbing pain emanated from there.

After soaking absorbent cotton in alcohol to wash the wound, sprinkling iodoform over it, and finishing the bandaging, Shunsuke lay down on his back right there on the wooden floorboards. The area had already fallen into shade, a refreshing wind blew through, and it was cool.

Jun was called by father and went out front.

For a time, there were no sounds, and the surroundings were quiet. There wasn’t a single white cloud in the sky. The vivid blue of the sky and the verdant green surrounding the house were both filled with light, intensifying the midday stillness. As he fixed his gaze on the distant sky, Shunsuke naturally teared up. The tears weren’t solely due to the glare. After a short while, from the grove of trees on the back mountain where pines mingled, the chirping of spring cicadas could be heard. But even that cicada song soon ceased, its voice rasping only briefly before falling silent.

Kompei came and stood beside where he was lying.

“How’s the pain? You don’t need to have a doctor look at it?” “Yeah. It’s just a bruise. Once some time passes, it’ll heal on its own. The wound’s already got iodoform on it.”

Had a crack formed in the bone? That was what Shunsuke feared. However, he did not voice it. “I think you should have it looked at once—if you’re going to show it, there’s Moriguchi in Sawai—their boy’s been back home lately.” “Being fresh out of school, he’s likely better than someone like Sakuma. Though mind you, Moriguchi’s lad isn’t a surgeon either.” “Is that so.” “Has Moriguchi’s son already finished school?” “Well that figures—he was five or six years my senior.”

Because it was the countryside, those from nearby villages who had gone to secondary school or higher remained clearly etched in each other's memories. "You did say his name was Shin, didn't you? What's this about—is he coming back to the village to take over his father's practice?"

“Well now, ’bout that—seems there’s all manner o’ complications tangled up in it.” “Old Man Moriguchi ain’t no youngster neither—pushin’ seventy if he’s a day—ridin’ that bicycle ’round to sick folks ain’t no easy task at his age.” “Been lookin’ poorly recent-like, so reckon he called his boy back from that Tokyo university lab or whatnot. But from the lad’s view—young’uns these days—why’d he go through all that bother? Graduatin’ from Tokyo U, gettin’ his medical scholar papers, just to settle in some godforsaken village tendin’ farmers? Not a lick o’ sense in that.” “But the old man’s got his pride too—Moriguchis been doctors here since lord knows when. Even got gifts from the feudal lords back in the day.” “Ain’t no Moriguchi ever turned their back on Sawai land—not proper-like.” “Even if he drops them old-fashioned airs and talks modern profit-talk—what good’s Tokyo doin’ him?” “Folks sayin’ they’ll get doctorates—why, you could sweep up PhDs with a broom these days.” “You think some piddlin’ hospital wage or scratchin’ out a practice in strange parts could ever match this here Sawai with its steady returns? That’s what the old codger’s sayin’, I reckon.” “So now the son’s stuck twixt and between—can’t plant his feet proper, squabblin’ over somethin’ or other.”

"There’s a family-concocted ointment at an old pharmacy in town that you dissolve in egg white and prepare—they say it’s good for drawing out heat from bruises and such,” he said, starting to turn away. “I’ll go buy some tomorrow.”

“I’ve decided to ask Genji for help,” Kompei said. “When I sent Jun earlier, she said he’d come right after eating.” “Will the work be done by tomorrow?”

“Hmm, let’s see.” “Reckon it’ll take all of tomorrow.” “Today we’ll remove the well surround, then tomorrow we’ll drain the water, dig out the bottom, and have to rebuild the stone lining.” About himself—now forced to watch idly with folded arms as all these tasks unfolded—Shunsuke wanted to say something. Yet he couldn’t speak. Kompei likewise didn’t utter a single word that might imply “That’s why I’m not saying it,” even sarcastically.

As afternoon arrived, his body seemed to grow feverish. It might have been nothing more than an illusion induced by the sweltering air. Either way, sitting idle alone in the house left him unable to settle on any task. From behind the building came Genji’s voice—youthful and vigorous—summoned earlier for assistance. The creak of pulleys and rustle of laborers moving materials reached his ears. Compelled by these sounds, Shunsuke made his way to the rear.

The young man working there, drenched in sweat, was large for eighteen—his splendid, well-built frame made him look twenty or even twenty-one. Though his body was now that of an adult, when their eyes met across that face which still bore clear traces of his fourteen- or fifteen-year-old self, Shunsuke offered a warm smile. Genji too—true to his nature as a shy yet diligent youth—smiled bashfully for no particular reason. It had been quite some time since they had last met.

“Hey, it’s been a while… Thanks for coming out today.”

“I’d heard you were back already, but we kept missing each other—sorry. “So, your illness—is it all better now?”

“Yeah, thanks, I’m completely fine now.” “Tried helping Father out today—uncharacteristically—and ended up like this.”

Shunsuke laughed as he pointed to the bandage on his foot that was barely clinging to his straw sandal.

The next day, early in the morning, they combined three long logs, spread their three legs apart, and erected them over the well. They attached a pulley to this and set up a device to draw out water. The water was completely drawn up before much time had passed.

When the time finally came to begin digging out the well’s bottom, not only Genji but also his father Heizo arrived to lend their strength.

“Well, you’ve left the lower half as it was.” “You sure this’ll hold?” Heizo peered into the murky depths and voiced his misgivings about the well’s structure.

“It’s perfectly safe,” Kompei replied with immediate confidence and lowered the ladder. Using that, he descended and stood at the bottom of the well. And he began digging out the bottom. Kompei had explained that the clay-like soil at the bottom had hardened like stone. The sound of striking the iron bar with a genno and prying up earth—Oo-waan, Oo-waan—echoed outward in widening circles, its reverberations trailing long before fading away. Progress seemed sluggish, and until a voice called up from below, the two men above had little to do. The job of those above was to hoist up the excavated soil and water. Today again, Shunsuke went out there and engaged in casual conversation with the two men who were waiting on standby.

After about an hour, Kompei came back up. He—who had gone down wearing a wool sweater over his shirt—was trembling, his teeth clattering. His lips had turned purple. That the cold at the bottom of the deeply dug well was so intense one couldn’t stay long and they had to switch every hour—this was something Shunsuke could only truly comprehend and nod to in understanding after hearing about it and seeing it for himself. Heizo stood up to take Kompei’s place, who had just emerged. However, Genji said, “Now, Old man, I’ll take care of this,” stopping him, and before Heizo could say anything, he was already waist-deep in the hole. Within those brief words overflowed both a considerate heart for the elderly and the self-assured pride of a young man who had come into his own.

They stopped digging at a depth of about four shaku and embedded the pre-prepared unglazed earthenware well walls into the newly excavated section. Certain areas were reinforced with stones. With the construction at the bottom now complete, it became time to rebuild using the stones that had taken all of yesterday to remove. Though they would bring stones and lower them down, the task of reconstruction was undeniably more arduous than dismantling had been. The one directing operations at the well’s depths could be neither Genji nor Heizo—it had to be Kompei. This time alone, role rotation was forbidden. Kompei, refusing to delegate what he trusted only to himself, likely adopted this cautious approach out of sheer confidence. He issued precise instructions at every step, and the two men above lowered stones they judged suitable in response. Yet when a lowered stone failed to settle properly into its designated spot, they had no choice but to seek another fitting piece and repeat the process however many times it took.

The stones were arranged along one side. Then Kompei shouted, “Uraguri!” By morning, Genji had transported the ballast and piled it into a mound there. Fine-meshed baskets were brought out. Ballast was loaded into baskets and lowered down. Until someone said “That’s enough,” basketful after basketful was lowered. As Shunsuke peered down, Kompei was tightly packing the ballast into the eighteen-inch gap behind the aligned stones. That was the so-called “Uraguri.” It was. Shunsuke asked Heizo.

“What exactly does Uraguri do?” “You see, this here’s an extremely crucial thing.” “When rain comes—heavy rains or long downpours—the force of water soaking into the earth and pressing against the well walls from all sides, well, that’s something mighty powerful.” “Not only does mud flow inward, but the soil softens and the side stones collapse too.” “That Uraguri—it’s what stops all that from happening.” “If you don’t put in proper Uraguri or skimp on it, every time it rains the water turns muddy and those carefully stacked stones come crashing down.” “This ain’t just about well walls—take stone embankments and such, same logic applies there too.” “These days’ crooked jobs—what they call shoddy construction—they’ll skimp on this *Uraguri* nine times outta ten. No wonder they don’t last.”

The work progressed smoothly in this manner.

Shunsuke could not tire of watching the movements of the two old men and one young man—their bodies brimming with power, their spirits perfectly attuned. He was enveloped in a strange sense of delight and profound emotion. Without blending into the three, he found himself united with them. It felt as though he had recovered something lost in the distant past.

Three The foot injury hadn’t been examined by a doctor but showed no worrisome signs—it appeared to follow a smooth course of healing. The torn flesh quickly closed. Blood gushed out between nail and flesh, turning it a dusky purple—a lifeless hue—but as that color gradually faded and a healthy tint returned, the swelling too subsided considerably. The speed of this recovery might not have been due to the medicinal plaster Kompei had bought. Such concerns as whether the bone had cracked or split no longer troubled him once the immediate pain had subsided. Kompei said,

“Always be careful when the cold comes around.” “Even if it’s healed now, when that season comes every year, a bruise will start aching again—that’s just how it works.”

And during that time, Shunsuke did not remain idle; once healed, he became even busier with work both inside and outside the house.

The Sugino house was a two-story structure spanning about twenty tsubo—roughly sixty-six square meters. Four years prior, they had demolished the old house they’d long inhabited, salvaging usable timber and supplementing it mainly with purchased aged wood for rebuilding—the total labor cost for carpenters and plasterers at that time reportedly came to sixty yen. This being the case, on the second floor one window retained its glass-paned shoji screen while the other stayed boarded up with an old door, leaving even daytime dimly lit with straw mats spread where tatami should have been. Though Shunsuke had been using this room until now, as summer approached and heat intensified, he first needed to address this nailed-shut window. Once the pain in his foot had subsided somewhat, he immediately set to work. His idea was to extend eaves over the window to prevent slanting rain from entering.

He searched the storage shed and brought out enough wood scraps and plank pieces as needed. Saws, chisels, planes, hammers—tools of that sort were all properly accounted for. Kompei explained how those planes and hammers had seen thirty years of use, even recalling when they’d first been bought new. You could say their lives were so unchanging that thirty years felt like one; you could say they prized their tools that dearly; you could say this showed how even trifling cash expenses weighed heavy on them.

Work such as drilling holes in wood with a chisel and fitting other pieces into those holes to interlock them presented no small difficulty for Shunsuke. Carving a single hole into a thick pillar took three hours, and fitting a crossbeam snugly into that hole consumed the entire morning. The finished form of what he was trying to make existed clearly in his mind as the general shape of such things, but when it came to the actual process of moving from the materials currently in his hands to that completed form, everything became profoundly ambiguous. Sawing, planing, drilling—each of these actual tasks gradually clarified those ambiguous individual processes, yet at the same time, new questions about details that had never occurred to him before starting the work arose one after another. Creating a one-ken by eighteen-inch eave for the window took nearly an entire day during the long daylight hours of early summer.

The next day, he made a chair. Since there was a table but no chairs, he took advantage of some suitable leftover wood scraps and tried making one. Again, it took an entire day, resulting in an awkward creation, but this was somewhat easier than the eave and the process itself had been enjoyable. He had Jun make a small cushion for the chair.

Once his foot had completely healed and he could walk freely again, Shunsuke, unable to wait any longer, rode his bicycle out to the part of the village that served as its town center. It was a bit of a ways there. He bought a bale of cement at the store there and attached it to the back of his bicycle. The bale of cement was heavy. He lacked confidence to ride the bicycle with it attached and pushed it along for a while, but when the road dipped into a slight decline, he attempted to mount it. The bicycle began moving but lurched unsteadily from the start, Shunsuke's hands clenched rigidly around the handlebars. As the speed gradually increased, his uneasy lack of confidence grew stronger, until finally he abandoned the attempt midway. As he applied the brake, he abandoned the bicycle and leapt off; the bicycle fell over with a violent crash.

Beyond the wheat field lay streetcar tracks about eighteen meters ahead. The slow-moving streetcar ran through the rice paddies, connecting these villages to the town housing the prefectural office. Shunsuke, sweating as he strained to lift the cement bale, heard the streetcar clattering westward toward town from the east. He looked up casually from his lowered gaze. Several faces peered from the train window in his direction. His eyes suddenly met one of them.

The individual features of that oblong face remained indistinct at this distance, yet the face itself was unmistakably familiar. Who could that be? Before the thought could fully form, the streetcar had already moved on. As the face at the window turned sideways and glasses caught a flash of light, the name surfaced in Shunsuke's mind: Katsuhiko Shimura. He hadn't known the man had returned. Shimura kept staring fixedly in this direction. Even dressed like any ordinary farmer now, he must have recognized exactly who Shunsuke was.

(How long has he been back, anyway? And what is he doing now?) Then an irresistible urge arose in me to meet and speak with this man—a youth who, though not significantly older than myself, belonged to a generation preceding mine; a man who had lived through that era as a young person should, uncompromisingly seeking higher things and fighting for them. After returning to the countryside following his setback, I wanted to know what he was thinking now, how he was living his daily life—those sorts of things. I had even come to firmly believe that this was absolutely necessary for myself.

Yet on the other hand, he also felt it might be better not to meet. Not only Shimura—he began to feel he should avoid meeting anyone else for the time being. Shunsuke knew all too well Shimura’s intense character. In the past, to repel that overwhelming force, Shunsuke had needed to summon extraordinary strength. Of course, the source of that strength back then had not been something as simple as personal intensity, but Shunsuke’s current desire to avoid Shimura was entirely different from his past reasons for avoidance. After a long stagnation, he now felt he had finally grasped something. He felt something taking shape within him. Precisely because of this—whatever its nature—he harbored an apprehension toward external influence.

Having returned pushing his bicycle, Shunsuke next went to the mountain, gathered small stones and crushed rocks into a bamboo basket, and carried them. He made about five round trips. Then, using a gennō hammer, he crushed them, spread them out at the well’s edge, poured cement into it, and solidified the concrete foundation. Next, he applied a top coat of cement mixed with gravel over it. The finished structure had a gentle slope so that wherever water was poured along the well’s edge, it would flow down into the corner basin. Once this was completed, next would come the equipment for installing the wheel-and-pulley system for the well. The bucket-and-pulley system had already been difficult to use due to the well’s depth, and now that well had grown even deeper. The wheel-and-pulley well system involved assembling wood into a gate frame and attaching a wheel to it. However, the tasks of cutting convex notches into the tops of two pillars and drilling two holes into the crossbeam spanning them appeared simple but proved unexpectedly challenging.

That too was somehow completed, but throughout all these tasks, Kompei—returning from the fields at dusk—would come over whenever he caught sight of Shunsuke still lingering there working, offering practical advice about the work as things occurred to him, but beyond that, he said nothing particular. He seemed to hold to the attitude of silently letting people do what they liked. And Kompei had always been like that. From childhood, Shunsuke had hardly known a father who was talkative. When Shunsuke, having graduated elementary school, harbored the wish—unbefitting his station—to attend higher schooling, even when the path opened for him to commute to middle school while enduring cold meals at a wealthy household’s residence, considerable hesitation preceded his voicing this to his father. Before Shunsuke, two boys had died. Being the sole remaining son, he thought that choosing such an unconventional path would inevitably stir up one storm after another. However, in reality, Kompei agreed without hesitation, leaving Uehara Shinji—the distant relative and landlord who had come to discuss the matter for Shunsuke’s sake—so taken aback that he seemed deflated.

“I can’t make heads or tails of what your father’s thinking or how he’s thinking it. “He didn’t oppose it, but then again, he didn’t seem particularly pleased either…” Uehara later said to Shunsuke. There could be no doubt that Uehara would have felt his efforts worthwhile only in one of two scenarios: either triumphantly persuading fierce opposition or witnessing wholehearted rejoicing over his son’s newly opened path to success. However, that Kompei had not lost his mental fortitude—that he did consider what needed considering and observed what needed observing—could be understood through one example: despite his predecessor’s considerable flaws, he had repaid the enormous debt left behind in a shockingly short period, astonishing everyone. To do so, he had disposed of nearly all their land, but the decisiveness he showed at that time was both astonishing and admirable. Since then, while lacking the strength to benefit others, he has lived modestly and cleanly without leaning on anyone either. Like a farmer of these times, he too was having considerable difficulty making ends meet, but from the outside, he didn’t look the least bit troubled. In his skillful navigation of emergencies lay the seasoned efficiency of a veteran. He gave the impression of having grasped the essential points of life. In the village, someone like that would likely have at least one piece of gossip spread about them, but in Kompei’s case, he avoided this because there was not a single word or action from him that sought to make others conscious of his presence. To some he was considered an elusive, enigmatic man; to others, he was held in quiet respect.

After the implementation of universal suffrage, some villagers who felt indebted to the previous generation had even gathered to discuss putting Kompei forward for the village council, but Kompei firmly declined and did not accept.

Regarding this kind of tolerance in his father, Shunsuke had thought about it since entering adolescence. He considered it to stem from various elements: an accommodating nature; the farmer’s inherent belief that things must follow their natural course; the conviction that each person—including his son—had their own immutable destiny; and having witnessed how his predecessor’s entanglement in local politics had ended in ruin. Though Kompei himself wished only to live modestly, he did not regard this as humanity’s sole or supreme path. Rather than desiring alternative lifestyles for himself—should they prove unattainable—he at least aspired not to impose his will on others, letting them act freely; this disposition, born of innate humility, seemed further reinforced by what might be called a philosophy of existence.

Of course, Shunsuke did not think Kompei had failed to consider his son beyond that point or that he hadn’t agonized over attempting to delve deeply into his son’s inner world. Though lacking formal education, as a practical man Kompei synthesized what he saw and heard, relying on sound common sense to actively try—to some extent—to understand the world of “today’s youth.” That he truly grasped it was something Kompei himself couldn’t believe. Yet as long as his desire to understand didn’t collide with utterly inexplicable resistance, he could remain content. From afar, he could offer a tentative smile toward the world of the young. But when resistance arose, that wouldn’t suffice. Subconsciously aware that tolerance must rest upon warm, thorough understanding, he had to suffer through trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. Still, understanding did not come easily.

Just once, in the dim second floor spread with a straw mat where Shunsuke was examining the nearly completed chair, Kompei came up. It was dusk. Kompei, who had quietly climbed the stairs, stood there and peered around suspiciously. “The window eaves are done already… What’re you making today?” “I tried making a chair.” “A chair?” “Yes, since we have a table but no chairs, I thought it’d be good for reading… but this is what ended up getting made.”

He put his hand on it, shook it while testing, and laughed, "I made it like an armchair, but when you sit down, it feels like it'll pitch forward." Then he sat down to show him. "Hmm." Kompei stared with an expression both uncomprehending and full of unspoken words. But he said nothing. Eventually he went downstairs. Long after Kompei left, the impression of him—seeming wanting to question yet restrained—lingered in Shunsuke's mind. Shunsuke knew about the thing that had lodged itself unresolved in Kompei's heart.

When alone with his wife Omura, Kompei often said things like this: “What on earth is going through Shunsuke’s mind?” “What’s he planning to do about school? I can’t make heads or tails of it.” “Didn’t he say anything to you?” “He hasn’t said anything to me,” said the soft-spoken Omura, who rarely spoke—a perfect embodiment of the saying “like husband, like wife.” “Has he grown tired of school, or did something happen in Tokyo…? We can’t help but feel it’s different from him just coming home to recuperate because his body’s weakened from illness.”

“Lately he hasn’t been reading books as much as before. And on top of that, he’s been helping us with our work and all, but it feels like he’s just goin’ through the motions.” “Helpin’ with farm work’s a good thing. It’s good for the body too, and there’s no harm in learnin’ anythin’ while you can. But Shun’s already lookin’ like he’s decided he ain’t goin’ back to Tokyo at all, y’know.”

“Could it be different from something like… if there was some money left… but he messed up with that wealthy household he’d been under the care of in Tokyo and ended up unable to go back to school?” Having long supported himself through school without burdening them financially, his parents remained unaware of the finer details of their son’s student life—a world entirely separate from their own.

“Father, since you’re going to Mr. Aoyagi’s anyway, why don’t you stop by Uehara’s and casually inquire while you’re at it?” “Hmm.”

“Honestly, Father, you’re hopeless. You don’t even try asking anything yourself—just sitting there stewing and fretting alone. With Shun too, you haven’t bothered to ask him a single thing—just keep muttering ‘don’t understand, don’t understand.’”

“There’s nothin’ we need to ask.” He’d been asking from time to time. But Shunsuke’s answers stayed vague. Never once did he say anything like “I mean to stay awhile longer.” When talk turned that way, he’d shrink back—sometimes plain on his face. Kompei couldn’t bring himself to push. Even a trifle like makin’ chairs—that too couldn’t slip past Kompei’s sharp eye. What’s the point of makin’ chairs? If he was fixin’ to go back to Tokyo soon anyway, no call for that now.

Shunsuke had been thinking that he wanted—no, needed—to speak thoroughly with Kompei about that matter just once. He had indeed seized upon returning home for post-illness recuperation as his opportunity. Even matters he had long secretly contemplated could not be acted upon without some catalyst. He had even come to see his illness as an accidental blessing. He hadn’t returned solely for recuperation. The thought that he might stay permanently had taken root. Three months had passed since then, yet his mind remained unsettled. To abandon intellectual life and return to his peasant roots—this seemed trivial on its face yet demanded true resolve. Even if one could somehow scrub away the urban patina accumulated from adolescence through youth—what could ancestral ways possibly offer him? Traditions and customs would likely prove less tractable than intellectual musings suggested. Wouldn’t they entangle him until struggle became futile? At best such a life amounted to that self-righteous “return-to-soil” posturing—wasn’t this mere steps removed from those ideologues? This turning point I was forging—when examined—became a terrifying gamble. It concerned nothing less than his entire existence. However I thrashed alone against society’s currents—they would not shift course. My capacity to influence societal matters had never been consequential regardless. Ultimately peace lay in following one’s chosen path without doubt. Such convictions gradually took hold within him.

As they went about these tasks, the wheat at the Sugino household too came to harvest time.

Shunsuke rose at 4:30 in the morning, prepared himself, and by five o'clock was already standing in the field with a sickle alongside Kompei. Memories of helping with farm work in his distant boyhood came flooding back. It had been years since he last held a sickle. Moreover, while he had carried a basket to the mountains for grass cutting, he had yet to experience wheat harvesting. The wheat in this area was almost all ridge-planted. And the Sugino family's was cultivated through broadcast sowing. The width of each ridge was nearly five feet. It was nearly twice the width of ordinary ridges. Each ridge had two rows running through it, each about fourteen to fifteen inches wide. However, now that the wheat had fully ripened and stood ready for harvest, each single ridge had split into two, appearing as if they had been that way from the beginning. This was because from January, when the wheat's true leaves finally began to put out one or two blades, until around April when the ears formed—during several rounds of soil replenishment—they exhausted the soil between ridge and ridge, after which they dug the soil between the two rows with hoes.

The wheat’s yield was without complaint. The ears had turned golden up to their bases, and the awns were like golden needles—now was precisely the time for reaping. The stems had spread out fully, making the furrows difficult to walk through. When the wind passed through, the wheat stalks did not bow their heads as low as rice, swaying upright with a pleasantly dry rustle. “Is broadcast sowing still profitable after all, Father?” “When you walk through the village, there are areas with broadcast sowing and others with regular sowing—quite a variety...” “It all comes down to how you do it—do it one way and you might lose out, another way and you might gain.” “But broadcast sowing eats up fertilizer something fierce.” “That’s only natural.” “’Cause it uses over twice as much land as regular sowin’.” “Where two hundred kan of compost would do, it ends up needing two hundred fifty kan or so.” “So if they mess up somewhere and don’t get a decent yield, then broadcast sowing’s no good—it’s a loss, as they say.”

“How many bales does our place yield?” “Well, let’s see… ’bout twelve bales, I’d say.” “Elsewhere, eight or nine bales is what most folks get, I tell ya.” “What variety is this?” Shunsuke said, holding an ear of wheat and feeling the pleasant prickling of its awns against his palm. “They call it Shirachinako.” “With wheat… you’ve got to reap it a bit earlier than usual, but…”

Having said that, Kompei walked ahead through the furrows.

Perhaps the timing had come slightly late. They had postponed the harvest day after day while waiting for rain, dreading how troublesome it would be if showers came after they started reaping. Then the rain arrived. It poured for a full day, clouded over on the second, then drizzled a little on the third. This began the day after Shunsuke finished rebuilding the well’s rim. “Now that the tobacco’s coming along proper-like, I can breathe easier at last,” Kompei declared. After breakfast, he sprawled aimlessly across the floor, drifting in and out of sleep.

Kompei started cutting from the opposite end of the ridge and steadily advanced in this direction. He raised his face, “Did you manage to do it? But you can’t cut it proper. Did you ever harvest wheat before, I wonder?” he laughed. His raised forehead was already glistening with sweat.

Shunsuke,

"Yeah," he replied with a nod, yet continued closely observing the movements of Kompei’s hands and posture as he resumed cutting. Swish-swish-swish—the rhythmically steady sound continued as he moved from stalk to stalk, light and crisp, until his left hand already held more cut wheat than he could grasp. He laid them out along the ridge. He moved to the next. Effortless, as if requiring no particular exertion at all. Shunsuke saw no need to add anything new to his childhood grass-cutting experience. And so he too began cutting the adjacent ridge from this end in reverse.

With his left hand, he grabbed a clump of stems, pressed the sickle against their base, and yanked it toward himself. It should have sliced through with a crisp, satisfying sound. Yet it didn’t cut. The blade struck the stem’s base, bending it over, but the resilient core rebounded the edge as if repelling steel. He tried again with greater force. Still no yield. Impatience rose in him naturally now—both hands clenched tighter, palms slick with sweat against their grip. He didn’t think he held too many stalks at once. Grinding the blade back and forth like some novice felt unthinkable even without witnesses. Apply too much strength and he’d uproot them entirely. Realizing this, he slackened his hold slightly. Shame prickled at his own stiff posture there, rigid as a temple gargoyle. The sickle’s edge Kompei had honed that morning flashed vainly white in the summer dawnlight.

Kompei had continued cutting forward and was now right before him. Seeing Shunsuke stand up, Kompei also stood up.

“What’s this? Still can’t get the hang of cutting proper, huh?” Immediately recognizing this, he said with a laugh as he crossed the harvested ridge and came to his side. “With wheat… you’ve got to reap it like this.” He demonstrated while speaking, “Alright, it’s all in how you handle your left hand.” “You can’t just be gripping it like that.” “Push this outward like this,” He placed the sickle at the base of the stem, and as he pulled it back, pushed his left hand—gripping a spot two or three inches above—outward. Then it sliced through cleanly with a satisfying sound. Shunsuke tried doing it exactly as instructed and succeeded. When he followed the advice, it seemed almost laughably simple—something he felt he’d been doing all along—but given that it hadn’t worked before, there must indeed be some technique to it.

The two began cutting two ridges side by side. Shunsuke was rapidly overtaken. Even without any initial competitive intent, he grew impatient, his mind fixated solely on how to cut faster. He started by trying to grab more stalks at once with his left hand, but overreaching forced him to readjust his grip, wasting time instead. Only after cutting extensively did he grasp his natural limit—the precise bundle size his hand could manage without conscious thought. While working, he thought of nothing beyond cutting well and cutting quickly. He felt no physical discomfort. When stretching his arms, he only registered the soaked shirt clinging to his skin. Yet even this sensation felt agreeable. Finally reaching the far end, he straightened up with relief and turned to find Kompei—whom he’d thought momentarily ahead—already finished with a second ridge and halfway through a third from the opposite side. Kompei’s stubble lay flawlessly even, as if machine-trimmed. Shunsuke’s rows jutted unevenly, their ragged ends barely showcasing the sickle’s sharpness.

They had begun early to take advantage of the cool morning hours, but by seven o'clock the sun was already sweltering. After a rain shower, its heat had intensified abruptly and hung heavy in the air. As Shunsuke looked down at his work, sweat dripped into his eyes and blurred his vision. He finally began to tire—the pain in his lower back arriving first and sharpest of all. To Kompei’s gruff admonition—"Yer body ain’t used to this yet. Best quit for today"—he could only yield with reluctant gratitude.

In the afternoon, he slept in the shade. After waking from a pleasant nap, he pushed the wheelbarrow to the field. He gathered the wheat that had been cut and laid out on the ridges into bundles, loaded them onto the wheelbarrow, and carried them back to the house’s yard. He piled them high in the yard and covered them with a straw mat to leave overnight.

The next morning, he began threshing with the rice thresher while it was still dark—a task he had learned assisting as an elementary school student. With his left hand pressing down on the rice thresher’s pedal to rotate the gears, he grabbed wheat stalks with his right hand, transferred them to his left grip, then held them against the gears to thresh—piling separated husks into a growing mound at his left. Like cycling or swimming—skills that once mastered remain unforgettable even after years of disuse—Shunsuke’s nerves and senses aligned with operating the rice thresher after a decade’s absence, requiring little time to regain their rhythm. Only his right foot stayed motionless. His left foot and both hands moved in unified cadence—a rhythmic flow that lifted his spirits with unexpected buoyancy.

The threshed wheat grains were put into a winnowing machine to remove husks and straw chaff, then passed through a mannstone to separate out stones and sand. After that, they were spread out on mats to dry in the sun for several days and, once thoroughly dried, formed into straw bales.

IV

That night, after finishing work, taking a bath, and eating dinner—exhausted but with bedtime still too early—he secluded himself on the second floor to read, but before much time had passed, Jun came upstairs to announce a visitor. Since the idea of someone coming to visit him was utterly inconceivable, he furrowed his brows in suspicion and asked about it, to which Jun replied that it was someone they’d never seen before—a man who had introduced himself as Shimura. Exclaiming involuntarily in a low voice, Shunsuke stood up and hurried downstairs to look—there in the dimly lit earthen entranceway stood none other than Katsuhiko Shimura himself.

Shunsuke led Shimura upstairs. As there was only one handmade chair crafted by Shunsuke, he unrolled the straw mat that had been rolled up and leaned against the wall, spread a futon there, and invited his guest to sit. The two sat facing each other. They exchanged brief greetings. Shimura intently gazed around the room. On the wall hung only Shunsuke’s work shirts and pants. In one corner of the room, a small number of books were piled directly on a straw mat. One of them lay spread open on the table, left half-read. There was nothing else. And before he knew it, the room’s owner had transformed himself to such an extent that the starkness of this room now felt fitting.

“I had no idea you’d returned,” said Shimura. “I didn’t know you were staying here either,” he said. “I had heard the rumors when I was in Tokyo, though.”

They were five years apart in age and had a relationship more of senior and junior than of friends. Given that they were from the countryside, the mere fact of being students from the same region studying in Tokyo would have given them occasion to become acquainted; beyond that, their respective proactive dispositions had drawn them closer. In every rural area, there exist a few students whose academic brilliance becomes exaggerated into legends passed down to later generations, and for Shunsuke and his peers, Katsuhiko Shimura had been precisely such a figure. When Shunsuke learned that this very Shimura was the son of a landlord in a neighboring hamlet—during that period when the white-lined student cap still seemed to radiate a halo in his eyes—his heart could not help being stirred. Thus came about his visit to this senior. Shimura, for his part, had later approached Shunsuke with particular care, driven by an ulterior motive of his own. Yet whether in their ways of thinking or in human closeness, they ultimately never fully aligned. This stemmed less from differences in their personal characters than from the considerable qualitative shifts—brief in duration yet intense in nature—between the two distinct eras of youth each had entered.

“In the end, there won’t be any decent rumors about me.” Shimura said this and laughed without making a sound. When Shunsuke heard that dry, oddly aged, dismissive way of speaking, somewhere in his heart he felt an unexpected sense of disjunction and stared fixedly at Shimura. “It’s been quite some time, hasn’t it? “I still had my enrollment at school, and you had just entered high school, I think, when we last met.” The events of that time remained vivid in Shunsuke’s memory—every single detail of their exchanged conversation. Back then, they had spoken about the ideology Shimura had been rapidly deepening within himself. Or rather, Shunsuke found himself being lectured about it. Shimura spoke passionately and tried to draw Shunsuke to his side, but Shunsuke’s attitude fell short of satisfying him. It wasn’t that Shunsuke failed to understand. Even before hearing it from Shimura, he had read deeply into those principles; yet he hadn’t reached the point of immediately reshaping himself through them. To all appearances, Shunsuke possessed a cautious nature—yet despite having only just entered youthhood, he seemed a pitiable soul who had never known idealism’s fervor—a man who beneath an earnest facade already took worldly pragmatism as his guiding star. This irritated Shimura. He perceived it as slyness—knowing full well what was right yet obstinately persisting with blinkered resolve. He couldn’t refrain from adopting a spiteful demeanor. Thus their final parting had been profoundly awkward. About a year later came Shunsuke’s hearsay knowledge of Shimura’s circumstances—how he had apparently abandoned school on graduation’s threshold.

“The other day on the village road, I saw you hauling something heavy on your bicycle, looking completely exhausted.” “I was on the train.” “At first I didn’t realize.” “When I saw your profile, I thought it was someone familiar.” “Then you looked up—truthfully, it shocked me.” “Even then, I remained half-convinced.” “So when I went to Aoyagi two or three days back, I called on Uehara and inquired.” “Knowing your special connection with him, and being well-acquainted with Uehara’s son—my junior from middle school—it seemed fitting to ask.” “And so I asked about you.” “They said you’d been ill.” “You’ve recovered now, I take it?”

“Yes.—Uehara’s son is Tetsuzo-san, right?” “How is he doing now? My uncle only mentioned he’s in Tokyo—I haven’t heard anything more concrete.” “It seems that guy’s gone off the rails.—But you’ve changed too.” “Uehara’s old man was saying all sorts of things.”

"I’ve changed too," he thought—the words hung unspoken as Shimura’s question followed immediately in a sigh-tinged tone that seemed to demand continuation. What Uehara had said was something Shunsuke had grasped well enough without asking; he merely replied "I see" and fell silent. “Have you been staying at home all this time?”

“Yeah, I’m here. What else can I do but stay here? I’m under disciplinary probation, you see.”

And again he gave a thin smile. Though seemingly casual, that sort of smile weighed unbearably on Shunsuke’s mind. Even without saying a word, that single smile laid bare his current state of mind as though it were transparent. It was chilling. One could not laugh like this unless they maintained a heart harsh toward both themselves and others; those who deliberately adopted such smiles to forcibly expose their inner selves were hardly rare among those surrounding Shunsuke in Tokyo. Shunsuke himself could not claim to have been free of such things—times when his own words and actions would come back to him, recalled with a blush-inducing shame whenever he found himself alone. However, Shimura was different from them. Even without asking anything, Shunsuke thought he understood the magnitude of the emotional wounds Shimura had suffered. At the same time, he felt a surge of anxiety. It was the fear that he would come to regret having met Shimura. Shunsuke was now finally attempting to take a new step forward. No matter how it may appear to others, for him, it was the result of having sought with all his might. However, it was not as though he could see all the way to the end of the path he was attempting to take. It was not that he had fully understood everything, possessed the conviction that this was the sole path free from error, and only then begun to follow it. He was simply trying to escape a damp, rotting state of existence—both body and soul—and sought a path of change in whatever was immediately accessible and possible for himself. And from there, he firmly expected that something new would surely emerge for him. Though he couldn’t foresee the outcome, it couldn’t be denied that there was a pragmatic aspect to his approach—rather than idly pondering, he had no choice but to try. That was precisely why he still could not bring himself to make a final decision. He, who knew himself to be thus, felt a fear—not that speaking with Shimura would deepen any conviction, but rather that his wavering would only intensify, and that his hard-won first step might be thwarted.

“Uehara said he can’t make heads or tails of your recent state of mind… Aren’t you going back to Tokyo?”

"Yes… I plan to stay here for now." "And school?" "Well… I might have to quit." "What a waste—you of all people."

Shimura gave a sardonic grin. “For someone like you who’s been working your way through school all this time—” “Just when you’re almost there.”

He laughed sarcastically because he was recalling Shunsuke Sugino of old—the rigid model student he once had been. That Shunsuke appeared overly cautious and rigidly diligent was not necessarily inherent to his character, but rather stemmed from being a working student with neither financial nor temporal leeway—though the truth remained that working students everywhere tended to become targets of scornful remarks like “Look at that guy playing the earnest saint,” rather than earning their peers’ respect. The appearance of poverty never gives those who see it a pleasant feeling in any circumstance. Shimura recalled the last time he had met and spoken with Shunsuke about how young intellectuals of their era ought to live. He remembered how Shunsuke—clinging desperately to the notion that no matter what, he must graduate from school—had provoked in him an exasperating, maddening desire to chew him up and spit him out.

“At any rate, you should at least graduate from school—it’s for your own good. Even in times like these, a graduation certificate—even if it’s just a speck of dirt under a fingernail—still holds some sway.” “Ha ha ha ha, this is absurd,” he laughed deliberately. “That I—the one who was told such things by you back when you were like that four or five years ago—am now saying this sort of thing in reverse… Truly, this too must be what they call the spirit of the times, I suppose.”

Shunsuke remained silent. “What’s wrong? Did something disagreeable happen with your patron?” “No, nothing specific. If we’re talking about disagreeable things, they’ve been there from the beginning—nothing recent. It’s just that I’ve been pushing myself through school since middle school, but lately I’ve come to feel there’s no need to force it anymore. Though realizing this only now does seem rather absurd.”

“If we’re talking about forcing oneself to attend school, well, most students these days are doing that in one way or another to some extent. And it’s probably true that most think it’s not a place worth attending even if you go to such lengths—but just because that’s the case doesn’t mean they’ll quit. Nor is there any need to quit. They don’t quit, but it’s not like they’re enthusiastic either. While dawdling around like that, they end up getting squeezed out from behind like agar jelly through a tube. That’s how it should be. And when you look at reality, those who get squeezed out end up better off than the ones who quit halfway, you see.”

“I suppose that’s true.” “But I don’t particularly mean to argue whether people in general should quit school or not.” “Those who can keep going without quitting should keep going, and those who can’t stay without quitting should quit—that’s all I think.” “It’s something each person must decide for themselves.” “I find my current student life in Tokyo utterly meaningless, and if I keep going like this for three more years, I believe it’ll only rot my very being.” “If I endure it, I don’t know what compensation I might gain later—but whatever I might gain, I just can’t stand it anymore.”

“Hmm… Rotting your very being?” “Well, I suppose that’s true.” “And it’s not just you who says such things.” “However, just because you quit school and enter a different life—who can possibly guarantee that this new life won’t also rot your very being?” “What different life awaits you?” “It’s different from our time, you know.” “First of all, I can’t grasp the secret behind this transformation—how you, who were once like that, have come to say such things now.” “Even if there’s something to it, it can’t be anything significant.” “Won’t that just be something you’ll regret later?” “Or do you mean to say that even now, you possess something like the genuine passion that urged us to sever ties with the past in our time?”

Shunsuke remained silent. “Student life itself isn’t inherently bad.” “Even today there exists an honorable path for students to follow.” “If you can’t even grasp that, quitting school would amount to the same futility in the end.” “There’s no way you could lead a decent life then either, right?” “Of course that’s true.”

Shunsuke thought that his current considerations were ones he had arrived at after fully understanding such matters. However, when it came to the subtle shifts in emotion that spilled beyond mere logical reasoning, he found himself unable to articulate them adequately in words.

“But whichever way you choose, it’s all the same in the end,” Shimura said, his tone turning intensely sneering once more. “If it’s all six of one and half a dozen of the other anyway, you’re better off following tradition and plodding along steadily—it’s more profitable.” “In the end, profit is truly no small matter.” “It’s easy to ridicule the majority moving according to this principle, but in reality, those who can turn their backs on it and live are few and far between.” “There isn’t even a single righteous person, you know.” “You should know your place.”

Shimura said with an air of idle whistling.

“So now that you’ve quit school and come back—what exactly do you plan to do?” “I intend to become a farmer.” “A farmer?” “You yourself doing it?” “Yes.” “I see,” said Shimura, looking closely once more at the transformation evident even in Shunsuke’s outward appearance. “So what’s your mindset going into this?” “Surely you’re not planning to do the sort of things I did in the past.”

“Of course, that’s not the case.” “However—just quitting being an intellectual to become a farmer.” “It’s not merely about succeeding your father, is it?” “You must have some sort of underlying ambition.” “At present, I don’t have what you’d call concrete ambitions.” “Right now, my sole aim is to assist my father—who’s grown frail with age without realizing it—and somehow learn farming until I become competent, however difficult that may prove.” “Naturally I hold various thoughts about rural conditions and farmers.” “Thus it’s not that I lack ambitions based on those thoughts—to claim otherwise would be false—but I currently have no desire to begin by proclaiming them publicly.” “If pressed, I might say it’s a lack of confidence.” “Before thrusting them outward, there’s something I must do first.” “In time, I’ll come to understand how genuine those ambitions truly are—for society and myself alike.” “That’s my conviction.” “Declaring them can wait until then—so for now, my hope lies purely in farming itself.” “Though truthfully, committing fully to this mindset may prove harder than anticipated.” “Yet even this limited life seems better than before.” “If nothing else, because it merits being called a true life.” “There’s substance here—no emptiness—something brimming with tangible content.” “Something that lets me engage wholly—body and soul focused as one.” “That’s all there is for now.” “What fruits this may bear—what new self might emerge—even I cannot foresee.”

“Nothing new will be born there—nothing at all,” Shimura calmly declared.

Without explanation, he hurled only the conclusion first and stared fixedly at the other man. He waited for his companion to say something. But when no words came, he continued. “Of course, your subjective sense of joy—as if something new were emerging from this—is an entirely separate matter.” “Feeling that way and taking pleasure in it is their own business—if they can remain content like that, they’re fortunate.” “At least that individual might feel somehow redeemed.” “Such childlike adults exist everywhere across all eras.” “Childish in their inability to cast their own thoughts and deeds into the wider world to examine their true nature.” “Childish in how they delight when handed some toy to play with.” “There are countless toys—sacred labor, mother earth... When you start declaring how farming life offers genuine fulfillment instead of emptiness, substantial meaning instead of vapidity—that tone makes me think of youth representatives on radio programs praising rural life, political operators rooted in farming communities, certain ideological propagators—that ilk.” “The fact you’ve begun voicing such things truly piques a particular interest in me.”

“Why must you always phrase things that way?” “Must you persistently confine yourself to such formulations?” “Then nothing new could ever emerge from this, could it?” “At any rate, I’m proposing we attempt concrete action.” “Why not simply permit people to try?” “Let us endeavor to alter our course.” “This resolve to stake something—anything—on forging new paths grows ever scarcer in our present surroundings.” “The mere fact of possessing such resolve—I myself consider this alone profoundly significant.” “From that soil might yet spring creation and progress—”

“Aren’t you going to question the direction of your resolve—its substance?” “Aren’t you going to question its social nature?” “Of course I’m not dismissing that as irrelevant.” “To stake something, to resolve—you’ve already convinced yourself that alone makes it something splendid, getting sentimental about it.” “You’re drowning in it.” “In our era, mere resolve divorced from concrete substance was never even considered an issue.” “We were already debating that much further ahead.” “You’re so far behind!”

“That may be behindhand, but merely blaming us for being behind won’t solve anything.” “There are various complex reasons why things have come to this.” “But we can’t wash our hands of it by saying it’s not our fault or that nothing can be done.” “If we find ourselves in such a state, then we’ve no choice but to start from where we stand.”

“You should at least understand by now that emphasizing abstract resolve itself has become rather dangerous in this day and age.” “By your logic, today’s intellectuals fawning over certain so-called heroes would also be justified—‘Say what you will, but at least they actually act on their convictions,’ or so it goes. Your seemingly reasonable protests—‘Why not let them try first? Criticism can come later’—all depend on the nature of the actions they’re attempting.” “Your abandonment of intellectual pursuits, your so-called ‘return to farming’—despite your facade of determination that pretends to hold some new significance—when viewed socially, are already well-tested and antiquated things not even worth saying ‘let’s try doing it first’ about anymore—I can’t believe someone like you would fail to realize this.”

“I certainly don’t think of it as some new path that no one has walked before.” “That is simply a path for me.” “And I hold a hopeful expectation that this might yet lead to a new path in the truest sense of the word—I do not think what you say is incorrect.” “However, I get the feeling that you say the same things to everyone with the same attitude.” “It’s not that we’re asking for any special leniency toward us, you understand.” “Even if someone who was once in the same position as you—or anyone else who held some ideological or activist stance—were to start saying things similar to what I’m saying today, though the words might appear the same on the surface, I believe their essence would be fundamentally different.” “For those people, that is the endpoint.” “After much wandering, they settled there—it’s as if they’ve found a place of peace.” “What arises from there is naturally understood.” “But for me, that point is the starting point.” “I am someone who has never once held a firm stance in any sort of thought or action before now.” “From now on, I will have something.” “I cannot simply dismiss it by saying I don’t need such things or that modern times make it impossible to possess them so easily.” “Society moves.” “And so we live.” “However, we do not want to live aimlessly, merely being swept along.” “We are earnestly seeking something like a stance.” “But that cannot be attained by merely wandering through the realm of ideas—I believe you are conflating us, who are like this, with them.” “As criticism directed at them, your words may indeed be correct.” “However, as criticism directed at us, it misses the mark—not having a stance yet does not equate to abandoning one.”

“If all that lacks a fixed stance or direction is deemed futile, then what becomes of the very process of reaching that point?” “So you’re saying we young people of today ought to be shown more generous understanding—is that your grand point?”

Shimura said sarcastically.

“Whether this is truly a starting point or merely a process of seeking—well, determining that proves rather troublesome.” “Whether that was truly the starting point can only be said in hindsight.” “It’s something you can only affirm from the vantage of having reached your destination.” “After all, we can’t dismiss the possibility that some grow complacent at that starting point, settling in all snug and comfortable… But let’s set that aside as unworthy of discussion now.”

“But even if it were a starting point in your sense, my criticism remains entirely valid,” said Shimura. “Even viewed as a starting point, what you call modern appears utterly... To speak plainly, it looks downright foolish. The path you’re trying to take—you might hate the term—had its social and historical nature determined ages ago, completely separate from your subjective intentions.”

“Theoretically and practically, how these tested and critiqued old things change their methods and forms, adorning themselves in attire befitting each era to appear anew!” “And how they deceive the young generation!” “Even if they put on a novel facade, they’re mostly just reproductions of antiquities.” “In your case, it’s all too glaringly obvious.” “Just list two or three well-known names—isn’t that sufficient?” “Take Mushanokōji’s New Village, or going further back, Roka’s earthworm prattle—there was even a certain Eto who amounted to a shoddy miniature version of Roka.” “We might also mention Sōma Gyofū, who retreated to Itoigawa.” “Shimazaki Tōson also sent his son to the countryside to become a farmer and wrote some high-minded reflections on it, didn’t he? In novels, there’s Tolstoy’s Levin.” “You’d probably take a liking to that sort.” “Though for you to become Levin, you’d first need to acquire that level of landownership, wouldn’t you?” “...These are all literary figures—we know about them because they write and talk—but there must be countless lesser-known adherents to this school that escape our notice.” “What they all share in common is first and foremost a kind of agrarianism.” “It’s Back-to-the-Land-ism.” “It’s the glorification of Mother Earth.” “What such emphasis could possibly mean in this current era should go without saying by now.” “A mask that the petit bourgeois—lacking not only the courage to confront the root evils that must be eradicated but even the courage to discern them—don to scurry into their cellars.”

“The second—though ultimately amounting to the same thing—is their insufferable self-righteousness. And this is precisely what I detest most. Do they truly believe their lives hold some socially positive significance? That they wield even a shred of power against the very social evils they’ve supposedly contemplated? There’s likely not a single soul among them who genuinely thinks so. They know their own powerlessness best. What substance does such a life truly hold? Wanting to distance oneself as much as possible from this meddlesome world, not giving a damn about others, just craving cozy isolation—what else could that possibly be? If one manages to acquire decent farmland and actually lives off it alone, that’s admirable—but when their cultivation amounts to nothing more than a gentleman’s hobby, something they can dismiss as mere rural dilettantism without consequence, well, that’s quite the privileged position they occupy. There’s no meaningful difference between that and some pensioner puttering about in a Tokyo suburb.”

“Then that’s just fine.” “If they themselves properly discern that and proceed with modesty, then that’s just fine.” “However, in reality, beneath their feigned restraint, they brazenly expose every manner of base worldly vulgarity.” “They furtively let covetousness peek through.” “They try to make people believe there’s some special social significance to their lives.” “They want to show off that ‘Even I, while doing this, am lamenting the world!’” “And then they start writing books and such.”

Suddenly, Shimura clamped his mouth shut. He might have only then noticed how his own words were escalating into fierce invective. Though his denunciations were scathing, Shimura himself showed no signs of heightened passion. That fervor too seemed dampened—a spark failing to ignite fully. He spoke in an inward tone, his bluish-black angular face slightly tilted downward as if withdrawn into itself. Shunsuke’s face flushed faintly. This wasn’t because he faced direct mockery or rebuke. Rather, it was as if the smoldering agitation smoldering within the other man had naturally seeped into him. Yet this differed fundamentally from genuine personal agitation. He didn’t sense those vehement words being aimed at himself. Nor did he even feel they targeted the named individuals or so-called agrarians in general. Shimura’s resentment resonated as though hurled toward something else—something undefined. It seemed directed at a target that encompassed even Shimura himself.

Shunsuke did not attempt to rebut. What he himself was—even he did not fully understand. However，he was not the same as those people Shimura had cited. There were probably common points among them as well. However，he thought there were also things they could not conceal—things that spilled out from them. It was not that he was superior to them as an individual. It was that they had transcended them historically. They could no longer find peace in the state those predecessors could attain. It was fated to be this way.

Before long, Shimura continued. “For intellectuals, this era is a harsh one.” “You’ve been crushed by that harshness—and all after barely tasting that bitterness with the tip of your tongue.” “You fled.” “To rationalize that flight, you’re imposing an idea—on others and yourself—that merely living as a farmer or laborer rather than an intellectual constitutes some inherently superior and nobler path.” “You’re pilfering convenient scraps from those old leftists’ mechanical ideologies to prop yourself up, then trying to contrast intellectuals en masse against workers and farmers to claim some hierarchy—that’s not just antiquated, it’s utterly absurd.” “This has nothing to do with discussing the historical particularities inherent to each class and social stratum.” “Whatever class or stratum one belongs to, isn’t a person’s value determined solely by their concrete lifestyle choices as an individual?” “This era has its own authentic path for intellectuals.” “That is precisely the path you ought to follow.” “There’s no need to retreat to the countryside and shoulder manure buckets.” “Your path amounts to nothing but escape.”

He pronounced this verdict. “The fact that you have a home to return to and land guaranteed for cultivation is what let such extravagant hopes sprout in you.” “Those without such conditions can’t possibly quit being intellectuals, however painful it might be to remain one.” “Setting aside for now the inner secret of your conversion and looking purely at the outcome—privileged with conditions granting freedom of choice, you’ve simply chosen the easier path.” “You ought to thank your stars for being born a farmer.”

“Well, I am grateful,” answered Shunsuke. He had said this without sarcasm, with nothing but sincerity. Even if not in Shimura’s intended sense, Shunsuke had been gradually deepening his gratitude for having been born into a farming family. “I think the path I’m attempting to take may unexpectedly connect to an old path—or rather, that it might be something liable to fall into an old path. But if we thought this so-called self-completion we’re suffering for could be achieved through the self-righteous ways of people in the past, there’d have been no reason for our current anguish from the start. There is no such thing as my conversion. I believe that the very fact I’m struggling to transform myself demonstrates that this cannot remain confined to self-righteousness. Well, even in times like these, shutting oneself away in a small shell and tending to one’s own life like a shade-grown flower—that wouldn’t necessarily be difficult. The means to console oneself in such a life—or rather, to cultivate it into something complete—are all amply prepared. And in past eras, such completion was deemed to be self-completion. However, nowadays even an individual’s life cannot be conceived from the very outset except in terms of its relationship to society. Self-completion cannot be sought except through the path of actively engaging with society—through transforming one’s will into social value. Even regarding the path of transforming personal will into social value—we already have some awareness of those self-centered approaches, and the means for self-criticism are available to us... So unless one completely abandons the effort to seek it, I believe those of us who persist need not fall into the self-righteousness of former times.”

“Self-completion?” “The way you phrase things piques my curiosity.” “It feels like I’m hearing youths from twenty years back... Are you diving into farm life with perfecting your own character as your primary goal?” “Given that, I’d like to ask what notions someone like you holds about rural issues.”

“Regarding intellectuals versus workers and farmers too—I don’t think about it the way you described earlier.” “That’s completely opposite.” “It’s not like I engaged in intellectual class theories or agrarian debates, measured my fate from them, then decided my course.” “For me, my own way of living has become a concrete problem—so in that sense, you’re right.” “To contrast my current self against some supposed ‘true intellectual path’ and make pronouncements—that’s precisely what seems absurd.” “As you said yourself—this isn’t about which social stratum I belong to. What matters is how to live concretely.” “Then you’d start bringing up positions and directions again—we’d just circle back to where we began. An endless loop.”

Shunsuke was gradually growing weary of the debate. He thought it was about time to end the conversation.

However, by that point, Shimura no longer even pretended to listen attentively. He seemed to be thinking of something else. By deliberately maintaining this pretense, he might have been showing contempt toward his companion. Silence lingered between them. After some time had passed, Shunsuke inquired: “How have you been getting on these days?”

People have all sorts of things to say about others’ lives—but what about your own? How exactly is that coming along? Setting aside such condemnatory feelings, he had wanted to ask about that. That’s right—asking about that was precisely what he had anticipated in his conversation with Shimura. Even before, the reason he had wanted—needed—to meet him was precisely that. The conversation up to now had revolved too exclusively around his own affairs.

“Me?” Shimura said coldly, “I’m not doing anything at all.” “Nothing worth telling people about.”

Could it be that for some reason he disliked talking about himself? However, his tone was listless. “Well, I’ve been back here for ten months now myself—in that time I’ve had my share of involvement with village matters here and there.” “My family would probably fall into what you might call the influential class in the village.” “My father is involved in various matters, and since I’m back here—considered one of the few intellectuals in the village—people come to consult me about all sorts of things.” “For instance, organizing a producers’ cooperative or establishing a vegetable market here.” “But truthfully, I simply can’t bring myself to throw my whole heart into that sort of work.” “In my current state, I’ve come down to their level—standing where they stand—and at best all I can do is offer advice or fill gaps in their knowledge.” “But what does any of that amount to?” “Moreover—what do producers’ cooperatives and vegetable markets amount to if left as mere institutions?” “People’s understanding of securing a penny or two more for workers’ daily lives must vary widely.” “If you just keep piling that up bit by bit—vaguely thinking things will somehow work out—how could anyone throw themselves into such work?” “The path ahead of what we’re doing lies too bare before us.” “Its limitations are clear before we even begin.” “What does it amount to!” “That’s what makes me skeptical.” “Yet even if we’re conceptually free—in actual practice, we can’t move beyond that point.”

Shimura’s words carried a sincere resonance. There was something different about his current tone—devoid of the mockery, ridicule, and anger that had permeated his earlier remarks, which had inevitably carried some pretense.

“One of these days, I’m thinking of going back to Tokyo,” he added. “Why do you think that’s meaningless? Even if it’s just that sort of work, isn’t it better to lend a hand than do nothing at all?” Shunsuke said earnestly. “Do you truly believe that?” Shimura said, looking directly at him. “Can you convince yourself of that without doubt?” “Well... I may be simple-minded, but—”

“Hmm…” Shimura appeared to ponder deeply. “Being able to convince yourself that way—well, you’re fortunate. You’ll manage to get by in your own way, I suppose.” He said this without any sarcasm in his tone. After that, the two fell silent once more.

Before long, Shimura stood up. “Well then, I’ll come again.”

While it seemed that things left unsaid and questions unasked were coiling densely in his chest, Shunsuke could not bring himself to stop him. Shunsuke escorted him out to the front and watched as Shimura slunk away into the darkness. In the room he returned to, purple smoke wafted quietly from the cigarette butts Shimura had left behind. Shunsuke felt an indescribable loneliness. And he sank into thought.

5

A letter arrived from Shinji Uehara of Aoyagi Village. "It has been some time since we last met, but how is your health? There are various matters I wish to discuss." The wording suggested something like: "Would you care to visit me around the day after tomorrow?" This occurred two days after Shimura’s visit. Having finished reading the letter and set it aside—the day being rainy—Kompei, who was at home, called from across,

“From Uehara?” he asked. Kompei had received it from the deliveryman and brought it to him.

“Yes.” “The other day when we went to Aoyagi—since it’d been ages since I last showed my face—we stopped by Uehara’s place. Then your situation came up, see—he asked what you meant to do about things. Well, Shun’s no child anymore. You must have your own thoughts on the matter. So I told him I’d leave it up to your judgment.”

He could sense his father’s meticulous consideration.

“Yeah, thanks,” Shunsuke said with a slight nod. The letter’s contents were something he already knew without needing to ask. Even without waiting for Uehara’s letter, the time had come when he would have to go and speak for himself. Now, with fresh emotion, he vividly recalled his long student life in Tokyo—from its very beginnings to the present—alive in both his heart and mind. There were several particularly vivid scenes that came to him, his recollections spreading out along the line connecting them. In the clamor of Tokyo Station’s platform on that morning ten years prior when he first stepped off the train, the heart of his younger self had trembled violently. His cheeks had flushed with excitement—a jumble of anticipation, joy, and fear. Even now, whenever he faced that photograph taken before his first departure from home—showing him in a smiling-patterned kasuri kimono and work trousers with tapered cuffs resembling monpe—he could not suppress the feeling of tears welling up. He could not help but recall the earnestness he had felt back then.

Everything he saw was blindingly bright, every sound a thunderous roar crashing over his head—and there, in the shadow of Shinji Uehara’s figure leading ahead, he found himself expelled out, clinging to that form as if for dear life.

He boarded a vehicle and had no idea where or how they traveled. They arrived at what appeared to be the inn where Uehara was staying. That day and the entire next day, Uehara took him around and guided him through Tokyo’s famous sights. Once he took up residence in another’s household, it would not be easy to come and go as he pleased.

The residence where he was to live belonged to the Okajima family—natives of his hometown who were said to have recently amassed wealth as new industrialists. It was through Uehara’s influence—an old acquaintance of Okajima—that Shunsuke had been installed there as a live-in student, creating an opportunity for this farmer’s son to pursue advanced education through sheer personal dedication. When imagining himself dwelling day and night within that place, in the innermost chamber of a vast mansion that felt like a dreamscape, his entire body trembled uncontrollably during his first formal audience with Master Okajima, conducted with Uehara as intermediary. He hunched his frame, avoided meeting the man’s gaze, and let his greeting die unformed in his mouth.

“Hmm, you’ve got quite a sturdy build.” In response to Okajima’s words, he didn’t know how to reply. Uehara, standing nearby with a mediating expression, said something. Into the heart of the boy he once was was carved, for the first time at that moment, a bitter lesson on navigating the world. He must endure any humiliation. He must not displease this man—or more precisely, the people this man represented. Okajima’s comment during that first audience—“You’ve got quite a sturdy build”—was no mere perfunctory remark; it should be called a statement of genuine significance. He was appraising Shunsuke. For him, who employed many people at a business company, this was a fitting act.

After moving in, what Shunsuke had initially worried about most was how he, a country boy, could quickly adapt to city life. It meant things like responding to guests with polished language and skillfully handling telephone calls. Yet this proved a groundless fear. Even if such things were necessary, they hardly mattered. Handling guests and phone calls fell to the maid. As befitted a country boy, he needed only serve with that "sturdy build" of his.

For the fourteen-year-old boy, this work as a live-in student in a grand household was by no means easy. It was equivalent to considerable labor. Mornings began at five o'clock year-round, and from then until evening he had almost no time to call his own. He would wipe down the wide engawa polished like a mirror, the long corridors, and even the staircase steps using either water from rinsing rice or bagged rice bran soaked in water. He swept clean the garden with its artificial hill, pond, arbor, and dimly lit groves of trees using a bamboo broom. The front garden stretching from the gate to the entrance received the same treatment. He drew bucket after bucket of water to sprinkle around the grounds. He scattered water across the doma and scrubbed it with a long-handled brush. No sooner had he finished cleaning and caught his breath than various errands awaited him. In this frugal household, even when sent on distant errands, no travel expenses were provided. He had to go by bicycle. For the first month or two, this proved his greatest challenge. The nerves accustomed to flat country roads required being stopped multiple times by traffic officers at intersections before adapting to weaving through vehicle streams, and necessitated being knocked down by cars approaching from behind and the side.

Therefore, he sometimes fell asleep during night classes. No matter how fiercely his love of learning burned, his body refused to comply. The school was a night junior high. This came as no small shock to Shunsuke’s expectations. Uehara too seemed taken aback—while there had been no explicit prior agreement about day or night schooling, when told they were funding a promising youth’s education through higher studies, anyone would naturally assume an ordinary student. Yet there existed a man serving as Okajima’s steward-secretary, and all arrangements had to follow his dictates. To this, Shunsuke naturally remained silent—as did even Uehara. Not wanting to succumb to disillusionment, he had no choice but to content himself with attending one of Tokyo’s rare night junior highs that granted equal standing to daytime schools.

Three years, then four, passed in the blink of an eye. Endure the shame. Do not displease others. There were times when he wanted to take this lesson folded into his chest and slam it down onto the ground with his own hands—moments he experienced repeatedly—but each time he somehow managed to endure. He persisted single-mindedly as a diligent, honest, overly cautious model student devoid of any charm.

The first time he violated that prohibition and found himself compelled to argue was when it came time to advance from middle school to a higher-level institution.

“You will enter the Commercial University’s specialized department,” said the steward who also served as secretary.

At that time he had withdrawn in silence, but turmoil still churned in Shunsuke’s chest. He was now a young man who could no longer refrain from probing matters deeply nor suppress his need for self-assertion. What had they said when he first came to this house? "As for which direction he himself chooses to take in the future—well naturally I’ve nothing to say about that." "He should pursue whatever path he prefers." "Just because I’ve taken care of him doesn’t mean I expect you to assume any responsibilities afterward." "The education of youths is what you might call my diversion."

The words that Okajima himself had spoken to Uehara still remained etched in his memory. Shunsuke was a student who had an interest in natural sciences. He had not yet been able to decide concretely whether it would be pure agricultural science or agricultural chemistry, but in any case, out of an awareness of his origins, he wanted to pursue academic study in that direction. And if I was going to endure the hardship of studying regardless, I wanted to proceed along the path from higher school to university.

When he met with the secretary for the second time and stated his aspirations，he looked rather surprised.

“You’re quite the oddball, aren’t you? Why go through six years of hardship when you could become fully capable in three? You want to go to university to improve your employment prospects, I suppose. But even if you graduate, there aren’t any decent positions nowadays. For someone like you, ever since entering middle school, your entire future—your whole life’s livelihood—has been securely guaranteed. Isn’t this an excellent deal—something you couldn’t even dream of?”

His understanding truly seemed incapable of progressing beyond that point. “Look at Mr. Onoe. Look at him.”

“Mr. Onoe?”

Shunsuke knew him. He was a young employee at the trading company run by Okajima, but he frequently visited Okajima’s private residence and appeared to maintain an especially close, personal connection with the family members. It could also be seen as him paying courtly visits to inquire after their welfare. During occasions like memorial services or celebratory events when crowds of guests gathered, he would invariably come, busy himself diligently, meddle even in private household matters, and call out “Hey, you! You there!”, directing Shunsuke with curt chin gestures.

“Mr. Onoe was once in the same circumstances as you,” said the steward-secretary. “When it comes to Mr. Onoe’s current position within the company, it’s quite something. University graduates who joined the same year can’t hold a candle to him.” Shunsuke recalled Onoe’s affected composure when ordering him about and the chill in those eyes. He thought Onoe hated him. He somehow sensed he understood the source of that hostility. But beyond this, Shunsuke simultaneously realized something new. Okajima’s patronage of students was, as the man himself put it, merely one of a wealthy man’s “hobbies”—albeit the most noble and socially meaningful among his various diversions. Yet this refined pastime served dual purposes: while providing spiritual satisfaction, it also conveniently cultivated lifelong subordinates for his affiliated companies—men who would submit to his every command without error. “You’re free to choose whichever path you wish in the future,” he had declared. But how could one expect boys dependent on Okajima’s charity—those who supposedly desired no such freedom—to prefer liberty over the constrained security of his patronage?

But Shunsuke loved that freedom. Even if his desire to study agricultural science and advance to university wasn’t absolute, the fact that the initial promise was being ignored without any reconsideration—the fact that his entire life’s course was being arbitrarily decided by others’ hands—proved an unbearable insult to his youth. This differed from other matters. Thus, at that moment, he broke his own oath for the first time.

During winter break, Uehara came up to Tokyo from his hometown. He stood between the secretary and Shunsuke and had various discussions. For the first time, Shunsuke displayed a stubborn single-mindedness that astonished people. He had even considered abandoning his studies and returning home, but through Uehara’s skillful intervention, he ultimately managed to enter higher school as desired. However, it was for humanities rather than sciences, and an unspoken agreement had been gently yet firmly established that after graduation, he would still have to follow the course others had decided—whether economics or law at university. Youth was no match for old cunning. When he thought about what was being said by Uehara to Okajima and the secretary—presented as his own will yet done without his knowledge—he felt dissatisfied, but there was nothing to do but remain silent.

However, in his third year after entering higher school, he finally clashed with his guardians once again. The direct cause was no more than a trivial matter, but resentments had been accumulating. This time, even Uehara’s backing held no sway. Even if they called him an ungrateful wretch, Shunsuke had no choice but to decisively sever all relations with the Okajima household himself from that day forth. Uehara was not a man of the stubbornness or single-mindedness typical of country folk, but rather one of both breadth and depth. Though Shunsuke had become like a dog that bites the hand of its master, Uehara did not cast him aside. He arranged a tutoring position for him, and thus Shunsuke was somehow able to continue his student life for a little over a year thereafter.

The psychology behind Shunsuke’s second act of defiance differed from the first; it was no simple matter. He felt that a burgeoning youthful spirit had already begun lifting its head anew within him. Even he, who had been forced into such abject humility, could not help but use his own spirit to break through his small, hard shell. He tried to devote his entire being without reservation to that free-spirited, soaring mind.

His misfortune lay in the fact that the moment he began sensing within himself that vigorous spirit—the privilege of youth—did not necessarily align with a time when he could perceive such overflowing abundance of that same spirit in the external world. The two timings diverged. Of course, no era or society had ever been entirely devoid of emerging new burgeoning spirits. They existed as an undercurrent. Yet there had been no state where the internal and external could resonate with each other. The era was undeniably stagnant. And when the external world stood thus, the youthful spirit—having retreated inward before tentatively reaching outward—could neither fully extend itself nor find any definite direction.

It was like something trying to blaze up fiercely only to meet dampness midway—not extinguished but forced to smolder resentfully. It resembled a current seeking yet finding no outlet. Until then, he had deliberately kept his eyes covered and ears plugged against the surrounding din. The undulating waves of society over recent years had inevitably reached even his academic surroundings. He had watched several students beside him abandon their studies mid-course to plunge willingly into those tides. Yet he responded by making his narrow world ever more fortified, retreating deeper within it. "Students in situations like mine should just follow conventional paths without looking sideways," he told himself. But matters couldn't possibly end there. This conscious effort to reinforce his confined world amounted precisely to admitting he sensed its contradictions and weaknesses against external pressures. Gradually his gaze began extending outward toward society. He started earnestly considering where to position himself and his work within this broader social framework, seriously pondering what placement would be proper.

He opened his awakened eyes and looked at society.

Moreover, at that time, society had undergone a major transformation over the past two or three years. Even if there existed principles upon which outward-turned youthful hearts could rely, this had become an era where they could not be attained without enduring countless doubts and hesitations. He could not help but suffer. He could not possibly become one of those students he had once seen off from right beside him. Alongside many other youths, Shunsuke too focused his thoughts on that state where the path of living as a truly social human being and surviving as an individual self might be unified without contradiction. Such a path would prove exceedingly rare in modern times—even if discovered, nearly impossible to tread. With an ache of envy, he contemplated the happiness of those born during society's younger days of development, who had lived and died in action. During that period, seeking unification of these two paths had not been so difficult. It was often the case that something like a career path chosen casually without mental exertion would objectively coincide with society's true path for its people. Yet with youthful ardor, he also came to ponder deeply the significance of living in this closed-off era. If one could discover that sought path in these times and live it through to the end—how much more splendid would that be compared to those envied people of earlier days?

He gazed at the group of students around him. The students he had until now unquestioningly regarded himself as part of would sometimes appear before his eyes as indescribably grotesque entities. Those exercising their minds about paths beyond career routes could by no means be called numerous. Those dubbed geniuses vied to push forward into scientific fields of study. The psychological foundation of these individuals was that of a breed indifferent to society. It must have been a reaction to that earlier period. The comprehensive understanding of society was deliberately rejected from the start; only one aspect of society—that which proved how technicians’ paths prospered, how they prospered regardless of society’s era—was extracted and understood.

The career path that brought prosperity to the path of technicians simultaneously fostered a flourishing of sports, dancing, Noh chants, haiku, calligraphy, and various other pursuits among students.

The sons of the Hirayama household where Shunsuke worked as a tutor—the two university students who were older brothers of the child he taught, along with their companions—were of a slightly different sort. They had little need to trouble themselves over career paths. They would appear in Ginza at least once a day dressed in suits, but during their commute to school, their attire merely replaced the jacket with a student uniform—paired with sharply creased trousers in varying hues, shoes in red or white with chocolate-brown patterns, and light-blue shirt sleeves that protruded conspicuously from their jacket cuffs. Many of them carried neither cloth-wrapped bundles nor bags, instead walking with large leather briefcases—the kind carried by lawyers and university professors—either hanging from their shoulders or tucked under their arms. From inside would emerge movie magazines and celebrity photo cards. At the Hirayama household, on weekends the parents would leave for their villa to rest and recuperate, leaving the house empty. On Saturday or Sunday nights, university students who had been drinking heavily somewhere would come tumbling into the house in a boisterous crowd, led by the son of this household. From the entrance down the long hallway to the sons’ room at the back, they clacked “Tera-tettette! Tora-tottotto!” and chanted “Tara-tatatta!” with their mouths keeping rhythm, swaying their hips and making exaggerated gestures as they danced their way into the room. There, they immediately went for beer again. Various foods were also ordered in. The record began to play. They danced. Meanwhile, others chanted naniwa-bushi ballads. Then mahjong began. When they grew tired, they would stretch out and begin talking boisterously while wiping around their noses with perfume-soaked colored handkerchiefs. Talk about the café. Talk about the women there. Talk about what they considered to be love.

The Hirayama household also had daughters of marriageable age who tried to take Shunsuke along on their sightseeing trips. He refused, but one out of every three times—particularly when the middle school student he tutored was going—he found himself unable to fully decline. Once, he overheard the daughter talking to someone who appeared to be a friend in a theater hallway. Even at a distance, his nerves stayed razor-sharp, sensing they were likely discussing him. “Who’s that?” “And who’s with him?” The friend asked in a breezy, flippant tone. “Oh, that’s our house tutor,” the daughter answered. On their return, after stopping at a department store to shop, she didn’t have her purchases delivered but instead made Shunsuke carry them. With him trailing behind like an attendant, she didn’t hail a vehicle right away but walked awhile through the crowded nighttime streets. Shunsuke remained too young to muster the composure that would let him dissolve into the crowd and laugh along at this utter farce.

The poor performance of the middle school student Shunsuke was teaching was truly something dreadful. It was not the kind of poor performance that could be dismissed as mere lack of study—the sort where one might say, “If only they applied themselves properly with disciplined methods, they’d improve.” He had absolutely no intention to learn; at the prestigious middle school he attended, that seemed to suffice; above all, with his pretentious cockiness—utterly devoid of humility toward people or things, lacking any sincerity—acquiring even middle-school-level knowledge proved impossible.

As summer finally grew hot and term exams approached, Shunsuke came to wait in the study room at his usual time one day. The boy was out. He returned much later, visibly seething and seemingly unable to contain his urge to vent frustration. The obligation to return from his outing for daily studies appeared to be irritating him. Without a word, his large frame dropped heavily into a cross-legged sit. He summoned the maid and demanded, "A glass of cold water." When he took the cup from the brought tray, a dangerous glint surfaced on his face. The maid sensed this but hovered uncertainly—the moment he shot her a sharp look, his cup-gripping hand lashed out, drenching her face before she could react. As she startled and tried to right her disheveled posture, a follow-up slap struck her wet cheek with a sharp crack. In a rushed tone he barked there was no ice in the water—hadn't he told her to bring it cold?—then roared in a cracking voice that she shouldn't have added ice chunks anyway, that she should've known without being told, all while calling her an imbecile. A school baseball player whose bulk belied his seventeen years—knees jutting high when seated, hands oddly elongated—he flicked his thick tongue over lips while ranting; staring into those murky eyes that felt nothing like a boy's, Shunsuke couldn't recognize anything human. The cup rolled near her knees as droplets kept falling from her unwiped face and kimono collar throughout the scolding.

The boy’s flawed nature was inseparably and fundamentally bound to what compelled him to such acts. To Shunsuke, the deep-seated stupidity of this youth and his brothers seemed rooted in something profoundly primordial. Merely contemplating it evoked a gloom tinged with fatalism. Shunsuke knew nothing of how the Hirayama family—their vast wealth society whispered about—had built their fortune. Yet he couldn’t escape the conviction that the process of amassing such riches within a single generation wasn’t wholly disconnected from the children’s idiocy; some tangible link must exist. This wasn’t some vague Buddhist karma, he thought, but a concrete relationship one could grasp and demonstrate.

What did it mean for them and their companions to be university students? Shunsuke could find no positive or proactive significance in it whatsoever—for society or for themselves. Among these youths, those who had come from rural areas particularly gripped his attention. They would soon graduate. Some might remain in Tokyo, but most would likely return to their hometowns. Coming from old established families or influential households in their regions, they would secure respectable positions there, forming a “solid” civilian leadership class. As university graduates, they would emerge as standard-bearers of regional cultural enlightenment. Indeed, small rural towns could be molded however two or three of them saw fit. Their standards would become those of local culture itself. The sheer mass of such accumulations must have been terrifying—the nation’s culture imperceptibly “lowered” to conform to their level, or perhaps “elevated.” In the end, whatever they could accept would flood forth to constitute a nation’s culture.

Shunsuke recalled those back in his countryside—people who had excellent minds and burned with a passion for learning, yet had ended up staying right there. They were now simply silently cultivating the land, planting, weeding, and harvesting.

Of course, not all the students around Shunsuke were like this. However, many of the intelligent and earnest ones had lost their vigor. They would envision beautiful dreams inevitable to youth. They would act. They would stumble. It was only through such stumbles that one might first fall into that state of listlessness, doubt, and despair—yet these present-day students had already sunk into it before ever acting at all. This could superficially be called reasonable. Every variety of dream had already been exhausted in the past. For it could not be said that attempts to realize those dreams had not already been thoroughly tested.

There were by no means few people who still retained both their vigor and dreams. They were principled people who, in all matters, could not rely solely on others’ experiences nor base their judgments solely thereon—people who could not rest without verifying things through their own actual deeds and confirming them with their very being. They earnestly pursued. From there, they began to harbor various demands in their role as modern intelligentsia. They harbored enthusiasm toward the path of realizing those demands. But as students, they would each soon venture out into society as professionals. The demands that had once remained confined to the realm of abstract thought now emerged as irresistible necessities arising from within the very fabric of their daily lives. To live truly, those various demands must be fulfilled. Moreover, when that time comes, can it truly be said there are many people who deeply consider both the realistic path to fulfilling those demands and their feasibility, then take action themselves?

Encountering formidable difficulties and, after groping their way through, they began with a passive approach. They tentatively abandoned the various demands of life they had previously held. And they tried to seek a path to sustain themselves in a place that had no direct connection to those demands. They deliberately split their own lives. When this manifested tangibly in form, it resulted in opposition, discrepancy, or complete irrelevance between one’s occupation and their “original work.” The lives expressed through their occupations were disregarded; no matter how dissatisfying their current state might be, they resigned themselves to it as unavoidable, leaving it untouched. Separate from this, another life expressed through their “original work” was built, and they sought to find their purpose in life solely there. Such another kind of life was nearly impossible in modern times. Because the job of putting food on the table demands every last drop of time and energy. However, people summoned superhuman courage and strived for that purpose.

One path for conscientious people in modern times must indeed lie there. But in this case, the two lives were left unrelated. At the very least, they did not share a relationship of strongly influencing each other. Was that really acceptable? Should not the two exist in an inseparable mutual relationship? Could there truly exist such a thing as original work that begins by abandoning the primary real demands of social life?

People agonized over this dual nature of their lives. Moreover, it was thought that within this intractable situation lay both the era’s distinctive hue and the particularity of the intelligentsia. Might not workers and farmers—people for whom production formed the core of their lives—fundamentally have found the path to resolving these contradictions more readily?

Shunsuke still did not fully grasp these matters. A state where his livelihood for survival became one with the path to sustain his entire being—this was what many people sought. Shunsuke too sought it. And gradually he came to consider abandoning his studies midway and returning home. After quietly contemplating his origins, past and present, his talents, and his future life as a member of the intelligentsia after graduation, he resolved to cast aside his recent ten years and venture forth anew along a different path. Even if weariness from his grueling student life and unbearable humiliation had simmered beneath the surface, they were not fundamental causes. He sought to obtain what he desired through such a transformation. He might have been avoiding difficulty and embracing ease. The conditions upon which he now tried to build his new life were not something he himself had painstakingly created—they had been given to him. Yet he thought this no cause for shame. He could side with neither group—neither those who claimed modern times lacked distinctive spirit or standards, who spoke of tomorrow’s uncertainty while voicing anxieties and doubts, yet in their personal lives stood upon commonplace norms, trusted in years ahead, and surprisingly drafted modest plans with apparent contentment; nor those who, before anything began, contemplated its end, affected a cleverness seeing through all eventualities, denied novelty by declaring everything old and tested, yet themselves took no action whatsoever, appearing to hold firm beliefs while truly possessing none.

VI

On Sunday, Shunsuke went to Shinji Uehara’s place. Since returning home, Shunsuke had met Uehara twice. In addition to the postcard informing him of today’s visit, he had once received a somewhat detailed letter. In any case, he had not yet deeply touched upon the matters that needed to be addressed.

In villages with deep-rooted traditions, it was hardly uncommon for all the households in the area to share some distant familial connection if one were to trace their lineages back through generations—and the Sugino family’s distant relation to the Ueharas was precisely such a case. The Uehara family had moved to Aoyagi Village about forty years ago.

Shinji Uehara was a man around fifty years old, his hair and mustache already half-grayed—a small-statured, lean man, yet he possessed an exceptionally vigorous demeanor. He was a landowner of about fifteen chōbu (approximately 14.88 hectares), had served as village mayor and been a prefectural assembly member, but in recent years had withdrawn entirely from such public offices and severed relations with local politics. For an old man residing in the countryside, he was a rare bibliophile who satisfied his scholarly inclinations through research on local folklore and regional customs. Because he was fairly well-known in that field, scholars from the capital would often visit him when they came to this region to study such matters.

When shown into the study, Uehara had just finished clearing away what appeared to be Japanese-bound historical documents spread across his desk and turned toward him.

“It’s grown hot. No changes, I trust?” he said with a composed smile, looking up. “My apologies for the long absence.” No matter how often he visited, the room never changed—merely taller stacks of accumulated books being the only difference. Shunsuke caught the aged scent ingrained in its walls. The atmosphere of this old man’s existence—who had grown increasingly reclusive of late, persisting in sitting within this dim chamber—seemed both to resist what Shunsuke had contemplated and sought to express along his way here, and conversely, to embrace it.

“How was your wheat this year?” “It seems it was generally quite good overall.”

“That’s good… The harvest here seems favorable too.” “Merely hearing of bountiful yields warms this old heart.” “Even one such as myself feels it.” “Though sunny weather would be welcome when transplanting comes.” “Given how relentlessly the sun’s shone since spring, everyone says rains will likely come right when needed.” “Hm.” Since he maintained proper seated posture without slouching, Shunsuke’s legs remained concealed. Uehara lowered his gaze toward his own knees and—

“I heard you injured your leg some time ago,” he asked. “Yes… It wasn’t anything serious,” he replied, realizing his father must have mentioned it. “Now then—what do you intend to do? What on earth are you—” After speaking quietly, Uehara proceeded into the main matter. “Since your letter stated you wanted to consider things further, I too had intended to wait, but Hirayama from Tokyo has been pressing quite insistently of late. He seems genuinely angry—we have our own circumstances to consider here. ‘I specifically requested that student based on your recommendation,’ he says, ‘but if you mean to withdraw, I’d have you inform us without delay—we must arrange a replacement.’ A perfectly reasonable position, I should think. ‘What do you intend to do?’—those were his words.”

Shunsuke began speaking haltingly of the matters he had been contemplating these past days. He wanted to convey his feelings to the other as faithfully as possible. He resolved to leave what he himself didn't understand as it stood unresolved, communicating only what he did grasp without ambiguity or deception—this was the mindset he maintained. As the conversation progressed, he sensed that even what had been unclear until now was gradually coming into focus. Simultaneously, he became aware that things which should have been clear remained unexpectedly beyond his grasp.

Throughout their conversation, what weighed heavily on his mind was not so much the difference in age as the difference in eras. Though the other party neither interrupted nor did anything but listen silently, the weight of that difference bore down heavily, and his words kept trailing off. He took care even when using certain words—those that had originated from social movements and had by then entered common parlance. He thought this because there was something in the nuances of language—a common quality among today’s youth that, regardless of the merits of what was being said, instinctively provoked repulsion in older people. It was not out of a desire to avoid being thought ill of. Because he wanted the person who had shown him kindness to grasp his true intentions, and because he himself wished to avoid debate. He took such pains in various ways.

“There was the matter with Mr. Okajima before—though it arose from my own willfulness—and even then you offered no reproach while arranging Mr. Hirayama’s assistance for me. To impose on your kindness yet again now fills me with deep remorse.”

He had truly felt that way as he spoke. The goodwill Uehara had shown over these ten years—his painstaking efforts to carve out a better path in life for him—had seeped into his very marrow. He contemplated the consequences of rendering that goodwill void. "Hmm... So that's how you're thinking... Though I wouldn't claim to fully grasp everything you've said." Uehara spoke with a severe expression. The deepened wrinkles made his face appear smaller, lending it a somber cast. Rather than displeasure, it was the countenance of one immersed in contemplation.

“It’s not that you find the Hirayama household unpleasant, is it?”

“No, that’s not the case.” “If that were so, there would be any number of other approaches,” Uehara murmured. “It isn’t that sort of feeling...” “An old-fashioned notion, but common enough—this sense of finding it unseemly to depend on others’ help, particularly to seek material assistance from the wealthy.” “What Arai Hakuseki called that old saying—‘A one-foot snake with a one-inch wound will have ten-inch wounds when it grows to ten feet.’”

“Such feelings were rather from the past.” “From your childhood.” “There’s nothing like that now.”

“You—Shimura... Katsuhiko Shimura.” “The one.” “Haven’t you met that man?” Suddenly, he changed the subject. “I just met him four or five days ago, for the first time in ages.”

“Hmm...” “Didn’t you keep in touch with him in Tokyo?” “When that person was still at school, I would meet him occasionally, but we weren’t particularly close.”

Why had he suddenly asked about Shimura? Had he doubted how closely Shunsuke had aligned himself with the ideology Shimura once held, and thus probed indirectly? And could it be that he was trying to find the key to understanding Shunsuke’s present self in some place other than what he had articulated? If that were the case, Shunsuke had no choice but to give a negative answer. It was not a matter of camouflage—that was indeed the case. “What do you think of that man?”

Uehara spoke a few words about Shimura’s recent circumstances. It served to prove that he had lost interest in everything, corroborating what Shunsuke had heard from the man’s own mouth. “Well… I don’t know much about that man’s circumstances over the past three or four years, and when I met him the other day, we didn’t delve into any in-depth discussions either.” Even as he spoke those words, when it came to Shimura, there was one matter he had been contemplating for some time now that he simply could not refrain from mentioning.

“...But if he’s like that now, there’s something I want to say.” “I thought about telling him directly but ended up missing the chance—why doesn’t he try to start anew?” “When the path following the course one has taken until now becomes closed off, does that mean there’s no other way? Of course, even someone like me without his past can understand his difficult position.” “For someone who stood upon a particular ideological position to act and inevitably faced setbacks, attempting to rise again—no matter what path they take hereafter—is no easy matter. It’s not something that can be dismissed as simple by those watching from the sidelines.” “If we let Mr. Shimura speak, he’d likely say now is the time to correct one’s posture, but going in circles in the realm of the mind will lead nowhere no matter how much time passes.” “If you try to settle everything from one to ten in your mind first—deciding exactly what’s right—before acting, you’ll never accomplish anything no matter how long you wait. But of course Mr. Shimura knows this well, so he must have tried various things himself, just as he says.” “But no matter what he does, it feels pointless—his critical eye activates, he sees right through what he’s doing, loses all interest and enthusiasm, and quits.”

I believe this is truly a significant matter. While one could first argue that this so-called critical eye is mistaken itself, what I sense runs deeper than that. It’s the fear that people have become incapable of loving life. Pitiful beings who can’t sincerely feel joy or sorrow, anger or hatred toward life’s beauty and ugliness, its richness and poverty. This matters most in being human. Only through such love can one live actively. By nurturing this love through daily life, we enrich our existence in turn. Even strength to rise after failure springs from this source. This isn’t separate from theories or ideologies. Though ultimately connected, many live with these elements split or incomplete... Take Mr. Shimura—though he’s like that now, I question whether even his past actions stemmed from deep love for people and living. Without such roots, ideologies rejecting conceptual thought still turn abstract. Losing one’s guiding philosophy naturally leads to his current state. ...Those among us after Shimura’s generation with emotional numbness might be harder to cure. ...Such unfeeling people multiply daily. This can’t be dismissed as mere lack of vitality. It’s a modern malady. Its causes are likely complex. Rooted in societal foundations... Beyond my current understanding. Yet I refuse to become such a person. ...In Tokyo, I felt myself sliding unwittingly toward that abyss.

“Such things have become one of the major reasons behind my current decision.” Shunsuke no longer had the capacity to extend the same meticulous consideration toward his interlocutor as he had initially. “First and foremost, one needs a life in which they can truly feel themselves living—and if that foundation exists, then no matter what form it takes, I believe a path will open from there.” "I believe one must first be faithful to oneself." “Otherwise, I don’t think I could ever feel that I’m taking responsibility for whatever results may come.”

Uehara listened in silence without so much as a twitch. He stared fixedly at Shunsuke. And he said.

“One cannot be convinced by others’ experiences alone.” “Others’ experiences remain ultimately others’ experiences.” “One cannot accept anything unless they personally verify each matter.” “Such sentiments indeed deserve respect.” “Even these basic sentiments have been gradually diminishing of late.” “And you mean to actually act upon these thoughts beyond mere sentiment?” “Compared to those like Shimura… or our Tetsuzo, your proactive stance toward living alone makes you commendable.” “Regardless of directionality.” “Yet even while conceding this point, I still must question your chosen path.”

“How is Tetsuzo-san doing now? I haven’t heard any news about him lately,” Shunsuke asked, even though it interrupted the flow of conversation. When he spoke Tetsuzo’s name, his tone had a hint of hesitation, an awkwardness in his delivery. However, Uehara did not attempt to answer the question and continued. “Even if you claim that others’ experiences cannot satisfy you, you cannot disregard the causes that produced those results—and if there is but one cause, you must inevitably acknowledge in advance that you will arrive at the same outcomes others have experienced. You cannot afford not to believe in history. To state my conclusion, I cannot simply agree to your return to the countryside—to farmer’s work—in pursuit of what you call a new life, a life of substance.”

His tone carried what could be described as an interrogative edge. Although he hadn’t had many opportunities to speak with him, this was the first time Shunsuke had seen Uehara speak in such an impassioned tone. Needless to say, this was also the first time he had heard such content from him. “Your conversion, your so-called implementation—these aren’t grounded in any clear theory or ideological position.” “Rather, you intend to seek such things from within your life going forward.” “Or rather, it is precisely there that I believe your proactive and passive aspects lie—that the contradiction exists.” “As far as you alone are concerned, you are undoubtedly proactive.” “But when you—as you are—are viewed within the broader society, are you truly so?” “I’m saying the same thing Shimura said.” “If Shimura or I were to say something—though we hold no influence—disregard who said it and consider only the content itself carefully.”

“You return to today’s rural villages—partly cultivating your own land, partly tenant farming just to barely get by—coming back to your parents’ house—what exactly do you intend to achieve? “Now, farming work could still be learned even at this stage. “You could at least feed yourself. “Though hardships remain, you might manage to get by without feeling the same discontent as some city salaryman would. “But that alone isn’t your aim, nor is restoring your family to its former glory your purpose either. “Your gaze turns both inward and outward—no, rather, that very duality forms your starting point. “In that outward-facing movement—what precisely can you accomplish? “I’m neither underestimating you nor disparaging your capabilities. “Even granted you possess keen intellect, courage, and sound methods—nothing can be achieved through solitary effort alone. “Can you truly secure collaborators? “Do you—you who’ve returned—truly comprehend the rural community you’ve immersed yourself within? “You’d say it’s precisely this ignorance that brought you back—but when understanding comes, will that not also be when former dreams and hopes are lost? “Oh, you might manage well enough—leading the village youth group in younger years, working like some model farmer in old age—” “But look at me—look at me!”

He said harshly, as if scolding.

“I’m a landlord.” “In this region, I’m what you’d call a mid-tier landlord.” “Of the land I inherited from my parents, I’ve lost about a quarter during my time.” “Now the Trust Company acts as landlord in my stead—the tenant farmers who used to work my land now answer to the company as their master.” “I haven’t just lost holdings—I’ve actually expanded some too.” “My debts now stand over ten thousand yen.” “Most of that’s owed to the Kangyo Bank and Trust Company.” “Autumn installment repayments at five and a half to six percent annual interest.” “Sooner or later, more of what I still hold will fall to the company too.” “Here I am talking like it’s someone else’s problem, sitting idle with folded arms waiting for that day.” “Thrashing about now would change nothing.” “Just sink my own feet deeper into the mud.”

“Was I undisciplined in some way? Was I an idler? Though you couldn’t even jokingly call me skilled at profit-making, neither was I some exceptional landlord different from the rest. If there was any difference at all, it was that long before the endless landlord-tenant disputes began—from the late Taisho era up to recent years—I practiced benevolent paternalism, keeping my tenant fees slightly lower than others’. Just a little—truly just a little. Yet even that small concession had certain fellow landlords carping—claiming I was putting on airs of novelty for its own sake, or attributing it to ambitions of running for the prefectural assembly. They even dragged in my uncharacteristic book-reading habits, berating me endlessly with their spiteful remarks. And now they keep saying, ‘Look at Uehara—down-and-out now, all because of that!’ But what exactly are these people? They’re landlords like me, yet simultaneously shareholders in the Trust Company and local banks I borrow from. Tied up with all sorts of other interests besides—those who’ve avoided ruin since the old days are bound to be something more than mere landlords. If you say they laugh at me for failing to become such a thing, then I can understand that argument.”

“I don’t squander money on political uproars like your grandfather did either… From taxes down to all land-related expenses—these alone likely devour nearly half a landlord’s income.” “Then there’s children’s education costs.” “Girls might manage with just girls’ schools, but boys need vocational schools or universities.” “How much do you suppose that runs per head?” “Most debts for landlords at my level come from these education costs—but what becomes of them after graduation?” “They must still consider it normal to keep draining the land dry long after graduating.” “And this isn’t just landlords—suppose someone falls gravely ill?” “My late grandmother’s medical bills cost fifty bales’ worth of rice.” “Then there’s weddings, funerals—every ceremonial occasion demands expenses matching customs and family status.” “Absurd outlays townsfolk wouldn’t fathom.” “…Rice comes in.” “You take it to the agricultural co-op and swap for rice coupons.” “But when selling season hits, there’s no holding coupons till your deposited rice sells.” “There’s this official price under the Rice Control Law.” “They convert it to cash under minimum terms—twenty percent docked—passing it straight from hand to hand.” “When settlement time comes, barely anything remains.” “Then some whopping big expense crops up there—no choice but to meddle with land again.” “With our cramped holdings—luck or curse—even unprofitable plots sell hereabouts.”

He sipped his tea. Then he continued. He had much pent up in his chest. Yet he rarely found those to whom he could pour it out. Shunsuke sensed himself being regarded as such a listener. Then warmth swelled in Shunsuke’s breast. “...It isn’t only tenant farmers who suffer.” “Landlords too know hardship.” “A dullard like myself only began looking beyond my own affairs—considering society’s workings—when middle-aged at last.” “Not from witnessing others’ misfortunes, mind you, but goaded by my household’s dwindling coffers.” “I wondered—might things be set aright?” “Sought some path for the whole village’s renewal.” “When debts mount thus endlessly—” “When harvests fetch such meager prices—” “This transcends mere individual virtue or vice.” “If causes lurk beyond—those I’d root out; if even my sort might act—that’s what I resolved.”

“It was after that period that I began involving myself with various public organizations—starting with the county assembly, then moving to the prefectural assembly, becoming an officer of the prefectural credit union, even serving as village mayor—all without knowing my proper place.” “Looking back now, it’s enough to make me break into a cold sweat.” “I simply can’t fathom it anymore.” “It wasn’t like I’d read books and understood theory, nor did I have any real experience.” “All I possessed was this fervent, earnest desire to do something—anything—and I believed that through persistent effort, even what I didn’t understand would gradually become clear.” “In other words, I suppose you could say I resembled what you are now.” “You’ve read so many more books than I had back then that there’s no comparison.” “Yet society itself has grown incomparably more complex than it was in our time.” “You still lack any social theory to anchor yourself.” “So you’d be throwing yourself into society’s turbulent waves armed with nothing but sincerity—whether you sink or swim remains unknown to either of us... Well, I tried that too.” “I tried with all my might.” “Kept at it for eighteen solid years.” “The things I didn’t understand did gradually become clearer.” “But the more I understood, the more things I realized I didn’t comprehend—that’s how understanding works.” “This fundamentally stems from our inability to implement what we’ve understood—the growing awareness of that vast chasm between knowledge and action creates such an impression.”

“When I participated in county and prefectural assemblies and engaged in local politics, I didn’t belong to either the Rikken Seiyūkai or Kenseikai parties. I aimed to think matters through myself and learn anew through both the process of implementing those thoughts and their outcomes. What I cultivated this way couldn’t possibly contain falsehoods. I can’t say I lacked foundations—I relied on society’s sound common sense, so to speak. I believed in sound common sense’s ultimate triumph. Though I wasn’t wholly ignorant that politics meant factional struggles, I wanted no constraints and thought that standing upon society’s majority common sense meant even alone I could act. Sound common sense wouldn’t obscure social justice—social justice might lie precisely beyond sound common sense. Yet common sense isn’t fixed; its elevation would align it with social justice. Grounding ourselves in today’s common sense would bring no harm first. Then what is social justice? I’d avoided pursuing that question to its end—it wasn’t that I considered it then returned to present common sense. That must have been my shortcoming. What treatment did my sound common sense face in real politics? Take a nearby example—those rice coupons I mentioned earlier. They entrust rice to industrial associations for timely sale. Tenant farmers have no rice to entrust—they haul one or two bales on their backs to sell, while independent farmers producing slightly more up through landlords mostly entrust theirs.”

“The opportune time to sell gets relayed from the prefectural association down to the village association.” “But you can’t unload everything at once.” “Yet without fail, they sell when prices haven’t risen much yet but are sure to climb higher—the paltry stocks entrusted by smallholders who’ve barely stored any.” “The large landlords’ shares get sold when prices peak.” “Wouldn’t any reasonable person call this unfair?” “Shouldn’t it precisely be sold in the exact opposite manner?” “That’s why I raised hell about it.” “But what got doubted and mocked was my ‘common sense’.”

Uehara was a landlord. And essentially a mid-tier one at that. "It's not like he was suffering losses himself, so why get so worked up? What a strange fellow," was essentially what they were saying.

If I were to list them all, there’d be no end to it. One instance speaks for all. “I first had to battle this overturned ‘common sense’ of theirs.”

“For a long time I continued my solitary, powerless struggle.” “Gradually I began surveying my surroundings.” “I started seeking collaborators.” “But such people couldn’t be found.” “Even those who might have become collaborators turned their backs on me with increasing speed during that time—due to certain circumstances.” “Certain circumstances—namely that the forces which later formed the Proletarian Party’s foundation were finally beginning to rise.” “I wasn’t an ally of these new forces.” “My common sense criticized them just as it had criticized landlord groups under established parties.” “But needless to say, natural differences emerged between myself and those hardening into fierce opposition against these new forces.” “I became caught between these two powers.” “Neither side spoke well of me.” “My common sense ultimately failed to coalesce into political force.” “Behind me as councilman were constituents of course.” “But they seemed nothing but the most apathetic among all voters to me.”

Finally, the time for my retirement came, but what prompted it was a major dispute between landlords and tenant farmers. “I stood between them as a mediator and worked tirelessly.” “I told representatives from both sides: ‘Leave it to me—I’ll take responsibility.’” “Yet the solution I’d labored over ultimately pleased neither party.” “The proposal was rejected.” “Because they’d entrusted me with mediation alone, I was blamed for letting victory slip through their fingers.” “It was utterly ruinous.” “Since this was called mediation, all I broke my heart over was trying to find a path where both sides could stand—a road of coexistence and mutual prosperity.” “I asked them to compromise.” “And it failed.” “But when I consider it now—wasn’t I always a mediator from the very beginning?” Wasn’t being a mediator my very essence?

With that as the final straw, I withdrew from all public duties entirely. What would become of the villages from now on? I simply couldn't fathom it. I was merely sitting there in silence, watching. I too was growing more confined each year. But even if we complained about hardships, we were still in a different class from tenant farmers. We sent our children to university, spent a fortune on our daughters' weddings, dealt with illnesses and hospital stays—and then complained about hardships. But that wasn't the case—I thought that true hardships also gradually came with the years. The children I had sent to school had all turned out to be good-for-nothings, and the land was disappearing too. But what did that matter? Even when the hardships of being landless and debt-ridden came upon us, that was merely saying we'd become equal to the ordinary villagers, wasn't it? "Well, I suppose I'll just let things take their course," he mused resignedly.

Shunsuke considered Uehara as a landlord who was different from others—this was something he had come to know through rumors. The tenant fees for his land were incomparably low compared to those in neighboring areas. Moreover, there was nothing that tenant farmers could not request—whether deductions for poor harvests or repair costs for land and irrigation. At first, they eagerly made demands taking full advantage of the situation, but ultimately grew so uneasy about it that it became unsettling. When there was a tenant farmer who had managed to scrape together a small sum and desired to make the land they cultivated their own, Uehara readily relinquished the land—even at an unthinkably low price. He appeared to be charging ahead as if he had cast something aside.

The fact that Uehara had recently been devoting himself to the study of folklore and local customs also made Shunsuke consider this with fresh interest.

That was likely an escape. Yet for a rural landlord who had withdrawn from the surface of political and social life, there ought to have been countless other ways to occupy his time. Even if his desire to satisfy intellectual curiosity were quite lofty, other means should have sufficed.

His choice was not accidental, and in the fact that he, having passed fifty, had begun devoting himself to such studies, there seemed to be something sorrowful. It appeared to stem from a deep love for local people's lives. He had tried to pour this love of his broadly into people's present-day existence. When this effort ended in failure, his gaze turned toward the past. In examining each folk custom, tradition, language, legend, and belief born in bygone eras and passed down to the present, he sought some measure of solace. However thoroughly one might have investigated the material relations underlying those old folkways and legends, precisely because such inquiries failed to stir anyone's awareness of contemporary interests, even those who had once denounced him now dismissed him as merely an eccentric landlord and let him be—and he too could remain untroubled. He might have finally begun detesting his very existence as a landlord. He may have foreseen himself advancing down this path until he eventually lost his homeland. Within his wholehearted devotion to these studies there may well have lain a love for his native soil—destined to vanish—choking in its depths.

“You aren’t me.” “But you may yet become me.” “Forgive my bluntness—you must realize how uncertain it is how far you can truly break free from me.” “Compared to my era—even if difficult now—it won’t grow easier hereafter.” “If someone strives single-mindedly seeking harmony between inner and outer worlds only to have it shattered once—then becoming utterly nonchalant afterward and chasing solely after personal gain—that’s another matter entirely.” “Such people exist.” “Suppose it were all just a youthful dream.” “If one could fully become that way—in some sense it might even bring happiness—but detaching oneself so completely proves difficult.” Even if one tried rousing their strength anew toward that former path after such a stumble—it felt as though life’s very essence had been siphoned away somewhere—rendering all efforts futile. What was lost this way seemed beyond recovery. The result became becoming someone like me or Shimura.

“Then what on earth do you suggest we should do, Uncle? Then isn’t the form I’m pursuing just a secondary concern? Doesn’t it mean that our very act of having developed such demands—of having our hearts set ablaze by them—is considered wrong or unfortunate? Whether it’s unfortunate or not—I don’t know. That’s beside the point. If one could manage without them, that would be one thing—but once you’ve come to possess them, there’s no helping it. To persist in those demands, there must be various forms to take. No matter which path one chooses, there will be both setbacks and achievements. In times like these, I understand that stumbling even once might very well be the end…… But even so, I don’t mind. For the consequences arising from my own actions, I alone must bear responsibility. While I spoke critically of Mr. Shimura earlier, I also feel that even if he were to go on living like an empty shell hereafter, I must accept it as such and silently see him off.”

Uehara did not answer. He knew well that his words lacked power to convince the young man. The weakness and ambiguity of his persuasion stemmed from lacking confidence in its substance. Even after expending many words, in the end he had simply wanted to say this: “Do not entertain unnecessary thoughts. Do not look away. Steadfastly follow the path you have walked until now—the common path of the secular world.” He did not state it explicitly. He could not say it. Because he detested such a path himself. He did not consider his current life of living apart from society as suffering. He did not regret the past that had brought about such a present. Moreover, to those who would come after him, he wanted to recommend taking society’s safe, well-trodden path if at all possible.

“……When I first arranged your placement at the Okajima household, I hadn’t deeply considered your future prospects.” “To leave a bright child who loved learning buried in this remote countryside seemed both pitiable and wasteful.” “My sole thought was to somehow open an academic path for you.” “My youthful indebtedness to your grandfather undoubtedly fueled these sentiments.” “But when you entered adolescence, I could no longer remain indifferent—for I had witnessed how the turbulent times were sweeping up even the youths around me.” “Shimura’s father and I maintained ties over years, yet when I learned his son Tetsuzo had gone astray—abandoning school to live with some peculiar woman—weariness overwhelmed me as though aged decades overnight.” “Tetsuzo had been precisely the most promising among them all.” “I found myself compelled to think of you.” “I actively desired for you to walk a path scorned by Shimura and Tetsuzo—the way of conventional society, even vulgar materialism.” “To mind the moods of your benefactors; fixate on academic rankings; prepare solely for employment; make salary raises and promotions life’s purpose after joining a company.” “You’d deem this intolerable insult—yet I deliberately willed you to become such a man.”

“Up until now—even in today’s conversation with you—this desire of mine for you to become such a person had been at work. That would bring your family happiness, and I thought it might discharge my responsibility for having sent you off to Tokyo. I do have such tendencies... Yet fortunately, you did not become what I had hoped. While outwardly expressing those hopes, deep within I was expecting—no, wishing—for you to fiercely resist someone like me. Had you truly become the sort of person I described, I would have outwardly rejoiced while secretly despising you in my heart. But you resisted. You rebelled against Okajima, against Hirayama, against me—against everything, even your own past ten years. You possess a heart that loves truth. You’re the sort who cannot casually dismiss doubts once they take root in your mind—a man incapable of self-deception. Nothing has brought me greater joy than discovering this aspect of you through this opportunity. It’s the blood. Truly, it’s the blood. These are qualities the Sugino family has inherited through generations. Grandfather Iyozō, Father Kompei—they’re all stubborn in that regard...”

Uehara gradually grew excited; youthful blood rose to his face. Shunsuke stared at the old man in surprise.

“Speaking of blood—but what about that Tetsuzo fellow?”

When he said this, a pained expression—frail and devoid of resolve—suddenly surfaced on the old man’s face. The sudden transformation from what had even seemed a radiant countenance startled Shunsuke anew. He no longer avoided speaking his son’s name—one he had evaded uttering many times before.

“You all have it good.” “Whether it’s you or Shimura, at least you’re both striving to gain some kind of conviction.” “You possess the vigor to risk your very bodies in experimentation.” “The Shimura of today is precisely as you see him.” “Yet he likely burned with greater intensity than any of you and acted more fiercely.” “As a reaction to that, he’s now like that... But what about that Tetsuzo fellow of mine!” “That one’s been this way from the very start.” “Putting on airs as if he never had the energy or interest to try anything since birth... dismissing everything as trivial without even attempting it.” “Utterly lifeless!... Acting like he’s never once known that youthful restlessness—that leaping urge to act, that inability to sit still without doing something!” “Of course he’s no fool—he grasps things well enough.” “What a repulsive creature he’s become.” “Is that too supposed to be my blood?” “...They’ve simply seen and heard too much—lost all capacity for genuine surprise or admiration.”

Shunsuke had no intention of probing deeply into Tetsuzo. They remained silent for some time.

After a while, the old man lowered his voice and said. “Those sorts must need to truly suffer to earn their bread.” “But that time will come sooner or later.” “When the tree a mistletoe clings to withers, the mistletoe too must wither.” “And if even then it refuses to perish, then against its will it must stir itself and take root elsewhere.”

The old man even appeared to be trembling from excitement. His wide-open eyes seemed glistening with tears. Shunsuke tried to speak but couldn’t, and looked at the old man with a heartfelt gaze. Then into Shunsuke’s heart welled up a tangled surge of inexpressible affection for this old man—a tender protectiveness, reverence, and gratitude all at once. He felt an impulse to cradle in his own hands the old man’s small face—the emaciated hands resting on slender knees, the pure white hair at his temples, the thick wrinkles of hardship carved into his forehead, and the gentle creases at the corners of his eyes that seemed perpetually smiling.

Seven

Busy days streamed over Shunsuke. He now pressed forward into his new life without hesitation. Though his awkward presence among the people sometimes made him glance around restlessly, he never felt daunted. He now found himself in a state of humility unlike any he had ever known. He might even have been called devout. He had to learn farming’s fundamentals above all else. The realization of dreams brimming with every hope would come after that. To achieve this, he first needed to cast off his former self. He would strip away everything acquired during ten years of city life—piece by piece—until reaching a state where none could detect any trace of that past in him, no matter where he went or who saw him. Not only in appearance, but even his way of perceiving things and his preferences would wholly become those of farmers. Urban elements did not inherently conflict with rural ones in every aspect, nor were they all necessarily things to reject. Yet he had come to feel that to fully assimilate with the soil-tilling farmers, he first needed to comprehensively negate them all. While sensing in this necessity to view urban and rural elements as opposing forces the root of modernity’s great misfortune, he—

When he visited Uehara and candidly spoke his mind, the ambiguity and hesitation that had lingered until then vanished. Through articulating his thoughts to others, there were aspects where understanding came to him for the first time and he gained conviction.

On the night he returned from Uehara, he discussed the same matter with his father.

“How did things go at Mr. Uehara’s place?” Kompei asked hesitantly one night when he relaxed before bed. The mother and sisters were also present there. “Yes, I had a long talk with Mr. Uehara today—the first time in ages.” The content of the conversation was difficult for him to convey. It was not necessarily about the details of today’s discussion; rather, Shunsuke spoke about matters he had long needed to address when an appropriate opportunity arose. He announced his decision. “I want to quit school and stay home to farm,” he said.

“At this late stage, wanting to change my path might look like defeat—like weakness—but to me that doesn’t matter. I refuse to let what I’ve felt and questioned go unexamined—to push them aside and leave them unresolved.” Shunsuke sensed an even greater chasm of age and era between himself and his father than with Uehara. This came from his father’s life lacking Uehara’s social breadth. That made it hard to speak openly. However carefully he phrased things, he couldn’t avoid using words unfamiliar to his father’s ears. Articulating the subtle workings of his heart felt nearly impossible. Yet part of him strongly believed no forced explanation was needed. He intuited that despite feeling this greater generational divide with his father compared to Uehara, his father would grasp his essence more directly than Uehara ever could. Without needing words, he felt certain his father would understand him better than any contemporary.

Kompei listened in silence. After some time had passed, “It ain’t… feelin’ sorry for your old man still workin’ or somethin’ like that…?” “That’s not the case.” “Yeah.” He nodded, then began speaking in fragments.

“I won’t say anything about it.” “Do whatever you want with your life.” “From that first day you left for Tokyo, I vowed never to interfere.” “Not that I could’ve told you anything worth hearing—a schooled man like you.” “A man’s got his born limits—no meddlin’ from others can make him rise beyond ’em.” “Long as he keeps his heart true and stays steady when it counts, one path’s as good as another.” “What’s planted in his nature will sprout in time.” “Makes no difference whether you graduate to some office job or come home plowin’ fields.” “When you first went off studyin’, folks said I was cold-hearted—Uehara himself called it strange—but my mind then’s my mind now you’re back.” “…Though truth told, there was a time I hoped you’d finish university—become what folks call a success.” “Your mother kept at me about it—but really ’twas your grandfather’s doin’.” “Our grandfather served this community wide and proper.” “Me? I turned out different.” “But none of that signifies now.” “Farm if farming pleases you.” “That’s choice enough.” “At your age—book-learned too—muckin’ through paddies won’t come easy… but you’ll manage.” “Hardship there is… but joys too.” “You’ve seen our ways these three months past—know what it means.” “Our lands hold four tan combined—homestead plots and fields—four tan rice paddies… plus three tan more we rent out.”

“Compared to farmers round these parts, we’re doing well enough.” “...If that’s how it stands, those ten years can’t be called some wasted sidetrack.” “Might’ve been a detour, sure—but not wasted.” “Truth is, there’s no such thing as wasted time.” “What you’ve seen, heard, done—it’ll stir awake in you someday.” “Even if you walk a different road entirely—that counts for something.” “That’s how life goes.” “No call to fret.”

Shunsuke felt he must say something in response. But in that moment, he could not speak. The mother and sisters too, throughout the two men's conversation, kept utterly silent without interjecting a word. The air within the room lay hushed yet carried a warmth that seeped into the heart.

The size of insects flying in from the open veranda, drawn to the light, had reached a point where they startled people. The hum of insects circling the light made the deepening night palpable. Kompei stood up.

The season was approaching the most crucial time of year for farming households. Soon they would need to channel water into the rice paddies. Rain was awaited with desperate longing. Particular caution had to be paid during this season to winds arising over the southwestern seas. This was because the tobacco leaves stood immediately before reaching their optimal ripeness.

One day in June, a neatly dressed man in his forties with a mustache beneath his nose came visiting, accompanied by two men in Western suits. Kompei welcomed them as if he had been eagerly awaiting their arrival for some time. Before exchanging initial greetings, Shunsuke had realized that he was Matsukawa, the head of the village’s tobacco growers’ association, and that the men in Western clothes were Monopoly Bureau officials. They had come for the inspection of the tobacco leaves.

“On this sweltering day, thank you for making the long journey here.” Kompei delivered a formal greeting. The three men sat leaning against the veranda and rested for a while. Jun came out holding a tea tray with a dish heaped with biscuits coated in red and white sugar. They sipped the tea, but no one touched the sweets. The Monopoly Bureau official glanced through the documents in his briefcase while fluttering his folding fan with excessive vigor. Even when Kompei said something, they barely responded. It couldn’t help but appear as if they were deliberately acting that way.

Kompei guided the group to the mountain tobacco field. Shunsuke followed behind. “It certainly does blaze down every day.” Leading the way while speaking, Kompei repeatedly wiped his bald head and face with a hand towel folded several times over. Shunsuke could see fresh beads of sweat welling up immediately after each wipe. Kompei’s thoroughly bald, round head sprouted a few downy hairs that felt fuzzy like baby fuzz—even these appeared reddened as if scorched. The gentle narrow slope leading to the mountain fields lay thick with white dust that made a heavy flapping sound at each step, like women dragging rubber-soled sandals. The dust soiled their shoes and trousers. Watching his elderly father—meticulously attentive to avoid displeasing others, smiling needlessly—Shunsuke felt an inexplicable wretched sorrow. He had never seen Kompei like this before.

The Monopoly Bureau officials stood at one corner of the tobacco field and gazed steadily around. “This is Plot No. 1 right?” he said pointing. “Yes” Kompei answered. “What’s the sebu measurement?” “Yes it’s one sebu.” The inspector measured the furrow width with a measuring tape. The number of plants could already be determined just from that but he proceeded to meticulously count each and every one. He did the same for each plot. Then they came to Plot No. 8. “This is the reserve plot right?”

“Yes, that’s correct.” The number of plants was counted. That was fifty plants.

The younger inspector who had been handling the inspection went over to where his colleague stood some distance away. The inspection must have concluded by now. Shunsuke, who had been observing, felt an unaccountable sense of relief. The two inspectors conversed briefly in low voices. Being separated and speaking in whispers made their words inaudible to those waiting.

Before long, the younger inspector returned to Kompei. And he said, “Uproot and discard twenty plants.” “From Plot No. 8.” It was low but commanding in tone. “What?”

As if unable to comprehend, Kompei looked up at the inspector’s face. “Uproot them. Twenty plants.”

Still, there was no expression in either his voice or face. His eyes did not look toward Kompei; with his chin, he gestured toward Plot No. 8 right at his feet. "Then the reserve would be..." "The reserve is thirty plants." "But the reserve was supposed to be permitted up to fifty plants." Kompei protested gently. "No—thirty." "No... With permission from the authorities stating thirty to fifty plants were acceptable, we’ve been allowed to cultivate up to fifty every year until now..."

Kompei protested desperately yet meekly while shooting a fleeting glance toward the side a short distance away. There stood Matsukawa. Kompei sought help. Matsukawa, however, pretended not to notice and stood motionless. “The regulation states between thirty and fifty plants. However, in practice, thirty plants as the minimum is what’s commonly standard everywhere. The fifty-plant allowance merely means that permitting up to fifty is possible; this provision exists solely for exceptional circumstances. In other words, it’s an exception. Now, do you understand?”

The fact that the dismissive speaker was a young man not yet thirty, while the one being addressed appeared old enough to be his father, rendered the contrast between the two men in this situation starkly vivid. Kompei stood silent and motionless, his gaze fixed on the tobacco field before him where symmetrically paired leaves spread their lush beauty across the ochre-hued slope.

“If you understand, then uproot them. Hurry up,” urged the inspector. “I’ve been growing tobacco for many years now. We’ve managed this way every year until now…,” Kompei muttered as if talking to himself, unable to resign himself fully, and turned once more toward the inspector. With hands holding a folded hand towel lowered to his knees, he forced a smile, “Please, sir… Just this once. We’ve put our hearts into growing this much—just this once, please let it slide. I humbly beg of you.”

“When I say no, it’s no.” “If I tell you to uproot them, uproot them.” He spoke as if declaring “Enough already” without voicing the words, his irritation finally surfacing as he rhythmically tapped the ground with his toe. “What’s twenty plants?” he spat out.

Kompei, who had been looking down, suddenly raised his face upon hearing this and glared up at the man from below with a sharpness entirely unlike anything before. Shunsuke, standing as an onlooker yet gripped by urgent emotions as he watched with anxious anticipation that something might happen, involuntarily started. However, Kompei quickly reverted to his former posture. He silently descended toward the field. He had given up. He began uprooting them from the edge. Though it was work that did not require assistance, unable to simply stand by and watch, Shunsuke went to his father’s side. The parent and child silently uprooted the tobacco plants one after another. It did not take long to uproot the twenty tobacco plants. After gathering them in a corner of the field and returning, Kompei looked toward the inspector as if wanting to say something. The inspector approached and checked the number of uprooted plants.

“Burn them. Now,” he said.

They had never dreamed it would come to this, so they hadn’t brought things like bamboo baskets. The two had to carry them by cradling the plants against their chests with both hands. Next to the tobacco field was what was called wasteland. The term “wasteland” referred to mountainous areas where mixed trees grew wild and remained uncultivated—designated as such in the land register. They carried the tobacco plants over to the area in that wasteland where trees had been cut down, forming a somewhat wide clearing, and stacked them there.

“What should we do?” As if wanting to voice the question, Shunsuke looked at Kompei.

“Go gather fallen leaves and brushwood,” Kompei said brusquely. The two gathered fallen leaves and brushwood from within the copse. The leaves had dried thoroughly under the prolonged drought. After amassing a sizable pile, “Shun, you got matches?”

Kompei thrust his hand into his pocket and said. Shunsuke happened to have them and passed them to Kompei.

Kompei struck a match. The fallen leaves began to burn. At first they had only been emitting white smoke, but when a gust of wind found its way through, it flared into crimson flames that swiftly spread to the brushwood. With a crisp crackling sound, sparks scattered. The flames gradually grew stronger. Standing beside it, their faces burned with the searing heat until they felt dizzy. Kompei grabbed the tobacco leaves and threw them into the flames. The fire suddenly weakened for a time. The tobacco leaves charred, curling and shriveling with a sizzle before beginning to smolder with a hiss.

In the clear early summer midday sky, white and blue smoke drifted upward as the tobacco leaves burned on. The fresh leaves burned poorly, barely smoldering without ever catching properly, but aided by the flames of the fallen leaves and brushwood, they burned. They kept adding fallen leaves and brushwood from time to time.

The two inspectors stood somewhat apart, watching this bonfire. As it burned, the area became filled with the intense scent of tobacco. Shunsuke, who did not smoke, choked on that scent; as if half-drunk, his head spun. The smoke stung eyes and noses. Kompei also let out a big sneeze. Under the scorching sun and burning fire, sweat seeped out clammily. Then, only at that moment did they notice their faces, hands, and chests had become sticky with nicotine.

The tobacco leaves were fed into the fire little by little. The last two or three were thrown in. When those too had turned completely black, Kompei took a tree branch, poked into the flames, and stirred them around. Smoke and flames rose unceasingly. Sparks occasionally flew. Some turned into white ash that drifted down onto their heads and shoulders. However, the flames gradually weakened. Only the smoke and smell remained thick, lingering endlessly. Kompei and Shunsuke shed tears along with their sweat. Their eyes stung, and no matter how much they wiped them, the tears kept coming. The hand towels used to wipe away sweat and tears became sticky with nicotine and reeked.

At last, only jet-black remnants remained, forming a pile of no great size. Even those that could not fully become ash no longer retained any trace of their original form. The two inspectors continued standing there until they saw this conclusion. After confirming this, the two left. Matsukawa also left.

“Fuckin’ bastards!”

Kompei channeled his barely containable resentment into that single phrase alone and hurled it low yet forcefully at their retreating backs.

After returning home, Shunsuke set about entering the required details on the wooden tags that the Tobacco Growers’ Association had forced them to purchase. The entry columns had been branded onto the surface of the wooden tags. There, he was to enter the items inspected today in the presence of the inspectors. For each lot, he entered the number, recorded the area in se and bu, wrote down the plant count, and finally noted the cultivator’s full name. When all the wooden tags had been filled out, he would attach each one to a thin bamboo stick and set them up in their respective fields in numerical order.

As he wrote, Shunsuke's heart burned fiercely. It was a type of emotion he had never before experienced. The events that had just transpired in the tobacco field were seared into both his eyes and heart. Was it because it concerned his own aged father? Or because it touched however slightly upon his family's direct interests? That must be it. Yet he thought it couldn't be entirely explained that way. Even were he to encounter another's similar circumstances, he would surely feel the same emotion, he believed. He recalled the farmers' labors in tobacco cultivation—hardships he had come to know through observation and hearsay.

That began with tasks like gathering fallen leaves to layer at seedbed bases and preparing compost amounting to hundreds of kan-measure weights for incorporation into main fields. These tasks had to be completed within the previous year. Come spring, once seedlings developed six or seven leaves and were transplanted from seedbeds to fields—what worries must they have endured until secure rooting? Particularly in this water-scarce region, their hardships multiplied. No sooner had roots taken than they kept sleepless vigil against winds through night-blinded hours. Eventually would come optimal ripening time. All through this period—their bodies coated in nicotine—they endlessly plucked unwanted buds. When finally came leaf-stripping and drying time, none escaped torment over financing drying chamber construction. Though built through joint investment to ease burdens, adding a personal chamber demanded at least 150 yen—borrowed under strain at six percent annual interest—leaving debt trailing endlessly. The drying itself required over a month. Moreover falling in midsummer’s height, this work demanded furnace stoking while regulating temperatures.

All those processes floated through Shunsuke’s mind. The figure of Kompei, carrying a water-filled tank on his back as he walked along the sloping field path—looking as if weighed down—struck him as particularly vivid. The hands that had been dirtied with nicotine in the field earlier still stuck to the shaft of the brush even now, after having roughly washed them. That deepened and intensified his imagined world into visceral reality. He felt as though he himself had already confronted the realities of tobacco cultivation many times over.

The requirement to fix the reserve—which allowed anywhere from thirty to fifty stalks—strictly at the minimum thirty was something Shunsuke simply could not comprehend. If this differed from annual precedent, then all the more reason it should make sense. Yet the truth was that Shunsuke knew nothing about the Tobacco Monopoly Bureau’s regulations or their practical implementation. Had he known, there might have been some understanding and acceptance—but in that case, it would have needed explaining in terms even those lacking knowledge could grasp. In any case, whether through flawed regulations or flawed people implementing them, one or the other had to be at fault.

However, for Shunsuke, that matter had not been such a significant thing. Or rather, there was another matter that struck Shunsuke’s heart more powerfully. He had now seen with his own eyes, for the first time, how those who were unrelated to production or not directly involved in its processes could handle the labor of those who did produce. Even facts that would be lightly overlooked by many people left an indelible impression on Shunsuke’s now-softened heart.

VIII

The long-awaited rain did not fall easily. Even when June came, there was hardly any proper rain. The farmers had gradually begun to feel uneasy and grow restless. On top of natural causes, there were also artificial ones compounding them. It stemmed from last year's prefectural initiative that had subsidized reservoir renovation works for paddy irrigation as part of relief projects. Yet despite being a government-endorsed program, approval for these renovations proved unexpectedly delayed until November. When work finally commenced, they were forced to discard water already filling a third of the reservoir. At that time, villagers had believed the reservoir would naturally replenish fully by planting season. Three months of drought from April through June shattered those expectations. Now at planting time, only five-tenths of water remained in the reservoir. This five-tenths had to supply all paddy fields dependent on its irrigation. Whether it would suffice.

The landlords were thrown into disarray, but the tenant farmers’ anxieties ran even deeper. The distribution of water insufficient to meet all needs could not help but become a critical issue. The landlords gathered the water rights representatives of the reservoir-dependent areas at the shrine the village called “Mountain Deity-san.” Water rights representatives were elected from landlords and owner-farmers—the latter category including qualified tenant-owner farmers—and made decisions regarding water usage for their owned lands. Shunsuke’s household had not become water rights representatives.

The decision from that night's General Meeting reached people's ears late in the evening. Before the village messenger could make his rounds to Kompei's house, Heizo from the neighboring home came bearing news. "How'd they decide?" Kompei asked the moment he saw Heizo's face, unable to wait any longer. "First they'll draw water for five-tenths of the reservoir-dependent acreage. Once that's done, they'll plant the remaining three-tenths based on how things look—that's the way of it." "Hmm," Kompei pondered deeply, though even he couldn't conjure up any better solution.

“So if they draw water for eight-tenths of the fields, where does the remaining two-tenths stay? It’s the lower fields after all?” Shunsuke asked from where he sat. “That’s how it works,” Heizo replied. “You see?” “Then this system creates unfairness. If fields can’t be planted just for being downstream... Won’t those farmers protest?” “Aye, but there’s no help for it. If we aimed to transplant every last field right now, we could stretch what water we’ve got to cover ’em all somehow. But seedlings transplanted dry’ll wither quick enough—then what’s the use? That’s why we keep back two-tenths.”

“So what becomes of the rice fields left until last in the end?” “Does that mean there’s truly no other way but to leave it to the heavens?”

“That’s how it is,” “There’s no way but to leave it to the heavens.” “If rain comes by then, good—if not, that’s just how it’ll be.”

Was there truly no other way but that? Shunsuke felt perplexed. Of course, no ideas for a solution came to him. He was filled with an almost unbelievable sense of wonder. The plight of farmers struggling with water shortages was something even city children knew. It was never treated as novel, simply dismissed as background noise. Yet now that he faced it himself - now that it had become his own problem - he felt something profoundly strange. How many centuries had passed since people first cultivated rice in this land? Surely those hundreds and thousands of years hadn't been wasted. Experience and techniques must have been passed down, refined through generations. Today agricultural universities produced doctors who wrote voluminous texts on rice cultivation, their disciples graduating yearly as technicians to lead practical farming efforts. And still we force those who till the soil to say, 'There's nothing to do but pray for sun'? Must they surrender so easily to mere drought? Must water disputes remain forever as some rustic tradition?

Where did the cause lie? Though scholars had already illuminated the path to resolution, had the means of implementation still not trickled down to reach the farmers? If that were the case, what was obstructing it? Or must rice cultivation forever remain subject to nature’s capricious constraints? Did misfortune reside in water’s singular role within rice cultivation? Shunsuke fell silent. He quietly sank into awareness of his own profound ignorance.

“What about the water managers?” Kompei asked after a moment. “Three—Yamashita, Motoda, Ishiguro. “Same as every year.” Water managers were those tasked with directing water into rice fields or damming its flow, hired for fixed periods at a set daily wage. This was work that required detailed knowledge of each individual rice field’s water retention quality—whether it held water well or poorly—as well as the customary practices surrounding water intake and drainage. Therefore, it had become customary for generally the same people to take on this role every year.

“What about the daily wage?” “Fifty sen,” he said, glancing furtively at Kompei’s expression before... “About that daily wage…” Heizo began. “We’re just tenant farmers—never had any right from the start to be part of this decision.” “We just sit here listenin’ quiet-like to what’s decided—same as every year, ain’t nothin’ new started now—but we tenant folk got a thing or two stewin’ in our guts too.” “Don’t go thinkin’ we’re just makin’ excuses here, though.” “The fifty-sen daily wage gets decided by the General Meeting.” “I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ about the fifty-sen rate itself, but who’s actually gonna be payin’ out that wage?” “That’d be us tenant farmers, wouldn’t it?” “And given that, ain’t a single tenant farmer among us sittin’ on that General Meeting.” “The General Meetin’ bein’ just landlords and independent farmers—no matter who you ask or how you look at it, that’s a bit of a story that don’t hold water, I’d say…”

The fact that this household owned some self-cultivated land must have weighed on Heizo’s mind, and he spoke with a certain reserve. “That’s a reasonable argument, but ain’t nobody steppin’ up to say such things first, now is there? If someone were to step up and speak out first, by all rights it’d likely go through smooth enough… But seein’ as how everyone’s just sittin’ there thinkin’ the same in their guts, nudgin’ each other to go ahead ’stead o’ speakin’ up themselves, nothin’ ever comes of it.”

"That's right. That's right. It's just a bunch o' folks who don't wanna be seen as the bad guys but still want things to go their way—ain't no hope with that lot." However, Heizo himself didn't seem inclined to take the lead himself.

Rice planting began first near the pond, with two or three water managers and rotating representatives going out to successively let water into the fields, chasing it downstream. On the third day after removing the pond’s dam, water began circulating toward Shunsuke’s hamlet. A notice from the General Meeting stated that water would enter his family’s fields sometime after midnight. That night, around one o'clock, they were roused from sleep. Through the darkness they ran to the fields with hoes. Kompei led first, followed by Shunsuke, then his mother Omura and younger sister Jun bringing up the rear. The summer night’s thick darkness pressed against their bodies with tangible weight. At intervals, an owl’s hooting drifted from unexpected directions.

A dam had been built in the ditch, and water had begun flowing into one upstream rice field. Even in the darkness, the water rushed in with such force that its presence became unmistakable. Though narrow and swift in its inflow, the sound carried quietly—a gentleness so soothing it felt almost endearing. The water lapped at bare feet standing in the rice field. Yet soon it withdrew again. In truth, it hadn’t receded—the parched fields had greedily drunk it all down. Because of this, the water never properly rose across the soil’s surface.

After finishing that rice field, they built a dam in the ditch and scraped away part of the ridge to channel water to the next field. When that area too had filled sufficiently and they moved on again, this time they couldn’t let water in from the ditch. They cut the corner of the ridge separating the fields and let water flow through there. These variations in water distribution methods between fields were established customs that couldn’t be arbitrarily changed. As he cut through the ridge, Kompei explained this to Shunsuke.

Shunsuke thought he could hear the soil drinking in the water. He felt a direct, visceral warmth and familiarity with both soil and water as if they were living things. He sensed the temperature of water lapping against his ankles through the soil where he stood. Once it began rising, it did so with tremendous speed. (Wouldn't there be even less water than they'd planned?) Such anxiety came. Had those General Meeting members and water managers truly factored in how parched soil could absorb this much water? He couldn't help but torment himself with such needless worries.

(What would happen if only about half the fields could be planted?)

With a truly grave feeling, he contemplated such a situation. Moreover, when it came to what should be done in such circumstances, almost nothing came to mind. There was not a single thing he could assert to others with any degree of confidence. This lack of confidence bred fear. He was struck by a visceral, urgent sensation—as if some monumental burden sought to crush him alone. Yet on the other hand, he could not pretend to feel relief in the fact that his family’s fields had somehow managed to endure this.

It seemed as though the depths of the darkness had begun to thin ever so slightly. Somewhere, a rooster let out a faint, drawn-out cry. Jun, who was standing nearby, “Ah, the third crow already.” “Thank you very much. Much obliged,” Kompei called out toward the movement of figures in the darkness some distance away. Their family’s share was thus completed. The General Meeting members and water managers, chattering noisily about something, hurriedly ran off toward the next rice field.

The coolness of dawn carried an invigorating freshness. The sensation of cold water and mud soaking into bare feet was a sharp, raw sting. As if peeling away thin layers one by one, the surroundings began to pale. The scenery around him, emerging like an embossed artwork floating into view, took Shunsuke by surprise. It held a freshness that made it seem utterly unfamiliar, despite being seen daily. Everything that had appeared completely wilted now brimmed with renewed vitality. What mysterious power water possessed!

Returning home, Shunsuke slept through the brief hours until dawn had fully broken. Because it was still cool, he slept soundly from the pleasant fatigue. When he woke up, Kompei said, “Shun, sorry to ask ya’, but make a quick run over t’Ishioka’s place – since Mrs. Ishioka’s handlin’ th’rice plantin’ schedule ’n all – go ask what time our field’ll get its turn today.”

Shunsuke went to Ishioka's house. Mrs. Ishioka, still in her unkempt yukata without having changed into work clothes, looked at Shunsuke with a dubious expression. But before Shunsuke could speak up, she suddenly beamed and said, "Oh, Mr. Sugino!"

“Good mornin’ to you. “Thank you for all your trouble this time.” “About what time will our rice planting be, I wonder?” “Well now, only Kurayoshi-san’s eight-person shifts and O-Yoshi-san’s five-person shifts are settled at present, so I reckon we’ll start after the midday meal’s done.” “I see.” “Well then, we’ll be waiting until then. I earnestly entreat your assistance.”

Having made the request, Shunsuke returned. Having heard this, Kompei, "I'll need to go fetch them seedlings."

With those words, he went out. This year, his household had established their seedling bed jointly with other families. Kompei had done so for particular reasons of his own; however, small-scale farmers who cultivated only one or two tan of paddy fields generally found it not worth building their own seedling beds, instead having other households grow seedlings for them. Heizo’s household and others who regularly visited Kompei’s place fell into this category. The cost of those seedlings was said to be repaid through day labor by Heizo himself and his son Genji.

In the afternoon, Shunsuke went up Tenjin Hill with his younger sister Jun. Through the trees there, the view was clear. “The rice-planting women are nowhere to be seen. Aren’t they still having their midday meal? This time it’s supposed to be our rice field’s turn, shouldn’t it?”

Jun shaded her eyes and peered into the distance as she spoke. In this region, rice fields were customarily referred to as tada.

“It’s hot, and they’re tired, so they’ll likely rest another half hour yet.” “Where would the midday meal be?” “Who knows?” “I wonder if we’re doing something instead of the midday meal at our place.”

A lively memory from his boyhood days welled up within Shunsuke. Places that could manage with five or six workers were one thing，but households with slightly more fields typically treated the rice-planting women during the midday meal with things like rice cakes，udon，or mixed sushi. “Well，I haven’t heard anything from Father yet. “…As for serving ritual sake，I’m against it. Last year we did serve it at our place. Then all the old women got drunk and… They’d say disgusting things and end up dancing around—I’ve had more than enough of it.”

She said with a frown.

“When are you heading out?” “Mine is the day after tomorrow.”

In the village, it was customary for rice-planting women to be contributed one per household to plant the fields collectively. Households that couldn't provide female labor paid planting fees, while some sent out two workers to earn those fees. What exceeded their own field's required shifts became their share. As they spoke, the figures of rice-planting women appeared. The women walked with a gait that looked rather heavy, those in front separated from those behind by about one chō. In groups of two or three, chatting as they went, they headed toward Shunsuke's family rice field. Seeing this, Jun descended Tenjin Hill. Shunsuke alone remained watching.

The rice-planting women were all in neat attire. The red was red and the white was white, each seeming to glitter brilliantly. The young women wore newly made indigo-dyed work clothes with red sashes tied around their sleeves, their obi belts neatly fastened in the otaiko style. Even though they would get soiled with mud and water, it was the custom for rice-planting women to change into fresh, clean attire. When they entered the field, they lined up four measuring sticks in a row and divided into four groups of two people per stick. The seedlings were bundled into groups of several stalks each and distributed to appropriate spots. Taking them in their left hands and inserting them with their right hands to plant. Once that happened, their posture became set; stiffening rigidly, their footwork fell into perfect unison. It was a sight of nothing but beauty.

No singing voices could be heard.

Five or six days after Shunsuke’s family finished planting their rice fields, the first five percent of their originally planned acreage was completed. Yet still no rain fell. Today for sure—they thought upon waking—but when they looked up at the morning sky, not a wisp of cloud remained. The drought only intensified with each passing day. As they stared at the fields left unplanted, the farmers’ minds steadily edged toward frenzy. Under a pitiless sky, a dangerous, volatile mood swelled ever larger.

The rumor spread that farmers from Yamashita Hamlet had gone together to light a fire at Hachiman Shrine starting from two in the morning. Then in Shunsuke’s hamlet too, someone emerged saying, “We should burn a rain prayer fire atop Mount Konpira,” going around persuading people and gathering supporters. Immediately afterward came the retort: “What’s the damn use of such shitty nonsense?” “Instead of that crap, why don’t we scheme to snatch what little water’s still left here and there for ourselves?” someone else barged in. Both sides bristled for confrontation. When these two groups chanced to meet, they truly fought. They clashed fiercely. As if each blamed the other for having no water and being unable to plant—as if they were mortal enemies—they fought. And blood flowed. When mediators intervened to pull them apart, both sides stood trembling with tears streaming down their faces.

The conflicts over water gradually increased. Kompei sighed deeply and spoke to Shunsuke.

“Water’s a terrible thing. “It turns siblings into strangers and neighbors into enemies. “If water flows into one side and not the other, those without it come to hate those who got it beyond all bearing. “After that, even when they meet face to face, they can’t bring themselves to say a word. “They just turn sharp away. “But here’s the thing—once that water flows in, they snap right back on the spot, burst out laughing like nothin’ happened. All that fuss from before? Gone like it never was.”

When night fell, in the direction of the provincial border, the sky above one of the connecting mountains there burned crimson like scorched blood. The stars and moon lay hidden—precisely because the night's darkness had fostered hopes that rain might finally come—making that patch of crimson sky alone blaze with an especially lurid, terrifying magnificence. Within that same redness, what stood out as strikingly deep and faintly black-tinged—could that have been light reflecting off clouds? The boundary with the dark sky blurred yellow and hazy, like a lunar halo. From one spot on the mountain, a single blazing band of light—about the width of an obi—rose slanting toward heaven. Above it, something resembling black smoke hung thickly across the sky.

“Wildfire.”

When he stepped into the garden and gazed up at that sky, what immediately flashed into Shunsuke’s mind was precisely that. He recalled a night from when he was six or seven years old—clinging to his mother’s waist, his teeth chattering uncontrollably—as they watched a distant mountain fire. That too had been one of the mountains along this provincial border.

It was a late autumn midnight when already，the lined clothing felt cold.

Shunsuke called out loudly to father inside the house. Kompei came out. The other members of the household also came out. “That’s no mountain fire.”

Without taking his eyes from the sky, Kompei said. “If ’twere a mountain fire, the flames wouldn’t rise in a single line like that.” “They’d spread out more sideways-like, crawling and licking their way along.” “That’s it—’tis a rain prayer fire after all.” “Whereabouts d’you suppose that is?” “Right... I reckon it’s probably around Motomura in the neighboring county.”

When they suddenly noticed, there was a clamor of voices coming from the direction of the lower road. Peering through the darkness, they saw people from two or three houses at the foot of the hill had gathered at the crossroads where the view was clear and were likewise engaged in discussing the mountain fire. Excited, high-pitched voices could be heard intermittently. What kind of power did that fire hold to work upon the agitated people of this village? A tremor within his body, completely different from his childhood experience, was something Shunsuke could not help but feel.

The next day, the hamlet's town crier rushed in all directions carrying the water rights council's notice.

“All tenant farmers must gather at Yama no Kami-san from breakfast time.” Shunsuke was set to attend the meeting as father’s proxy. For him, this kind of experience was naturally his first. He was anxious. Of course, he did not think he would participate in the discussion of this critical issue, nor did he believe he could participate. He would simply listen in silence. He would just listen and think. More than anything, he felt a powerful urge to absorb as much as he could. Where people confronted the situation with a life-or-death sense of urgency, he approached it with such “spare capacity.” The thought that his former self—having spent ten years in urban student life—still lingered around him like color and scent made him timid for the first time as he stepped among such people. I have not yet reached the point where everything from my way of walking to my way of speaking has assimilated with the people. Like a drop of oil in water, both those who know me and those who don’t will naturally fix their gaze on me. Especially under such circumstances, people could not help but feel a vague hostility.

However, such thoughts were nothing more than his own delusion.

When he arrived at Yama no Kami-san’s plaza, the designated meeting place, people were already packed tightly there. They were clamoring and cursing one after another, yet their hearts were all focused on a single point. No one turned to look at Shunsuke when he arrived then. Shunsuke vanished into the jet-black crowd as though swallowed whole. On a slightly raised platform that had been constructed, one of the council representatives stood.

“Everyone!” he shouted. The voices within the crowd ceased abruptly. “The reason we’ve requested your gathering today goes without saying—as those responsible for Tarō Pond’s water allocation, this concerns our discussion about water management.” “As you’re all aware, those working the upper half have completed their plantings, but regarding the lower half—to our mutual profound distress—the situation remains unchanged due to this water shortage.” “However, we cannot remain like this forever, simply waiting for rain.” “Therefore, after consulting with all those involved in Tarō Pond’s water allocation regarding how to use its remaining water...”

He then opened his mouth and looked around at the people.

“What are your thoughts regarding this?” he said. “Everyone.” “Since having everyone speak out haphazardly would get us nowhere, we would first have the council representatives deliberate and settle on a proposal to present to you all, then humbly seek your opinions on it—this is what I believe we should do.” No one spoke up immediately. However, throat-clearings and guttural noises erupted sporadically across the gathering, swelling gradually in volume. Then murmuring spread through the crowd. The man on the platform suddenly clapped his hands two or three times with hurried motions and called for order. At that moment, someone from within the crowd shouted in a loud voice.

“Well then, why don’t we have ’em tell us this council decision or whatever it is they’ve come up with?” “Then everyone can state their own thoughts—that’d be best.” Many voices chimed in agreement.

“Aye, aye! That’s the way! That’s it.” Yet even before hearing anything, there was an oppositional momentum—a resolve to first make them state their proposal before agreeing to any trivial matters—that smoldered darkly. Struck by this silent force, the council representative on the platform turned slightly pale. Though achieving precisely his intended proposal, he had to speak in a voice that trembled faintly.

“Well then, I will present our proposal… Of the remaining five parts of the fields, we will first plant only three. There will still be some water left afterward, but we absolutely must keep this reserved. We can’t possibly use up all of it. Because if we can’t replenish irrigation water, even the crops we’ve painstakingly planted up to now will end up withering away…” They did not let him speak any further. Even the last of what he had managed to say vanished into the sudden uproar that erupted like a stirred hornet’s nest.

“Bullshit! What’re you spoutin’?” “What’re you spoutin’?” “What the—!” “What a half-assed idea!”

“You idiot! Get lost!” “You only think about yourselves—what’re ya plannin’ to do about the rest of us?” “Quit being council reps!” However, there were of course also a group who remained silent—who through their silence expressed agreement with the council reps. They were, needless to say, people who had already finished their planting. One bold man among them said: “If you just keep plantin’ without irrigation water, it won’t do any good.” “We should just do as the council says.”

Suddenly, angry shouts erupted nearby, and the crowd surged in that area. Even the sounds of blows being exchanged were heard two or three times. Eventually, pushing and shoving his way through the crowd, a man came staggering toward the area below the platform as if about to collapse. Then he stealthily hid somewhere. His allies never showed themselves again. Somewhat calmer words, delivered in a tone of logical reproach, began to fix blame on the council representatives.

“Did you haul us out here today just to hear that same tired talk? We’ve known that old song since the first General Meeting where you lot decided it! And there’s a heap of objections besides. So you’ve been dithering about what to do, letting the remaining fields go dry all this time—then you call us together saying there’s matters to discuss! When you do that, we come thinkin’ maybe there’s some better idea than before—ain’t that plain as day? So you plant three parts—what in blazes d’you mean to do with the other two?”

This argument struck true to reason. The council representatives should have come to today’s gathering with some new proposal—but what brilliant plan could they possibly have had? If they pushed through with implementing their prior resolution exactly as decided, there was no telling what catastrophe might arise. Yet they could delay no longer. They resolutely gathered everyone in one place. And so—prepared for opposition—they made their attempt to unite the assembly.

When he thought he had seen the inevitable outcome, the council representative on the platform could endure no more. Lacking confidence, he possessed neither the composure to attempt earnestly explaining matters anew nor the presence of mind to exchange whispered consultations once more with the other council representatives—who stood packed together near the platform's base, their faces betraying unease. He abruptly roared out.

“Well then, what the hell do you want us to do?!” “If any of you’ve got a better idea than ours, shouldn’t we hear it?” “All this opposin’ ain’t accomplishin’ a damn thing!” “What d’you want to do?” “You fine with usin’ every last drop for plantin’, then havin’ no rain come—endin’ with everythin’ we planted just witherin’ away? That what you want?” “If everyone says it’s fine, shouldn’t we just do that?” “How’s that?”

He completely changed his attitude and settled into it, so to speak. He looked like a man driven to reckless desperation. And there he stood, imposingly blocking the way.

For a moment, they fell silent. It was an eerie few moments. However, the fact that the council representative had resorted to such an approach—while he may have derived some grim satisfaction from it—meant he had lost the contest. Setting aside victory or defeat, even when looking at the results alone, it could not be said they had obtained a desirable outcome. His words provoked and sowed destruction. He was answered with matching retorts. “Let’s plant! Drain the pond to its very dregs and plant!”

“That’s right.” “If they’re gonna wither anyway, better plant ’em all and let ’em wither.” “Settles it clean!” “Shared fate—we die together if we die.” Half-reckless voices like those erupted here and there. No power remained to suppress them. Those voices instantly engulfed all present. Thus it became today’s gathering’s final decision. Of the pond-fed fields, five-tenths already stood planted. Now the council reps declared intent to plant three-tenths more. Thus only two-tenths—the lowest downstream fields—remained sacrificial. The prior eight-tenths were those benefiting from the reps’ proposal. Eight against two. Yet why did the minority’s argument prevail? Because among those who’d finished planting, many absented themselves from today’s gathering. They’d avoided conflict. Even attendees couldn’t escape feeling they profited from minority sacrifice. Though water turned brothers into sworn foes, some still couldn’t steel themselves against such guilt. And those two-tenths folk bore ferocity laced with murderous intent—no ordinary resolve.

What would those who hadn’t attended today’s gathering say when they later heard of this forced decision? Would they truly remain silent and consent? Jostled by the crowd and overwhelmed by the abnormal excitement, Shunsuke returned home alone in disarray, his mind clouded with gloom. He reported to his father. He could not add a single opinion of his own. Kompei too remained silent. Amid the oppressive atmosphere, the pond’s dam was again dismantled until every drop of water had been drained out, and the fields—literally thirsting for water—greedily drank their fill. Rice planting, one of those annual events that should have been as joyous as New Year’s celebrations or the village shrine festival, could not in this case be filled with unalloyed brightness and cheer. The communal effort had already collapsed—the rice-planting women were now mobilized only from a handful of downstream hamlets.

The rice fields greedily absorbed the water, and no matter how much they absorbed, it never seemed enough. And finally, even in the downstream areas, spots emerged where there wasn’t enough water for planting. They had not anticipated that even after releasing all the water, things would still turn out like this.

That night, about twenty tenant farmers from downstream formed a group and, reeking of alcohol, visited the home of the water rights council chairman. They blamed the water rights council representatives and distribution managers, shouting that it was all their fault, but the council chairman, being a shrewd man, said little. Smiling and offering placating words like “Now, now,” he served them alcohol and focused entirely on playing host. They had already been drinking before arriving, and combined with their exhaustion from the day, they all became thoroughly drunk and completely lost control. Some collapsed where they stood, others babbled incoherently through tears, someone forgot they were in a landlord’s house and urinated on the dirt-floored entryway, and there was even one person who stumbled into a puddle of piss. And then, late into the night, two or perhaps three of them staggered home along the dark path where even frogs didn’t croak, their shoulders bumping together as they went.

The next day, from early morning onward, the roar of engines began resounding frequently from downstream. This had been arranged through the water rights council representatives' mediation. They somehow managed to complete the planting as originally resolved, but replenishing irrigation water remained nearly impossible. The three water managers ran frantically from field to field, searching for parched areas and wearing themselves out in desperate attempts to replenish the water. Within mere days, their eyes had sunk deep and their bodies grown gaunt from overwork and strain; even those who had denounced them privately the day before found themselves unable to withhold words of sympathy when meeting them face-to-face.

Another notice from the water rights council representatives had been circulated. “At this stage, there remains no alternative but to dredge out the water pooled in the river’s hollows. This shall be conducted through two shifts, day and night, working in rotation. The daily wage is set at seventy sen, with expenses to be borne equally by landlords and tenant farmers.”

And there, yet another new problem had become entangled.

Indeed, not even an hour had passed before Shunsuke heard that voices of discontent had arisen among those who received the notice. The matter concerned the burden of dredging costs. It was a complaint about splitting expenses equally between landlords and tenant farmers. However, those voices were dismissed with nothing more than the explanation that "cost-sharing has become customary in every village." "Now, now, that's enough of that." "Even if we talk 'bout bearing costs, it ain't somethin' urgent—April and May're still ahead." "Now ain't the time to be grumblin' 'bout such things." "Let's all pull together an' dredge the water now."

The man who had come to Kompei’s place also said that and left.

It was indeed as this man said. Yet how many problems must have been piling up unresolved in this way, being pushed forward one after another? The matters that had been pushed ahead would eventually circle back and return to their origin. And even then, they would hear only faint mutterings like the bubbles of crabs, and it would be sent back again unresolved. As he listened, Shunsuke felt a desire that made his heart race regarding the one thing he wanted to say.

Though it was unclear how much the dredging costs might amount to, what if the tenant farmers were to have it deducted from their tenant fees? The thought had risen to his throat, but he couldn’t bring himself to voice it. He didn’t know what sort of man this visitor was. He feared how his words might be received. But more fundamentally, once you proposed something, you had to take responsibility and work toward its realization. That was why he believed one shouldn’t carelessly voice such things without that confidence.

In the evening, Kompei,

“I’ll go tonight.” “You join tomorrow’s shift,” he said, then set off with a neighbor who had come to fetch him for the water dredging. Water dredging was twelve hours of continuous labor, from six in the evening until six the next morning.

A little past nine o'clock, having prepared Kompei's night meal, Shunsuke left the house. It was a moonlit night. To reach the riverbed, one took the road below Konpira Mountain. Even though it was called a mountain, it was more of a hill. From below, following the gentle slope, the summit that formed a wide flat area was clearly visible. On the mountain, several black human figures were moving. Having heard about it during the day, Shunsuke stopped there and watched for a while.

Before long, a fire suddenly flared up. It rapidly grew larger. The crackling sound of dry branches or something burning seemed almost audible. Because it was a windless night, the flames rose straight and high. The expanse of sky and earth around there was cast in a bright red glow. The ten or so figures standing in a circle around the fire were also clearly visible. However, the vigor of the blazing fire did not last long. Once it flared up brightly—its vigorous state continuing for a while before gradually weakening—it never blazed up again. It was little more than a slightly larger-than-usual bonfire. It bore no resemblance whatsoever to what he had seen on Kunizakai Mountain a few days prior.

However, there was no mistaking it for anything but a rain prayer fire. The ones who had persistently advocated for holding the ritual on Konpira Mountain were several heavy drinkers. Their fervent urging had initially been met with resistance, but gradually people began clinging to the idea like drowning men grasping at straws. Though no one truly believed rain prayers held power anymore—not after so many fruitless attempts—desperation made them think this time might be different. In the end, they extracted five yen from the village reserve fund and some subsidy from the municipal office. They waited for nightfall before ascending the mountain. There they drank sake. Then they made the priest chant his prayers, and when that concluded, lit the fire.

The flames gradually weakened, and the circle of brightness surrounding them steadily shrank. Only the base of the fire remained crimson. The people who had been standing now seemed to have crouched in a circle around it. Before long, singing voices drifted over from there. As they sang, the sound of clapping hands could also be heard. Though the lyrics were indistinguishable in the still village night, the melody carried clearly down to the mountain's base. It was terribly disordered and drawn-out.

Shunsuke continued to gaze on and on.

Two days later, it rained.

It poured down. The rain continued to fall for nearly two days straight. It appeared as if it were answering all the farmers’ prayers, and yet also as if it were mocking every endeavor and worry they had poured into securing water until now. In fact, the rain swept away all water-related problems in one fell swoop. The farmers' tragedies and comedies surrounding water vanished like a dream.

The farmers lazed about all day long, and when they rose, would eat and drink at any hour; late into the night they sang in voices straying from the melody. There were those who wandered through the rain, visiting whichever houses their feet led them to, moving from one to the next while chattering away. The mayor and landlords and water overseers and agricultural association officers and industrial cooperative directors paid each other visits, exchanged congratulations, and consoled one another over their recent troubles. On the second day of rain, the newspaper carried heartfelt words of joy from the prefectural governor—who had just returned from inspecting certain drought-stricken areas within the prefecture—regarding this rainfall. He expressed renewed gratitude for rainwater: nature's vast benevolence. In this progressive modern age—when some even clamor for liberation from science's oppressive weight—the fact remained that across these vast swathes of land covering much of the earth's surface, when it came to producing their most vital agricultural yields, every problem that those involved had poured their utmost anxieties and efforts into solving ultimately found its resolution in rainwater bestowed by heaven; that such primitive forces held the key; that none now thought to freshly question what this reality truly signified.

IX

The events in the tobacco fields and the water issues in the rice paddies. These two things—experienced in the first month or so after entering his new life—though ordinary events of daily life, had all the more deeply seeped into Shunsuke’s heart precisely because of that. He could not possibly remain numb to these "ordinary matters" like the adults accustomed to the grime of worldly life. He still needed to spend more time and accumulate further experience before he could properly draw out all the meanings contained within them, before he could properly situate them within himself—so much had he felt from those two things that he came to think this.

Within daily activities that at first glance seemed utterly insignificant—even trivial—how much of the farmers' suffering, sorrows, joys, resourcefulness, inventions, wisdom, and creativity were interwoven had been something he could not stop feeling since his first well-digging experience. That awareness now deepened further. To contemplate this warmed the heart. To put it simply, he felt life itself. Not only was he gradually understanding the significance of each detail structuring such a life, but he could also feel affection toward them—even respect welling up within him. This meant his positive affection and love toward humanity and life as a whole were steadily deepening. Such emotions ought to become the mother of all truly positive attitudes and actions. The path to pressing deeper into humanity's living essence could not open except from there. The sense of self-worth too arose from that source. On nights when returning alone along farm paths, seeing clusters of two or three farmhouses among mixed woodlands at the foot of hills, Shunsuke would find himself tearing up without knowing why as he imagined the lives sustained within them. That alone might seem hopelessly naive. Yet sensing this mental state deepening within him brought Shunsuke joy surpassing all else at this moment.

He felt himself gradually becoming unable to look upon both people and things with that casual contempt he once had. He came to approach both matters and people's words with an extremely humble attitude. The fact that modern youth refuse to acknowledge any authority and treat everything with superficial disdain is, in most cases, nothing but a reflection of their lack of self-assurance and inner substance. Because it is not a path that truly transcends authority but mere posturing, beyond that paper-thin veneer lies nothing but servile ugliness. Such individuals, given the opportunity, instantly become unsightly sycophants. Shunsuke’s transformation was not of that sort.

No matter how modest a fragment one might take from what shaped the farmers' lives, there was history in it—nothing that wasn't the crystallization of many people's long years of effort. They devised and invented in their own way. Not a single method of hoeing or way of holding a sickle had arisen by chance. In other words, there was the mental toil of those who produced. Needless to say, their lives were inseparable from production. Life was unified through production down to every corner. Therefore, there was no waste or slack, and a simple beauty arose from that.

They remained within their primitive methods yet did their utmost to be efficient. However, the more Shunsuke gained insight into the realities of these farmers' lives, the more contradictions and pressing issues he naturally came to discover within them. A prime example of such contradictions could be seen in events like water disputes. To feel affection toward life and perceive the beauty of existence unified through production—this by no means equated to affirming farmers' current circumstances exactly as they were. Within him arose various questions, and he felt a burning desire to resolve them. Toward matters needing redress, he wished to contribute whatever small effort he could muster to bring about better conditions. But to do even this much—to earn merely the right to speak—he first had to remake himself into someone capable. He had to join their ranks as a fellow producer.

As the tobacco leaves approached their optimal maturity period, a notice came that the village tobacco cooperative would gather tonight at the village head’s house. “Shun, you goin’?” Kompei asked. Lately, Kompei had been making an effort to send Shunsuke in his place to gatherings and other assemblies where people congregated.

“Yes, I’ll go,” said Shunsuke. This was during the second weeding of the rice fields—work had reached a lull, making it relatively idle time. Even after sunset, while twilight still permitted faint visibility, people would split firewood, cut cattle fodder, and tend to cucumbers and eggplants, so no household had dinner before eight o’clock. Since everyone came after bathing first, the gatherings never started until quite late. Those who arrived early became thoroughfare for mosquitoes. Yet nobody minded this in the least.

Thinking it improper for someone young like himself to keep others waiting, Shunsuke went to the house a little after eight o'clock. There were three people who had arrived first. "Excuse the intrusion," Shunsuke greeted them and took his seat. The people seated there, "Welcome," they said as they greeted him. No matter how much Shunsuke tensed up and stiffened, there was nothing particularly different in the people’s attitudes. It seemed they were simply welcoming another member of their group; the fact that he had come in Kompei’s place didn’t even register in their awareness. They immediately resumed the casual conversation they had apparently been continuing until now. That gave Shunsuke a profound sense of ease.

Kompei had made a point of introducing Shunsuke to the villagers at every opportunity, so even among those gathered today, there were no unfamiliar faces. Even if a son who had been absent so long that people had nearly forgotten his very existence were to suddenly reappear, he would only become a subject of gossip for a time before ceasing to be anything remarkable. In this region, there would be no end to it if people were to marvel at each such occurrence, for sons of age were constantly moving back and forth between the countryside and the cities.

Even so，whenever stories about their past struggles with water for the rice fields were brought up，one of them would—

“Mr. Sugino, what’s Tokyo like these days?” one of them asked with a laugh, turning toward him. And then, as if realizing himself how vague his question was, “With the military boom, things must be roaring along there now,” he added. “Well…” Shunsuke hesitated, unsure how to respond immediately, and simply laughed. “Tokyo?” another one asked. “I’d thought you’d gone off to Osaka for work, Mr. Sugino, but...”

“No, you went to Tokyo, Mr. Sugino. You attended school in Tokyo,” said the village head, who owned this house. “School?” “Hmm, is that so?” The man who had asked stared at Shunsuke for a moment, but seeming to find nothing of interest, fell silent and adjusted his pipe. “Well now, Mr. Sugino—the time will surely come when airplanes replace trains altogether, I suppose. But first off, there’d have to be way more airplanes than there are now. And they’d need to be made so they never crash again, not even once. Since that’ll take ages yet, airplane manufacturing work must grow bigger and busier from here on out. That’s why I’ve been thinking—from now on, young folks leaving the village ought to set their sights on becoming airplane factory workers first and foremost.”

“…………” However, Shunsuke suddenly choked. He began coughing violently, unable to stop. More than that, the smoke had been stinging his eyes for some time now, tears streaming uncontrollably. They were burning mosquito repellent. In an aged iron brazier, they heaped fresh mugwort high, stuffed kokuwa—pine needles—beneath it, lit a fire, and fanned vigorously. Billowing white smoke filled the room, stinging eyes and choking throats. Yet everyone except Shunsuke remained utterly unbothered.

“Ah, right, right,” said the village head as he grabbed a fan and hurriedly began fanning. He set about dispersing the smoke that had drifted toward Shunsuke. “You still haven’t gotten used to it, have you?” he said with a good-natured laugh. “When you’ve lived in Tokyo that long, life out here in the deep countryside must take some getting used to. In all sorts of ways. Though since you weren’t born and raised in the city, you’ll get used to it soon enough.”

“Well…” Shunsuke pressed a hand towel against his eyes and nose.

Just then, the last person they had been waiting for arrived, and with that, the discussion came to an end.

“Well then, let’s set aside the talk for later and get to arranging the drying schedule.” Of the six people gathered—including Shunsuke—two still had green tobacco leaves that weren’t in urgent need of drying, but since the other four had already reached optimal ripeness, they wanted to set the date as soon as possible. After discussion, they decided to start burning the fires five days later. They divided into pairs working three-day shifts, with Shunsuke’s group assigned to the first day’s duty. When these main arrangements concluded, Sugahara—the man paired with Shunsuke—spoke up.

“Right, right—you gotta make sure to warn Father properly, y’hear?” “Since your family’s crop’s running late this year, if you don’t give Father a good scolding from the side, no tellin’ he won’t go pickin’ leaves while they’re still green again.” “Kompei’s stubborn as they come—seein’ as his crop’s late, he’ll stay behind alone in the dryin’ chamber after everyone else finishes. Says he can’t stand botherin’ others, won’t mind takin’ a loss himself.” “Ends up pickin’ even leaves you’d think should’ve been left to ripen longer.” “Even if we all finish up and tell him ‘Take your time now,’ he’ll nod along—but when push comes to shove, he just can’t help himself.” “Human nature’s a peculiar thing.” “Breaks your heart come settlement time.” “Man himself don’t bat an eye though.” “This year with you here helpin’, we can breathe easier—but you still better have a proper talk with ’im.”

Shunsuke thought his father might have such an aspect after all. He couldn't help finding it somewhat unexpected. There was no denying Kompei was stubborn to his core, yet Shunsuke had always regarded him as someone who rarely suffered losses regardless of circumstances. The conversation had already shifted course. In these highlands encircled by mountains, even summer nights grew chilly against the skin once eleven o'clock approached.

The tobacco drying chambers were built as two rooms with their fire mouths facing each other. One room measured four tsubo in area, with a height exceeding three ken. On both sides separate from the one with the fire mouth, ventilation shutters measuring three shaku by approximately two shaku had been installed. These served as regulating windows for adjusting the indoor temperature. Mounted atop the ridge was another small house-like structure. The ridge stood about five shaku high, with a smaller roof extending parallel to the main roof's slope. At the section corresponding to its eaves, adjustment windows matching those below were arranged three each on both sides, filling the spaces between pillars completely. These adjustment window shutters were rigged with wires that allowed them to be opened from the ground. Normally these regulating windows remained tightly sealed. Additionally, there were two inspection windows. One was positioned on the side opposite the fire mouth and another to its right, both situated midway at over two ken above ground level - small double-doored windows each. When opened, these wooden doors revealed inner panes of glass meant for examining the tobacco leaves' coloration inside.

Similarly, on the left side from the fire mouth, there was an entrance at the center measuring one ken in height and half a ken in width, with double doors where the inner door was made of glass. Upon entering inside, in the earthen-floored area, a thin iron pipe about one shaku in circumference spread out across the entire space, shaped like the character for "middle" (中) without its protruding strokes. The protruding section at the bottom of the "middle" character connected to the fire mouth. High-temperature heat circulated through this iron pipe, thereby raising the indoor temperature and lowering the humidity to dry the leaf tobacco. In the upper part of the chamber, starting from one ken above ground level, numerous removable boards spanned both sides, from which hung ropes bearing tobacco leaves.

The furnace was a simple structure, resembling a larger version of a bathhouse furnace. A chimney protruded directly above the fire mouth, with an interior designed to allow fires to burn deep into its recesses. At its furthest point, this connected to the iron pipe. The fuel used was either coal or split wood. Since the chamber's temperature had to be constantly monitored at its center, the thermometer was positioned there. To check it, they had to pull it toward a small window beside the fire mouth, so a thin cord was attached for this purpose.

On the day before they were to dry them the following morning, they started picking the leaves from evening onward. If they did not select fully matured and yellowed leaves to pick, when dried, the quality would deteriorate. The drying process placed stringent emphasis on proper leaf maturity and yellowing. Above all else, yellowing was treated as the primary concern and established as a crucial criterion in determining quality. To pick tobacco leaves, one had to first change into work clothes specially made from rags for this purpose. The nicotine secreted from the undersides of the leaves startled those encountering it for the first time. Their clothes became clammy with grime. As they handled each leaf one by one, their hands became stained black—a mark that soap wouldn’t easily wash away.

The gathered leaves were inserted one by one into the twists of a left-twisted rope, each leaf stem tip inserted about an inch deep. The rope was about one ken in length.

That day, Kompei and Shunsuke changed into their work clothes and entered the tobacco field. There was still some time before the sun would begin to sink. Until then, they could not pick the leaves. In the meantime, the two decided to remove the lateral buds from the tobacco plants. Due to the scarce rain, the ridges on the upper slopes had dried out, leaving all plants there stunted in growth. Yet those at the lower reaches had grown excessively tall. "Well now, why do they grow so differently?" Shunsuke exclaimed in surprise.

“When rain falls, it flows down from higher ground to lower,” Kompei explained. “That current carries fertilizer along with it too. So even when upper fields parch dry, lower ones stay moist through and through. That’s what makes things grow so different-like.” The leaves extended symmetrically from each node – one to either side – though some sprouted buds at their petiole bases. A few had even grown into slender branches bearing clusters of small leaves. Those plants where they’d neglected to pinch the main bud now stood bolted upright, pale purple flowers blooming where tobacco ought to crown – blossoms resembling their solanaceous cousin the eggplant more than anything else. Working carefully to avoid damaging foliage, the two plucked buds and snapped off wayward shoots. Without this tending, maturation would lag behind schedule. Yet despite their caution, fragile leaf tips still snapped when sleeves barely grazed them – casualties gathered one by one into bamboo baskets as they combed the rows. This clearing served dual purpose: tobacco detritus left to rot would taint soil already hostile to repeated plantings of its kind.

They waited for the sun to sink before beginning to pick the leaves. They put what they had picked into bamboo baskets and made trip after trip along the mountain path, piling them up in the house's yard. Then they spread a mat in the yard, and with the whole family gathered there, sat down to thread the leaves onto ropes. In the gradually deepening dusk, not a single person spoke as countless hands moved with mechanical swiftness. They called each rope strung with leaves a "ren," and upon completing each ren, would spread it over the grassy bank, sprinkle water to prevent wilting, then stack another ren on top in this manner.

As darkness deepened, swarms of mountain mosquitoes descended upon them. The droning grew terrifying. Their unprotected feet, hands and faces suffered bites everywhere - there were moments when they could see the engorged insects resembling dark berries yet found their hands powerless to swat them away. At times they beat frantically at the mosquitoes while hurriedly inserting the leaves. This twilight rush repeated roughly every two days.

At dawn the next day, before breakfast, they loaded last night’s tobacco leaves onto a wheelbarrow and pushed it to the drying chamber. Then the association members scrambled to seize the most convenient hanging spots. Because of this scramble, they had to go without even eating breakfast. When Kompei and Shunsuke pushed the wheelbarrow there, the best hanging spots had already been taken by others. Right after them, Sugahara arrived. When Sugahara saw this,

“Tch! Quick to grab ’em first,” Sugahara spat out. The people who had arrived earlier glanced briefly in his direction. An indescribably unpleasant awkwardness settled among them. After returning home to eat and coming back again—even while chewing his meal—Shunsuke found himself unable to stop brooding over what he had just witnessed. Amidst yesterday’s lingering fatigue, that refreshingly pleasant mood now felt instantly tainted, as if even his vitality were draining away.

(What in the world could this be?)

The cooperative work through the Tobacco Growers' Association—the mutual aid among people—had appeared beautiful to Shunsuke. To be sure, Matsukawa’s attitude when his so-called “reserve” had been uprooted was something Shunsuke found incomprehensible and resentment-inducing. However, as the man who had gathered and unified several village tobacco associations into one body—their supreme leader—it was likely that the privileged consciousness stemming from his position had made him adopt such an attitude. Yet he had believed that at least the six people in their hamlet were gathering together and helping one another.

Sugahara had spoken of Kompei’s “conscientiousness” and advised them to “make sure not to pick the green leaves”—words that Shunsuke had heard as beautiful. Moreover, this same man was now being made to spit out hostile words like “Cheh! Quick to snatch ’em up,” and for him to do so, there had indeed been actions by the other members that warranted such remarks. Exclusive actions or words, no matter how trivial, left an especially harsh impression precisely because they occurred within communal work, and they also demanded particular attention.

Suddenly struck by the thought, Shunsuke asked Kompei. “What about the accounting? Is it done collectively?” “Accounting?” “Yes—submitting it to the Monopoly Bureau and converting it to money. All those matters.” “That’s handled separately by each of us.”

He thought one of the root causes lay here. He thought it stemmed from conducting the accounting individually. But making the accounting communal and sharing responsibility? If they were to do that, it would require sharing responsibility jointly from tobacco cultivation's very inception. The entire process—from cultivation through drying and final sale—must be managed under the Tobacco Growers' Association's collective responsibility. Each member needed to act solely through zeal for perfecting all leaves together, free from notions of "my leaves" versus "yours." Otherwise, there'd be no stopping those six men from competing over prime drying racks. Since they handled every other task individually while attempting only drying communally, contradictions inevitably festered. The joint effort had begun both from financial necessity—building the drying chamber through pooled funds—and drying's inherent difficulty when done solo. Though this cooperation needed expanding, such half-measures meant even their communal drying would remain fundamentally flawed.

That was how he had come to think about it. Yet in this village's current state, it could only be considered an idealistic theory. To implement this, they would first have to transfer the farmland itself to communal management, and if they equalized burdens, they would also need to equalize the distribution of production results. But then those who had cultivated more land until now could never feel satisfied with such outcomes. There existed producers' associations and shipment cooperatives in various regions. What sort of organizations were these, and how exactly were they being managed? For instance, how did the farmers in Hatano's tobacco-growing regions handle it?

However, even if a fundamental solution couldn't be hoped for, it still seemed possible to carry on a bit more smoothly with their current approach. And that could only come through mutual concessions. Fixated on this thought, he grew single-minded and couldn't keep from speaking out immediately. He said it without even consulting Kompei. It was when the people who had finished breakfast returned once more to the drying chamber.

“I’d like to discuss something,” he said. The people who had been about to begin the hanging work all stopped their hands and looked this way. Shunsuke flushed crimson. “It may be presumptuous of me to bring this up... and I know I’m overstepping my place,” he said, “but it seems there are better and worse spots for hanging. Perhaps if we could take turns each day, yielding to one another... What do you think?”

Everyone remained silent. And then, in a loud voice, "That's it, that's it. That's good, that's the way," came a voice. It was Sugahara. Then, all except Kompei—the other four—each assumed attitudes befitting their respective characters. The good-natured, seemingly timid man said, "Yeah, well, that's probably for the best," but it was merely lip service; his inner lack of enthusiasm showed through in his appearance of utter uncertainty. Someone remarked skeptically, "Hmm, I'm not so sure about that," though it was, of course, filled with opposing intent. However, the others pretended not to hear and, remaining silent, briskly began their work.

When the next hanging morning arrived, it became clearly known through fact that Shunsuke's words from the previous day held no power whatsoever. The struggle of people trying to secure good spots, and in that very moment, the grating clash of blatantly exclusionary emotions, showed not the slightest change from the previous day.

Later, Kompei said to Shunsuke.

“Trying to make others accept what you say is no easy task.” “Specially when it comes to changin’ how things are done—even if everyone knows plain as day it’d be better—folks won’t just jump to it ’cause someone tells ’em.” “First off, they’ll doubt it.” “That’s farmers for ya.” “Don’t go thinkin’ you can bend folks to your ways yet—you’re still green.” “Ain’t that your words lack sense.” “Even fine words depend on who’s speakin’ ’em.” “You still ain’t got the heft needed.” “You ain’t got the pull to make folks feel they gotta follow what’s reasonable.” “To get there, first thing’s earnin’ trust—that’s what matters.” “Becomin’ someone folks respect—or better yet, look up to—that’s what matters.” “That takes piling up more years.” “Takes gainin’ more know-how.” “Gotta reach where folks natural-like start feelin’, ‘What he says goes,’ without even noticin’ when.” “You got your book-learnin’.” “But ’round here, ’cept maybe townfolk, that learnin’ don’t mean squat.” “That learnin’ won’t move folks.” “Ain’t tellin’ you to hold your tongue.” “Ain’t sayin’ don’t speak your piece ’bout what’s right—keep at it steady-like among folks startin’ now.” “But watch sharp—don’t let empty words charge ahead of everythin’ else.”

“And no matter what, you gotta steer clear of doin’ things that’ll make folks resent you.” “Now, I ain’t sayin’ what you brought up the other day was like that or nothin’.” “Especially since there’s somethin’ different about your nature compared to other farmers.” Shunsuke thought this was exactly right. It didn’t need saying by Kompei—this truth already lived within his own awareness. Yet being told it outright felt strangely reassuring.

But it was two days later that...

After finishing hanging the tobacco leaves that day, they lit the furnace at ten o'clock. The group’s representative recorded the date, lighting time, and indoor temperature before ignition on the blackboard, then noted the hourly temperature fluctuations to serve as a guideline for furnace operation. This was the general standard, but depending on the leaf quality, weather conditions, and fire circulation, they had to adjust the temperature up or down slightly. While seasoned workers needed no temperature charts—stoking by eye and adjusting to leaf changes without error—Shunsuke clung to these indicators as his sole guide, methodically opening and closing the vent to regulate it.

The indoor temperature was around thirty-two or thirty-three degrees Celsius on rainy or windy days, and about thirty-six degrees on normal days. They raised this to a maximum of eighty-four or eighty-five degrees Celsius. When raised to this level, it became impossible to remain inside the chamber for even five minutes. He felt anxiety and fear that the leaves might catch fire. Of course, he thought the ignition point of the leaves wouldn’t be so low, yet... However, in fact, the leaves closest to the iron pipes sometimes had their tips scorched. However, when those scorched leaves belonged to someone other than those responsible at the time, there was no avoiding muttered complaints behind their backs.

Shunsuke and Sugahara paired up to take turns tending the kiln. Though formally responsible that day, other farmers concerned about their leaves would come inspect whenever free. They gathered around shogi boards or passed time with idle chatter. Cooperative members along with other villagers would sit on the six-foot bench before the drying chamber—sipping tea, chatting awhile before leaving. Farmers dearly love their tea. The leaves bought with communal funds—clearly too refined for farmers' tastes, as even Shunsuke could tell—were kept in the drying chamber. Through savoring that tea, they seemed to treat themselves to fleeting luxury. When Shunsuke transferred embers from the furnace's firebox to the portable brazier, set the kettle boiling, and brought out the tea set, they'd blow across steaming cups while sweat streamed down their faces, sipping eagerly.

Night fell.

From around the time the borrowed bath was finished and dinner was done, the bench in this drying chamber grew even livelier. It was a sort of social gathering place. Many came bearing the smell of alcohol. They spoke in loud voices.

The reason their conversations tended to dwell solely on the past was likely due to the simple, confined, unchanging nature of their daily lives. For this very reason, those who had experienced lives even slightly more varied than others in the past grew quite talkative, and people gladly listened to their stories. The living conditions in the places they had gone for migrant work, working conditions, customs, local specialties, women, food, and such were recounted. Through hearing such stories, they naturally gained opportunities to compare their own land and lives with others', each harboring quiet critiques of their present circumstances. They, who of course read books and only sporadically read newspapers, seemed to gradually deepen their knowledge of the outside world through such means. When conversations didn’t head in that direction, they would ceaselessly pick apart their own narrow surroundings. They dug into others’ failures, scandals, quirks, and marital connections, showering them with passionate slander and condemnation.

The absence of any young men struck Shunsuke as both puzzling and left him feeling unfulfilled. If there were youths present, he thought, he might find some way to insert himself into the conversation. With this in mind, he spent the time until his shift change with Sugahara listening to people's talk while baring his chest to the night breeze. As the night's dampness began clinging to their skin and one or two people started heading home, the others suddenly clattered after them in rapid succession.

“Well then, we’ll leave the rest to you.” “Good work.”

When the cooperative members had left, only the two on duty remained. The surroundings grew quiet. The buzzing of mosquitoes suddenly swelled in volume and pitch. Sugahara rubbed his eyes, then let out a loud, drawn-out yawn one after another. Shunsuke, “Why don’t you catch some sleep?” “I’ve gotten quite accustomed to it by now,” he urged. “Ah… thank you,” Sugahara said, yet he remained in place. Having two people keeping watch simultaneously was unnecessary, and moreover, that would be too hard on their bodies. At first, Shunsuke thought Sugahara wouldn’t go to sleep because leaving him alone still caused anxiety. However, even so, Sugahara did not tell Shunsuke to go rest either. He seemed to require two night watchmen. The meaning of this arrangement gradually became clear to Shunsuke as days passed. In case the drying failed and the leaves turned out poorly, Sugahara wanted to avoid being left solely responsible. If there were two people, the burden would be divided. Depending on the situation, he could even shift the blame onto the other person. It was nothing but that sort of disposition.

The two of them spent several hours in silence. Both body and mind utterly exhausted, finding even speaking disagreeable, they remained motionless, knees hugged to their chests. The sound of burning logs flaring up with a whoosh could be heard in the haze between sleep and wakefulness. When he suddenly raised his head and looked outside, fireflies were flying through the darkness over the fields, tracing lines of light. The swarms of mosquitoes had thinned considerably. In the depths of the darkness, there was a faintly whitish expanse spreading out somewhere, so thinking dawn might be near, he stood beneath the eaves to look—but the night was still deep, and it turned out to be nothing more than one of those summer night views.

Shunsuke tried suggesting once more to Sugahara, who was on the verge of slipping off his seat, repeating his earlier words. Sugahara let out an “Ah—” as he raised his hands high in a big stretch, then obediently this time said, “Well then, I’ll have you let me sleep for about two hours. I’ll leave the rest to you,” and entered the vacant adjacent drying chamber unsteadily on his feet. He spread a coarse straw mat on the dirt floor there, and no sooner had his head touched down than loud snores could be heard.

Shunsuke had grown quite accustomed by now. By how the fire burned in the stove, he could roughly estimate the temperature inside without needing to check the thermometer each time. He knew how much a single split log would raise it. Once his drowsiness passed a certain threshold, sleepiness vanished altogether. He spread out the magazine he had brought and traced lines of small print under the dim light. Until night began paling into dawn, Shunsuke kept on like that alone. Sugahara never came even if awake, nor went to rouse him. Shunsuke went to the wellside beside the drying chamber, washed his face and wiped his body. Over the bamboo grove across the way, a large red sun rose. In the morning breeze, bamboo leaves rustled softly, their pale glimmer rippling as they swayed. He drank cold water straight from the well bucket and felt morning’s fresh vitality course through him.

Shunsuke carried firewood several times from the storage area and piled it up in the designated spot. He discarded the tea leaves from the kettle, lit the shichirin charcoal stove to boil water, cleaned the area, and roughly tidied up.

Just then, Sugahara appeared, still looking sleep-deprived as he woke up. “I must really apologize for that. I ended up sleeping right through,” he said apologetically, coming down to the fire pit where he busied himself poking at the flames.

Before long, the cooperative members began trickling in.

“You had a rough night,” said the cooperative member with an appreciative tone, his face etched with genuine concern. “How’s it coming?” asked Sugahara. “Is the yellowing progressing well?” “Well, we’ve only managed a little so far,” Shunsuke answered. Since this was his first time handling full responsibility, unease prickled at him. The thermometer read exactly thirty-seven degrees. Though not excessively hot, moisture evaporating from the leaves saturated the chamber’s air, creating a stifling atmosphere for anyone entering from outside. The tobacco leaves now steamed under controlled heat and humidity—this was how they achieved their golden transformation. Every cultivator treated the process with grave seriousness, for the quality of yellowing determined the leaf’s ultimate value. The cooperative member took point, meticulously examining each strand while Shunsuke trailed behind.

“It’s proceeding nicely now.” “You there.” “This batch looks top-grade,” the man said, turning to Shunsuke, who released a held breath in relief. The tension melted from his face—fatigue having seeped up like oil through his pores—as his features involuntarily softened.

“Your batch is fine, but isn’t this row here still a bit green?” Shunsuke pointed to the section that had been worrying him since earlier. “Ah, well, that’s because they were picked a bit too early and are still green. Can’t be helped,” the man replied. “It’s not the fault of the drying process.” When the day’s duty group had assembled, Shunsuke and Sugahara handed over their shift. They checked the thermometer and completed the transfer of responsibilities. “We leave it in your hands,” they said in farewell, finally released from the day-long tension.

The drying ended in late August. This work, which had continued for over a month, left everyone wearied and exhausted by its end, their bodies thinned and eyes sunken. Still, on the final day, all their faces—sunburnt, greasy, and sallow—brightened remarkably, and their movements, which until yesterday had seemed listless, now appeared infused with renewed energy. Shunsuke went to the drying chamber around ten in the morning and began removing the hung tobacco leaves from inside. Among the cooperative members, some arrived pushing handcarts with their wives, sons, and daughters, faces alight with delight. They removed the leaves in order from those hung lowest. They had attached name tags and markers to the rope ends to prevent mix-ups. Those who finished early helped those still working, exchanging critiques about each other's leaf quality. All spoke modestly of their own work while effusively praising others'.

The leaves, which had initially been damp with moisture, had now wilted, become elastic, shed their greenness, and transformed into a beautiful yellowish-brown hue. They removed each leaf from the ropes one by one, aligned them neatly, placed them into baskets, loaded them onto handcarts, and transported them back. These were to be stored in the barn's storage area. The storage area had been constructed by selecting an especially dry corner within the barn. They raised the floor half a ken above the dirt foundation, piled straw thickly and laid mats over it, arranged the leaves in orderly rows on top, then placed another layer of straw and mats before arranging more leaves in this fashion. This was done to prevent moisture. After stacking all layers, they piled more straw thickly and covered the entire structure with mats. Through this method, the leaves steamed until even those retaining traces of green gradually yellowed during storage.

That evening was the drying celebration.

Near the drying chamber was a small open space with a solitary cherry tree standing there. Beneath it they spread five or six straw mats and hung a lantern from the tree's branches. Since everyone had agreed to hold a feast with homemade dishes and drinks, they waited for two appointed preparers to return from gathering ingredients. Shunsuke had also come out to help with the preparations. “What’ll you be handling, Mr. Sugino? What’re you good at?” one man asked with a chuckle. “Well now, there’s nothing I’m particularly skilled at,” Shunsuke laughed.

“Well then, why don’t you grill a fish or something?” said the man dangling a bundle of burdock root from his hand, gesturing with his chin toward the mat beside them. Shunsuke saw a large flat dish there heaped with several sardines and three or four thick octopus legs. Shunsuke ended up assigned to grill those sardines. Some went to cook rice while others began preparing ingredients for assorted sushi—each taking on their divided roles. “Everyone, what should we put in the assorted sushi?” the person handling that role began consulting them.

As one person began listing—"Fried tofu, konjac, burdock, and octopus"—another picked up where they left off, “Kelp and taro stems. “Well, that should about do it, eh?” Since they said that would make it tasty, everyone agreed. Shunsuke, who had lit the charcoal brazier, placed stones on both ends of the brazier and set a wire net on top because the flames were too strong. As the savory aroma of grilled fish began to drift through the evening dusk, one person turned around,

“Make sure to grill that fish good and proper now.” After this warning, someone recounted how at last year’s drying celebration, one of their comrades had been laid low by half-raw fish. The story went that he’d been bedridden three days, had to call a doctor, and ended up paying through the nose. “We won’t keel over from no grilled fish, mind—but when it comes to sake, we’re the sort to drop fast.” The man known throughout for his iron liver said this with a self-satisfied laugh.

“How much rice should we cook?” asked the person in charge of cooking rice, coming to consult everyone. “Well now, five gō per person oughta do it, I’d say,” someone immediately chimed in from nearby. Since no one questioned this, Shunsuke was taken aback.

“Well now, that’s near a day’s ration for us,” he muttered into the air. “Ah, five gō ain’t nothin’.” “You’d be packin’ that much away in one sittin’ yourself after half a year here.” And so five gō per head it was settled.

A string had been tied to a cherry branch, and insects flew toward the flame of the lamp hanging from it. Some swirled madly around the glass chimney while others clung motionless to the inside of the shade. Eventually a few fell near the plates of homemade dishes that had been brought over, but people paid them no mind—catching them barehanded, twisting them carelessly without paper, and smearing them on their clothes. The lamp's wick had been fully extended, its tongues of flame licking and flickering as they stretched and shrank. Mosquito coils burned at two corners of the mat, their blue smoke occasionally enveloping the lamp when the wind shifted, momentarily dimming the surroundings.

Six cooperative members and about five or six of their family members took their seats. The grilled sardines prepared by Shunsuke’s hands were placed one by one before each person. In addition, there were small dishes of cucumber salad mixed with shredded sardine meat and plates of simmered vegetables. The central open space was occupied by a platter heaped with assorted sushi. The earthenware teapot placed on the charcoal brazier had sake heated within it.

“This year’s tobacco crop has at last been successfully brought to completion today.” “Everyone, I sincerely thank you for all your hard work.” “As tonight offers a long-awaited chance to rest your weary bones, please do eat and drink your fill,” the cooperative head addressed them.

“Thank you kindly,” the entire group bowed their heads. Though today’s celebration had been funded collectively rather than being the cooperative head’s personal treat, his address had expressed both gratitude for the two shō of sake he’d contributed beyond their shared expenses and respect for his position—a greeting born from dual sentiments. One of the caretakers, known for his drinking prowess, tested the warmth of the heated sake before declaring, “Right then, let’s begin,” and started pouring from the person beside him. He continued around the circle. Even nondrinkers accepted at least the first cup. Shunsuke accepted his too.

As the evening dusk grew increasingly thick, the area where they sat appeared to float within a soft yellow light, creating a particular mood. Their eyes having finally grown heavy-lidded, they immersed both body and soul freely into that atmosphere. By the time three or four empty sake bottles had lined up, the mood had fully warmed. From someone among them, singing voices began to rise, and even those who didn't sing took up handclaps to join in rhythm. One of the elderly men, who had stopped drinking early on, dropped his head heavily forward; even when someone brought a cup before him and shouted in his ear, he said nothing and merely waved his hand above his head—but then he rose unsteadily to his feet. With unsteady legs and peculiar hand movements, he began to dance. It was the movements of the Bon dance. The gathering erupted in uproarious cheers as two people stood up to join in, beginning to circle around the mat-covered seating area. There was a man proud of his voice, who raised it even higher,

“Ah, form a circle, form a circle—just form a small circle now! Gather round like that full moon on the fifteenth night!” As he sang this, the entire group chimed in unison, chanting “Yoi-yoi-yoi, yoi-yana!”

Shunsuke drank three or four cups as people pressed him to, listening to the songs and watching the lively scene unfold. He had never been much of a drinker. There had been nights in Tokyo when he'd roamed the streets drinking with fellow students—less from anguish over lost or elusive goals than from a sentimental indulgence in his own suffering, and from youth's oppressive restlessness that thrashed within him without outlet. In all that time, had there even been ten such nights? The liquor he'd initially found harsh had at times begun to taste agreeable, but soon enough he'd broken ties with those companions. He'd known from the beginning that such things could never serve as even a temporary stopgap. He was a man who could never lose himself completely in drunken oblivion—not even temporarily.

However, tonight he felt that if only someone had encouraged him, he too might have been able to drink himself into oblivion. He could not sing along with the others, clap in rhythm, or join the dancing. At first he had chatted cheerfully with those seated beside and across from him, but once the gathering descended into disarray, such exchanges ceased. He appeared to be left completely alone. Yet his own heart was not as solitary as his outward appearance suggested—it remained fully attuned to the people's sentiments. He felt no great chasm between himself and the others. Within himself, he detected nothing that resisted blending into the atmosphere here, nothing discordant. Rather, he found himself honestly merging into it; even without singing or dancing, he felt he could share in enjoying what the others were experiencing. And he thought that even someone like him could come to feel this way precisely because, however brief—just over a month—he had shared both hardships and joys with them through their shared work in production.

However, no one offered him sake anymore. The weaker ones had already collapsed in drunkenness, while the stronger ones, though not offering drinks to others, were not being offered any themselves either—each pouring and drinking as they pleased. Some grew impatient with the small cups, while others had taken to pouring their sake into bowls to drink. A voice called out that the sake had run out. The sake bottles around them were each shaken and checked. In some, faint sounds remained at the bottom. Then, one person,

“Alright, I’ll buy one shō,” he said and walked toward where the bicycles were parked. True to someone who was still drinking, his footing remained steady and secure.

“Watch your step!” “It’s dark out there,” someone called from behind. “I’ll be fine,” he replied, and vanished into the darkness.

Soon after, Shunsuke was the first to return home alone. He quietly slipped away from his seat without drawing attention. The moon, which had finally revealed itself by the time night had deepened, hung slightly tilted in the sky. The sound of insects along the road flowed like water.

10

From around the time Obon was approaching, Kompei appeared constantly occupied with something. He could not remain settled at home. He would entrust the fieldwork to the family members and frequently leave early in the morning for destinations unknown, not returning until late at night. Shunsuke neither understood the nature of this busyness nor paid it particular heed.

In the dead of night, Shunsuke abruptly awoke to voices from the living area—people still awake discussing something. Kompei, who had returned late, was talking with Omura. The elderly couple’s hushed voices carried an anxiety that seemed more than mere discretion about the late hour. Though their words remained nearly inaudible, this was the first time their conversation truly gripped Shunsuke’s attention. There had been more than one such night. When he finally came to understand the nature of his father’s worries, he felt ashamed of his own excessive obtuseness.

It was something he should have realized immediately if he had even known about rural Obon traditions. The matter concerned money. There were payments to the village office and credit union that could not be delayed. The debts to the lumberyard, general store, soy sauce merchant, doctor, and others each loomed large. As for bicycle shops and blacksmiths—being fellow small tradesmen in their circle—Kompei's nature made postponing [payments] utterly unthinkable.

Shunsuke found himself contemplating once more this fundamental truth of rural life—just how profound a source of anxiety cash could be. Even if somewhat substantial sums of cash came in two or three fixed times a year, the direction of their outflow had already been determined long before they arrived. It was rather common for cash to be borrowed against its anticipated arrival, only to have already been spent by then. The aspects of consumer life requiring cash could not help but take on ever-greater breadth each year within the framework of farmers' lives. Preventing that was impossible. That was simply the same as society progressing. However, on the flip side, the avenues through which money came in remained almost entirely limited to those of old, and even when new ones were occasionally added, they brought little of real substance. It was through migrant work, sericulture, selling vegetables, cutting firewood, burning charcoal, braiding wheat straw, or other side jobs. The reality of what those actually entailed is widely known today.

This year during Obon, there would be people fleeing the village—Shunsuke had begun hearing such rumors in places where crowds gathered. People even began boldly speculating about exactly who would flee, their names being tossed around without restraint by the gossipy crowd. Of course, fleeing was only a temporary measure, and it was said such people existed in every village each year. All that remained afterward were children who knew nothing. In rural areas, they believed that if one could just make it through those critical times like Obon and seasonal payment deadlines, lenders would resign themselves to extending the due date until the next settlement period.

Shunsuke acutely felt the fact that he could do nothing for his aged father in this current situation. Through his own independent efforts at present, he could not produce even a single coin of new money. Though he too had long battled poverty, that experience proved utterly useless in the present circumstances. He recalled Shimura and Uehara, along with a few affluent students in Tokyo. Yet merely recalling them, he found himself completely unable to steel his resolve to approach any one of them and voice his request.

After much consideration, he decided to do the one thing he could in his current situation. One day, he shut himself in his room and spent a long time there. He was now taking out the stored books—which, aside from a portion he had retrieved after bringing them back from Tokyo, he hadn’t had time to unpack—to examine them there. They were packed into three trunks that weren’t particularly large. Whenever he had even a little leeway, he bought books. As a poor student, he was one who possessed expensive books. When returning home this time, he had sold off a considerable number of volumes, but a fair amount of valuable ones still remained. As a student, he had painstakingly acquired books—particularly Western ones—that were deemed essential to read someday, whether he could manage them immediately or not. Since he had not yet specialized in any academic discipline, his interests had ranged across various fields depending on his shifting moods, but one could say there were no books in his collection that lacked logical coherence. And he, who had often relied on used bookstores, could estimate the resale value of each and every volume with near precision.

He was absolutely determined to get fifty yen. Gathering enough books to make fifty yen would have been simple enough, but he couldn't help agonizing over the selection. The moment he settled on one, he'd start thinking another was better. Memories surfaced one after another—the times he'd strained himself to acquire those books, and the life he'd been living back then. The past clung to their tactile feel and lingering scent. Now, in many ways, he found it painful to let his thoughts drift backward.

He had been completely immersed in his new life these past few months, captivated by its fresh allure and driven by a pleasantly busy state that left him with no time to consider anything else. He had been wholly occupied with absorbing new things and adapting himself to his new life. His self-reform had to first be achieved through participating in productive labor. The absorption of knowledge through books had gone unconsidered for some time now. And having been forgotten, it was not particularly painful. Yet the time when this would become painful would likely arrive before long.

What young Shunsuke sought through his rather vague self-awareness could be expressed in various ways depending on perspective, but from one angle, it might be said he pursued a harmonious union—a state of unification—between intellectual labor and physical labor. One could not deny this division between the two was the source of contemporary society's and humanity's misfortunes. Yet what would it mean to pursue such unified existence solely within one's personal life? The matter had its roots in social foundations—what might be called the opposition between inherently deficient cities and countryside.

Shunsuke recalled Shimura; he found himself recalling a particular phrase from their conversation. Phrases like “farming in fair weather and reading in the rain” or “the experience of labor”—even Shunsuke himself could not have spoken them without a tinge of irony.

However, it couldn’t be denied that his own new life risked remaining merely something akin to farming in fair weather and reading in the rain. Farmers’ lives were finally coming within reach. At the same time, what had been forgotten—the intelligentsia within him—began to stir, demanding the unification of the two. A new difficulty was beginning. And unless the principle of that unification was sought from a newly elevated social perspective, the overcoming of those difficulties would ultimately end in a “farming in fair weather and reading in the rain” type of solution.

However, this newly elevated social perspective was not yet something he could fully grasp in concrete terms. He understood it theoretically as knowledge. He hoped that through life's realities, he might deepen an understanding more essential than mere knowledge. Shunsuke smelled books after long absence, summoning back the life he'd abandoned. It felt like something from a distant past. Then nostalgia surged powerfully for that world, making him realize anew the formidable difficulties of his chosen path.

After a long time, Shunsuke selected an appropriate number of books. He packed them into two suitable boxes, attached them to the back of his bicycle, carried them to the station in a town about three ri (twelve kilometers) away, and entrusted them to be sent by railway mail. He wrote a letter to one of his close friends, explained the circumstances, and asked him to do his best to secure as good a price as possible. About a week later, a registered letter arrived from that friend containing seventy yen. This was twenty yen more than Shunsuke had anticipated. The reason lay in foreign exchange rates having driven up the value of Western books.

Shunsuke handed it to Kompei. It was the eleventh—the day after tomorrow would be the thirteenth, marking the start of Obon. This happened while the tobacco work remained unfinished. As for how he had obtained that money, Shunsuke offered no explanation. "Is that so? Well, thank you," Kompei said with a slight bow of his head. "You really shouldn't have gone to such trouble."

Kompei did not try to pry into what Shunsuke had left unsaid. But he had likely been dimly aware of it for some time.

During Obon, every household took off work from the day before and were bustling with all sorts of preparations. Shunsuke’s family belonged to the Jōdo Shinshū sect, so aside from decorating the Buddhist altar with flowers and offerings, they didn’t do anything particularly elaborate. In this area, the main Buddhist sects were Jōdo Shinshū and Shingon. In most households, they did major cleaning, while in those with means to spare, people were seen taking this opportunity to undertake house repairs and tatami replacements as well.

Two houses down from Shunsuke’s home, across the way, stood a hill where the village’s communal cemetery was located. When standing in the garden, one could point out several gravestones visible between clumps of pampas grass. Since morning, there had been a constant stream of people passing before his house. Women and children walked by carrying bamboo rakes, bamboo brooms, wooden buckets, flower vases, and bouquets, while among those cleaning graves, many came to draw water from the Sugino family’s well. White smoke from burning swept-up debris rose in multiple trails from the grove’s shadow, its smell carried by the wind to where Shunsuke stood.

The roughly two-hour bustle at the cemetery on the evening of Obon's first day made Shunsuke reminisce about his childhood. An elderly person, bent as if folded double, ushered in daughters, grandchildren, even great-grandchildren. That such scenes appeared not merely once or twice compelled Shunsuke to ponder aspects of humanity and human existence he had scarcely considered before. He reconsidered the nature of family and blood ties. He meditated on the mystery of species. He reflected on heredity. That even something as obvious as the resemblance among ten family members' faces could feel nearly miraculous struck him profoundly. He found himself contemplating the past, present, and future of human society. Though people had grown accustomed to debating these matters as grand ideological or social issues, witnessing four generations of living lineage stretched before one's eyes inevitably stirred emotions of singular depth.

In this region, fresh-cut pine logs were called koematsu. Throughout the cemetery, flames from burning koematsu blazed crimson here and there, their resinous scent stinging the nose. It mingled with the fragrance of incense. The clang of temple bells and chanted sutras persisted even after darkness fell. Last year they had held the Bon dance, but this year decided against it. Instead, a manzai performance was staged in Tenjin’s precincts. From Shunsuke’s neighboring households too, men and women went out together bearing fans. The twang of shamisen and rumble of drums carried faintly through the night air until past eleven.

The next day was the custom where every household entertained guests. Blood relatives would invite each other as guests and visit one another’s homes. The village udon shop was bustling from morning. Women and children would bring a shō or two of flour to have udon noodles made for them. It was so crowded that they had to stand continuously for over an hour until their turn came. This udon was the main offering for entertaining guests.

Obon lasted until the sixteenth. However, since there was a custom of holding a special event jointly hosted by this village and the neighboring one on the evening of the twentieth every year, the villagers remained immersed in the Obon spirit until it concluded.

From the morning of the nineteenth, people from the two villages gathered at a nearby mountain, one person from each household, each carrying ropes and hatchets in their hands. "It was koematsu-cutting." They had previously purchased two large pine trees from the mountain and now worked collectively to cut them into logs about two feet long. First, using a two-person crosscut saw, they began cutting near the base. People who prided themselves on their strength and skill took turns sawing through the trunk. Even a massive tree that would require two arm spans to encircle was sawn about sixty percent through in moments, at which point everyone pulled on the rope tied beforehand and felled it. The fallen tree was sawn into two-foot lengths by nearly twenty people. Others split the logs with axes. They bound the split wood into bundles. With so many hands working, all these tasks were completed in short order.

From that mountain, the path to Mount Konpira’s summit followed the mountain ridges. Between the mountain ridge and the summit, over 130 bonfire pits had been dug. The townspeople brought bundled split logs and placed two bundles in each pit before moving on.

This was one of the village's annual events—the Odaishi-san Festival. In the village stood Odaishi-san—a small building that now served as a temple without any monks, maintained by just a single caretaker. It was said that over two hundred years ago, the head priest of this temple had brought back small amounts of soil from each of Shikoku's eighty-eight sacred sites and created new eighty-eight sites along the mountain ridges mentioned earlier. There, stone Amida statues, stone miniature shrines, stone pagodas, and the like stood lined up at intervals of two to three ken along one side. The bonfires were for these eighty-eight sites.

The twentieth was bustling from morning. Along the road leading to the mountain base, street stalls set up shop, and even a naniwabushi performance hut was erected. The fire of this village’s Odaishi-san was widely known throughout the prefecture. From distant villages as well, a great number of people came gathering toward this hamlet. Since people were not allowed up the mountain, the road immediately below became exceptionally crowded. Alongside the road, figures could be seen spreading mats and beginning to pour sake.

The sun had completely set, and moonless twilight darkly enveloped the surroundings. Soon drums resounded thunderously. At that signal fire was set to the fresh-cut pine logs. The flames burned vigorously. Flares from one hundred thirty locations simultaneously seemed to engulf the entire mountain. Crimson serpentine flames—rising through pine groves, racing from foothills along ridges toward the summit—formed nothing less than a spectacular sight. Forests paddies fields houses and people crowding the road all shone uniformly red.

The bonfire burned for over an hour before going out. Only after the flames had completely died out did the moon finally rise. The night in the village after everyone had left felt even more desolate than usual. The distant howling of dogs could be heard late into the night.

Eleven

Autumn was the season of festivals. Starting with the Odaishi-san Festival, all manner of deities came popping out one after another, leaving Shunsuke flustered. Shunsuke, who had primarily viewed the farmers solely through the lens of their productive labor and interacted with them in that capacity, now found himself compelled to come to know them through other dimensions.

One day, two men from the village came to visit the Sugino house. One of them, Takiyama, was a young man still under thirty who had gone to Osaka as a boy, worked for nearly ten years at a file factory to become a full-fledged craftsman, but had now returned to the village to work as a farmer after his father’s death. The other man, Maeshima, was someone who would give election speeches if asked, and it was customary to inquire with him about any unfamiliar characters. Both were known as the knowledgeable ones in the village.

“Is Father not coming out?” Kompei happened to be out, so Shunsuke met them. However, this was not their first meeting. “No, it’s fine. Even without Father here. If you’d hear us out,” they said,

“We’re holding the Cow Deity festival the day after tomorrow—could you spare any contribution you see fit?” “The Cow Deity?”

“Ah, right. You hadn’t heard about this yet, had you?”

And so they began to explain. Four years ago, three cows kept by the farmers of this hamlet had died one after another within a very short span. Having grown suspicious, they consulted Masakichi-san, the devout bull breeder, “In your hamlet, isn’t there a Cow Deity? “And isn’t there a chance you’ve been neglecting that deity?” Those who had been told returned to the hamlet and gathered people to inquire, but no one had any clue. Before long, one of the elders told of a shrine in a certain mountain valley where now only traces remained. It was said that decades ago, there had been an annual festival called the “Cow Deity.” It was said that before anyone knew it, the festival had been abandoned. Then upon hearing this, a man spoke up—now that he thought of it, he had cut down a pine tree right beside that very spot last year. That was indeed a large tree—it might well have been a sacred tree. When he felled it, the tree came crashing down onto the shrine—and now a pale-faced man came forward and confessed that this might have been the wrongdoing. Subsequently, similar stories were told by two or three others.

It was conclusively decided that this must indeed be the cause. Then under Takiyama and Maeshima’s guidance, a lively festival was promptly conducted. A new shrine was erected. Since then, the festival has been held every autumn. “The divine power is truly remarkable. Ever since then, every cow in this hamlet has been in fine health, you see. Not a single one has fallen ill or died anymore.” Shunsuke could not find any way to respond and remained silent for a while.

At first, Shunsuke thought there had been something sarcastic in Takiyama's tone when he said, "The divine power is truly remarkable." He suspected Takiyama knew exactly what he was doing—profiting from the festival through some shabby scheme while feigning belief. But he soon realized this wasn't entirely true. Even if Takiyama did profit from it, he genuinely believed in the Cow Deity. For Shunsuke, facing this sincere believer proved more agonizing than confronting a mere cunning opportunist.

He felt as though he were only now realizing this was what village interactions entailed. He wasn't quite sure how much he should contribute. On one hand, five or ten sen seemed sufficient, yet considering his household owned some land, he felt obliged to give more. Yet it didn't seem worth waiting for Kompei's return to consult him. So he asked how much he should give.

“Any amount will do. It’s entirely up to your generosity,” they said, refusing to specify further. And so, Shunsuke handed over fifteen sen.

When Kompei returned home and was told about it, "That'll do." "Fifteen sen." "—Ten would've sufficed."

And not only did he refrain from making critical comments about the festival, but soon— "Right, right—at our place too, we've gotta hold the Bishamonten festival soon.—This year our household's the chief priest, see." "What is Mr. Bishamonten?" "On the large stone beside the path leading to our field, there's a shrine, right? That's Mr. Bishamonten." Such shrines did exist. They had apparently been there since his childhood. Yet he had never known until now that this was Mr. Bishamonten. Given his ignorance of this fact, perhaps there had been no festivals for it in former times.

“When did you start worshiping something like that?” “Well, I’d say that began maybe three or four years back. Though mind you, we only joined the group ourselves this year for the first time.” “There’s this Bishamonten parishioners’ group that formed.” “Started by the likes of Murai and Tsuchida most likely, but now there’s about six households involved.” “They kept badgering us to join, and seeing as it wasn’t something worth putting up a fight over, well, we went along with it.” “Then right off they tell us to be this year’s festival stewards.” “Just another drain on the coffers.”

“Why don’t you quit that sort of thing? Since it’s your first year involved, it’s not too late yet. Why not cancel and back out now while you still can?” “Can’t be helped,” Kompei replied, his attitude toward this matter no different from how he approached any other problem. “It’s not like we actually believe in Mr. Bishamonten or anything. But when they keep pushing us like this, we can’t just refuse to join their group. If some misfortune ever hit our household, they’d start right in—‘That’s why we warned you,’ or ‘It’s divine punishment,’ or ‘Serves you right’—you know how they’d nag. We can’t stand that kind of hassle. We figure it’s best to just go along with what’s expected for things we can tolerate.”

“What kind of god is Mr. Bishamonten?” “Well, must be one of the Fortune Deities, don’t you think?…… I don’t rightly know myself.” “What exactly do you do during the festival?” “There ain’t nothin’ to it. “It’s just folks gatherin’ to drink and eat, that’s all.”

After two or three days had passed, red and white banners could be seen standing at a certain spot in the foothills of the mountain, flapping noisily in the wind as people filed along in a steady stream.

“When they say ‘Cow Deity,’ do you think it’s just a god for cows?” “Can’t it grant other wishes too?” “Now listen here—it’s a Deity after all. Even if they call it Cow Deity, that doesn’t mean it’s limited to cows alone.” “Otherwise there’d be no sense in it for folks like me.” “We don’t keep cows at our place, see.” “Since we’ve got goats instead of cows, we’d end up having to worship some Goat Deity or whatnot.”

Shunsuke heard the worshippers speaking in that manner as they went to pay their respects.

On a large natural stone beside the field sat a small, weathered shrine. One day, Shunsuke opened its door to see what lay inside. A palm-sized stone resembling pumice rested there, enshrined beneath a layer of dust.

On the eve of the Bishamonten festival, as evening approached, the ritualist came and,

“Tomorrow is Mr. Bishamonten’s festival, but I’ve come today to pay my respects since I can’t attend tomorrow,” he said. In this region, “otaisan” referred to those who made their living performing norito ritual prayers, though they weren’t Shinto priests. As it was an hour before sunset—the busiest time of day for farmwork—all the household members were in a foul mood. They even had to call Kompei back from the fields. The ritualist,

“Please prepare some clean straw, Japanese paper, salt, and washed rice,” he said. Taking straw to make a sacred rope and fashioning a gohei from the paper, he then headed toward the back field carrying those along with the washed rice and salt. The members of the parishioner group changed into neat attire and began gathering one after another. They all uniformly bowed their heads in worship. The next day, on the festival’s date, the Sugino household, serving as festival organizers, invited the group and hosted them as guests. Various deities were being enshrined. Gods long buried in the earth and forgotten had been dug up again; gods that had never existed before were newly created; indeed, it could be called a time of divine revival.

In one sense, festivals must serve as social gatherings. The form of work that involves taking up a hoe to till the soil may be solitary in itself, but within the entire process of agriculture, it becomes intricately intertwined with multifaceted relationships with other people. Such lives as theirs would naturally seek out many opportunities for social interaction. Festivals must also be a form of comfort and entertainment. And various other things they must be. However, such things do not explain why buried gods are being dug up or new gods are being created.

Here too, Shunsuke recalled the commotion during the water famine. He reflected on how solutions to such life-and-death issues for farmers were sought beyond human capability—how they found themselves in situations where they had no choice but to turn to forces greater than themselves. And this phenomenon wouldn’t be limited to water famines alone. Nor would it apply only to natural elements like water. When cocoon prices plummeted, they’d just as readily create and worship a silkworm deity.

Shunsuke recalled the festivals of his village. Daishi-san, the Earth Deity, the Mountain Deity, Konpira-san, the Cow Deity, Bishamonten, Hachiman—these rose in his mind. Beyond these, gods he had yet to know might abruptly manifest themselves and take him by surprise.

Among religious observances that were distinct in nature from these, there existed the "Oza" gatherings of the Jōdo Shinshū sect.

In Shingon Buddhism, this was called "O-kanki." Several households formed a group that took turns hosting the Oza each month. The Sugino family’s Oza group consisted of six households. This was also called kuminai. On that day, there would be a prayer service starting in the evening. At the entrance was placed a hand-washing basin, and with that water they would cleanse their hands before entering. The people who entered faced the master of the house,

“Thank you kindly for tonight. “You’ve kindly opened the Oza.” “We’ve come to pay our respects,” each and every one of them recited in unison with the same fixed greeting. The master of the house, “Thank you all for coming to pay your respects,” he returned the courtesy.

After engaging in casual conversation for about two hours, they would typically commence the service. In every kuminai parishioner group, there existed one person who served as the prayer leader. This person served as a substitute for the Buddhist priest. The prayer leader of the Sugino family’s kuminai parishioner group was an old man called Matanana-tsuan. Before the Buddhist altar, Matanana-tsuan sat in formal seiza with solemn formality. The others took their seats a short distance behind him. Matanana-tsuan offered a ritual oil lamp and lit two incense sticks. And then, striking the ritual bell, he began solemnly chanting sutras. To Shunsuke listening nearby, apart from assuming it must be one of the Three Sutras, he had no idea which sutra it actually was. As Matanana-tsuan chanted the sutras, the people joined in harmony. Though quite lengthy, one couldn’t help thinking they had thoroughly memorized every word. Matanana-tsuan struck the ritual bell at intervals. When the sutra chanting concluded, Matanana-tsuan took up the sacred writings and recited a familiar passage. The people bowed their heads and listened. Finally, when he intoned “Anakashiko Anakashiko” to close, the people chanted “Namu Amida Butsu” in unison, bowed deeply in worship, and rubbed their prayer beads until they clattered.

And with that, it was done. Thereupon, the women of the house brought in udon and served it. Everyone said things like "It's well made" and went back for seconds and thirds.

Considering all these festival and religious event expenses they demanded, Shunsuke could not help being astonished at their cumulative magnitude. These expenses came bit by bit—each one inconspicuous on its own—but when viewed collectively, they likely amounted to several times what was paid in public levies. Among the monthly levies were three sen for Daishi-san's electric light fee, while rice donations were set at one's discretion—typically one or two gō. For periodic offerings: five gō each to the Mountain and Earth Deities every spring and autumn; ten sen each to Konpira-san biannually; and for Hachiman-san twice yearly—two or three gō of rice and about twenty sen in cash—these were established contributions. Additionally, there were numerous what might be called appropriate donations required for the autumn festival alone. These numerous festivals were conducted by dividing the hamlet into groups of five or six households that took turns hosting them. For some festivals, they had to take days off work for preparations, and any house serving as a lion dance rehearsal venue had to provide full hospitality to youths at its own expense. Neglect this duty, and eventually the full consequences would inevitably follow without exception. For both the Seven-Night Services from lunar November first through twenty-eighth and the Shōki Memorial Services during lunar December, every household in the Oza group was required to host each observance once—inviting fellow parishioners for services and hospitality—though for some families these hospitality costs formed no small burden. Needless to say, temples and priests claimed the largest share.

Among the various expenses collectively referred to as miscellaneous expenditures, Shunsuke thought that the most substantial portion was likely these religious expenses.

Due to complex social causes, the farmers' livelihoods became increasingly difficult—so much so that by no means could they be described as comfortable. It might have been expected that costly festivals would be discontinued, but this was not necessarily the case. A multitude of diverse gods promising worldly benefits would emerge anew or be transformed to suit people’s ever-shifting desires, only to be enshrined with ever-greater fervor. Within their arduous lives, excessive demands piled up ever higher. Such a dynamic could be observed.

When would these people ever come to understand the proper relationship between the path to genuine human happiness and these acts of worship? And through what manner of path would that realization arrive? Shunsuke tasted bitter anguish. Though not wholly distinct from that variety of suffering, there existed another pain—more immediate, more quotidian—that Shunsuke alone was compelled to feel. In these idolatrous rituals, he could never remain simply an observer or critic. In practice, he had no choice but to move in concert with the people. He had to prepare festivals alongside them and take his place at ceremonial gatherings among them.

When parishioners' group members decided roles for each occasion, Shunsuke too would be assigned duties such as pounding mirror rice cakes, preparing sweet sake as ritual offering, collecting rice from each household in the hamlet and distributing it, or making assorted sushi. On festival days, they would have even the youngest children taste the sweet sake for ritual offerings—just a tiny drop left lingering at the bottom of the sake cups. They would arrange the sushi on wooden trays and distribute it to the people. They would finely cut the mirror rice cakes into as many pieces as there were households in the hamlet and distribute them to each house. Shunsuke too carried out such duties as part of his assigned role. That he had taken it upon himself to volunteer for these duties in place of Kompei to such an extent was because he must not treat himself as a special person. He had to accustom himself to every aspect of life. It had been based on his conviction that he must first assimilate himself with the people by conforming to their customs, but in practice, this proved no simple matter and caused him considerable anguish. For instance, compared to that night’s banquet celebrating the tobacco drying—both events presenting similar outward appearances of communal festivity—how differently must Shunsuke’s heart have moved in receiving them: this one and that. At that time, he had been able to accept everything—even what seemed foolish—with a heartwarming sincerity.

In the beginning, when he first directly connected with farmers through their productive work, Shunsuke became single-mindedly enamored with them. He loved their simple and unadorned form. He loved its lack of waste and its life filled with substance. However, he had finally reached the time when he must also observe their various other facets.

Of course, this was something he had understood from the beginning. What was a farmer? What kind of life was that? As for their nature and characteristics—though he had been long absent from home—since he himself inherently belonged there by birth, he should have known them as more than mere concepts; yet when confronting actual circumstances, they still evoked in him manifold reflections.

Shunsuke read the experiences of three or four people—works written by those who had once lived as intellectuals before entering farming life for various reasons. Generally, he either felt dissatisfied or found contempt welling up within him. These writers weren’t blind to farmers’ negative aspects; if anything, they observed and perceived them more acutely and minutely than Shunsuke himself did. Yet in that very act of observation, they deceived both themselves and others, whether consciously or not. All too often, they invoked pastoral sentiments, modifying and embellishing what they saw and felt in both people and landscapes. This was only natural—for they could choose not to see what displeased them and avoid what they wished to shun. Their farming amounted to little more than a pastime, sustained by other means of livelihood. They resembled Roka’s description: “He is an aesthetic farmer. His cultivation is that of a hobbyist, not a way of life.”

However, Shunsuke could not be like that.

Everything had only just barely begun. He would still have much to experience indeed.

12

Autumn gradually deepened.

With the rice harvest looming ahead, the entire village began to show lively activity.

Depending on each season，farmers have certain endeavors that are complete in themselves and representative of that season． However，in summer，there are no such conspicuous activities． There is a tobacco harvest，but that is limited to only certain tobacco growers． Even when it comes to vegetables，there is nothing particularly worth mentioning in this region． Throughout the long summer，they do nothing but prepare for autumn． All their activities are nothing but preparations for the day of a bountiful rice harvest． Therefore，the vigorous force stretches outward and outward． Contrary to the character of summer as a season，the movements of farmers during this period possess a quietly submerged，tranquil quality． Autumn is the time when this submerged force manifests outwardly． As they approach this annual reckoning of the entire year，all their available energy is roused．

Chestnuts, persimmons, grapes, and akebi berries bore fruit and ripened. The mountains had long since been mostly cleared, leaving no trace of those boyhood days when one might traverse peak after peak gathering nuts, staining their mouths red with juice. Yet even now, in unexpected thickets along the slopes, one could still sometimes discover a few dangling clusters of wild grapes. The mountains bustled again with mushroom foraging. Shunsuke felt deeply the richness of harvest autumn for the first time in years.

Shunsuke was also busy. He did not have a single day where he idly folded his hands. He kept planning one thing after another and moving to put them into practice. He felt dissatisfied that in his home, aside from one plowing ox, no other creatures were being kept. A farmhouse without chickens, rabbits, or pigs seemed to him utterly unlike a proper farmhouse at all. And indeed, his household had once kept such animals. On a winter evening, Kompei crouched by the clear stream downstream from the house. He was washing something. The boy Shunsuke, returning from play, paused mid-crossing on the nearby bridge and looked down. Winter had made the water so clear that every stone on the stream bed was visible, even the leaves caught between them. Beneath Kompei’s splashing hands in the water lay a pale reddish flesh tone. When Kompei stood up, dangling from his hand was a freshly skinned lump of meat with thin red hide still clinging to it—Shunsuke nearly stopped breathing in shock. The queasy discomfort of that moment, yet also the translucent beauty of that pink flesh glowing through, along with the crisp rustle of that cold-flowing stream—these impressions remain etched in my mind with uncanny vividness to this day.

However, the tender rabbit meat stewed with potatoes and daikon was indescribably delicious, and because he learned that the peeled skins were periodically bought by a man who came around—the money becoming funds for his elementary school paper and brushes—even when seeing the raw, skinned flesh, he soon ceased to feel anything about it. The rabbits apparently weren’t kept for long, but he had a memory of the chickens being raised until quite recent years.

When Shunsuke asked Kompei, “It’s not like there’s any particular reason.” “It doesn’t bring profit and often ends up causing losses instead.” “So, three years ago, was it? There was a time when eggs dropped to ten sen or below per hundred momme.” “We took that opportunity to stop.” “Ain’t worth the trouble of raisin’ ’em.”

Shunsuke did some calculations. At thirteen to fifteen sen per hundred momme, keeping a hundred chickens would result in a monthly loss of ten to twelve yen. Lately, it seemed egg prices dropping to around thirteen to fifteen sen had become a constant occurrence. In this situation, the larger the scale they were kept, the more losses were incurred. But why not try raising four or five chickens with just my spare labor?

Even in cases of losses at large-scale poultry operations, their calculations accounted not a single sen for labor costs except when specifically hiring additional help requiring monetary expenditure. The labor of family members was treated as completely free, and the fact that it was human labor requiring food, drink, and clothing was forgotten. In the farmer's economy, this held true without exception for everything. If one were to calculate their labor at market rates and draw up a balance sheet as ordinary people do, even more noteworthy results would likely have emerged. And if economists of that time could not help but perceive even the endeavors of poor farmers as having an enterprise-like nature, then it would have been only proper to calculate labor costs and such at enterprise levels.

Therefore, even if Shunsuke said he was raising them using only his own spare labor, when losses occurred they occurred, and there was no reason their proportion should differ from those at large-scale operations. The only difference lay in the absolute amount of losses - large or small. And if it was a small loss, he likely thought it wouldn't amount to much. Yet more than such calculations, what drove him forward was an earnest desire to gain varied experiences. The three-year-old chicken coop had already been demolished, so he began by building a new small one from scratch. On the evening when he finally completed assembling the coop using leftover timber and fresh bamboo cut from the grove, a motorcycle engine stopped on the road before the house. The young man from Kompei's acquaintance at the town transport shop had brought three White Leghorn hens as promised. If one asked him, there existed channels to procure poultry cheaper than market rates.

He immediately released them into the new bird coop. The young man took a break and left, and Shunsuke returned to the chicken coop again. He had given them water and feed, but the chickens showed no interest in eating; instead, they stretched their necks, tilted their heads, and made cluck-cluck-cluck sounds in their throats. They seemed startled and fearful, acting timidly. They still didn’t seem to have noticed the roost. They tried to fly up to a high perch but slipped and fell, flapping their wings.

Suddenly noticing something abnormal in one of them that had turned its back, Shunsuke caught it to examine. A red mucous membrane protruded from its anus, hung down, fluid oozed out, and the chicken’s rear feathers were soaked and soiled.

It was undoubtedly a prolapse. Shunsuke was angry. He became single-mindedly convinced that the young man had brought this sick chicken because he looked down on his inexperience. He went to Kompei and spoke. Kompei came over and, upon taking one look, “How did you bring the chickens?” “I attached a basket to the back of the motorcycle and put them inside…” “So what’s this—you went and raced that motorcycle like crazy. Thudding and bumping all over the place, I bet. The basket must’ve been shaking something fierce too—violently bouncing up and down from all that jolting. Every time that happened, the chickens inside got tossed up and then slammed down. That’s how it ended up like this.”

“Admittedly,” he added, “When you keep a lotta chickens, prolapses ain’t rare. “They say that happens when they’re layin’, but ’stead of thinkin’ he brought it knowin’ full well from the start, better to figure it happened on the way here. “At least it’ll keep ya from blowin’ your top,” he said with a laugh. “So what’ll happen now? “Will this chicken get better?” “Most times they don’t heal. It’ll likely kick the bucket soon enough. “Even if it mends proper, won’t lay many eggs.”

Kompei caught the chicken and tried pushing the prolapse back inside with his fingertips, but it popped out again as the bird breathed. He repeated this several times to no avail. “Well, there’s naught to do but give up—though givin’ up straight off seems cruel-like. Let’s keep it awhile and see how it fares.”

With that, he went off to wash his hands.

It had already grown dim. Shunsuke caught the chickens and put them into the roost. For the time being, he thought he would have to show them where to sleep. And he closed the shed door. The next morning, when he got up and checked, two eggs had been laid in the roost. There was no doubt they were laid by the two healthy hens. When he saw the eggs, the chickens became endearing, and he began to feel both enjoyment and a sense of purpose in raising them. The feeling of warm affection he held toward the chickens grew profoundly deeper. He felt as though his own efforts had contributed to the eggs that had been laid. Even I find myself amused by this mercenary impulse of mine, yet there is a sense of reality to it.

However, after that, the chickens did not lay eggs for some time. Kompei said it was probably due to the upheaval when they were transported, the change in their location and food. He also said that the quality of the chickens was good.

Then, after about ten days, they began laying again. And from then on, both hens continued laying steadily. They took a break once every three days. One morning, over a month later, Shunsuke was surprised to find three eggs in the box at once. By that time, they had already given up on the one with the prolapse, leaving it unattended to follow its natural course. Before anyone knew, it had healed properly and unexpectedly laid an egg. The eggs were eaten at their home too. However, they saved most of them and took them to the agricultural association to exchange for money once a certain number accumulated. The association claimed to buy eggs at one sen per hundred monme—higher than merchants who made rounds to farms—but Shunsuke wasn't entirely convinced this was true. Still, it was convenient because you could get cash immediately whenever needed. The money that came in thirty or fifty sen at a time felt like an unexpected windfall, saving them on more than one occasion. Kompei had said, "Use this for your pocket money," but lately he'd been trying not to spend it, keeping it separate instead. The chicken manure was gathered bit by bit into straw bags. Though some would buy it at fifty sen per bale, they planned to use it as fertilizer for their own fields rather than sell it. Shunsuke thought he could probably raise up to twenty chickens, but he still couldn't bring himself to decide.

Around the same time as the chickens, Shunsuke decided to try raising goats.

“Goats don’t require much effort or money. “They’re clean, don’t smell, and are docile—good creatures, I tell ya.” “Why don’t you give raisin’ one a try for fun, Mister?” “And drinkin’ their milk’s good for your health too.” So saying, this had been Heizo’s suggestion. At Heizo’s relative’s house, they kept goats. It was said that the kids born this year had already become able to be weaned. If desired, they said they would sell them cheaply. Shunsuke gladly decided to raise them.

One day, Shunsuke went alone to visit that house in a village about four ri away.

The host guided him to the goat shed. There were four or five pigs, and next to their partition was the goat shed. There were two adult goats and two kid goats. When he reached out his hand, they came over one after another, pressed their noses against it, and looked up at Shunsuke with eyes as friendly as a human’s. “Goat milk’s fine stuff, I tell you. If you mean to drink the milk yourself, you’d do best taking one of these parent goats.” “Are both parent goats female?”

“Yes.” “What about the kids?” “The kids are a male and a female.” “If it’s the kids, I’ll let you have both of them.” “How old are they?” “They’re just a little short of three months, I’d say.”

Shunsuke thought for a while,

“In that case, I’ll take the kids after all,” he said. If he took just a single female goat, there would be the hassle of mating to consider, and more than anything, he had a strong desire to raise them with his own hands from when they were kids. Even so, how on earth was he supposed to take them back? When he looked at the host with a questioning look, the man turned back toward the interior and returned with a rather large box that seemed to contain fruit or something. Then he bound both kid goats’ front and hind legs. Shunsuke was surprised,

“Are you putting them in that box?” he asked.

“Yep,” he replied with an air of confidence. “Will they be okay?”

“Of course it’s okay,” he said with practiced assurance. He crammed them into the box and crisscrossed a rope over the top in a mesh pattern. The host carried it to the station, talked to what seemed like a familiar station worker, and had it registered as parcel luggage. The box rode on the same train Shunsuke boarded. Someone spread a large cloth over it and set it near the conductor’s feet. Through every sluggish mile as the train crawled between villages, Shunsuke’s attention remained tethered to that box. The goats made no cries, no clattering sounds. Once the cloth appeared to lift faintly from beneath—or perhaps it never moved at all. Their eerie stillness bred fears they’d suffocated in that rough confinement, until the creeping train’s every jolt frayed his nerves and left him praying for arrival.

Upon arriving at the terminal, seeing the two goats piled one atop the other—unable to move anything but their eyes darting restlessly—he felt relieved. From there, he took a car, and since there was no other luggage in the vehicle, he felt somewhat relieved. As dusk was falling, he arrived home and immediately released them from the box. The bottom and sides of the box were drenched with dampness, so thoroughly soaked that when tilted, water pooled in one corner. The kid goats' bodies were dripping wet too, their fur clung flat against their skin, so he wiped them down with a hand towel. The kid goats scampered about the area, their eyes darting nervously. Neighborhood children who had been playing nearby came flocking around in excitement, each plucking grass and pressing it against the goats' mouths, but they wouldn't eat. That night he put them in the barn and secured them with a rope, then the next day had Kompei help him build a goat house. They erected a fence behind the barn and thatched the roof with straw. They laid cut straw to serve as flooring.

As Heizo had said, the goats required neither money nor much effort, and their feed was just grass and tree leaves. They had been told not to give them water—though he had missed hearing the reason why—and they had done as instructed. The manure trampled by goats was said to be the finest among fertilizers, surpassing that of cows and horses.

While watching over the kid goats growing visibly larger by the day, Shunsuke felt a warm affection for these animals—a love that could only be understood through firsthand experience of raising them. The drought that had persisted from spring through summer gave way to frequent autumn rains. Yet what proved fortunate for the farmers was that on many days, the rain would fall during the night and clear up by morning.

One such early morning, Genji from Heizo’s place came to invite him.

“Let’s go mushroom foraging.” “Since it rained since last evening, today’s bound to be great!” Shunsuke had previously asked him to invite him whenever a convenient day came. “Mountains get slippery after rain—best prepare your footwear proper,” Genji said, so Shunsuke pulled on tabi socks and wrapped his gaiters. The gaiters were from his student days, though they were frayed and worn. Genji too wore tabi socks.

“What about lunch?” he asked.

“Aren’t you getting greedy? Planning to gather that much? A meal’s worth of mushrooms can be picked easy before lunch,” he laughed. After deliberating over containers, they found a basket—not too wide but decently deep. “Let’s take this one.” “Still counts as greedy though,” he chuckled. “If you know what you’re doing, you could fill this eighty percent full,” came the reply, so they took it.

Slinging the basket's strap over his arm and shoulder, and taking a bamboo stick meant for raking leaves, Shunsuke followed Genji.

They reached the mountain. When they had left home it was still somewhat dim, but by then it had become completely bright. The mountain that had appeared pale blue from afar now—with the sun having risen and their gradual approach—began revealing multicolored autumn hues from behind rapidly vanishing blue mists. Because conifers and broad-leaved trees mingled together, their colors formed a mottled beauty. Being still October, there were no withered-looking areas. Damp from the night's moderate rain and glistening beneath the rising morning sun, the view held a composed, profound beauty. The wind descending from the rain-washed mountain heights carried a bracing chill—a clarity like being cleansed, an invigorating sensation.

“Shunsuke-san, can you tell edible mushrooms from poisonous ones?” Genji asked as they climbed the mountain. “I think I can generally tell,” “What mushrooms grow in these mountains again?” “At least I know all their names,” “Besides matsutake… hatsutake, iguchi, tamagodake, shimeji, jigobo, sōmen-dake…” He listed them off, then seemed to recall there was still something more but couldn’t remember. “And nezumidake,” said Genji.

“Right, right—nezumidake.” “There was something called nezumidake, wasn’t there?” “What did that look like again?” “Its stem’s thick. “The color’s purplish with a reddish tint... They’re ridiculously large. Some call ’em houki mushrooms.” “Which was bigger—the sōmen-dake or those?” “No comparison! “Nezumi ones are bigger... First off, the colors don’t match. “Sōmen’re yellow.” “Ah, right you are.”

The shapes and colors of the mushrooms he had forgotten, the brittle sensation of them snapping between his fingers, even their scent—all gradually grew clearer in his memory. “Shunsuke-san, did you ever go mushroom hunting when you were a child?” “Oh yes, I often came.” “But I never found any matsutake.” “The skilled adults always got them first... Though back when I was a child, people didn’t make such a commotion over mushroom hunting like they do now.”

“That’s just how much harsher the world has become,” Genji said with an air of maturity.

The wet mountain path was slippery. Fallen leaves covered much of the path, but where the red soil lay exposed, those spots were especially treacherous. The oak and kunugi leaves weren’t too bad, but walking on pine needles felt unnervingly slick. “Maybe straw sandals would’ve served better than these rubber-soled tabi,” Genji said, nearly losing his footing before steadying himself. Where the path narrowed between encroaching trees, their faces kept snagging on spiderwebs strung across both sides. The dim light in those stretches made the threads invisible until too late. Panicked spiders—all large and yellow-bellied—scuttled away as they passed.

"Alright, I'll take over," said Shunsuke, stepping forward to lead the way. He had a stick while Genji did not, which was why he took the front. Watching carefully ahead, he used the stick to sweep aside spiderwebs as they progressed.

Having emerged at a spacious vantage point, the two looked back. The path twisted in an S-shape, with four or five people clustered around its very midpoint and two or three others visible slightly further away. Some distance below, human figures appeared as mere dark shapes, but they were unmistakably fellow mushroom hunters. Shunsuke realized they hadn't come nearly as early as he'd thought.

From there, Genji took the lead again, and he began walking even faster than before. There was no doubt he had the people coming up behind them on his mind. And then, when they came to a certain fork in the path,

“Let’s go down from here,” Genji said, and they briskly descended the mountainside. It was a north-facing valley whose lower slopes were known throughout the mountain as prime mushroom territory. This stood as the only area with a proper pine grove—matsutake grew scarcely elsewhere—making these woods the natural heart of foraging activity. Reaching the bottom, they froze in disbelief. How could this be? Those who had prided themselves on an early start now found themselves last to arrive. Men and women, children and elders—dozens upon dozens—crouched or knelt in chosen spots: beneath distant tree canopies, around nearby stumps, at shrub bases close at hand—all vying fiercely for their prizes.

“Well, well.” Genji looked somewhat dumbfounded as he gazed at the scene. At any rate, deciding to head toward the pine grove, the two crossed through there. Along the way, whenever they encountered familiar faces, Genji would, “You’re early!” he called out with a laugh as he approached.

“Have you gathered quite a bit already?” “Already?” he said, peering into the baskets at their feet. However, those addressed only mumbled vague responses like “Ugh” or “Ah” under their breath, remaining sullenly silent as their hands never stopped working. Some glared sharply at Genji with harsh eyes as he peered into their baskets. Of course, not all interactions were like this. Some exchanged ordinary greetings—when smiled at, they smiled back; when asked “Found plenty?” they answered “No, today’s been completely hopeless”—and indeed these were more common. Yet even here, one couldn’t help sensing a certain guardedness. Nothing felt casual. They couldn’t escape the feeling that they—latecomers newly joining—were being watched with particular scrutiny.

After such exchanges had been repeated three or four times, Genji too stopped speaking to them. The young man, sensitive in a way characteristic of youth, took on a sullen expression as he followed the narrow path—broken in places and hidden under fallen leaves and grass—toward the pine grove. Shunsuke followed silently behind, treading on the fallen leaves. "The matsutake might already be gone for today." When they entered the pine grove, Genji said. "Because they've likely been picked clean by everyone already."

Shunsuke had thought the same. While other mushrooms might be another matter, the matsutake in these mountains could hardly be called abundant. It was said that unless one was someone who came here constantly and knew the terrain well, they couldn’t find any. Precisely because of that, they were highly prized by people. The people they had encountered on their way here had, of course, already combed through the pine grove. The pine grove was dim and damp. Since the eastern side was open, it seemed sunlight had streamed in during the morning; through gaps in the pine needles, light dappled over piled fallen leaves in thin, shimmering stripes—a beautiful sight. Dew pattered down from above. Shunsuke proceeded, occasionally thrusting his stick into fallen leaves here and there. The forest stood still and silent, making the absence of human figures all the more surprising.

Genji stopped around here, so to speak, and began raking through the fallen leaves here and there. Not a single one was found. Where the mycelium had turned white—thinking this must be the spot—they searched meticulously, but found nothing. It seemed the timing might still be a bit too early. Traces that someone had just raked through could be seen here and there. Suddenly sensing someone’s presence, the two looked ahead. A man was standing in the shade of a tree about ten ken away. When he realized he had been noticed, he put on an air of ignorance and made as if to hastily leave—but at that moment, Genji,

“Oh, Mr. Kensuke. Good morning,” Genji called out as he approached, causing the man to stop. “You’re early,” he said. “Mr. Kensuke... How’s it going? Found much? You must’ve gotten quite a few from the good spots already.” “Nah, not really.” The young man, who looked seven or eight years older than Genji, stood there bluntly, his tone unfriendly. “C’mon, show me one,” Genji pressed brashly, ignoring the man’s demeanor as he reached for the basket hanging at his left hand and peered inside. Something like leaves had been placed over the top, and as he thrust his hand into the basket,

“Oh ho! There they are!” “Finished up quick, did ya?” “...Mr. Shunsuke, better come see this proper-like,” he said turning around. Shunsuke kept right on smiling.

“Well... “A fellow like Kensuke here knows the good root bases, so he’s different from folks like us after all.” “Since we’re still greenhorns here, we ain’t found a single root base... What d’you say, Kensuke?” “We ain’t askin’ you to teach us your root bases—that’d be an unreasonable demand. But how ’bout lettin’ us tag along when you go huntin’? Then we’d get the general idea of where an’ how to look for ’em.”

Genji said this with a smirk. “I don’t know nothin’ about any root bases,” Kensuke said bluntly.

“Askin’ ’bout root bases is taboo.” “If matsutake ever got wiped from this mountain, that’d spell disaster.” “All we want’s to trail after ya—that’s the whole ask.” “We ain’t know nothin’ past what you folks already do.” “Aw now, don’t go sayin’ that,” Genji pressed, annoyingly persistent. “I’m done for today—tak’n my leave now.”

Kensuke said this abruptly and began walking briskly along the path toward the forest exit. And so Genji could not press him any further. He watched Kensuke’s retreating figure and let out a “Hmph,” his face forming a sarcastic smile that seemed both mocking and teasing.

The two pressed on deeper into the woods. Genji was the one who first discovered a root base. People in this region called matsutake growth spots “root bases” for reasons nobody quite understood. Still unopened and perfectly sized, they lay uniformly arranged under thick layers of fallen leaves in hushed stillness. Heartened by this find, they kept raking until Shunsuke spotted a cluster ranging from some not even an inch across to bean-sized ones. But Genji,

“Even ones that small—if you simmer ’em whole in raw soy sauce till it reduces down tight—there ain’t nothin’ tastier than that,” Genji declared, so they meticulously collected even the bean-sized ones. However, from then on, they did not encounter a single matsutake mushroom. Though they grew quite tired and thought about giving up and heading back outside, they still clung to hope, persisting with thoughts of “just a bit more, just a bit more.” When they had gone deep into the forest and the exit on the far side seemed near, Genji silently slipped over to Shunsuke’s side. With a face that seemed to suppress laughter, he poked Shunsuke’s elbow. Then, whispering “Look, look,” he pointed far ahead.

When Shunsuke looked, there was a man with his back turned toward them, bending over. Who could it be? There was no need to wonder—it was clear. It was Kensuke—whom they had just parted from, and who should have already returned.

On Genji’s face, as he stared fixedly at that retreating figure, the same sneer from earlier rose once more.

“Hahahahaha!”

Suddenly, Genji burst into loud laughter. It was a voice so loud that even Shunsuke beside him was startled—so loud that Kensuke, caught off guard, was jolted upright where he stood. However, Genji had clearly aimed this at Kensuke, and with blatant scorn, he continued his mocking laughter—hahahaha—as if ridiculing the man.

Kensuke, startled, whirled around. And then he spotted the two of them. Immediately turning away again, he wove between the trees and sneakily vanished somewhere. “Hmph! You idiot!” Genji hurled insults from behind him as he fled.

“What’s the big deal over some lousy matsutake? Look at that pitiful sight! Mr. Shunsuke, when it comes to mushroom foraging, everyone in the village acts like that, you know. Especially when it comes to matsutake hunting. They get up at dawn, sneak up to the mountain alone, and after harvesting the big ones, cover them with fallen leaves to make absolutely sure no one finds out about the root bases. The root bases they find are kept absolutely secret from everyone else, no matter how close they might be—they earnestly believe that if they ever told someone else, the matsutake mushrooms would vanish from the mountain within a year or two. It’s so absurd it’s not even worth discussing. You could understand if it were just the old folks—but even young men, a guy like Kensuke of all people— That guy’s supposed to be a branch leader of the Youth Group or something, despite how he acts. Because I knew that, that’s why I said what I did earlier—askin’ you to take us along where you go—just harassin’ you, see? Once, there was this thing that happened… My cousin in Tokyo came to visit. It was exactly this time of year. He was from the city, so we thought he’d find matsutake hunting fun—and he himself said as much—but we didn’t know any root bases at all, and not wanting to disappoint someone who’d come all this way, we asked an old man known as an expert in matsutake hunting to take him along. I made sure to ask him repeatedly. I had business to attend to that day, so I didn’t go. But when I saw him come back at noon, he was acting strangely dazed. He looked utterly bored. When we looked inside the basket, there were just a tiny bit of hatsutake and shimeji mushrooms. There wasn’t even a single lousy matsutake in there. When we asked him about it, turns out that old bastard had ditched my cousin in the mountains somehow. Before they even reached the pine woods where matsutake grow—”

“My cousin thought he shouldn’t move from where he’d gotten separated, so he stayed put right there.” “Then after a good long while, that old codger suddenly shows up again, cool as you please, saying ‘Oh you’re still here? Let’s head back,’ or so I heard.” “So he came back feeling like he’d been played for a fool by a fox.” “Everything around here works that way.” “What’s supposed to be a fun autumn mushroom hunt—they end up eyeing each other suspiciously, sneaking around hiding things, outright shoving elbows like animals.” “Even if it ain’t like how city folks do their leisurely picking outings, I wish they could at least make it a bit more cheerful.”

What in the world could this be?

Shunsuke remembered his childhood experiences of mushroom foraging in the mountains, though not with perfect clarity. Of course, even back then, it had never been a leisurely outing. It was unmistakably one of the tasks required to put food on the table. Yet ten years later, the realities he had heard described, witnessed firsthand, and sensed—the very atmosphere of such things—had been unknown to him in those days. Perhaps it had always been that way; perhaps he had simply been unaware. But considering how mushroom foraging used to involve neighbors inviting each other to go out in large groups—how scenes of communal harmony remained etched in memory, with people roasting freshly picked matsutake on-site and boisterously sharing sake—one could never claim things remained unchanged between then and now.

The foraged mushrooms would be soaked in salt water, left for a while, then washed and drained before being simmered in raw soy sauce or in soy sauce with a bit of sugar added. This method was very much welcomed by the farmers. For them, it served as a rather luxurious side dish. However, the true purpose of gathering mushrooms lay even beyond that. The ones washed in salt water were dried. And then stored away. These were used as a substitute for shiitake mushrooms. When people gathered for meals during New Year, Obon, festivals, Buddhist memorial services, or any celebrations, the first thing they made in this region was assorted sushi. Assorted sushi required shiitake mushrooms. The cash expenditure needed for this was by no means insignificant. And to store them as a substitute for shiitake mushrooms, it proved absolutely impossible unless they gathered substantial quantities of mushrooms. That was precisely why they competed with each other.

The position that mushroom foraging—imbued with such significance—held within the farmers' lives had likely grown weightier with each passing year. What had been permitted ten years ago—done with a leisurely, playful mindset—was likely no longer permitted today. The circumstances that made it no longer permitted were likely varied. Cash expenditures had likely come to weigh ever more heavily on the farmers' economy. If by using what grew wild in the mountains and fields—even if only a small amount—there arose a prospect of blocking one avenue of cash expenditure, then they would likely prefer not to spend even a single sen there. Those who had rarely gone to the mountains before would now start rushing out eagerly. Mushroom production must have been decreasing both relatively and absolutely. The result was their mutual competition, and there, subtle emotional entanglements that had once gone unnoticed must have begun to arise.

Over ten years, various things had changed.

The transition of peasant life could be glimpsed through such a small point.

No matter what he saw or heard, there was nothing that was merely overlooked or allowed to pass by unheard. Everyone was being bombarded with nothing but a multitude of impressions.

Even the mountain mushroom foraging they had come to do for a pleasant day could not simply bring Shunsuke joy.

Thirteen

From September to October, Shunsuke entered the mountains every day for the reclamation of the wasteland.

This mountain was not the one they had gone to for mushroom foraging. In the mountain that contained part of their tobacco field, the Sugino family still retained over two tan of uncleared land. Pines, oaks, chestnuts, horse chestnuts, mountain azaleas, and sasa bamboo grew thickly. Though there were few truly massive trees, the growth stood so dense that even daytime felt dim.

This year, the frost covering the ground seemed to come earlier than usual. At October's end, when he abruptly awoke in the night's depths and felt an uncommonly biting cold around his neck, morning arrived with a mist like white smoke clinging thickly to the air, frost pillars standing rigid within the soil. As such days persisted, the mountain trees' leaves suddenly began hastening their scattering. Some would fall before achieving full crimson. Each morning when setting out, Shunsuke too found himself somehow hurried along, made to feel as though driven onward.

“It’s gotten really cold, hasn’t it? All of a sudden.” “I’ll go fetch the foot warmer again today.” Having said that, Shunsuke set out. The sky stretched high and crisp, everything parched all around; even on a day when the wind had turned bitingly cold, the woods felt damp and warm. Shunsuke swung a felling axe and started by cutting down the underbrush, leaving the tall trees untouched. When the felled vegetation reached a certain mass, he would gather and pile it in one spot. Then he pressed further onward. At dusk, he bundled the day’s cuttings with kudzu vines into several sheaves. Just clearing the underbrush took nearly twenty days.

Fallen leaves from this year had added to those that had fallen late the previous year and lay piled thickly. He raked them together with a rake, packed them into a bamboo basket, and carried it down from the mountain. He made countless round trips each day. This would become compost for the tobacco field. The old fallen leaves had decayed and were halfway turned into soil. He gathered these as well. This was what they called the mountain’s dregs, one of the most effective fertilizers. The cleared mountain had its bare slopes exposed, and the tall trees standing here and there seemed to stretch straight up into the sky, creating a neat and tidy view.

“Quite a nice view, isn’t it,” Kompei said when he came to look. “It somehow feels wasteful to make this into fields. If they were to put even a bench under those trees over there and dig a pond, it’d be just like a park.” “Even among the wealthiest people, there can’t be many who have gardens this splendid.” Yet the tall trees had to be uprooted root and branch, and pickaxes had to be driven into the mountain’s base. To fell tall trees, one dug deep around them and severed their firmly entrenched roots. Then using the tree’s own weight, smaller ones could be pushed over by hand while unwieldy ones required ropes. When using hands, pushing sufficed; with ropes, pulling became necessary. As he strained against the rope, the tree gradually tilted, branches swaying heavily as leaves showered down on him. Soon a creaking came from where severed roots remained, and the tree came crashing down with a rustling roar. In that instant, Shunsuke released the rope and leapt sideways to safety. Simultaneously came the satisfying thud of earth trembling.

The felled trees were sawn into lumber, processed into timber, and turned into firewood. Processing a single tree could take half a day, a full day, or sometimes even longer.

When that was done, Shunsuke forcefully struck the first pickaxe into the base of the mountain. And then he began digging up the roots of the sasa bamboo and undergrowth.

He was no longer the same man he had been in spring. Over these past few months, his body had grown astonishingly sturdy. Though never particularly delicate in build to begin with, muscles characteristic of those who labored without respite had begun forming around his chest and shoulders. His posture had acquired an unshakable solidity. Blisters would rise and burst, rise and burst again, until the skin of his palms gradually thickened into leather. Before long, he would likely be able to grasp hot coals barehanded without flinching. He could lift tree roots like millstones and carry them great distances; even when swinging a heavy pickaxe dozens of times in succession into rock-hard soil where sasa bamboo roots spread their fine meshwork; even when sweat drenched his entire body—he no longer felt breathless enough to consider it truly taxing.

While digging up the soil, Shunsuke nurtured various plans in his heart. The wasteland should have been cultivated long before. They were not farmers with enough surplus to leave even two tan and a little more of land unused. Leaving it as wasteland would at best mean not being short of firewood and brushwood. It needed to be cultivated quickly and fully utilized as farmland. The reason it had remained in that state for so long was that until now, Kompei had been the only male hand and, being pressed from one seasonal task to another, he had been unable to find the time.

Once cultivated, what should be planted there? Taking into account that it was land at the base of the mountain, Shunsuke considered various possibilities. First he thought of planting fruit trees. But even with crops like grapes or peaches, it would take three years before they bore fruit. The slow return on investment made him hesitate. Given his family's current situation, it didn't seem practical. What about pyrethrum flowers? While suitable for the local climate and something he wanted to try growing, the problem was how wildly market prices fluctuated. There was also the danger of being easily exploited by middlemen and ending up working for merchants' benefit instead of their own.

After much consideration, he decided to turn this area into a tobacco field as well. Newly cultivated mountain slope land provided the most suitable conditions for tobacco cultivation. Moreover, when it came to profitability, there was hardly anything else that could compare to tobacco.

He also considered digging a pond of suitable size there. He would use it as a water reservoir. And it would eliminate the laborious task of having to carry water up from the foot of the mountain. He refined his thoughts, and planning one thing after another became irresistibly pleasant. This was a pleasure he had not known at all until six months prior. He thought of his ability to be this proactive as something akin to a new discovery. His plan was based on his own desires. It was neither done reluctantly nor forced by others. And now, he could immediately put his plans into action. The results of implementation clearly manifested there as the tangible products born from his labor. The refreshing pleasure he had never known before came from there.

Shunsuke laid down his hoe, sat down on one of the tree roots, and rested for a while, wiping his sweat.

At the base of the mountain, along the path leading to the neighboring village, two lion handlers passed through while leisurely beating their drums. The neighboring village’s guardian deity festival was beginning that day. They must have been heading there.

Shunsuke was of course aware that tobacco cultivation was a government enterprise. However, he knew nothing about the detailed regulations. He did not know what various restrictions the Monopoly Bureau had established regarding cultivation permits. And what he learned about that became his first experience of an obstacle he had to overcome.

This autumn's rice harvest was generally very poor.

There had been almost no damage from drought. But when heavy rains continued to fall after September began, the rice was exactly at the flowering stage of medium maturity. Pollination was severely damaged as a result. To make matters worse, at the end of that same month, a storm struck, violently shaking the rice plants and abrading their ears, so that the grains failed to fill, resulting in what are called white ears.

Shunsuke also temporarily halted his mountain work and harvested the rice. The anxiety about how this year’s harvest would turn out could not leave him alone in the mountains. The harvested rice plants were immediately used to make deko drying racks in the harvested fields for drying. They would cross two long slender logs, stand them with their legs spread open, make two such structures, lay a crossbeam across the intersections of the two, and hang the rice plants on this. This was the so-called deko. In this way they prepared for rain. After drying them for two or three days, they would carry them into the yard, thresh them with a rice threshing machine, and spread the unhulled rice on dozens of straw mats laid out to dry.

There were rice huller operators who made their living by going around to houses to hull rice; nowadays, no household used earthen mortars for hulling anymore. This fact was both a new discovery and a noteworthy change to Shunsuke. All work was power-driven. Even the mortars had been replaced with rubber rollers. This was likely one of the most notable instances of machinery’s incursion into agricultural labor. With machinery, the unhulled rice from one tanbu could be processed within thirty or forty minutes. This was undoubtedly significant progress.

Progress, however, was accompanied by contradiction. Under certain conditions of life, if there was a single step forward in one aspect of living, all other aspects were also required to follow suit. As long as this did not accompany them, there could be no harmony, and contradictions would persist.

Shunsuke saw that farmers did not necessarily welcome the mechanization of farm tools, though it was clearly progress. If society at large had come to this state, there was no alternative. One couldn't maintain old customs alone. He realized this was an extremely passive form of adaptation. He understood there were circumstances where one couldn't simply rejoice in faster work and saved labor alone.

A ten-sen hulling fee was required per bale. When using an earthen mortar yourself, this became unnecessary. While one might argue that this burden was not insignificant when viewed overall, and that it shouldn't be questioned as an obligation to bear for such benefits, the greatest concern remained that since implementing machine hulling, the four-to bale could no longer function as the four-to bale had before. Through machine hulling, the rice processing finished cleaner than traditional methods. The brown rice's surface turned smooth. When measuring such rice into bales, the grains packed densely under their own weight - each individual kernel clinging snugly to its neighbors, this tightness and complete absence of gaps forming a stark contrast to mortar-processed rice. Consequently, even for identical four-to bales, they now had to pack significantly more rice compared to earlier standards. By villagers' accounts, this difference amounted to two or three sho in volume, or three to four kilograms by weight.

Rice packed into bales had to undergo strict inspection for each and every bale. It was an inspection conducted to improve the quality of harvested rice and maintain prefectural rice's reputation in the market. When inspections were conducted by weight, the weight of a machine-hulled bale became the inspection standard. The standard had risen by that much. When farmers stored rice in bales for their own households, it didn’t matter how much extra they packed into each bale or how high the inspection standards became. However, more than half of the rice packed into bales was their rice, yet in truth, it was not theirs. They had to transport it to the landlord’s place. They now had to take three shō [approx. 5.4 liters] extra per bale for free compared to before.

The farmers complained about this. This was likely the natural result arising from machine hulling. Therefore, to say the machines were bad and they should return to using earthen mortars missed the point. If progress in production had not yet become true joy for the producers, then everything needed improving until it reached such a state. If the extra measurement was an undeniable fact, shouldn't those receiving this surplus have shown some consideration regarding it?

Shouldn't the rice inspection system also adopt appropriate measures to cover producers' losses arising from weight discrepancies? Shunsuke took some of the brown rice being spat out from the mouth of the huller and examined it in his hand. That there were many so-called immature grains, and that many were not fully filled and had become emaciated, was something even someone like Shunsuke could clearly see. With this, how could it possibly be qualified rice? Kompei also grabbed a handful, placed it on his palm, and stared at it with a grim expression.

There were many things that needed to be improved. And everyone felt this. As for the actual ways in which things needed to be improved, there were rather few who did not understand. What was truly lacking was people. Someone had to take the lead, articulate in an orderly manner what everyone was thinking, and actually begin the work toward its realization. There was no such person. Shunsuke recalled what Kompei and Heizo had once talked about. the lament that there was nothing to be done, for while they all thought it in their hearts, they kept pushing it onto each other.

Is it not that someone like myself must become that kind of person? Whether I currently possess that much capability is doubtful. However, unless I strive to become that kind of person, even my decision to enter this life will not be illuminated by a new light.

While staring at a few grains of broken rice in his palm, Shunsuke continued to think.

As days passed and the rice underwent inspection, half of the bales were rejected. The inspectors wrapped certificates of approval around the straw ropes of qualified bales, pasting both ends firmly with glue. The certificates were made from sturdy kozo paper, bearing revenue stamps and grade numbers stamped in blue ink with rubber seals. “At least put some black paper on the rejects too.” Kompei glared sideways at the inspectors as he spoke, his face twisted in uncharacteristic displeasure.

Fourteen

The mountain wind that blew down morning and evening took on a stinging coldness. The mountain shed all leaves from its deciduous trees, and even the evergreens turned a gloomy, dusky black, forming a stark contrast against the gray sky. Days when the sky stood high and crystal-clear became nearly impossible to hope for. In the high mountains of the neighboring country, snow must have been falling; here, the sky looked as if sleet might come by tonight.

In the empty fields, there were no human figures; only the fierce sky wind raged with swift, terrible force.

Had everything already come to an end?

The seasonal endeavors of farmers were multifarious in nature. But it was no exaggeration to say that rice formed the center of all their endeavors—that all their activities were ultimately directed toward and unified by it. Farmers' labor could be seen as a single cycle stretching from seed selection to rice harvest. Now that the harvest was over, the rice bales piled up in back rooms and sacred sake offered, had everything temporarily come to an end? And so, were people quietly shutting themselves in for winter?

That was not the case. Piling up rice bales did not in any way signify their completion.

Look at the highway. On the pale parched road where soil was being whirled upward into the sky, the sound of carts could be heard. There was a cart pulled by a cow. There was also a cart pulled by people. But one thing common to all was that rice bales were piled on board. The farmers wore their work clothes but had made themselves somewhat neater than usual, with new towels wrapped around their necks. There were also children pushing the carts from behind. The carts thus headed toward houses with storehouses or warehouses in that village, or perhaps in villages far away.

At the Sugino household too, on the night before they were to deliver their tenant rice, his mother Omura went to inform landlord Yamashita about the matter. During the roughly month-long period for tax rice delivery, it was customary for landlords to stay at home continuously, with even those who normally resided elsewhere returning to personally receive tenant farmers.

“Did you go then?” Sensing Omura’s return, Kompei called out from the back room. “Yes, I went.” Having said this, she fell silent. But from the moment she had entered the living room, Omura had been hearing Shunsuke arguing with his father in an unusually loud voice about something.

“But Father. What I’m saying isn’t unreasonable no matter who hears it—I don’t think there’s a soul who’d call it selfish. This isn’t about opposing Yamashita or anything. Anyone who thinks it through would see it’s only fair—why, even Yamashita himself would agree if we just talked to him.” “We ain’t saying your words lack reason or border on recklessness. That much is exactly as you say. But things don’t turn right just ’cause they make sense, y’know.”

“You’re saying that while it makes sense logically, just that alone isn’t enough to settle things? The fact that nearly half failed inspection isn’t some made-up story—it’s the actual situation. And it’s not just our household that ended up like this—it’s not because our methods were poor, but due to the weather, so everywhere’s in the same situation. Therefore, there’s no need to deliver the entire land tax using only qualified rice. I think it’s perfectly fine to include a little unqualified rice. If we take all eleven bales of land tax in qualified rice alone, what will be left afterward? Nothing but unqualified rice. If we were to use all of it for our household meals, that would be one thing, but even we still need to sell some. Yamashita doesn’t sell all of theirs either. They must keep rice for their own household meals, right? Even if they receive unqualified rice, they can simply allocate it to their meal provisions. I think this would be an extremely stable method that causes no inconvenience to either party.”

“To tell the truth, we thought the same way at first.” “We thought about taking them half and half—qualified and unqualified.” “That’s precisely why we told the inspector and had the unqualified black paper pasted on them.” “If it’s just for our own household rice, there’s no need to go through the trouble of having them paste black paper on it.” “Why did you change your mind again and decide to use only qualified rice after all?”

Kompei did not answer. He held his hands over the brazier, slightly bowing his head, and remained silent. “Are you saying that if we bring unqualified rice, it would displease Yamashita—that it would damage relations?” “Or that you simply won’t feel satisfied unless we do it this way?” “Or perhaps you don’t want to fall short compared to the others?” “Whichever it is, I consider them all meaningless concerns.” “I’ll speak to Yamashita myself if needed.” “Matters grounded in reason must be clearly articulated.”

Shunsuke was more agitated than usual today. And he was persistent. Even though Kompei remained silent despite all that, finally, “Father, you’re nothing but honest to a fault. It’s good to be honest, but I don’t think human beings are just that. One must assert what ought to be asserted,” he pressed on.

He was simply frustrated. He harbored no particular animosity toward Yamashita, but his youthful single-mindedness could not bear the fact that clear logic and common sense understandable to anyone were not being followed. And he had doubts about his stubborn old father’s attitude and feelings. Was that nothing but excessive honesty, or was it something else? He sensed an undue deference toward the other party—a servility that grated on him.

“What on earth are others planning to do? Why don’t we go ask them?” Shunsuke muttered as if speaking to himself.

Kompei remained stubbornly silent even then. He thought his son’s ideas were naive. Due to his lack of worldly experience, he believed the boy needed more time and exposure to various hardships. What did his son know about the actual relationship between landlords and tenant farmers? He only knew such things from what he had read on paper. “Landlords and tenant farmers have a parent-child relationship—that’s what they say, but it’s not true.” He was merely reciting written statements. His son had suggested asking others what they would do, but if they actually inquired, he would surely be shocked to find that everywhere—even those who borrowed from elsewhere—people were trying to deliver only qualified rice.

The fear of displeasing Yamashita, or the compulsion that one couldn't feel settled unless using qualified rice—both were precisely as they stood. Yet if causing displeasure had merely meant making someone feel unpleasant, then even Kompei would not have refrained from daring it.

The tenant land that tenant farmers were permitted—to keep this securely in their hands year after year—how meticulously must they have strained every nerve? They turned nerves as thick as wire into ones as fine as needles. Beyond their dealings with landlords lay relationships among tenant farmers themselves. Even those who typically exchanged smiles would watch for vulnerabilities when it came to tenant land—intricate dynamics of which the son remained utterly unaware.

Kompei, however, did not say anything about those things. Through his own experience, his son would gradually come to know everything.

The next morning, the parent and child loaded rice bales onto the ox-cart. They silently shouldered the bales. Mother and younger sister stood watching in the earthen-floored area. What they loaded was only qualified rice. Shunsuke also no longer argued about anything. All eleven bales of tenant rice were loaded. Among tenant farmers, even those with only a few bales rarely took them all at once. They would load them onto the cart little by little over about two days. There were various psychological factors at work there, but Kompei took them all at once.

“Shun, you don’t need to come along.” When it came time to depart, Kompei said that. “Okay… but let’s go.”

Kompei, standing nearby, turned toward Michiru. “Michiru, are you coming too?” Michiru glanced briefly at her mother. Since her mother remained silent, “I don’t need to go.” she said in a low voice. It was common for couples to go together, with their children tagging along as well. While the man went up to greet the landlord, his wife would meet the landlord’s wife at the kitchen entrance. For women, there were conversations among themselves. And so they would receive a new hand towel, while the children would return home with small paper bags of sweets and such.

It was just that simple, yet those conversations between women held varied depths. They might discuss children growing up, offer to find service positions for someone’s fifteen-year-old next year, debate crop quality, or share stories about the landlord’s wife’s autumn sightseeing trip to Kyoto and Osaka—harmless enough while remaining superficial. But sometimes they would probe deeper, brushing against matters that struck at the very core of their livelihoods. Blending the deft lightness and tenacity peculiar to women, they advanced through indirect means. A careless remark might be seized as binding words, leading later to irreversible consequences. When tenancy contracts neared expiration, such exchanges could even become grounds for renewals under unfavorable terms.

And Mrs. Yamashita, in contrast to her husband who was relatively easygoing, had gained a reputation for skillfully employing such indirect approaches from the flank. That was why Shunsuke’s mother did not want to go. “Well then, I’ll be off.”

The ox-cart started moving. Yamashita’s house stood at the village outskirts. As a mid-level landlord, he possessed no white-walled storehouse. There stood instead a single substantial wooden warehouse.

The ox-cart that had entered the gate came to a stop before the warehouse. Hearing the noise, a young man who regularly visited the house emerged from within the open-doored warehouse. He was a townsman-style figure in an apron who might have been a shop manager from a merchant household. This was likely a face Kompei hadn’t seen since the start of the year. He carried a thick account book in his hand. “Ah, thank you for your trouble,” he responded to Kompei’s greeting, then pulled out what looked like a scrap of paper that had been tucked into the ledger as a record and inspected it.

“Mr. Sugino’s… eleven bales, was it?”

He walked over to the ox-cart and began inspecting the stacked bales. After checking each inspection pass one by one,

“Confirmed,” he nodded deeply, then opened the ledger and wrote in large ink characters that even Shunsuke, standing at a distance, could see: “Fourth-grade passed rice, eleven bales received. Sugino” he wrote. Kompei and Shunsuke shouldered the bales and entered the warehouse.

The warehouse had a high ceiling, was simply vast, and the interior was dimly lit. The floor plastered with lime stood out with a hazy whitishness. The warm scent of fresh straw and grains filled the air. The bales had already been stacked quite extensively. The base was wide, narrowing gradually as it rose upward into a triangular pile. With one mound already completed, the bales they carried were placed as the very bottom foundation for building a new one.

Thud—with an indescribable emotion, Shunsuke listened to the sound of rice bales falling from his shoulder to the floor. That feeling had continued uninterruptedly since last night when he had finalized plans with his old father about delivering the land tax rice tomorrow, and since this morning when they had loaded the bales onto the ox-cart. The same feeling now reached its peak when he heard the sound of rice bales falling onto the warehouse floor.

These rice bales were heartrending. To put it bluntly, it amounted to nothing more than this sort of feeling. Parting with these rice bales pained him. That was the nature of his attachment. Yet the intensity and ferocity of that attachment surpassed anything he himself could have imagined. He had occasionally noticed how his feelings toward produce—particularly agricultural products—had changed from before. Among these shifts, the simplest and most conspicuous was an inability to treat things carelessly. Though he’d been desperately poor as a student—so destitute that wastefulness never crossed his mind—even those earlier sentiments felt profoundly different from what he now held. When he heard a fellow tobacco grower confess how he’d begun picking up discarded cigarette butts in public without shame since taking up cultivation, Shunsuke recognized that compulsion intimately. Reading biographies of old farmers, their dread of wasting even a single grain resonated within him with startling purity. While sensing deep truth in such accounts, he detected unbearable hypocrisy in tales of feudal lords pressing fallen rice grains to their foreheads in performative reverence. Then came thoughts of modern doctrines seeking kinship with these rustic sensibilities—teachings that left him equally uneasy.

This feeling he now held—that these bales were painful to relinquish—was different from those earlier sentiments. Yet this too belonged to the producers. Not to producers in general, but something particular to tenant farmers among them. Shouldering the bales and dropping them one after another, Shunsuke tried during these motions to observe his own emotional shifts from a detached perspective.

After they finished loading all the bales, the young man,

“Oh, thank you for your hard work. “Now then, please come this way. The master has been eagerly awaiting you,” he urged them toward the main house. “Right,” Kompei replied as he untied the hand towel from around his neck, brushed off his hem, and fidgeted slightly. All the while, his eyes were still glancing toward the entrance. Tenant farmers bringing the land tax greatly disliked having two or more people arrive at the same time. One of the reasons for transporting the land tax in multiple trips lies there. When they see that someone has arrived before them and is already inside, they do not wish to be present together. When they haven’t brought everything, they naturally turn back, but even after finishing delivery, they pass time chatting with the young clerks and wait for those who arrived before them to leave. Growing impatient and inventing various reasons, some would say, "I'll come back later," and head home. While there are cases where unless one is completely alone, they cannot receive adequate hospitality, those who have some sort of grievance absolutely require being alone with the master.

Kompei too appeared to be checking for this. Having folded the hand towel and holding it in his left hand, he then turned to look at Shunsuke beside him. "Shall we go make our greetings then?"

They went up to the tea room and waited for a while. Before long，the master，Shōta Yamashita，appeared at his seat. He was a man of about fifty，an ordinary，good-natured old man. He came out smiling.

“Oh. Good day.” “It’s good of you to have come.”

Kompei placed both hands together and lowered his head very deeply. “Your continued vigor is truly our greatest blessing.” “Oh now—you’ve kept your strength as always…” “Today we’ve been permitted to deliver the land tax without complication, for which we offer our deepest gratitude.” “Well now, that this year too has passed without mishap is our greatest fortune indeed. At planting time we had such water shortages. In September came those fierce winds. One hardship after another. Though I must confess I’d harbored concerns, thanks to your efforts nothing grave occurred—an ordinary harvest by all accounts, leaving little cause for celebration on either side.”

“All of this is thanks to your benevolence, Master.” “Next year too, unchanged as ever, we most humbly entreat you to graciously grant us your continued favor.” He lowered his head deeply once more. Following suit, Shunsuke made an equally courteous bow. This was not Shunsuke’s first encounter with Yamashita. He had previously paid formal respects to the landlord that spring. “My, you’ve grown remarkably sturdy,” Yamashita remarked, smiling approvingly as he appraised Shunsuke.

“If one compares now to when we last met, you’ve become completely unrecognizable.” “You’ve gotten so deeply tanned.” Shunsuke responded with a vague “Yes,” answered with a smile, and then fell silent.

At that moment, the mistress of the house appeared. Between the mistress and Kompei passed greetings identical to those exchanged earlier. As they made a few casual remarks about trivial matters, the master turned to his wife and, "Well then," he signaled with his eyes. When the mistress withdrew into the inner rooms, ceremonial meal trays soon arrived. Elaborate black-lacquered formal trays with tall legs were set before each of the three. They bore whole fish with heads and tails still attached, vinegared dishes, simmered vegetables, herring roe, soup bowls, and other fare.

The master held a large-mouthed, clumsily shaped sake decanter of the sort seen only in the countryside. “Come now, have a drink,” he urged Kompei. Kompei shrank back in deference, adjusting his posture as he, “You’re too generous,” he said, extending his cup-holding hand. Shunsuke, too, silently accepted only the first cup, took a sip, then set the cup down. “C'mon, today’s an informal gathering, so make yourselves at home and take your time.” Kompei was a fairly capable drinker by ordinary standards. When he drank even a little, he quickly turned red. And as he was told, he settled into a more relaxed posture. His voice gradually grew louder. Before becoming drunk, one must have something to appeal—otherwise this situation cannot be resolved—but he currently either possessed nothing to appeal or, even if he did possess something, had no intention of speaking of it here. The fact that Yamashita showed no signs of bringing up anything new regarding the coming year also lightened his spirits.

“This is how it is. “You’ve all had it quite rough, but we’ve been having our own share of hardships too,” Yamashita abruptly began. “Though of course you folks having even a bit of your own land helps matters—but those who are purely tenant farmers must find things truly unbearable.” “Well, I know that well enough myself, but…” He must have had something weighing on his mind regarding other tenant farmers. But suddenly,

“No—today wasn’t the day to be telling you such things.” “My apologies for that.” He dismissed it with a loud laugh. Then he kept pouring for himself and gulping down drink after drink. He was already quite drunk. Seeming concerned that Shunsuke remained the only one sitting idle, he kept trying to engage him in conversation. “You seem to have fully recovered now, but don’t you have any intention of returning to school?” The fact that Shunsuke had left school due to illness had reached Yamashita’s ears.

“Seems he’s taken to farming now,” Kompei interjected from the side.

“Yes, yes.” “Farming’s a proper occupation indeed.” “But when all’s said and done,” “What a waste you went so far with schooling.” “Could you tutor my son this time?” “He’s fourth-year middle school now.”

However, Shunsuke was quickly forgotten. Yamashita repeatedly urged Kompei to sing. And then, “Well then, I’ll start with one.” With that, he began to sing. It was a folk song from this region. Kompei also sang after that. Shunsuke heard his father’s lonely, somber singing voice for the first time in years. Drunk, with eyes closed, raising his voice and tilting his face toward the ceiling—Shunsuke stared fixedly at his father like that. The protruding Adam’s apple appeared forlorn.

He left his father like that and stepped outside first. The sky remained a dull gray, thickly clouded over, and the wind was whipping up white plumes of dust. An oxcart loaded with rice had just arrived at the entrance.

Fifteen

After returning home and telling his mother that the land tax had also been settled without incident, Shunsuke, “Had any letters or anything come from the Monopoly Bureau?” “No, nothing.” “So, was there any word from Matsukawa?” “Well, nothing about that either.”

Shunsuke was disheartened. He thought about how to use what remained of this half-finished day—perhaps go gather fallen leaves to make compost for the tobacco fields after all. Yet even that work felt devoid of motivation unless the current unresolved matter was settled. It wasn’t merely an emotional obstacle; it held crucial bearing on the practical issue of how much compost they could produce.

The one thing that he had been preoccupied with daily of late was this.

When he had resolved to turn the newly cultivated mountain land into a tobacco field and enthusiastically told his father about it, he was casually laughed off by him. “If you even think about planting, you’re thinkin’ you can start that same year just with your own ideas, eh?” “Huh? Why?” “Tobacco’s the government’s business, you know.” “You can’t just go expanding fields without the government’s permission.”

What careless, unthinkable foolishness this must have been. Shunsuke had personally witnessed how each planted tobacco stalk would be meticulously counted and how not a single leaf could be neglected—yet he had somehow imagined that cultivation allotments themselves could be freely expanded or reduced through his own decisions alone. “Well, in time we might make that area a tobacco field as you want,” Kompei said. “There’s a chance for gradual allotment increases, but who knows when that’ll be. Even someone like me who’s farmed this long still only has seven se now.”

“So have you managed to get any allotment increases up to now?” “Two se.” “The allotment was increased only once.” “Even if you successfully get an increase, you’ll hardly ever get more than two se.” “So even if we somehow got yearly increases, turnin’ that mountain into tobacco fields’d take ten years by my reckonin’.” Shunsuke sank into thought. Was there really no way to get a little more flexibility? He suddenly felt as though a bright light had dawned.

“Can I become a member of the Tobacco Union too?” “Yeah, that’s doable.” “So having two people in one household’s allowed then? A parent and child—they can each get recognized as separate union members, right?” “That’s possible. Once you get the union’s okay.”

“If that’s the case, then naturally I’ll be granted my own new cultivation allotment, right?” “That’s right.” “Then I’ll do that. First, I’ll put in the request for that. And then I’ll work that reclaimed land.” “That’s fine.—But even if you call it your own allotment, you won’t get more than five se.” “Five se?” “That’s right. New cultivators aren’t allowed to work more than five se.”

“Is that absolutely certain? Is there even an absolute rule that says you can’t go beyond that?” “Whether there’s a rule or not, I don’t know. But in this village, as far as we’ve known, everyone’s been like that. In the first place, ain’t that how we ourselves started out? We got a two-se increase once, and now it’s seven se. After all, we started with five se right from the very beginning.”

“You’re saying it’s been that way in this village up until now, right?” “How is it in other villages?” “We don’t know nothin’ about other villages. But if this village is like that, there’s nothin’ we can do about it, right?” Shunsuke had stubbornly pressed even that far, but his confidence was rapidly crumbling into helpless unreliability. First he would get permission for five se. Then he would wait for two-se increments each time. He simply couldn’t be satisfied with only that.

“What’s the maximum cultivation allotment a single union member can have?” “The authorities permit up to four tan.” “But there’s hardly anyone actually cultivating that much.” “So everyone’s hoping for increased allotments after all, aren’t they?” “Are they really hoping for that?” “They’ve been wishin’ their hearts out for it, but when it comes down to it, we’re dealin’ with the authorities here.” “So has everyone been submitting requests about this to the Monopoly Bureau?” “And even if you submit them, they say it’s pointless?”

“But each person can’t just submit requests on their own.” “When it comes to tobacco matters, it’s the Tobacco Union chairman who handles negotiations with the Monopoly Bureau on behalf of all cultivators.” Shunsuke couldn’t help feeling utterly cornered from all sides. Yet a suspicion immediately sprang up within him. Then who was this union chairman entrusted with such crucial responsibility? The name Matsukawa surfaced in his mind. Along with it came the memory of that June day in the tobacco field—Matsukawa’s dismissive attitude that had struck Shunsuke as utterly unacceptable.

“The union chairman was Matsukawa, right? Is Matsukawa properly conveying everyone’s actual wishes to the authorities?” “Well, I don’t rightly know about that.” When it came to that critical point, Kompei remained evasive.

And it was precisely at this point that Shunsuke intuitively grasped there lay a path to breakthrough.

Shunsuke came to understand various things. The Monopoly Bureau had established various restrictions regarding cultivation permits. First, they did not permit individuals to apply directly. Applications had to be processed through the village office. The village had a single tobacco cultivation union. In Shunsuke’s village at that time, there were approximately forty cultivators with a total cultivation allotment exceeding six chō. Each hamlet maintained its own hamlet association with one representative. These representatives constituted the council of representatives under the union chairman.

At the Monopoly Bureau, they entrusted all responsibility to this union, with every administrative negotiation to be conducted through it. To determine individual cultivation allotments, first the annual allotment allocated in advance to the village association would be reallocated by the Union Chairman and Council of Representatives to each hamlet respectively. Within each hamlet, these reallocated allotments were then divided among individual cultivators. These were the procedures, but currently they amounted to nothing more than formalities. This was to be expected. The previous year's allotment had already been firmly established, and in the following year too, there was generally no alteration made to it. Moreover, when increasing cultivation allotments, the Monopoly Bureau would typically specify them individually for each person. The initial allotment for first-time cultivators followed this same pattern. However, it was said that through discussion, the Union Chairman or Council of Representatives held authority to adjust them somewhat.

Shunsuke learned all these things. And he had various doubts. First, have not all these relationships and functions now become entirely formalized and ossified as a whole?

To what extent were the hopes of ordinary union members reflected in entities like the Union Chairman and Council of Representatives? Were they truly working diligently to realize those hopes? Hadn't it all become nothing but a dried-up formality, merely handling administrative tasks through rote procedure? And what of the authorities? Could it be they too were just working by entrenched convention? The various restrictions he'd learned about from Kompei and through his own investigations might not be absolute after all. Might there not be elements there that had started out one way, become fixed unnoticed, and persisted unchanged until now? If one tried moving them, might they not budge?

And there too, there was likely no one who dared try to change it. Yet regarding this matter, Shunsuke felt he himself might be able to effect change. Though recalling the Monopoly Bureau inspectors' attitude from that day in June should have made such feelings hard to muster, somehow he found himself thinking exactly that. Whether it succeeded or not didn't matter—he simply felt compelled to try. Shunsuke's enthusiasm stemmed both from his personal desire for more tobacco cultivation allotments and his eagerness to undertake proactive work itself. This was his individual aspiration. But it also drew from other sources—specifically, having spoken with fellow tobacco growers in his hamlet, he'd realized how desperately they wished to increase their own allotments.

His own problem was simultaneously their problem as well. Shunsuke had begun to fervently wish to pour even his meager strength into seeing this earnest desire of the farmers fulfilled. Even if he couldn’t immediately bring direct, tangible benefits to the people, he wished to do at least those things that held promise for the future.

In this manner, his gaze gradually shifted from his own individual problems to the external world beyond.

This was only natural. As he himself had long maintained, it was utterly impossible for his personal internal problems to exist independently from the problems of the external world. From the very moment a problem arose, the former became inextricably bound to the latter. No—it was because their very relationship of mutual entanglement had been pressing upon him as a question of how to live.

And since humans are social beings, this would likely hold true in any era. It is only in their manner of posing problems—or rather, in how they are received—that each era’s distinctive characteristics manifest. If they had been youths just a few years prior, their eyes would have been fixed solely on the external world. And their actions would have also corresponded to that. But Shunsuke was different. He could never detach himself from his own self. Therefore, his starting point began from a manner of posing questions—such as his own way of living—that, depending on one’s perspective, carried a somewhat antiquated air. Compared to the youths of the past, it could be said that he was introspective, personal, and stagnant. And that was not something that could be called good or bad.

Even if it appeared personal, his concern for issues like politics, society, and the people could not be said to have particularly diminished compared to those who had once loudly proclaimed such matters—if one were to temporarily set aside the depth of their understanding. And the fact that those problems were also adding pressure to Shunsuke’s transformation remained true, regardless of whether he was conscious of it. However, in his case, he simply could not begin from such rallying cries of concern.

He could not begin by shouting, “For society! For the people!” It could also be said that he so strongly desired unity between his inner self and the external world.

And now he himself had begun to utter, in a faint yet persistent voice, "For the people." Thus he resolved to start from what lay nearest and most achievable. The very smallness of that voice, the very gradualness of those steps—might one not discern in this a certain steadfastness? Shunsuke first met with Ishiguro, his hamlet's representative in the tobacco growers' union. The man shared a close bond with Kompei and had worked alongside Shunsuke since that summer's drying season, making theirs a relationship of unguarded speech.

Shunsuke asked Ishiguro various questions about the Council of Representatives and the Union Chairman.

“Even if you call it the Council of Representatives, they hardly ever hold proper meetings,” “The way things are going, it might as well not exist.” “Practically all decisions come from Matsukawa acting on his own authority.” “How much cultivation allotment does Matsukawa hold?” “Three tan and five se, you see.” “The largest in the whole village.” “Well, Matsukawa’s been around forever.” “With that much allotment, he’s practically become union chairman by default.” Three tan and five se—with four tan being the upper limit—amounted to nearly the maximum permitted. Matsukawa himself could now be considered fully satisfied. There was good reason why he showed no particular zeal in working for ordinary union members.

Shunsuke intended to have them allow him to grow tobacco separately from his father. Since he would eventually have to join the union as well, he asked for support. However, regarding Matsukawa, he requested, "I’d like you to keep quiet a bit longer until I give the word." “Yeah, that’s fine,” Ishiguro replied. “But I hear they decide next year’s planting allotment increases and distributions every autumn, so you gotta get your procedures done quick.”

In Shunsuke’s plan, before finalizing union membership procedures, he intended to independently meet directly with senior officials at the prefectural Monopoly Bureau branch office and request his desired cultivation allotment. Once he had so much as met and spoken with Matsukawa, he concluded he could neither proceed by ignoring him nor expect his request to be accepted if handled through Matsukawa.

Ishiguro, “Well… I wonder,” he said dismissively. “Seems futile to me.” But Shunsuke—

“No—I’ll try it regardless. Right now, this is just my own problem—but if I break the customary practice that limits new growers to five se and allotment increases to no more than two se, and manage to secure even a little more, it’ll set a new precedent. That’ll make things better going forward. Moreover, if this succeeds, I believe everyone will naturally come to feel that from now on—instead of leaving everything to the union chairman—they must adopt a more proactive approach.”

“If my hopes are met and a considerable allotment gets approved, I’ll share a portion of it with the hamlet folks,” he said with a laugh. Shunsuke obtained detailed information from Ishiguro about the current state of tobacco cultivation allotments in their hamlet and village—the rate and pace of allotment increases, comparisons with other villages’ figures, and similar matters. Ishiguro, being the representative he was, knew even the minutest details thoroughly. Shunsuke recorded each item in his notebook.

Even after getting into bed at night, he continued to rack his brain over what he needed to discuss the next day and how to present it in an orderly manner. The next day, Shunsuke promptly visited the local Monopoly Bureau.

The midday heat still lingered fiercely. Along the bleached seven-ri road, Shunsuke pedaled his bicycle through sweat and dust toward the town housing the Monopoly Bureau.

He presented his business card at the reception and abruptly requested a meeting with someone called the Business Department Chief. It was not that he knew anything at all about what kind of person that individual was. He didn't even know his name. However, he had researched and understood the general structure of the Monopoly Bureau—what departments and sections existed there and what respective duties they managed—and therefore concluded that the Business Department would likely be most suitable for his matter today.

Presenting his business card with no title or affiliation meant they couldn't possibly know who he was. He simply told the receptionist he'd come to make a request concerning tobacco farming. Reckless it might be called—and reckless it was. Yet part of him had considered the matter with surprising nonchalance and optimism. An institution like the Monopoly Bureau must constantly interact with locals given its administrative nature. Perhaps he was overcomplicating things. They might grant him an audience more readily than expected—the receptionist's manner of taking his card and leaving without listening had paradoxically given him a flicker of reassurance. He interpreted it not as discourtesy but as the routine nonchalance born of thorough familiarity.

As he waited, he felt anxious. It seemed all but inevitable that he would be effortlessly turned away. The previous glimmer of hope vanished, and such feelings grew steadily stronger. In that brief span of time, his state of mind swung back and forth between opposite extremes countless times.

The receptionist returned.

“This way.” Shunsuke reflexively gave a quick bow. He followed behind.

One corner of the earthen floor area had been partitioned off to serve as the reception room. Having been told to wait there, Shunsuke waited for some time. The space measured barely three tatami mats, with a small table at its center flanked by two chairs. Nothing else occupied the room. Had someone been here moments before? Thick tobacco smoke lingered in the air, carrying a faint trace of human odor. The man who entered appeared to be in his thirties. He might have been forty. Perhaps his clean-shaven face made him look younger? In any case, he differed markedly from the imposing figure Shunsuke had imagined bearing the title of Business Department Chief. Precisely because this pot-bellied man lacked gravitas, Shunsuke felt he could speak freely. Yet he wondered if this might be a subordinate rather than the chief himself.

“What is it? State your business,” he replied to Shunsuke’s greeting with a slight bow, sitting down in the chair as he spoke curtly. Rather than unfriendly, it was perhaps better to view his manner as strictly professional. Shunsuke also sat down in a chair accordingly. He was holding Shunsuke’s business card in his hand and, while glancing at it, “Ah, you’re from Kashiwano Village,” he said, seeming to mentally sketch out the village’s general layout. Shunsuke had written the address in small pen letters on the left corner of his business card.

“Are you cultivating tobacco?” “No… I’m actually hoping to start cultivating from next year… That’s why I’ve come to make this request.”

Having said that, Shunsuke began to speak. Ah, he feared they might tell him at any moment to submit his request through the union or village office instead, but no such words came.

He thought he had no choice but to speak frankly about everything. Not knowing what kind of person the man was made it all the more necessary to do so; he must not needlessly be wary of him, doubt him, fear him, or look down on him. Above all, he thought the worst thing would be if the speaker himself held even the slightest belief that speaking up would amount to nothing—that it probably wouldn’t make any difference. One must speak with the conviction that reasonable arguments should prevail and that the other party would listen—though in reality, having witnessed many actual cases, it was truly difficult to believe such things easily. Still, he resolved to speak with that conviction when the time came. Without it, he thought, even what might have passed would end up not passing. And these were by no means ideas he had just conceived upon facing the situation.

He began by speaking about his past in broad strokes. He explained that he had been a student but had to leave school midway due to circumstances, returned to his hometown, and was now working as a farmer. While working as a farmer, he explained that for his part, it wasn’t merely about not burdening his family with his return, but also about adding something more—wanting to ensure that his coming back amounted to something worthwhile. As a first step toward that end, he explained that he wanted to cultivate tobacco and thereby establish at least the foundation of his own livelihood. He explained that this was because their land at the foot of the mountain was limited in area and there were no crops more profitable than tobacco to cultivate there. And he also spoke about the land reclamation he was currently undertaking. By the way, he explained that according to what he had heard, first-time cultivators were generally only permitted about five se of allotment, but with that amount, it was absolutely impossible to fulfill the hopes he had just described. He explained that he hoped to be granted as much cultivation allotment as possible. “At the same time—though it may be presumptuous of me to say this myself—since this also concerns my father, I must ask: the members of my village community have recently been excluded from allotment increases. “And so everyone is earnestly requesting an allotment increase.” “And I earnestly ask that you give your consideration to this matter as well,” he said. And he spoke based on the figures he had researched. Regarding this last point, he had worried it might come across as terribly impertinent, and had vacillated back and forth about it even the previous night, but ultimately resolved to speak his mind.

The man listened in silence. When Shunsuke finished speaking, “I see. No—I fully understand.” he said. And with that, he fell silent again. Shunsuke was extremely tense. “By the way, this may seem rather unrelated, but…” the man began, “You say you left school midway… Was it something ideological—like a red incident?” he asked. Shunsuke was momentarily startled. His past had absolutely nothing to do with such matters, but in that instant, he wondered if the fervor in his own speaking tone had made the man detect something and led him to that misunderstanding. He thought it inevitable that his personal transformation would appear peculiar in others' eyes. But then again, he immediately considered that the man probably hadn't asked with such deep consideration; it was likely just a routine inquiry for reference purposes.

“No, it’s nothing like that. It was mainly due to tuition issues and circumstances where my health wouldn’t allow me to continue working my way through school.” “Ah, right... No—I only asked about that as a formality, you see—it’s nothing significant.” He changed the topic, “So, how much cultivation allotment do you wish to have? Of course, I can’t guarantee it will turn out exactly as you hope.”

“I would like at least three tan.” He thought he might either be suddenly laughed at or else be flatly denied outright. However, as Takano seemed to ponder deeply, Shunsuke was inwardly surprised by this reaction. “Three tan would be quite difficult… but in any case, I cannot give you any immediate response here and now…” he continued to weigh the matter. “Yes, of course not immediately…”

“Please wait a moment,” he said and left the room.

Shunsuke waited. Even in that brief interval, various thoughts arose within him.

The man who had returned was holding something like a large ledger in his hand. “Excuse me,” he said, and for a while looked at the open page. Though he had tilted the ledger’s spine upward slightly—and with its contents positioned directly before him—Shunsuke could have easily seen what was written had he looked; yet he kept his gaze deliberately averted. He fixed his eyes on the ink stain on the desk. “Hmm, it seems there are those in Kashiwano Village for whom the allotment is too small—pitiable indeed.”

He snapped the ledger shut and placed it beside him. "I have fully understood your explanation, and I will give it due consideration."

He had already stood up. Somewhat flustered, Shunsuke also stood up.

“I humbly ask for your kind consideration.”

He felt as though he had forgotten to mention something important. However, he could not recall it. He felt he needed to repeat what he had said once or twice more and make absolutely sure of it. However, since the man had stated it so clearly, what need was there to say anything more? “Thank you very much for everything.”

From behind Shunsuke, who was opening the door to leave, he spoke up as if suddenly remembering—

“Ah, regarding your matter—” “Please have your village head submit a petition to the Monopoly Bureau Director requesting permission for your tobacco cultivation.” “This is merely procedural, but such are the established protocols.” “The village office will know about the required forms.” Shunsuke repeated his thanks and left the room. As he descended the stone steps and was about to reach the ground, he suddenly remembered something crucial he had forgotten and hurriedly turned back. Oh right—I was supposed to ask his name!

Shunsuke turned back and went as far as the previous room’s entrance, but there was no reason to expect he would still be there. He peered into the dim corridor beyond, but could not catch sight of anyone resembling him.

He had no choice but to ask at the reception desk. “The person I just requested to meet—the one from the Business Department. May I ask what that gentleman’s name is?” “Mr. Takano.” “And his given name?” “Mitsutarou—the ‘Mitsu’ is written with the character that means ‘to shine.’” He had also wanted to ask whether Mr. Takano was indeed the head of the Business Department, but thinking it might come across as rude, he refrained. With a wry smile at his own flustered behavior, Shunsuke began his journey home. Because even such small experiences were firsts for him as a working man, he was excited. Yet beneath that excitement lay a joyful emotion. To him, the result of today’s meeting could only be thought of as having proceeded favorably.

At the same time, he also felt a certain dissatisfaction—a vague sense of letdown. He had anticipated encountering more resistance of various kinds. A flood of thoughts surged through him. One couldn’t know anything without trying. But above all else, what mattered most now was how this simple yet vital conviction had taken firmer root within him. Several immovable truths had proven not to be so absolute after all. There was the claim that individual cultivators would never receive consideration. The rule that new growers couldn’t exceed half a tan, nor existing ones gain more than two-tenths in expanded allotments. Of course, while these cultivation quotas remained entirely undecided, it had at least been recognized that room now existed to maneuver beyond established customs.

Suddenly, an unpleasant doubt arose. Couldn't that also be one of their usual tactics? Couldn't this be one of their tactics—having grown thoroughly sick of handling several people like me, they skillfully give us the shoulder-dodge? He was speaking eagerly, even getting somewhat excited himself. The other party seemed to be listening intently, but in reality was thinking of something else entirely. Because he already knew without needing to be told. If that’s how it is, let’s think it through thoroughly—but that conclusion was reached all too easily.

Imagining this reality of having his naivety stripped away, Shunsuke flushed red. He felt as though he might be either an utterly clueless simpleton ignorant of the world or a hopelessly naive man. Even so—if that were truly the case—would they need to go through all that trouble of bringing out ledgers and making such remarks, those complicated procedures?

However, Shunsuke immediately stopped vacillating between these two thoughts. And if he wanted to stop, he could stop at once. In such matters, he found himself able to act with a resolve now that differed from his former self. Perhaps I'm being naive. I might be ignorant of how the world works. But regardless, it remained a fact that I could sincerely believe it. There was no need to introduce doubts here, was there? If I was deceived, then so be it—let me be deceived.

He returned to the village. And that very evening, he immediately visited Ishiguro and spoke with him. Ishiguro also rejoiced as if it were his own matter.

The next day, Shunsuke visited the village office with Ishiguro to meet the village head. Shunsuke explained the general outline of the matter. And since the Monopoly Bureau had also instructed them to do so, he requested that they provide a written document. Ishiguro also chimed in from beside him. The village head readily agreed.

Four or five days passed with Shunsuke being too busy to meet Ishiguro when one day Ishiguro came to visit him. He suggested it might be better to meet with Matsukawa at least once. It was likely the information had leaked from the village head; Matsukawa had heard about Shunsuke and was said to have voiced his dissatisfaction to those around him. Shunsuke harbored not the slightest disregard for the union. His respect for it was, if anything, stronger than anyone else’s. He simply believed the union needed to better fulfill its original purpose. That he had taken personal action without going through the union was unavoidable given its current state and did not reflect his true intentions.

Accompanied by Ishiguro, Shunsuke visited Matsukawa. Matsukawa sat cross-legged with an arrogant demeanor. Shunsuke formally greeted him and explained that once permission came through based on the document from the village head, he would need to join the union, and therefore earnestly requested Matsukawa's kind consideration. Matsukawa nodded in response. Shunsuke kept strictly to these formalities and said nothing further about recent events. He had been ready to speak if questioned. Matsukawa, however, asked nothing. What followed were just a few exchanges of trivial talk, with Matsukawa remaining unsmiling throughout and clearly in poor humor.

“That bastard’s really got his feathers ruffled, eh? Guess he’s just spineless through and through.”

Ishiguro kept saying such things all along the way back.

Suddenly, Shunsuke thought of this. What if his wish were granted, and the permitted cultivation allotment broke precedent in its scale? The general union members would be astonished at the results this newcomer had obtained. That would be accompanied by envy and jealousy. Wouldn't this result lead to various objections being raised, using the fact that he hadn't gone through the union as a pretext? The previous customary practices were not absolute. Such things were indeed possible. Might results arise—unrelated to or even contrary to his intention of demonstrating through his own experience and wanting people to become more proactive in their livelihoods?

Moreover, if I were to join the union, the issue of improving its current functions would immediately arise. Though I couldn’t know precisely which aspects required improvement or how without joining and confronting actual matters firsthand, it remained an undeniable fact—stated in the most general terms—that the members’ intentions weren’t adequately reflected in the union’s various organs. And this was precisely the first point that had to be reformed.

But there, the conflict between myself and the union leader along with certain executives surrounding him would ultimately become unavoidable. Shunsuke felt himself emerging from his position as a kind of bystander to village life and, as one of its members, gradually becoming woven into its framework. And the more he immersed himself within it, the more he encountered one unexpected new fact after another—things he had never anticipated. They were problems that had long required solutions and were accompanied by various difficulties. However, there was nothing grand there that would astonish people’s eyes, no matter what. What trifling details, what tedium, what monotony!

Someday, Shunsuke too would find himself gnawed at by that very thought. There might come times when this very boredom itself emerged as the greatest enemy, surpassing all difficulties. That itself would be the crisis. Yet he, having just begun, remained far from even that position of telling himself—and enduring—that this was what village life, what the lives of most laborers truly consisted of, and still carried fresh emotion within him.

Shunsuke waited anxiously for word from the Monopoly Bureau. He kept waiting, certain that notification would come either to him directly, to the village head, or to Matsukawa. Yet nothing arrived.

Shunsuke felt anxious several times. He found himself recalling how they had questioned him suspiciously about why he had left school midway. As for the cultivation allotment, putting that aside, he thought the notification of cultivation permission should have arrived sooner. He should have pressed Mr. Takano and asked when the decision would be made during their meeting. He regretted, thinking that when you're inexperienced, oversights can occur in the smallest details. He had not been without the thought to visit Mr. Takano once more; but upon reconsideration, he gave up the idea. Even if they met, it would only mean repeating the same things twice; he restrained himself, thinking he shouldn't be so persistent. Moreover, after returning from his earlier meeting with Mr. Takano, Shunsuke had sent a letter of thanks, in which he had once again repeated his earnest request for consideration.

Ishiguro,

“Every year, the cultivation allotment for the following year comes in December’s notification, so I suppose everything will get sorted out then,” he said optimistically.

Even as they were doing so, the time had already come when they needed to begin preparations for the next year's tobacco cultivation. They had been unable to start work while anxiously awaiting notification from the Monopoly Bureau and had fallen somewhat behind due to mountain reclamation efforts. If the cultivation allotment remained undetermined, there would be complications in creating seedbeds and making compost, but they couldn't keep postponing indefinitely. Kompei couldn't overexert himself from autumn through winter due to neuralgia. Under his father's supervision, Shunsuke had to shoulder the main labor. It was backbreaking work that proved too much for an elderly man.

A seedbed measuring one ken by four ken corresponded exactly to one tan's cultivation area. To gather the fallen leaves needed for the base of these seedbeds, Shunsuke shouldered a bamboo basket daily, took a rake, and headed into the mountains. He made countless round trips each day. A single load exceeded twenty kan. Bundling the gathered fallen leaves required skill, and even after instruction, reaching average proficiency demanded considerable effort. The farmers had developed their own methods for compressing leaf-like materials into portable loads. First they carried fallen leaves to a treeless clearing in the mountains and piled them high. Next they raked small portions at a time, stamping repeatedly with both feet using full force. The damp leaves gradually adhered together into a compact mass. As they continued layering more leaves from below while piling upward, there eventually formed something like a leaf board—approximately four shaku wide by three shaku long and five sun thick.

Then they would cut bamboo or tree branches and fit them against both sides of the compacted leaf layer, using these supports to gently lift it as if cradling it against their chests before placing it onto two prepared vines. Until one grew accustomed to it, the leaves would crumble apart when lifted, requiring repeated attempts to get it right. They would stack five or six layers of these and bind them tightly with vines to form a load of fallen leaves. They gathered up the scattered fallen leaves around them into a bamboo basket, placed the compacted load on top of it, secured everything with rope, and shouldered the bundle. Mere fallen leaves—what an astonishing weight they became like this! With this load on his back, heaving himself upright in one motion using the spring-like power of his waist was no easy feat. If he could just push through with all his strength in one go, that would be best. If it shifted even slightly, he could no longer stand up. Even when he finally managed to rise, he tottered unsteadily as if about to collapse. At one point Shunsuke truly fell—his legs kicking wildly in midair—and thought his neck might snap.

Even when he shouldered the load and began walking, his feet seemed to lift with each step. His shoulders were constricted, his collarbone ached as though it might snap. When the slope became slightly steeper, Shunsuke felt true terror. However, when he saw a boy of about sixteen performing this strenuous work with ease, he realized it wasn’t merely a matter of strength—this too must be something that comes with experience.

Since the seedbeds needed to be laid out to a thickness of one shaku five sun, they had to transport this load over a dozen times.

When the seedbeds were finished, next came the compost for the main fields. For this, they used the fallen leaves that had been gathered earlier from the mountain in the reclaimed area. They had estimated there was roughly two hundred kan, but they didn’t think that would be sufficient. But in the nearby mountains, fallen leaves were already almost nonexistent. When the autumn harvest ended, the women formed teams to gather fallen leaves for fuel and went into the mountains day after day. If they were to proceed now, they would have to go deep into the mountains. That fallen leaves could hold such significance for farmers was something Shunsuke had never once recalled during his time in the city; just as he found himself in difficulty, someone arrived with timely information.

A house in the village community was selling rice straw. Shunsuke promptly went to inspect that house. There were exactly seven bales' worth. They had previously agreed to sell it elsewhere for two yen and seventy sen, but due to improper storage methods, rainwater had seeped in and begun rotting the straw, making it unusable for straw crafts—so the deal had fallen through. "If you understand this can only serve as fertilizer now," they said, "then buy it." Shunsuke gladly decided to purchase it for two yen and seventy sen. As he loaded the straw—bundled into sheaves and left at a paddy's edge five or six cho from the house—onto his wheelbarrow, he breathed a sigh of relief at avoiding another mountain expedition.

This straw was cut into lengths of three to four sun using a fodder cutter. When it piled up like a mountain, they would rake it smooth and pour several bucketfuls of water over it from above. On top of that, they would stack more cut straw and sprinkle water again.

After completing the compost preparation, the remaining task was weaving wheat straw mats to cover the seedbeds. These measured half a ken by one ken, requiring about twenty-four or twenty-five pieces. Then they needed to construct pillars and frames to erect around the seedbeds.

When engaged in static work such as weaving mats, Shunsuke’s thoughts would sometimes drift to the past. He could still be said to be in a turbid state of mind. It could not yet be said that he had gained a clear view of the path he had taken. There were rare times when he would suddenly think that he might be making an unthinkably foolish mistake. But he felt no regret. On the whole, it was still more often that he devoted his mind to hopes and plans for the future.

And so that year too had entered December. One evening, Ishiguro and two other tobacco-growing companions hurriedly came to visit Shunsuke, about a week after the day they had gone to pay the tenant fees. It was a day in late December.

Shunsuke, who had been weaving mats in the barn, was called by Kompei and stepped out. He sensed an unusual agitation in Kompei's voice calling him - something nearly unheard of in his father's daily demeanor.

When he entered the dirt-floored area, Ishiguro, who had been sitting on the raised threshold, upon seeing his face— “Shunsuke-san, this is serious!” said Ishiguro. However, his face showed no trace of seriousness whatsoever; rather, it seemed barely able to contain some kind of joy. The other two were the same. “What is it?” “There’s nothing at all—it’s serious! The allotment from the Monopoly Bureau has arrived.”

Even Shunsuke could no longer suppress the turmoil rising in his chest. “Is that true?” “It certainly is. A little while ago, the notification arrived at the union leader’s place. So they told me as well. There’s yours too. It’s just as I told you before. The cultivation permission, the allotment—everything came through together.” “I see. So what were the results?” “Well, why don’t you come on up,” said Ishiguro with forced composure, flapping his hand towel to dust off his hem and legs before stepping inside as if it were his own home.

They were shown into the sitting room and sat down. “Shunsuke-san, you’ve done something truly remarkable,” said Ishiguro as he pulled out a sheet of paper from his breast pocket and spread it out there. “You have one tan and five se, your father has one tan and one bu. “Combined, that makes two tan and five se.” “Your father gets an increase of three se.” “Well, take a good look at this,” he said, pushing the paper forward. Shunsuke took it in his hands and looked. There, recorded were all the next fiscal year’s allotment quotas for every tobacco-growing member of the village community. And below that, the figures for the allotment increases were recorded. It appeared to have been hastily copied by someone from an official notification and was written in pencil on Japanese paper. Shunsuke and the others’ portion was exactly as Ishiguro had stated. The allotment increase was two se or three se, and every single person in the village community received an increase.

“Shunsuke-san, this is all thanks to you. From me too, I offer my deepest gratitude.” As Ishiguro spoke, the other two also began to follow suit and voice their thoughts. All three were terribly excited. To them, Shunsuke’s one tan and five se was an astonishment almost beyond belief. The three-se allotment increase was similarly astonishing. Ishiguro’s words—“This is serious!”—were no exaggeration but a direct expression of their feelings.

However, Shunsuke felt somewhat dazed. It felt anticlimactic. Was this truly due to my "efforts"? If that were truly the case, then which part of my words had possessed such power? This was nearly a coincidence, wasn't it? The greater the role chance had played in their victory, the more he found himself worrying about what lay ahead.

But it wouldn’t be too late to think about such things later. He too now simply wanted to be happy. He wanted to be happy—for himself and for everyone else.

Whether this endeavor would succeed had been a grave concern for him. Beyond mere material consequences, what truly mattered was how its outcome would reshape the nature of his connection with the villagers. The villagers kept talking without pause. Kompei moved among them, wearing a quiet smile.

“Matsukawa must be really shocked this time around, I bet.” “What about the other village communities?”

“Well, I haven’t properly asked about the other village communities yet.”

“Mr. Ishiguro. I’m still new at this, and besides, since Father already received an increase of three se, I really don’t need something like one tan and five se. I’ll give five se of this to the village community.” Ishiguro and the other two looked at Shunsuke in surprise. “I once said that if things worked out, I would give some portion to the village community members, but at that time, I hadn’t actually thought it would become possible. It’s turned out exactly as I said, and I’m truly pleased... We could divide the five se into one se each for five people, or distribute it among those with smaller allotments. We can all discuss how to handle that later.”

Ishiguro and the other two expressed their thanks with few words. The brevity of their speech laid bare just how deeply delighted and grateful they were—such was the nature of their words.

Shunsuke's chest grew warm. They could feel such deep and profound joy from just this much. Wasn't this truly the most crucial matter? For no particular reason, Shunsuke suddenly recalled both Shimura and Uehara, whom he hadn't seen in quite some time.

What had been accomplished was truly but a single modest thing.

However, this gave Shunsuke new confidence and courage.

(End of Part I)