Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Masacka Yō

This here is my five colors and seven hues of an unfinished draft; it is a memorandum.

I had long cherished Sanyūtei Enchō, and the day when I would compile his life into a full-length novel now drew near.

"This piece, 'Enchō Fireworks,' indeed formed the foundational draft of that full-length novel."
Here I presented images of his days—youthful, middle-aged, and later years alike—each vividly colored and dream-steeped, humbly seeking the indulgence of discerning eyes.
I said again—this was entirely a provisional draft.
Deign to gaze upon this as but a fleeting scene from a magic lantern show.

Fragment I

——The crimson tail slithered up snake-like, and just as its light flared intensely—boom.

Instantly, across the entire sky, it bloomed like a weeping willow.

Next came one launched from the opposite direction—a crimson-crimson glass sphere scattering like coral branches studded with pearls.

Then came one resembling a yellow rainbow, followed by crimson stars, azure orbs—

“Tamaya!”

“Kagiya!”

Each time, tens of thousands of voices roared from Ryōgoku Bridge.

The Ōkawa River—midnight-blue even to night-adjusted eyes—lay packed to bursting with boats and people: chokibune skiffs, roofed pleasure craft, yakatabune barges, wandering boats rowing tirelessly between vessels, even shadow-puppet boats—all repainted with each firework burst in vermilion, emerald, azure, and violet.
At establishments like Manpachi, Kawachō, Umekawa, Kameshige, Yanagiya, Kashiwaya, Aokashiwa, and Ōnakamura—their eaves forming unbroken lines along the riverbank—viewing platforms projecting over the Ōkawa were bedecked with Yanagibashi geisha in full splendor, each vying to outdo the others in extravagance as though every skyward explosion were worth a thousand ryō.
Indeed, only tonight did Lord Matsuura's Chinquapin Estate and the Shubi Pine area retain mere fragments of darkness along both banks,

A bridge three hundred jō long—

People seem to walk the heavens—

Edo’s renowned River Opening Festival had the entire capital utterly enraptured.

“Hey there, Master.
“Don’t just keep staring at the fireworks in a daze—go on and dry yourself off already.”

In the middle of the Ōkawa River, a roofed boat moored perilously close—leaving just enough passage for ascending and descending vessels—bore a woman whose pale features in the dim light joyously mirrored Sawamura Tanosuke’s famed beauty: O-ito of Yanagibashi, celebrated in Narushima Ryūhoku’s *Willow Bridge Chronicles* for her allure.

“Nah, I’m no good with that.”
“As for the sake, let’s just set that aside.”
“Rather than that, for a teetotaler like me, Ryūshō’s sweets here are far more welcome.”

As he spoke, Sanyūtei Enchō—the young rakugo storyteller now captivating all of Edo with his theatrical tales—plucked something resembling kuzu-zakura sweets from the cut-glass plate beside him and irritably popped it into his mouth.
With his fair complexion and dashing leading-man looks, he wore a gaudy open-necked crepe summer kimono.
A tepid night wind swept through.

At that time, Enchō—who had been drawing audiences of three to five hundred as the headliner at the purification grounds' afternoon shows across the river, said to be the grandest stage for rakugo storytellers, and rapidly igniting widespread popularity—had before long become romantically involved with this O-ito from the land just a bridge away.
Genji 1—it was summer when Enchō turned twenty-six.

"Oh, those kudzu cherry-blossom sweets."
"Well then, Arushintei’s shirogami here’s got more style, don’t you think? C’mon now—Aaahn—open up that mouth for me."

With her face overflowing with happiness, O-ito began to pick up the famous shirogami confection with elegant vermilion-lacquered chopsticks, but—

“Whoa there, O-ito—that doesn’t measure up.”

Enchō restrained that white hand once more,

“I’m a rakugo storyteller born and bred.—Rather than such fancy fare, grabbing some common eats at a stall near Kobashi Bridge would be more my style.”

“Well… Master, why must you spout such highfalutin nonsense tonight? If there’s something about me you don’t like, you should just lay it all out and scold me properly! Ugh, you’re so infuriating!”

Still wearing that blissful expression, she began scooting closer and was about to place her hand on the man’s gently sloping shoulder when—

“Shh—shut it! I ain’t angry at you.
“Look—there’s the damn rival on that boat over there.”

Enchō shook it off and pointed with his opulent pipe toward the boat across the water—a mere obi’s width away.

On the diagonally opposite roofed boat, Shodai Shunpūtei Ryūshi—exuding the gravitas of chief organizer in contemporary rakugo rankings—sat with his florid face flushed crimson under lantern light, accompanied by disciples Ryūjō and Ryūkyō as he glared bitterly across the water.
Ryūshi—originally the second son of a hatamoto samurai and said to have devoted himself to Shinto—was a master of crafting and performing his own tales. Though he created sensual stories like *“Osetsu Tokusaburō”* and *“Inokori Saheiji,”* his true forte lay in works grounded in theological experiences, such as *“Shingaku Giryū”* and *“Shintō Chawan,”* which aligned with his nature as a stubborn old man through and through.

Therefore, he utterly despised the garishness of Sanyūtei Enchō’s theatrical stories—those trend-chasing concoctions whipped up by constantly shifting his focus.

"A rakugo storyteller ought to behave like a rakugo storyteller—if they don’t perform plays with just a fan and their silver tongue, then there’d be no true flavor or worth to their theatrical tales whatsoever."
"But when it comes to that Enchō—what does he do?"
"He hires seven nagauta musicians, poaches them from every troupe to cut corners, installs drainage wells beneath the audience seats, then goes prancing about using the main water supply."
"It’s precisely like those Kirishitan padres!"

Ryūshi always hurled such abuse.

“That’s all well and good—but then you’ve got this theatrical Sendai lord losing his marbles, draping some limp purple headband about him, clinging to his disciples’ shoulders while prancing mincingly into the dressing room—what a lowly hack! To go that far just for popularity—what a wretched way of thinking. After all—a performer’s brat remains a performer. Performers born to generations of artists are base from their very nature, I tell you.”

He continued hurling abuse in this manner.
These insults had, naturally, also reached Enchō’s ears.

Yet no matter what, his rival was Edo’s foremost rakugo storyteller—better to bend than break, Enchō told himself as he gritted his teeth—but tonight, aboard this fireworks-viewing boat with O-ito, the woman he had only just fallen for, he found himself face-to-face across the water with that great adversary, Ryūshi.
O-ito knew nothing of this, but Enchō had noticed early on; still in his twenties and hot-blooded, a combative urge to challenge his rival to battle had been burning through his entire body like fire from the very start.

However, the boatmen—utterly unaware of these circumstances—in their attempt to avoid the jostling vessels behind them, instead vigorously thrust Enchō’s roofed boat forward with a single push of the oar toward the contentious front. They ended up pushing it forward.

Then, the top disciple Ryūjō—

“Hey Master, some sunny simpleton’s come flaunting his fancy open-necked crepe summer kimono over here.”

He said with deliberately loud, insincere flattery.

Suddenly, Enchō flared up but forced himself to pretend he hadn't heard—then another Ryūkyō,

"Heh—what's he gonna do if water splashes on that showy crepe summer kimono he's parading around in? Once crepe gets wet and shrinks, there's no way he'll be taking the stage come tomorrow night."

No sooner had he spoken than he rushed to the boat's edge and spat as if he'd seen something vile.
Ptui, ptui.
He spat over and over again.
And he kept at it endlessly.

Enchō suddenly flared up.
The blood throughout his body churned—throb after throb after throb—as if it were boiling over,

“Hah! Even twenty or thirty of these yukata at my place would just be standard-issue uniforms lying around.”
“Hey—O-ito.”

No sooner had he spoken than he suddenly stood up and planted one foot on the boat’s edge.

“Hah!”
With a shout, he flipped through the air and plunged into the emerald-green water with a resounding splash.

“Hey! He’s jumped in!”

“He’s jumped in!”

Tens of thousands of spectators cried out in alarm, but once the truth rippled through the crowd,

“No, no! That’s not it!”
“It’s the rakugo storyteller Enchō diving in for a lark and swimming around!”

“Oh! He’s swimming for a lark.”
“Hmm, that Enchō’s quite the spirited fellow despite his pallid face.”

“Spirited indeed!”
“Enchō! Enchō! Swim strong!”

Eagerly eclipsing even the fireworks, they began cheering for Enchō.

“Damn it—I went and said too much! Ended up letting Enchō turn this around on us.”

With Ryūjō and Ryūkyō exchanging bitter glances, Enchō paid them no heed as he swam about the area awhile longer. Deeming it time, he swam back to his boat still clad in his soaked crepe summer kimono—dripping wet just as it was—

“Hey! Hurry up and gimme that yukata over there!”

He called out to the beautiful profile that had been watching anxiously at the boat’s edge, heart racing at what might unfold.

“Yes, yes. You—here, with this.” Smoothly rising to her feet, O-ito removed the soaked summer kimono and immediately draped another perfectly identical open-necked yukata—prepared in advance—over Enchō’s still-dripping back with gentle care. “That’s gutsy, hey—Enchō’s brought how many of those splendid crepe summer kimonos with him, the hell?” “Damn right—that young’un’s got one hell of a backbone! Go get ’em, Enchō—!”

Once again, spectators from boats in all directions showered him with hail-like applause.
There was no longer any Ryūjō or Ryūkyō.
No—even Grand Master Ryūshi had utterly and completely lost his luster before young Enchō.
At this very moment, Enchō felt himself standing like a guardian deity—having single-handedly seized every last shred of popularity from every quarter of Edo.

Ah—the events of this night—I shall never forget them for all eternity.

O-ito... Fireworks...

Eventually, his displeasure cleared away with a snap, and Enchō felt something within him cry out like this.

Pop, sputter-pop, pop— Just then came an intense noise, and suddenly everything around them—the sky, the water, the boats, the people, Enchō himself, even O-ito—began glowing vermillion like mythical scarlet, he thought. No sooner had this happened than across the riverbank, the mechanized fireworks' spinning wheel mechanism whirled to life.

...Let the above be designated as "Fragment One" of my work.

Fragment Two

“Now then... On the twentieth night of December, when the wife of Master Fukami Shinzaemon suffered another sharp stabbing pain, the masseur they summoned turned out to be an extremely elderly, emaciated man.”

“Well now—being newly blind and quite unaccustomed to this—please tell me where it hurts.”
“Since I don’t understand meridians, if you say ‘massage here,’ I’ll massage here.”

“With that,” he moved behind her to perform a probing treatment.

Eighteen years had passed.

It was now early September of Meiji 15.
At Fuki-nuki-tei in Shitaya Ikenohata, Enchō sat solemnly upon the storytelling stage as he began narrating *Kasane-ga-fuchi*'s murder of Sōetsu—his figure illuminated by the large ceiling gas lamps recently installed, which emitted a pale, buzzing light.
Having finally deepened his artistic nuance and reached the realm of a true master, Enchō—now forty-four and in his prime as a man, with a slightly receding hairline—had acquired a composure that made him seem like a different person.

The audience of over four hundred packed into the venue did not let out so much as a single cough.
They leaned forward, listening with rapt attention.

“However, the more he massaged her, the more the wife—”

“Ah! It hurts! Ah! It hurts!”

“Madam.”
“Now, now—it’s quite troublesome if you keep whimpering like that.”
“Can’t you endure it?”
“This ill becomes one born to a samurai house.”
“Ah look—if you keep thrashing so, you’ll only let the sickness win. Bear it quietly.”

“Ah! It hurts...”

In the water-sprinkled garden where ground insects chirped intermittently, Enchō pressed onward with his tale.

“...‘Wait there, masseur—wait!”
“Hold still.”
“This shouldn’t hurt—try mine instead. Ah! Ah! Th-this... this pains me!”
“I see... Th-this is... truly wretched technique.”
“You—who massages directly on the bone like this?”
“Put thought into it—it’s agony! Ah, the pain!”
“‘Twas unbearable.’”

“Oh? Are you in pain?”
“However, this was still far from over.”
“The agony when I was slashed down from my left shoulder to my breast with your wakizashi like this...”

“Wh-what...?”

When he looked back, there sat Sōetsu—the blind man he had slain years before—his hands reduced to bone and skin resting on his knees, his sightless eyes wide open as he leaned forward like this—Fukami Shinzaemon’s drunkenness evaporated. Every hair on his body stood erect; in a panic of terror, he seized the sword at his side and—

“You bastard! Had enough?!”

When he slashed down with all his strength—startled by her sudden cry—Kanzō the gatekeeper rushed out to find he had gashed the mistress’s shoulder instead of Sōetsu.

Fukami Shinzaemon was driven mad at last by Sōetsu’s vengeful curse.

“The beginning of *Kasane-ga-fuchi*—allow me to continue tomorrow evening.”

At this chilling climactic moment, Enchō skillfully cut off his story,

“…………”

He bowed his head, but the audience—utterly captivated by the once-in-a-generation master’s every syllable—still remained dazedly seated for some time without stirring. Yet when the backstage drum finally rumbled to life, they snapped back to themselves all at once and erupted into thunderous applause.

“Thank you very much.
“Please remain quiet, please remain quiet.”

After calling out to the bustling audience two or three times, he finally rose from the elevated stage and descended to the backstage—

"You’ve worked hard."

"You’ve all done well."

Among the disciples offering their greetings was the dark-complexioned Seichō, his mouth shaped like a kite’s beak,

"Master, there’s a guest waiting."

"What...? A visitor?"
"How inconvenient..."

He briefly furrowed his composed brows,

"...Though I’m expected at Lord Umagoe’s residence in Shiba this evening—who might this guest be?"

“Um, well, Master...”

When Seichō faltered inexplicably,

“Oh, Master.
“I am Teshigawara Shizue.”

From the adjacent room of the backstage already emerged this noblewoman with thick eyebrows, piercing eyes, and a showy face—her thick makeup resembling a bouquet of white peonies even in night vision, dressed head-to-toe in gold-trimmed Western clothes and wearing what one might call a bonnet—a wide-brimmed flower-adorned hat—exuding the pungent scent of rum as she alluringly bent her entire body to greet Enchō,

“Hey, hey Master, I absolutely won’t let you go tonight.
“Master Enchō is mine.”

The woman laughed shrilly.

“Hey, Master.
“Tonight, you promised, so please accompany me.—I’ve had a carriage waiting out front, you see.”

In the four-and-a-half-mat room adjacent to the backstage, under the hanging oil lamp’s light, the woman known as Teshigawara Shizue neatly arranged Enchō’s supple hands upon her lap, then lightly pulled them toward herself,

“Come on, it’s fine. You should fulfill your promises once in a while. Since you’re a man of Civilization and Enlightenment, Master, you’ll surely champion women’s rights.”

She said, bringing lips painted with thick lipstick that threatened to smear close to Enchō’s cheek.

“I must decline. I have a prior engagement tonight at Lord Umagoe’s residence.”

Quietly, he shook off her hand and said.

“My, how rude! If you’re going to say such things, my prior engagement has been set for... well, who even knows how many months now?”

“That is because your ladyship unilaterally decided this matter alone.”
“Lady Shizue—”

He decisively rephrased his words,

“Your ladyship is, after all, the noble daughter of Viscount Teshigawa, are you not? You must not have your carriage stop at places like the backstage of a vaudeville theater.”

“Oh, I’m no young lady. Just a divorcée scraping by day to day.”

“That is not the case. Even in your current divorced state, good days will surely come. You must take great care of yourself. Enchō cannot engage in such dalliances.”

“Oh, what are you saying? I’m not engaging in any dalliance. I truly love your art...”

“That is where your understanding is mistaken. Your patronage of this unworthy Enchō’s art brings me joy beyond measure, but that is an entirely separate matter.”

“But…”

“Lady, please come to this vaudeville theater once more the evening after tomorrow. In the continuation of *Kasane-ga-fuchi* you will have the honor of hearing how the female master Toyoshika, through a single night’s dalliance with a younger man named Shinkichi, utterly ruins her life and meets her demise. If I may say so—being an exemplary daughter of this enlightened age—you will come to fully comprehend the error of your present perspective. Why, there is a dodoitsu popular these days among seasonal revelers: *A carefree abode of second-class bricks built through accumulated hardships and worries*. Enchō prays from his heart for the auspicious day when spring returns to your ladyship.”

To Enchō’s utterly sincere demeanor—and whether she had now sobered from her rum drunkenness—Teshigawara Shizue hung her head in dejection.
The neatly shaved nape of her neck seemed as lonely as a blade of grass.

But having finished speaking his convictions, Enchō took out a pocket watch from his obi and looked at it,

“Seichō.”

He called out to the adjacent room,

“You, escort the Lady back to her carriage and see her off.”
“Then you alone are to return to Futabacho ahead of the rest.”
“And tell them I won’t be returning tonight.”

—Keeping her large, round eyes downcast, he briskly departed Fukinuki-tei, leaving Shizue perched primly in her Western dress.

About ten minutes later, the rickshaw carrying Enchō clattered along with its iron wheels from Yushima's dark cut-through through Hongō Sanchōme toward Ikinosamazaka slope.

Though past eleven o'clock, Hongō-dōri on this early autumn evening bustled with boisterous students singing at the top of their lungs, their voices occasionally erupting in cheers from the direction of Akamon.

"I hear Lord Kaga's side is setting off fireworks."

Though Otomatsu the rickshaw puller had said this, when he glanced back from his seat, no such lights were visible; the rain-laden wind blew chill and cool, while the night sky hung thick with an unreasonable reddish-brown hue.

—The Lord Umagoe to whose residence he was now being invited was none other than Umagoe Kyōhei, the industrial magnate then making waves in business circles; at his Shiba-Sakuragawa mansion tonight, Kawada Koichirō, Shibusawa Eiichi, and other prominent gentlemen of the era—with Enchō among their company—would engage in discussions of refined cultural pursuits through the night.
At some point, he—Enchō—had joined the ranks of first-rate figures in Japan’s artistic world alongside Ichikawa Danjūrō, Onoe Kikugorō, Tokiwazu Rinchū, and others.
By chance, triggered now by that single mention of fireworks, atop the rickshaw rolling through the night, he found himself compelled to contemplate this notion of "the flow of time".

And—without warning—the large, dark eyes of Teshigawara Shizue, whom he had left behind in Fukinuki-tei’s four-and-a-half-mat room, flickered before his vision like a magic lantern slide. That transformed into O-ito’s face. Though neither had wearied of the other—O-ito, torn apart like green wood when parted.

"Had it been the Enchō of that desperate period after parting with O-ito, he would never have done something as wasteful as lecturing that prime-of-her-life divorcée with sermons that could outdo even renowned monks."
Ah, now that things have come to this, how I long for those Edo days when I plunged into the Ōkawa clad only in a summer kimono.
No—come to think of it, perhaps that time was the best in my entire life…

Enchō suddenly recalled the warmth of O-ito's skin—now more than ever, he longed for that day, for that moment. He yearned for her with such intensity it squeezed his chest. "Ha... hatchoo!" he sneezed.

A grey heron cried overhead.

…And thus concludes ‘Part Two’ of these fragments.

And now, please turn to 'Part Three'.

Part Three

In human affairs, when sixes keep coming up, a one is sure to follow.

Fortune has its limits—even an exceptional figure like Enchō soon found himself eclipsed by Japan’s burgeoning stenography techniques through Wakabayashi Kanzō’s, Koa Eitarō’s, and Imamura Jirō’s transcriptions of *Botan Dōrō* and *Annaka Sōzō*
*Shiobara Tasuke*, *The Living Burial of a Beauty*, *Awataguchi*, *Breast-Shaped Enoki Tree*, *Ejimaya*
With masterpieces such as *The Filial Son of Britain* succeeding one another—adorned by the sumptuous illustrations of Ochiai Yoshiiku and Mizuno Toshikata, serialized in *Yamato Shinbun* and *Chūō Shinbun*—and with *Shiobara Tasuke* attaining the singular honor of a command performance before His Majesty the Emperor at Marquis Inoue’s residence during his fifty-third year in Meiji 24 (1891), which marked his zenith, Enchō’s fortunes at last began to drift away from their resplendent form.

Outraged by the theater managers' tyranny, Enchō conspired with his renegade disciples—Enshō, En'yū, Enkyō, Entarō, Enkyō, and Enma—who had gained notoriety as iconoclasts, scheming to raise a banner against their oppressors. But one among the disciples betrayed them, having already leaked their coordinated efforts to the theater faction, and their solidarity crumbled.

Enchō, in despair,

“I will never appear at Tokyo’s vaudeville theaters again.”

With this declaration, he secluded himself in the thatched hermitage Entsūdō he had established in Shinjuku Kitamachi at the time, devoting himself to Zen meditation and shunning worldly concerns.

Only in September of the 25th year did he venture into Osaka Naniwaza as a solo headliner, but soon after returning to Tokyo, he was thrown from a rickshaw and suffered severe injuries.
The world grew increasingly devoid of interest to him.

No matter how much he devoted himself body and soul to Zen studies, his mind remained disturbed; his white hair grew increasingly abundant, and he aged beyond recognition.
Each time, Enchō quietly closed his eyes.
And he thought of that evening of fireworks.
Strangely, when he thought of that evening, he felt as if he had grown ten or twenty years younger.

In October of Meiji 32 [1899], his extended performance of *Botan Dōrō* at Ōroji in Nihonbashi finally became his last storytelling stage, and from year's end onward he lay bedridden with illness too severe to lift his head from the pillow.
As the year turned from winter to spring, then into summer, Enchō, now sixty-two, found his frailty growing ever more pronounced.
With the lengthy diagnosis of progressive paralysis with secondary encephalomyelitis having already damaged his brain’s central nervous system, he would occasionally lose all sense of judgment.

Near dusk on August 3rd——

Near Shitaya Kōtokuji Temple, at Enchō’s house, cicadas were shrilling incessantly in the shade of thick oak leaves.

“How’s it goin’, hey—the Master’s condition?”

The one who appeared from the kitchen entrance carrying a newspaper-wrapped parcel—his whimsical face all nose—was Sanyūtei En'yū, the rakugo prodigy beginning to be hailed as the commoners' genius of comic storytelling and wordplay.

"He ain't doin' well. Can't tell black from white no more."
"Completely lost all sense of shade in things."

"Ten more days? He ain't gonna hold out that long."

Enshō and Enraku (formerly Seichō), who had been crushing ice, took turns looking up at En'yū's face and spoke.

“Is it really that bad?”

“I tell ya, for five, six days now—right around the Ryōgoku River Opening Festival—he’s been carrying on about wanting to see fireworks, throwing tantrums like a child. It’s been a real hassle.”
“Yet even when you take him up to the drying area, he ain’t got the strength left to lie back and look at the sky, see.”
“I tell ya, he’s been acting like he’s possessed by fireworks—fireworks this, fireworks that.”

Enraku puckered his lips sorrowfully.

“Well now—since I heard about that from a certain quarter, today I’ve brought this as a gift for Master.”

Handing over the newspaper-wrapped package, En'yū—

“There’s a whole bunch of sparklers packed in here.”
“With these, we can light ’em easy right by Master’s bedside.”

“Ah, now this here’s a stroke of genius.”
“Sparklers—now that’s inspired!”

“En’yū truly lives up to being En’yū.”

The two exchanged looks and marveled.

“Enraku… Enraku… Those… fireworks…”

A hoarse voice could be heard from the back.

“Ah, Master!”

“Hmm... Master.”

“He seems to have woken up.”

Noisily, the three pressed into the sickroom.

Enchō—now with sunken eyes, hollowed cheeks, and dark shadows rimming his eyelids, his form eroded by the heartrending shadow of “death”—lay there as his wife O-sachi, a large-framed woman around forty who had married him without hardship after he attained fame and status, fanned him from beside with all the demeanor of a proper lady, his ragged breaths ceaselessly rippling the futon’s surface.

“Now, Master,” En’yū said. “Tonight’s the River Opening Festival. Let me show you some fine fireworks.”

Still standing as he spoke, he tied a new hand towel around his head like when performing his signature “Suteteko” routine onstage, hitched up his kimono hem, and noisily unwrapped the newspaper bundle—revealing dozens of sparklers with slender stems dyed in mottled patterns of peony red, yellow, purple, and vermilion.

He deftly plucked one and touched it to the flame in Enchō’s bedside tobacco tray. With a hiss, the spark flared into a fireball like a paper lantern plant’s fruit before crackling outward in all directions, scattering hemp leaf-shaped embers.

The hemp-leaf sparks scattered high and low above Enchō's head in the dimly lit room. As the fire's intensity waned again, they swiftly traced out delicate willow leaves resembling Kōrin-style maki-e lacquerwork.

Just as that one began to die out, En'yū deftly lit the next firework with his free hand.

Once more, the sparks scattered hemp leaves.

"Ah... grateful," he rasped. "Ryōgoku. The river opening."

As if overwhelmed by memories of past and present, Enchō managed his first faint smile.

“What splendid fireworks.”
“That one must have cost 500 ryō.……Ah, another’s going up.”
“Falling stars.”
“Oh, a rising dragon.”
“Chrysanthemums and the national flag.”
“……Ah... Ah... Ah... Vanished behind Manhachi……”

Gradually adopting an increasingly delighted expression, Enchō began uttering trivialities.

“It’s really gotten to his brain.”

“To think this is the great Sanyūtei Enchō of our time...”

Enshō and Enraku exchanged looks.
And then they simply hung their heads.
A stifled sob escaped from no one in particular.
Before long, everyone—every last one of them—had begun sobbing aloud.
Even En'yū, still clutching sparklers in hand.

But—but this sorrow, this lamentation, this grief—it was all nothing more than the disciples' misguided sense of propriety, they who knew nothing of the circumstances.
Ah, for Enchō—his own figure from that night in Ryōgoku forty years prior now rose crystal clear before his eyes.
The youthful days of his happiest love and popularity from a lifetime unburdened by reservations or cares—now came vividly back to life within the hemp-leaf patterns of sparklers.

After that, Enchō had obtained "status."
"Wealth." He had obtained.
"Zen studies." He had obtained.
And various other so-called this and that.
"This and that." He had obtained.
"Various and sundry glories too numerous to mention." He had obtained.
Moreover, a life of sixty-two years.

Now standing at death's precipice, the joy that had outshone that night of fireworks at twenty-six contained no profundity.
Now within the final tatters of a mind shredded, mangled, utterly consumed—every vision of ecstasy appearing drenched in iridescent light belonged solely to that night.

He saw the river, smelled the water, glimpsed roofed boats, watched lantern lights sway incessantly—red-faced Ryūshi glared—then instantly crumbled before him. "Serves you right!"
Blood coursed smoothly through his body—O-ito drew near with evident delight—the scent of hair grazed his nose—and then the crimson firework shattered.

He was happy—he was elated—he was delighted from the bottom of his heart—his whole body tingled with excitement—and gazing at the flickering firework lights by his pillow, Enchō kept chasing after dreams of the past, on and on without end.
He kept chasing them.

"Ah, it lit up again."
"A shooting star."
"Ah... Oh! Mikenjaku."
"How nostalgic."
"This time it flew off toward O-takezō."
"Magnificent, magnificent."
"Tamaya, Kagiya."
"Tamaya and Kagiya—"