Pathway to Japanese Literature

Crape Myrtle

I

I was walking along a narrow path that wound halfway up the mountain.
The sun was shining.
Below, the trolley rails that carried stone from a mountain three ri away stretched on and on, and beyond them, mountains covered with beautifully growing pines rose in layers.

From time to time, trolleys loaded with stone would pass down the slope, making a terrible noise.
……the laborers would raise both hands and such.

I addressed the short friend walking alongside me.

“How about it?
“Have you ever had that kind of experience, huh?”

“Nope.”

With that, the friend laughed.
It was a light laugh that seemed to say, “Well, well—it’s finally come out, hasn’t it?”
And that laugh, strangely enough, silenced me.
I walked in silence for a long time.
Suddenly, a large temple bell floated into my mind.
That was the temple bell I had seen a little earlier in front of the main hall of the temple.
Next, the scene of when that temple bell was cast flickered before my eyes.
A large construction shed… A massive cauldron melting copper… A fire blazing fiercely… An aged metal caster zealously directing laborers—

“I’ve been casting bells with this for forty years now, but not once has it ever gone truly well.”
“Somehow I keep thinking—if only I could make something splendid just once, something that’d endure. But I’m not sure I can manage even that.” This was what the metal caster had said.
On that wrinkled, earnest face, the fire cast a red reflection...

“This bell has already reached five hundred years.”

“Is that so? Has it really been that long?”

“Look, here—it’s written like this.”
“Such-and-such year, month, day, resident of such-and-such province… Ah, so someone from such a place cast it, you say?”
“...So even back then, there was someone like that who cast a temple bell like this, you suppose?”

With that, those people grasped the striker and struck the temple bell.
The temple bell filled the air with a quivering resonance.

In the stillness of nature, the bell's echoes faded one by one.
Then silence, deep silence...

"The traces of effort in crafted things remain precious precisely because they persist through such long years unchanged."

"We Japanese do tend toward sentimentalism."

“It’s true.”

When one [of them] said this,

“That’s truly how it is.”

and the other one chimed in.

Those two were just like the two of us.
I even began to think that perhaps it was my short friend beside me and I who had struck the temple bell and come out.

The sun glittered down on the trolley rails.
[...] a nursemaid, hoisting a sleeping child onto her back as if rousing them, walked briskly barefoot along the rails.

Bush clover flowers bloomed. Butterflies fluttered—a beautiful one with yellow patterns on black wings...

We rode the train, crossed an iron bridge, passed through a pine grove, saw morning's white clouds fluttering over mountaintops, spotted an old flagman, then disembarked at one of those small stations common in these parts, walked through a rural town with deep-eaved houses, turned at the corner where eel sizzled rhythmically on a grill, passed before a thatch-roofed town hall, and wound through rice paddies until we reached this place.
For what purpose?
With what aim?

II

“It’s hot, isn’t it?”
“There’s not a speck of shade.”

“Should’ve brought the umbrella.”

“But I did say we should take it—you’re the one who called it bothersome and left it behind.”

“Can’t be helped now.”

We traded these words.

Ahead stood a mountain whose pines grew in curious formations, with a single torii gate at its base where we held this exchange:

“The hero from that popular song ‘On Sanjō Bridge in Kyoto,’ eh?”
“What of this shrine’s deity?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Given it was that era, if you call him impressive, then impressive he was.”
“And imperial loyalism makes for such a fine topic...”
“He probably wasn’t such an impressive figure…… And his suicide in Chikugo—if I had to say—stems from sentimentalism, don’t you think?”

When we came near the torii gate, sunlight filtered through the pines, and a small shrine deep within appeared close enough to grasp.
Along the path we were walking flowed a small river.
Countless killifish were swimming.

“Shall we pay our respects?”

“No—that’s enough already.”

With that, they passed by the foot of the mountain and came toward the pine-lined avenue.

They crossed a beautiful little stream to find a tidy ice shop. There, a young shop woman with casually tied hair took an ice block coated with sawdust from a square box, washed it in the stream, shaved it with a plane into snow-like flakes, and offered it to customers. Beside her, a boy of about four—barefoot—was mischievously playing, plunging his water pistol into a bucket again and again with evident delight.

The water from the pistol sometimes shot up high. Each time it did, the boy laughed cheerfully.

“Hey now, if you keep doing that and hit a customer or something, it’ll be trouble.”

The young shop woman said this and turned the water pistol’s nozzle toward the field.

The young shop woman's smile!
That strangely captured my heart.
It resembled someone.
Someone I once thought beautiful somewhere?
Eyes, eyebrows—within their depths, that woman dwelled.
For a long time, I walked on, turning that someone over and over in my mind.

Whenever his friend spoke to him，that “someone” wavered．Signs boldly proclaiming “Famous Matsutake Yōkan” and red and yellow fluttering banners kept flickering before eyes，inextricably intertwined with that “someone”．Given that he could forget her，she wasn’t a woman he’d been particularly close to—but she was undoubtedly one who had once left a deep impression on him．

“That’s it!”

Involuntarily, I cried out.
We had already arrived before the large main hall.
“I’ve finally remembered!”
As I repeated this, my friend—
“What is it?”

“What is it?”

“Well, I’ve been trying and trying to remember since earlier, and now I’ve finally managed it.”

“What?”

I spoke of a journey from ten years past. Thoughts of that woman occupied my mind awhile—narrow sweltering rooms, drums, shamisen rushing swift and swifter through my head. At dawn’s first light, I found myself alone within the mosquito net. Through one opened shutter on the second floor came a cool morning breeze. The net’s hem stirred faintly.

“Just once, then?”

“That’s right.”

“You’ve got quite the memory.”

“Well, I was already on the verge of forgetting. But… precisely because she was a woman I was involved with, I hadn’t forgotten her, you know.”

“Would women be the same way?”

“Isn’t it said that women are more that way than men?”

“Is that so?”

This time it was my companion who eagerly took up such talk.
We walked laughing through the main hall's precincts crowded with worshippers.
A place where bush clovers bloomed and crape myrtles blushed crimson.

III

That too was a narrow town street. From there, going around to the back, there was a filthy ditch, and beyond it stretched the long railway tracks. The train came rumbling and roaring.

"So that's what he was doing back then—he never showed any sign of it," I thought as I listened to my companion's story.

The notion of secrecy welled up from within me.

"You never know what secrets people hold!"

Having thought such things, I turned to examine my own secret-laden being.

My friend spoke.

"When you first came, things hadn’t gotten so bad yet—but even then, I was already involved with that woman, and your presence wasn’t exactly without being a hindrance."
"I think you probably remember, but there were two or three times I came home late using the excuse of having a meeting or something."
"That was me sneaking off to her place behind your back."
"You were so rigid, you see."
"Back then."
"I never let a hint of it slip out, you see."
"Because if I brought up visiting brothels or such, you’d turn bright red and get furious," he said with a laugh. "Besides, those places around there were cheap."
"I could go even without money, you see."
"After that, I went every single night."
"She was a woman from a place called Tamiya—a woman named Taka."
"I still can’t forget her!"

“Did you quit that place because of that?”

“There was some of that kind of connection, you know.”
“At first, even so, since I was hired by a teacher at that temple school, I worked there dutifully.”
“But I was young, had no one to talk to, and knew all about visiting brothels—so it couldn’t last long.”
“Even so, I thought it wouldn’t do to be found out locally, so at first I used to take the train here and there from Saturday to Sunday.”
“I’d say I was going sightseeing somewhere or something like that.”
“So you see, there wasn’t a single red-light district in that neighborhood I hadn’t been to.”

“Is that right?”

“Then I gradually grew bolder—well, you see, the time you stayed for about a month was during Tsukigase’s plum season, so around July or August, right? From that time on, I’d started doing it right there in the area without a second thought! When I quit that place and came back, I tricked her by saying I’d definitely send for her once I returned to Tokyo—”

“Then you haven’t seen her since?”

“After that, she sent letters often, but since I couldn’t go through with it, well—it just ended up staying like that in the end.”

“It’s been fifteen or sixteen years now, hmm.”

“Yeah.”

“All such things end up merging into a single tale, don’t they,” I said. “Have you heard any rumors about what became of the woman since then?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“If you met her now, it’d be interesting, wouldn’t it?”

“I sometimes think about such things. Though I say that, I’m not enthusiastic enough to go out of my way to see her. Even now, I still get the urge—if I happen to be there for some reason—to go and see her.”

“Ordinary—she’s become someone’s wife and lives peacefully now, I suppose.”

“I suppose so…”

“If you went and looked for her, wouldn’t that be interesting?” Having said this, I pictured in my mind the entrance of a farmhouse of the sort commonly seen in that region.
There, yellow and white chrysanthemums were blooming.
When we entered, the woman—now aged in both form and figure, having fully become a farmer’s wife—stared at us with a fixed, startled expression…….

“Mōpassan’s short stories have many tales depicting such scenes.”

Having said this, I looked at my friend’s face.

The impression of that month I spent there fifteen or sixteen years ago vividly revived in my mind. A sunless cold room on the second floor; the voice of a shellfish-selling woman heard from bed in the morning; the bitterly cold, famed west wind one could hardly face; a high mountain half-covered in snow—my friend’s words, “Looking back to those days, you’ve changed too,” resonated vividly in my chest.

I was obsessed with the sea at that time.
Using any excuse, I would invite that friend out and take the train to the coast.
There was a pine grove like a painting there.
At the corner of the pine grove stood a small lighthouse, and from there a wide sea stretched into view.
It was a vast, vast sea.

“So you’d been to that red-light district by the sea even back then…”

“Back then, when you went there with me, I was already acquainted with that red-light district.”

My friend laughed with these words.

The red-light district within the pine grove—on its railings, red futons and tasseled pillows hung out to dry, bathed in sharp afternoon shadows.
The sound of pines and waves drifted faintly from that place.

IV

Another trolley passed over the rail tracks.
The ascent couldn't proceed like the descent.
Three laborers pushed.

“There’s a hot spring deeper in these mountains.”

“In the depths—where the rail tracks lead?”

“Ah.”

“Have you been there?”

“When I was fourteen or fifteen… I went there once.”
“Beyond this mountain lie nothing but small hills—one connecting to another—making it a rather interesting place.”
“Though calling it a hot spring… it’s just heated water they boil…”

“That sounds fascinating.”
“If I were free… I’d want to go…”

“Shall we go—”

My friend said, as if suddenly thinking of it.

“But no matter what, we’ve got to go back tomorrow.”

“But one day would be fine.”

In my mind floated images of the tram and the large bookstore sign along the tram route. Men in Western suits sitting lined up by the tram, women with long chignons looking spirited, young shopboys, modern-dressed dandies—they appeared and vanished. Next, the large portrait of a woman displayed at the station strangely materialized before my eyes with vivid clarity.

The woman in the portrait gazed at me with strangely familiar eyes.
Familiar eyes... or rather, eyes that left an unforgettable impression.
—I would always pass before that portrait when going to use the payphone.
A young woman with a vibrant voice would answer that payphone.
—For a brief moment, that woman’s face, the eyes from the portrait, and images of mountain hot springs merged before me.

When I suddenly became aware, we had left the thatched-roof temple behind and were sitting at a small pavilion-like place overlooking a cliff, gazing downward as if peering below.

The sunlit areas and those in shadow stood out in stark contrast.
It was a quiet day, yet one heavy with shadows; the accumulated green leaves of the pines heightened the crisp, cool atmosphere that suffused the surroundings.
Above all, a feeling akin to parting layer upon layer of mountains to venture deeper refreshed our hearts.

I was imagining the hot spring resort deep in these mountains.
Rail tracks crossed from mountain to mountain, winding around low foothills... A small waterfall crashed down with a clamorous roar from a high cliff along the path... Water shattered against rocks flowed down fiercely white, roaring... Dusk was already beginning to fall.
There was still about one ri to the hot spring resort.
A quiet, cold mountain chill washed over the skin.

……At the hot spring resort, clear waters overflowed…… ……Maids in red sashes…… ……Young and beautiful……

The wide-open temple was completely visible from here.
Set apart by the red of oshiroi grasses, the yellow of sunflowers, and the blue of pines, a man in white clothes, a young student in haori and hakama, and an old man who seemed to be a temple caretaker were gathered at the temple office talking animatedly—the scene appeared like a painting or something of the sort.
The temple caretaker occasionally raised his face and looked toward us.

“I wonder if Yoshisada’s grave is here.”

“That’s right.
“Perhaps only a lock of hair is buried there.” I paused slightly before continuing, “It was quite derelict in the past.
“Nowadays, with all this fuss about preserving historic sites, they’ve apparently managed to keep it this well-maintained.
“When I was sixteen, I came here with my brother—back then it was terribly rundown.” As I spoke these words, I suddenly remembered how my brother had inscribed a poem on the wall during that visit.

I hurried to that spot.
The characters, though faint, could still be made out.

“So that’s how it was… When you were sixteen, this…”

My friend read the poem titled Tōkinzan Yūsaku with an air of curiosity.

I couldn’t help but think of my dead brother.
The feelings I held toward my brother during that time remained vividly in my memory; all the more did his entire life replay itself clearly and quietly.
At that time, my brother was twenty-three or twenty-four and had been in Tokyo for training for two or three years; during that winter vacation when he returned home after a long absence, he and I visited Kanayama via a five-ri road.
At that time, my elder brother walked using the broken bow as a walking stick.
At that time, I wore leg wrappings and straw sandals for the first time.

Many of the paths wound through pine groves.
From where the forest broke off, a corner of the marsh glinted into view.
I gathered orchids and tied them with string.
Noticing small shrimp being dried at a certain house, I bargained them down to a cheap price and bought them as souvenirs.
But that too is now a distant past.

A face with healthy red cheeks and an emaciated face lying in a hospital bed—both passed before my eyes.
That brother—that brother who used his broken bow as a walking stick—is gone.
No, no, no—of those who were in that country house back then, who remains alive today other than myself?

About halfway along that five-ri road, there had been a certain small village called something-or-other.
It was a village with the character for 'kasa' in its name.
There was my grandmother’s grave there.
It was also during that time that I had visited it with my brother.

My mother's mother's grave!
I still remember when that mother died.

The uncle who had returned to farming in that village would always say as if it were a catchphrase, “Kin, come to Uncle’s place—I’ll treat you to lots of mochi.”
I went there just once.
At that very time, there happened to be a festival in the village across the way with a play being performed, so I was taken along by my cousins.
I remember it was the Kagamiyama play.

When I went with my brother, Uncle’s house was no longer there.
Uncle had sold his farmland and moved to Tokyo a year or two earlier.
And so, my brother and I had to visit the chief priest of the village’s patron temple to search for our grandmother’s grave.

In a corner of the dark cemetery beyond the bamboo thicket lay his grandmother's grave.
My elder brother and I borrowed a bucket from the temple kitchen, drew water, and offered incense and flowers.

After leaving that temple, there was a small river, and beyond it lay a thicket overgrown with mixed trees.
My elder brother said there was a good tree for a walking stick, entered the thicket, and diligently carved at it with a small knife.
As I watched from this side of the river, my elder brother’s figure remained unseen, with only the trees rustling noisily here and there.
Before long, my elder brother gave me the freshly cut branch of the tree.

“Before you know it, time slips away… Now there’s no one left above me… It won’t be long before we too become things of the past.”

Having said this, I couldn’t dismiss it as a casual jest as I usually would.
My voice was subdued.

“It’s true—when it comes down to it, there’s nothing but impermanence.”
“Humans have no choice but to confront impermanence.”

There was now a certain earnestness even in my friend’s voice.

“Even this—the fact that I’ve come here with you like this—will soon become the past.”
“That’s right…”

The summer noon in the valley lay hushed and still.
No birdsong could be heard.
From there, the rail tracks leading toward the town could be seen stretching long into the distance.
A single farmer could be seen walking quietly along the opposite road.

V

“It’s hot. Let’s give up on climbing Kanayama now.”

And so, we decided to turn back from there.
I climbed that mountain three times.
The most recent climb being the year before last, its impression still remains vivid in my mind.
Old ponds, paths through bamboo thickets, remnants of old trenches, and cool teahouses overlooking cliffs—such things flashed before my eyes.
Suddenly, I could hear someone delivering a speech in a sharp, hurried voice from a vast second-floor hall—about fifty tatami mats in size—where a crowd had gathered.
“The fact that Yoshisada and Takauji were in the same province, and moreover in places not even three ri apart, is an interesting thing...” I could hear such words being spoken.
“The way Yoshisada departed Kasagake Field, crossed the Tone River, and charged forth into Musashino—isn’t it something we can still vividly imagine even now…?” I could hear such words being spoken.
The sound of applause could be heard here and there.
No sooner had I registered this than the speaker changed again—this person now expounding on causes behind the town's curious absence of decline.
“Sticking only to towns is futile…” Such words too could be heard mingling…

A pond in the rice fields where lotus flowers bloomed... Five or six geishas walking single-file along the back road bordering it toward us... Tamago and Shizue... Suddenly, my heart began to feel a kind of unease.
It resembled that state of mind when passing from a certain station through the front of a bathhouse, skirting alongside lotus flowers blooming in rice fields, moving through places where patterned cloth hung out to dry flapped noisily in the wind.
At times, there were instances where the man doing the patterning would diligently wash the cloth in the muddy ditch-like river the color of iron that ran alongside.
Chinquapin trees... An elementary school... A guidepost stone to Daishi standing at the corner... From there, a black wall stretched long...

What if she were to go off somewhere and vanish?
What if that woman were to vanish forever from before my eyes?

Suddenly, the red of the crape myrtle caught my eye, and I came to my senses with a start.
The friend who should have been walking alongside me had fallen far behind.

I was waiting.
Under the shade of a large tree,

“I’m starving—what time is it?”

“It’s already one o’clock.”

“Well, no wonder I’m starving,” my friend said as he came to my side. “Isn’t there somewhere cool around here?”

“In this town, there’s likely no such place.”

A salt-grilled ayu—large and fresh, from the Ara River, they say…

The maid said they hadn’t come by train.
The ayu that were transported from Kumagaya through Menuma, across the Tone River, straight through pine groves and shrub forests, to this town’s restaurant kitchen.
Of course, they had been caught that very morning.
There were five or six waterwheels made from boats lined up along the river.
Beyond them, the Chichibu mountains could be seen in the distance.
A small pavilion facing the river... glittering ayu fish neatly arranged within the box.

“I remember. The time I went to Arakawa.”

“Have you ever been? To Arakawa?”

“Five or six years ago, two or three of us went to catch ayu there. They had a cormorant kept there, you see—used it to catch fish and show us. Quite something, wasn’t it?”

“That’s how it goes… I suppose Arakawa’s ayu are being sent to Tokyo in quite some quantity these days.”

“They do come through… In fact, restaurants these days are said to value Arakawa’s over Tamagawa’s.”

“Is that so?”

It was a second-floor room bathed in the late afternoon sun.
The eaves were short, and with no sunshade, after staying there awhile, sunlight began creeping onto the tatami mats.
From there, only tile roofs, tin roofs, thatched roofs, and such could be seen—there was nothing else to please the eye.
In the alcove, no hanging scrolls were displayed.

The label on the beer can was half-peeled off.

It was a narrow back alley.
There was a ditch on the left side.
Houses with low eaves lined both sides.
Under the eaves, several eave lanterns with red characters reading "Cuisine" were displayed.
Hibiscus were blooming.

A woman of eighteen or nineteen—a fair-skinned woman with beautiful eyes—wearing a gaudy yukata—stood in what served as a kitchen area, looking this way.

Kinsen Pavilion——

Fukutei——

Such names continued endlessly along both sides. Women were present in numbers—showing their backs, the long hair at their napes, their pale faces. In these parts, everyone watched the unfamiliar pair depart. From where the rows of houses ended, ripe cornfields could be seen.

Due to the intense rays of the lingering summer sun, the interiors of the houses on the right side appeared slightly shadowed and dim. There was a large, portly man who seemed to be the proprietor sitting blankly in a yukata patterned with hand towels or something of the sort, and there was a haggard-eyed old woman who appeared to be the housewife fussily chattering about something. The daytime alleys we had seen gave us an indescribably dry, gritty sensation.

“Even so, it’s fascinating how this place comes back to life at night.”

I said quietly to my friend.

Trembling whispers, heated heart meeting heated heart, two pale faces outlined against the dark veil of night—such scenes would come alive in this narrow back alley when night fell. I walked while imagining such things.

Even after walking about a block, the narrow back alley still continued.
But before we knew it, we had already passed through the red-light district.
This time there appeared a doctor’s large back entrance and an elegant back gate with a plum grove.
A young woman wearing her hair in a round chignon, carrying a child on her back, came from the opposite direction.

There were fields, forests, farmhouses, and shadoofs.
From the telegraph poles marking the rails came gravel, freight offices, rest areas, and the station.

VI

“Look, you can see Koganeyama.”

“That white one is a torii gate.”

Conversations like these kept springing up everywhere we went.

The train continued ceaselessly southeastward, tracing a curve across the plain at the mountain’s base.
The late afternoon sunlight spread across the entire train car, and as the train advanced, it gradually widened.
Over the mountain range undulating north of Koganeyama, dark clouds billowed up thickly and fiercely.

I was gazing intently at the mountain.
I had been completely captivated by that same feeling I once experienced.
Had it been when I came here with my brother? Or during my visit two or three years prior? Or perhaps this feeling had arisen somewhere entirely different from here? I couldn't tell, but in any case, I kept gazing at that solitary mountain's form.
Two or three pine trees... Among them, the one on the right stood tallest.

A white cloud hung over that tall pine tree.

VII

“Is that so? When you were young, did you come to this town?”

“How many years ago was that?” asked the temple chief priest, looking at me.

“Let me see,” I counted silently in my head. “Since I was twelve then… that would be thirty years ago now.”

“Thirty years ago—why, I hadn’t even come here yet,” said the priest. “It was twenty-two or twenty-three years ago that I came to this temple and grew up here alongside Mr. Mita.”

“I used to sneak off from my master to listen to saimon chants,” my friend interjected with a laugh.

My short friend looked at the Temple Chief Priest and said this with a laugh.

“Ah yes, there used to be a man who often performed saimon chants in that square.”

The Temple Chief Priest also spoke as if reminiscing about old times.

Today we passed through that place again—the square within the shrine grounds. “This is where I used to come to listen to saimon chants,” my friend told me as we walked through it.
For me too, those back alleys were places thick with memories.
Over a narrow river lay a plank bridge where a man diligently wrung out freshly washed threads.
A town of woven cloths and thriving dye works—everywhere dyed threads hung high on drying poles.

Indigo blues and blacks set against browns and pale yellows—mothers brought these from weaving houses to spin on hand-cranked wheels for piecework wages.
Even as I watched from nearby, my eyes clung more to those muted ochres and saffrons than to their darker counterparts.
“Pale yellow this time...” I murmured with quiet delight.

“Where was the house where you stayed?” After a moment, the temple chief priest asked me.

“The Komatsuya house.”
“It was a large pharmacy, but—”

“Komatsuya?”

“Is it still there?”

“Indeed it does… That Komatsuya is a long-established, reputable household… They should still be brewing soy sauce there alongside their pharmacy.”

“Yes.”
“It was like that even back then.”

“Is that so? How strange life can be—the world truly is fascinating. Back then, none of us could have foreseen these karmic ties that would bring the three of us to converse like this… How mysterious.”

“There should have been a girl over there.”

“Yes, there was.”
“The one slightly older than you was adopted into that family—that must be the current master.”

“My mother was a spirited woman, but…”

“In any case, Komatsuya is a reputable household.”

The temple chief priest began to say this and poured beer into a cup.
On the meal tray were field-grown long eggplants and handmade soba noodles.

It was a room in the large temple's kitchen quarters, with a deep veranda and an equally lofty ceiling. Since my friend knew the temple chief priest, he absolutely insisted and dragged me here. Before the gate lay a pond, with a path stretching long alongside it. In front of the mountain gate stood two Jizo statues. It was a temple detached from the world—cool and beautiful.

The temple chief priest recounted how three hundred years prior, there had been a castle on the mountain behind this temple where a certain ruler resided—the very ruler who had founded this temple. He was a minor daimyo under the Hojo clan who was destroyed during Hideyoshi’s Siege of Odawara. The graves of his clan still remained at this temple. The temple chief priest showed us the armor that the ruler had worn.

In the large tree outside, cicadas were singing.

On our return journey, the temple chief priest had prepared a rickshaw to take us to the station.
When we bid our farewells, the sun was already beginning to set.

“Please, you mustn’t trouble yourself any further—” We protested repeatedly.
Yet the temple chief priest courteously escorted us all the way to the mountain gate.
The evening sun blazed crimson across the pond.

Ahead walked two rickshaw pullers.
The vehicle was placed where the stepping stones before the mountain gate ended.
The folded hood was faintly lit by the setting sun.
I walked quietly, quietly onward, my slightly intoxicated self...

The fantasy of vanishing away somewhere assailed my mind with even greater intensity than usual.

My life—this filthy life, this life that remains stained no matter how I try to wash it clean—I want to flee from it.
I want to escape from the eyes of all the people I have met.
I want to escape from this current life—supervised, interfered with, subjected to strange looks from people I know.

To a new life!
To a life where no one knows of my soiled clothes, my decayed undergarments, my torn hat—anything of that sort!

The Karafuto Colonization Guide floated before my eyes. A life in a shack listening to storms rage—that would be enough. I want nothing; I desire nothing. A place with no people—a place with no humans who bind others’ freedom through their eyes, gestures, or hearts… I yearn to go to such a place.

“Still clinging to those romantic notions, I see.”

Once, when I voiced such sentiments, this friend laughed and said that.
I didn’t mean it that way at all—I was speaking in earnest.

Even though I explained myself like this, my friend couldn’t grasp that sentiment. For some reason, today that sentiment dominated my body with particular strength and depth. Carrying the figure of an old farmer working diligently with a hoe beside a large felled tree, the vehicle raced headlong through the town where evening lights flickered.

By the time I realized I wanted to escape, my body was already bound beyond remedy, leaving me powerless to act. Freedom is death! It amounted to the same thing.

Bound by pleasure, bound by human ties. Bound by hunger, bound by obligation.—Before my eyes atop the carriage passed ceaselessly back and forth: potatoes that must last a year’s meals; huts boarded up on all sides; white flowers blooming in buckwheat fields; lamps before roadside inns; bright shoji screens lettered “Udon Broth”; slopes where willows swayed in evening winds.

When we emerged onto the riverbank before the bridge, even so, our spirits couldn't help but lift.
The afterglow following sunset reflected off black clouds that had risen from the mountains, faintly illuminating the river as it curved and flowed below.
The sound of rushing water reached us.

When I looked over, my companion was alighting from the carriage at the bridge approach.

“The train still has plenty of time before departure. Why don’t we walk a bit?”

I too abandoned the vehicle.

"It’s a nice spot."

"It feels rather nice here."

We said such things and leaned against the bridge railing.

The shape of the black clouds illuminated by the sunset glow gradually grew smaller and smaller.
A man pulling a cart passed by, singing something loudly.
The sound of water continued to reach us.

We walked silently across the bridge.

I was thinking such things.
"Back then, I crossed the Gochōda Crossing right below here."
Wearing a red woolen scarf and a striped futokorogami workman's jacket, standing there trembling in the morning cold—I remember.
Why did I not remain long in service at that pharmacy and become an ordinary person?
Why did I begin this life of half-heartedly studying human hearts and putting on a face that feigns superiority over others? …Perhaps that life of licking and crawling on the ground like a pig was far purer and more genuine than this one.
That cold-seeming figure from back then might have been far happier than I am now.
I must absolutely start a new life from now on.
Even now, it’s not too late—a new, free life!

We were tired.

When we arrived at the station, we abruptly laid ourselves down lengthwise on a bench.
We were so exhausted that we couldn’t regain our vigor unless through liquor or women.

“I want to go buy cigarettes, but getting to the other side is such a hassle.” My friend said something like that.
The electric lamp cast a blue light on the yellow face.

“But women are such vigorous creatures, aren’t they? Even when you’re this exhausted, just mentioning them gives you courage.”
“Because they make you feel revived—they’ve got such incredible power!”

“Well then, shall we try reviving ourselves a bit?”

Laughing, my friend said such things.

The train arrived about twenty minutes late.
We hurriedly boarded the train.
Inside was only a single dim lamp, leaving the surroundings blurred in haziness.
Every face looked like that of the dead or ill.

For a short while after leaving the station, lights still flickered into view, but soon a vast expanse of darkness spread across both sides.
This infinite void—devoid of firelight or starlight—resembled my own desolate heart, barren of hope or illumination.
I felt as though my heart had been laid bare before me there, and I stared fixedly at it.
The ink-black darkness persisted without end.

Even so, a single distant light would occasionally appear, or the bare candle of a roadside farmhouse would swiftly flit past.

Suddenly within that darkness emerged a strikingly bright light.
Drums throbbed through the air.
“Revived lot over there,” he said with a laugh.

The friend who had leaned his face closer laughed as he said this.

Within the fence surrounding the red-light district, lamplight shone brightly like flowers.
Along with the shamisen's notes, the voices of the revelers came through as clearly as if one could reach out and touch them.
But that too was but a moment.
The lamplight passed away with time.
Darkness and silence resumed.

A man in Western clothes could be seen through the glass door, working at something under a dim lamp.
That was a station with pine trees.
The next station was the town where I was born.
With a peculiar sort of feeling, I waited for that station to arrive.
Neither the marsh with many memories nor the pine grove was visible; the train simply raced from darkness to darkness.

The town of my birth, emerging from darkness, was a place of many lights, bustling streets, and numerous storehouses.
The spacious station was filled with passengers waiting.
To the left, the lights of a large manufacturing company’s factory were brightly and beautifully illuminating the night.

I passed through the town—now thriving beyond recognition as my birthplace—peering into the darkness as I went.