Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

Left-wing writer Washio Kazuyoshi, who had hurriedly returned home from Tokyo to this Kumamoto City in southern Kyushu, was already completely irritated after just three days— In the mornings, as he had to look after the children until his wife finished the laundry, it had become his habit to take out the bench from under the eaves of his family home—now a cheap sweets shop—and sit motionless in the weak winter sunlight, patting his third daughter on the back while murmuring lullabies. This area marked the outermost edge of Kumamoto City in southern Kyushu—a place where manure-cart services, eateries catering to farmers from the countryside, blacksmiths, bicycle shops, and lumber mills stood scattered along the road. To the left, stretching toward a farming village clustered with southern Kyushu’s characteristic low-eaved thatched roofs that appeared small in the distance, lay nothing but the prefectural road wearing a pale, dreadfully bored expression. Of course, the west side of the prefectural road was nothing but rice paddies and fields continuing into the foothills of Mt. Tatsuta with its continental undulations. When dry winter winds blew under the low-hanging sky, white dust along the road would spin wildly like tornadoes as it raced into the distance. The horses vanished from sight, the hooded farmers disappeared, and heaven and earth turned entirely gray—leaving only the dull, monotonous clatter of a horse-drawn cart echoing through the void.

For a man not yet forty, Washio looked terribly aged. Though he now worked in the unusual profession of novel-writing, perhaps because his roots were those of a laborer, he had a stubbornly sturdy build—yet his very core seemed terribly exhausted, with noticeable white hair at his temples.

“Last year’s silk prices were good, so things must’ve been somewhat better for you.”

He addressed her in as light a tone as he could manage, glancing back over his shoulder. Then Washio’s sister—grilling dango at the shopfront with the air of a country wife—responded with what sounded like an indignant retort.

“What’re you on about? That wouldn’t even amount to snot!” “Is that so…” “Listen here—without some war or other, this economy ain’t gonna budge—” What?! Washio looked toward his sister at this, but she kept her soot-darkened face lowered, briskly flipping the dango on the grill. “Where’s this war supposed to be fought?” “...That’s what they’re sayin’.” Without the slightest hesitation, she explained how a "military horse procurement office" had been established in the next village. This appeared far more simple and clear than what Washio had known of such things in Tokyo.

This stingy, barren country wife would constantly turn her goosefleshed blue face toward the outdoors. Whenever she spotted hooded farmers leading horses or cyclists pedaling past, she’d call out in a voice that clashed grotesquely with her pallor—"Won’t you stop for some dango?" or "Aren’t you cold? Drop by on your way back!"—but they would merely tilt their hooded heads slightly and hurry past.

“Those tightfisted dirt farmers won’t even come ’round while they’ve still got their New Year’s rice cakes—” At such moments, her bitter tirades seemed poised to spill actual tears. Washio was regretting having gone through the trouble of scraping together travel funds to return home. One purpose had been fulfilling his duties as the impoverished eldest son—attending his mother’s first death anniversary (he hadn’t even seen her at her end), and entrusting their remaining elderly father to his sister and brother-in-law—but given his own financial impotence, he now felt it would’ve been more prudent to have forced these matters through letters from the start, since smooth resolution was impossible anyway.

On the very night he returned, when they all drank together with their father at the center, his sister had already subtly laid out a defensive line by enumerating their household finances in meticulous detail. Her carpenter husband earned one yen per day with packed lunches; Washio’s youngest brother Torakichi worked as a suburban train conductor in Kumamoto City for seventy sen daily; the youngest sister and father’s side jobs brought in less than thirty sen; and the shop’s earnings barely covered the monthly land rent. “The five of us are all workin’ our gama off here! What’re we gonna do if you get Torakichi drafted next year⁉”

“I see, I see…”

Washio had offered a reply whose meaning even he himself couldn’t comprehend. Her husband left for work early in the morning, and his youngest brother Torakichi had such a brutal schedule—320 hours a month on that duty roster—that he hadn’t had a single proper conversation with either since returning home.

To tell the truth, Washio himself had become unable to comprehend his own complex present self. Their writers' group had nearly………………, and now with some comrade-writers plunging headlong through the storm's fury, he thought he must lighten his burdens for the coming hardships—settle family affairs, make his father understand their circumstances, perhaps even have someone take in one or two of his children—to follow his comrades at all costs. Yet simultaneously there existed his utterly exhausted body and mind, emotions………………crumbling into bottomless depths—indeed, even this homecoming could be called a panicked retreat, clutching ambitious plans yet unable to leap the great chasm before him.

He would scrawl phrases like “Calm down, calm down—” or “Don’t panic now—” throughout his diary, desperately screaming them in his heart’s depths—yet before he knew it, he’d find himself with body stiffened, staring fixedly at some random point in the oppressive winter sky. “Lately neum’s gone dirt cheap… bamboo ladles ain’t worth a damn no more…” His father spoke up from the corner of the shop’s earthen floor where he did piecework. They made bamboo ladles and chopsticks from the abundant Moso bamboo roots in this region—clumsy and heavy things that still sold among the farmers. Since losing his wife, the father had grown severely senile; now he raised his kind, shriveled face framed by white hair bound with a headband as he spoke. His nearly toothless mouth gave his words a “Fwa, fwa” quality. Shaving bamboo bark with a double-handled blade called “Sen,” his branch-like arm would tremble jelly-like whenever the tool struck a hard node.

“But th’other day, there was an order from ‘Mitsui,’ y’see—”

“Mitsui?” Washio had thought his father was exaggerating, but through persistent questioning learned that Mitsui’s dye factory in Ōmuta had placed a special order—bamboo utensils for handling “corrosive chemicals” during boiling processes. “Should we have charged them extra?” “Couldn’t do that—prices’re fixed.” The father—his nameplate reading “Washio [So-and-so], Eighth-Class Order of Merit”—survived the Russo-Japanese War. His left leg sat awkwardly cross-legged, purple scars from bullet fragments glowing where two toes were missing. This timid yet stubbornly obstinate poor farmer’s temperament—foolishly honest through and through—Washio understood intimately through shared blood. That very morning, Washio’s wife had tried taking their two grandchildren—whom he’d never met—out somewhere considerately, only to return fuming midway through their outing.

“Grandpa, you idiot…” When she asked the older boy who was bawling, he said Grandpa had hit him along the way. “What’s wrong, Pa?”

Even when Washio asked, his sullenly angry father came and sat down in the earthen-floored workshop.

“Tokyo brats are impertinent...” Yet whenever quarreling with his sister, he would inevitably bellow, “I’m off to Tokyo!” The sister and father often argued even before Washio and his wife, but on such occasions she too would adopt a reckless attitude and retort, “Well then, off you go wherever you please—”

“Brother, that young master from Masukiya’s has passed away, he has.”

That sister of his, as if suddenly recalling something, blurted it out.

“Mr. Ikuta? How?”

“They said it was peritonitis or something—got caught up in [things] for ages... then wound up in prison—”

Washio was startled and looked at his sister’s face. He had heard through rumors that there had been a great storm here, but of late he had known nothing at all. Mr. Ikuta was the pawnshop owner’s son; even when Washio had last returned home, he had visited him a few times—a quiet young man who had been a member of a cultural circle. “Since it looked bad to others, they held the funeral all secret-like, they say.” “Was it only Mr. Ikuta? What about Mr. F?” “Oh, the barber’s son—I hear they hauled him in for a bit too.”

“And then?” “I don’t rightly know—so it hasn’t even made the papers yet.”

When a farmer who had pulled his horse’s muzzle in from outside entered the shop’s entrance, the sister cut off their conversation with an annoyed look. With an irritated complexion, Washio walked while jostling the child in his arms, peering fidgetily toward the back door. When the sun hid itself within the low gray clouds, the patches of sunlight at their feet vanished completely, and a bitterly cold wind blew across the frozen ground. “Hey—you still dawdling over there?”

As if he could no longer contain himself, he barked at his wife—still doing laundry at the back door—in a sudden outburst.

II

Upon returning home, Washio had immediately sent a postcard to K Police Station: ――Having returned due to familial matters requiring my presence, I hereby humbly report this matter――.

After dropping the postcard into the mailbox, he was startled to realize how utterly natural the act had felt. He was a "legal figure"—there had been no reason whatsoever to consider him in violation of the law. But right around that moment, the police officer arrived.

“Well now, long time no see.” The bicycle that had come speeding straight down the prefectural road stained with horse manure executed a circling stop before Washio standing beneath the eaves. “So this time… that’s your story, eh?” While bringing his bicycle beneath the eaves, the forty-year-old man with a brush-like mustache and pockmarked, pudgy face gave a nasty grin. “It’s Mom’s first anniversary—didn’t I file the notice properly?” Washio turned away, but the bicycle man—nodding in some incomprehensible manner—kept darting glances over his shoulder into the house even while lighting his cigarette.

“Since I’ve brought my wife and children along, I’d like you to go easy on me this time.” Gradually regaining his composure, he said with a joking laugh.

“I’m just a novelist—no need to make such an enemy of me.”

“…………” The man gave a derisive “Hmph,” and for a while both stood silent in the cold wind. But eventually, as he turned his bicycle around, he muttered with a bitter smile still averted.

“But after all, you’re an old hand in that line of work around here.” “………………” It felt as though his weak-kneed attitude had been joltingly thrust back—

When the bicycle man had left, Washio handed the child in his arms to his wife and went out through the back door toward the fields. He felt disgusted with himself—utterly wretched. The winter-withered rice fields held only sparse wheat sprouts here and there, exuding a parched and thoroughly desolate air. The earthen bridge with sunken supports, the stream exposing its dried-up bed, and the frost-crumbled paths between fields all clung to the teeth of his geta, making each step torturous. At such moments—a habit born of his worsening neurasthenia—he would walk restlessly as though hurrying to urgent business. From among the dried bead-plant stems rustling at the stream’s edge, even when a parched earth-colored young lark tumbled forth—still capable only of feeble chirps—he lacked the mental composure to turn and look, though aware of its presence.

While chasing his incessant, agitated thoughts—though he himself felt utterly exhausted—he wandered the vast fields searching for some place to sit down, some spot to rest. And in the end, he could find no such place anywhere. Every ridge had crumbled; every stretch of riverbank revealed jagged exposed earth when approached, scoured raw by the dry winter wind. And when he suddenly became aware of this, he gasped open-mouthed, exhaling a sharp "Haa—". He felt as though he had been holding his breath for hours—dozens of hours—until that moment.

"—You're an old hand in these parts—" The man's earlier words now prodded at Washio's restless agitation. When he thought about it, it had been fourteen or fifteen years since he'd been driven from this town with rice fields (then a village) due to his involvement in the movement. In the intervening years, Washio had indeed shifted from activism to cultural organizations, yet his inescapable past remained firmly tethered to the present— In Tokyo, he’d managed to blur his mental image of “hometown” somewhat—but seeing it like this, the lie now sank in with piercing clarity. Even regarding this field—the way the stream meandered, the slope of the rice paddies, the hibiscus covering the riverbank—he had vaguely held childhood nostalgia in his mind, but when pressed face-to-face with it, it all seemed utterly foolish. When Washio first became aware of his surroundings, his parents didn’t even hold tenant fields; he grew up, so to speak, as a "stepchild" of these rice paddies. Whenever he scooped fish from the stream, the farmers would berate him mercilessly; whenever he searched for skylark nests, they would chase him around with manure scoops. Such bitter memories kept welling up.—

“Proletarians have no homeland”—recalling someone’s words to that effect, Washio crossed the rice fields with a bitter smile. The hamlet—now interspersed with farmers’ houses among others—was filled entirely with unfamiliar faces. Even when he occasionally recognized an elderly villager and nodded in greeting, they would stare back in blank confusion. Where a bamboo grove stood on one side and a collapsed fence on the other, arriving before the thatched-roof house with its mud walls exposed, Washio paced back and forth two or three times. At the entrance, baskets and a balance scale—as if meant for peddling—stood propped up.

After a while, from the sunny spot on the engawa came a shrill cry, and a man appeared—bald-headed, clad in a dirty kasuri-patterned garment, looking somehow both young and old. “Fool! Fool!...” With hands tucked into his sleeves, the stocky man—his neck twisted at an odd angle—tilted his head back at a sharp right angle toward the sky and emitted a terrifying, shrike-like shriek with fearsome intensity.— “Mr.N, Mr.N…” While taking off his hat, Washio called out two or three times, but upon seeing there was no reaction at all, he remained silent and stood still.

This man had been a March 15th defendant who emerged into society as a madman, but previously he had worked as a streetcar conductor. Though he was two or three years younger than Washio and had attended the same elementary school—so that even in this terribly altered visage, Washio could faintly discern the boyish face he once knew—where now could one find the bearing of the man who had led the Kumamoto City streetcar dispute six or seven years prior…? “Mr. N…”

When he called out a bit louder this time—whether Mr. N noticed or not—the man suddenly bowed his face toward his feet as if he had dropped something and began to spin around in circles. His sunken cheeks and slack jaw streaked with drool—compared to when Washio had last seen him three years prior—showed he had deteriorated drastically. "Hey now, hey now..."

From inside the house emerged a girl of about six, wearing oversized geta and sniffling back snot. And then, as if handling cargo, she suddenly pressed both hands against the madman’s back and began shoving him forcefully toward the house.— “You... you...” When he called out to the girl—likely his sister or niece—her scarlet hair blazed like red spider lilies as she whirled around, glaring at him with furious eyes before letting out a derisive snort.

She must have mistaken Washio for someone else. The madman, pushed and staggering unsteadily, nevertheless obediently made his way into the house. Washio began walking restlessly again.—

III

Washio would sometimes read books from early morning in the wind-swept room facing the back rice fields. They were works of rigorous social science that his weakened, agitated mind found stubbornly impenetrable. He tried scrawling haphazard underlines across pages, and when that failed, repeated the same passage aloud again and again. Through this process his mind would gradually settle, a raw-rice-chewing bitterness would surface before giving way to rhythm, until finally a faint brightness emerged—but today even this method proved futile.

Last night too, he had been assailed by terrible obsessive thoughts. It was an utterly trivial yet shameful dream—one he had never shared with anyone—but at its worst, the dream’s events clung vividly to his mind for days on end. Even now they occupied the greater part of his consciousness, stubbornly resisting expulsion. Last night’s dream had even included the detective who visited yesterday, forcing him to confront a wretchedly defeated version of himself— At such moments he would sit bolt upright on the futon, drenched in sweat. He would peer restlessly into the dim darkness below. Children lay sleeping like scattered potato tubers; his wife and infant collapsed in shapeless exhaustion... He would switch on lights, attempt deep breaths, smoke cigarettes—but gripped by a terror with no tangible source, he inevitably ended up shaking his wife awake again and again.

“Wh-what is it…?”

But she was exhausted; the ends of her words immediately grew hoarse and faded into sleep.— “Another... dream... you had... didn’t you―” And he was left alone in the darkness, tossing restlessly until dawn broke—yet in his mind, now grown strangely brittle, even the works he had written in the past began to feel like they were someone else’s deeds.… Eventually when dawn broke and he moved among people again, he could regain that proactive mindset of combating this illness; but lately this had worsened, and once he began realizing this sickness was directly tied to the present dark circumstances, terror would seize him and he’d panic as though set aflame.

The best medicine for this illness was scientific conviction. Clear eyes and a stance braced against the current—that was what he needed, he thought. Yet even now, as his eyes raced across the printed text, the words simply slid away without taking hold. "Hey—someone's calling for you."

“Wh-where…?” Alerted by his wife—nursing their child behind him—he looked out the window and saw a sallow, emaciated young man pacing restlessly along the rice field’s edge. The tea-colored scarf and hunched, threadbare coat made him initially appear elderly... “Oh! Mr.M!” “Yes…it’s been too long...”

Terribly emaciated, his elongated face pressed against the window, Mr. M smiled—but immediately made a gesture as if to say "just a moment" and moved away toward the rice fields. Washio too threw on his cloak and went out through the back door into the rice fields. After joining him on a sparsely populated embankment, they began walking along the footpath toward Ryūtasan.— "You… you made it through alright?" "Well, I’ve been bedridden since last summer, you see…"

Mr. M laughed in a boisterous manner typical of locals—a laugh tinged with self-deprecation—as he mixed standard Japanese with the regional dialect. He had been part of the theater club during his time in the liberal arts department at H University in Tokyo, but two years prior, his lungs had deteriorated, forcing him to return to his hometown, where he had since worked as a member of a cultural organization branch.

"Sounds like it was rough for you." When Washio spoke, the other man jutted out his sunken cheekbones as if to cut him off, "No, there are still some scattered about, you see." he said. As they walked, even listening to Mr. M’s agitated, trembling words in fragments, Washio realized that it………………. It felt exactly like………………. "Well, quite a number have come out already, but…"

When the wind hit Mr. M, he would cough violently for a while. Yet even when urged to go inside a house or into the shade of a tree, he refused. While climbing the mountain path as if driven by something, when he grew agitated, his sunken eyes gleamed fearfully. When we noticed, we had already arrived at the summit of Ryūtasan before we knew it. Although it was a low mountain, it must have been nearly four kilometers from Washio’s house. A slightly flattened area had been fashioned like a small park, and from there spread out in full view the tree-filled streets of Kumamoto, this agricultural city.

Even when names were mentioned, most were young people Washio didn’t know, but among those he did recognize were stories like Mr. Ikuta—who had fallen gravely ill and died soon after being released—and many accounts of Mr. H’s family now left destitute. “Ah yes, this here’s Mr. Ikuta’s debut work, I tell you.” “You had read it for me—I’d been safeguarding it.”

Having settled himself at the base of a pine tree and calmed his breathing, Mr. M suddenly remembered something and began rummaging through the pockets of his old coat. He pulled out a small, neatly bound manuscript and handed it to Washio. "A debut work... and his final one…………" As he recalled the pale, delicate young master features of Mr. Ikuta—who had been a bank clerk—he flipped through the manuscript. The title was "A Boring Town," a sketch of this town stained with horse dung, but it remained an immature work.

Mr. M let his emaciated hands dangle limply on his propped-up knees, his mouth hung open as if gasping for breath, and stared fixedly at the ground beneath him. He spoke sparingly of the utterly destroyed "circle" and those who had defected, then fell silent. Even when Washio spoke of similar situations in Tokyo, he neither nodded in agreement nor showed any sign of acknowledgment, his expression dark as if preoccupied with other thoughts.

"Well, calm yourself now, eh?" ………… "At times like this, you just end up thinking such pointless things—honest truth." To Washio, it felt he could grasp this young man's cornered state of mind. "—This isn't the first time." "It's happened many times before—and you're ill, aren't you? Settle yourself and heal properly first..." "Huh—"

“We must always stay healthy. “Only a sound mind… is capable of proper judgment. “Calm yourself now, come on, calm down.”

Even as he spoke, Washio abruptly realized he was trying to convince himself of this, and felt his face grow hot.—

The gray winter sky—which hadn’t shown a glimpse of sunlight since morning—sank ever lower, while a fierce dry wind gusted up, swaying the massive red-barked pine tree where they sat with heavy undulations. The two had started descending the mountain path when Mr. M, who seemed somewhat reinvigorated, said the following. “—Do you know someone named Takenaga Aiko? “You know, the town’s rice shop—” “Takenaga Aiko?” Washio couldn’t recall her at first, but at the other man’s next words, he involuntarily stopped in his tracks.

“I hear you were in service back then…” “Ah, that rice shop’s daughter…” Speaking of Aiko—when Washio was a child working as an apprentice, she had been the baby he often carried around only to get peed on. Only the fair-skinned, plump, chubby infant face remained in his memory…….

“This time…she was taken down, I tell you.” “That child?!”

Not knowing what to say, he suddenly felt his body grow hot—Huh! Huh!—he repeated again and again. Mr. M spoke haltingly, now ahead now behind in his account, about how she had worked as a clerk at K Electric Company after graduating from girls’ school, and how she had since recanted and returned to civilian life. “I’d like to meet her.” “Her family’s keeping too close a watch—it’s no use, I tell you.” “Is that so…”

Carelessly descending the slope while drowning in old memories—that baby who used to pee on him had read his novel—and now she walked a path loftier than his own; it felt like something out of a dream.

“Wait?”

When Washio suddenly came to his senses, Mr. M—who had been glancing back over his shoulder repeatedly—hurriedly pressed himself against a tree’s shade. “What…?” “Well, it does seem that way…” Sure enough, about twenty ken behind them among the pine grove flickered glimpses of a brown hat and a black overcoat with upturned collar—though their faces remained hidden, these figures had indeed been trailing behind during their ascent earlier.—

“Well then, I’ll come see you again.” “Yeah, let’s do that.”

Suddenly quickening their pace, the two parted at a small path near the foothills. Washio did not look back once along the way, but upon reaching home—while thinking "Surely not..."—he glanced behind him and froze. Half-concealed in the lumberyard, the black overcoat was watching this way with feigned nonchalance. Now even from this side, the vulgar gape of his still-youthful round face came into clear view.

IV

Since returning home, Washio had attempted multiple times to work on the novel he had planned since two months prior. After putting the children to bed, he would lower the lamp to the corner of the room and sit there night after night, fingertips numb with cold—but it was no use. The characters that surfaced within his desiccated prose lacked both vitality and passion. And when he finally realized it all stemmed from his own attitude as the author—from this wavering state of mind—he slammed into the wall of himself, clutching the pen like a hawk’s talon and making the manuscript rustle as he scrawled: ——Coward! Hypocrite! This fraud who’s dragged around by both children and parents!——

Yet he would soon grow despondent again—on days such as the one following Mr. M’s visit, he didn’t even step outside all day. As was his habit—after putting away even his books and manuscript paper—he sat dazedly in the sunlit spot beneath the eaves.

Perhaps military exercises were being held somewhere—since morning, soldiers had been streaming ceaselessly along the prefectural road toward the farming villages. All wore gradation-dyed nets of green and yellow over their heads, carrying machine guns in twos and threes. Backpacks, ammunition belts, daggers, rifles, yellow steel helmets, and other things Washio didn’t recognize were bundled and attached to the sides of their packs—the infantrymen of late seemed to find even walking an arduous task. With their lower halves concealed in billowing clouds of dust, a group of infantry passed by, and soon after, a column of transport soldiers rumbled through, their heavy ammunition wagons shaking the houses along the town. The horses exhaled breath like steam, and the soldiers were already drenched in sweat as if they’d been doused with water.

Harsh shouts could be heard, and a dispatch rider at double time galloped past, frothing at the mouth……

At such times, Washio involuntarily held his breath. In the face of this intimidating spectacle, he found himself unconsciously clutching the baby to his chest.

— The vortex of white dust gradually receded. After a considerable delay, three or four commander-like figures—swaying quietly atop their horses with laughter resounding—passed by. Then the carts and farmers who had until now taken shelter under eaves and along the roadside began moving as though relieved.

“What’s that?” Washio asked his sister, who was peering out from behind the dango cooking pot. Peasant women loaded handcarts with white rice and hung baskets from carrying poles containing miso and vegetables—among them were young women trailing red flannel sashes—passing in groups nearly every morning. “Why, they’re headin’ to town to sell their wares, I tell ya. “These days, even proper farmers ain’t got no cash, I tell ya…”

The destitute peasant wives—not being proper farmers and having nothing to sell—would approach Washio’s eaves at dusk in groups returning from day labor, swaying babies hoarse from crying on their backs. With a coin or two, they bought dango to hush the infants before retreating along the darkened prefectural road.

Along the embankment following the prefectural road passed the suburban train that Washio's youngest brothers worked on, roughly every hour. The train with peeling, faded red paint rattled and swayed as it moved, perpetually empty. When Washio stood at the eaves, his brother's round face—flushed red from the cold—would jut out from the conductor's platform; with a "Hey!", he'd hurl his emptied lunchbox toward the roadside as the train clattered past.

And repeatedly passing by the empty trains, farmers walked along rusted railroad ties. Weather-beaten old-timers in straw sandals, students heading to the city school, peddlers shouldering large cloth bundles—such figures walked along listlessly watching the trains pass by. “This recession shows no sign of letting up anytime soon, huh...” That night—as the carpenter brother-in-law had unusually returned home early—Washio gathered with his father to drink sake and began talking about such matters.

“First of all, no matter where you look among the world’s capitalist countries, there’s said to be no material for economic recovery.” “Huh…so that’s how it is…” The carpenter—already glassy-eyed after just one or two cups—clumsily received the offered sake cup with both large palms pressed together, delivering an empty-headed reply.

With alcohol’s momentum added to various factors, Washio spoke about social conditions and recent events. Though accustomed to adjusting his explanations to his listeners’ level of understanding in such situations, tonight Washio spoke with intense subjectivity, heedless of his audience. Whether they understood or not, even the carpenter—who usually fell fast asleep right after meals—and their father, clutching his chilled cup in solitude, both stared vacantly with mouths agape at his face.

“Given these times, everyone’s suffering. Even novelists like us who take the laborers’ stance find it far from easy—and things will likely only get worse from here—” Before he knew it, the societal discussion had shifted to his personal circumstances—not that Washio had particularly intended this shift. “As the eldest son, I’m constantly worried about Father too, and it’s not like I feel good about leaving him to you all—not in the slightest—but…”

Beside them, his sister—who had been sullenly eating her meal—clattered the lid of the rice tub shut at that moment and rose toward the kitchen. Washio, his head muddled with drink, felt this pierce through him but remained silent. “Nah, we ain’t got no young’uns yet ourselves… Takin’ care o’ Father alone ain’t nothin’ much…” The kind-hearted carpenter said this to Washio without any particular mediating expression. “Brother-in-law, since you’re a scholar and all, why don’t you go on and lend your name to represent all us siblings here.”

“Thank you—” Washio responded without even a bitter smile, accepting the sake cup with solemnity. “Of course—I’ll represent you all and lend my name to that.” Yet his father sat hunched in lonely silence. At such moments, he would habitually stare vacantly at some spot on his averted face, looking utterly childlike. Washio felt an urge to deflect the tension with some flippant remark.

“Plus y’know Father, old folks just can’t settle down in Tokyo,” he said, eyes fixed on that wrinkled profile as he recalled the fact. “In rich folks’ houses it’s different, but in poor men’s factory towns not even a single blade o’ green grass grows right. Houses jammed together so tight sunlight never reaches ’em—old folks can’t even have their tea-drinkin’ chats—” “Haaah, that’s how it is sure ’nuff...” The brother-in-law chimed in from beside them. Washio recounted stories of friends from his factory days—K and M. K the printworker had brought his old parents to Tokyo after their country sons died. But within half a year, even his weak-eyed father and near-deaf mother started pining for home soil. When K scolded ’em, they’d quietly pluck weeds from the Ministry Line embankment and plant ’em at their three-shaku alley mouth under eaves where no sun reached—gazin’ up at some invisible sun through the shadows—or so K had once told Washio, glasses off and wipin’ tears as he spoke.—

“In truth, that sort of thing’s downright common in Tokyo’s factory towns. So long as the countryside keeps scraping by somehow, poor old folks won’t come to Tokyo—it’s God’s truth, Father—”

Washio peered at his father’s face—gradually bowing as if being scolded—while “Young folks can grow up quick even in Tokyo—they can become proletarians. But old farmers down to their marrow—they’re no good.”

The old man merely sniffed and wiped his nose once, still saying nothing. Having gotten carried away and spoken at length, Washio picked up his sake cup with a sense of detachment, but the sake had gone completely cold and bitter.

Before he knew it, his mood had become completely agitated again, and his sobering brain throbbed with pain. The brother-in-law, exhausted from the day's labor, fell asleep leaning against the dining table, while Washio, as usual, went to the kitchen to prepare a water pillow and lay down beside the children—but he couldn’t seem to fall asleep.—

In the adjacent room with torn shoji doors, someone had apparently lit a votive lamp before their deceased mother’s memorial tablet—yellow light seeped through. Then, with two clangs of a bell, Father’s rasping voice chanting sutras could be heard.—

Five

An oppressive winter sky hung over them day after day. His head felt as though encased in an iron helmet, while his unsupported lower abdomen panted thuddingly as if perpetually pursued by something. Unable to settle in the cold house, he would rush out toward the rice fields, but every ridge path and embankment road soon became dead ends, and within thirty minutes he’d hurry back as if having forgotten something. This was characteristic of Southern Kyushu—not as cold as Tokyo, but subject to drastic continental climate shifts. No sooner would a faint glimmer of sunlight seep through than, in the blink of an eye, the whole expanse of fields would plunge into pitch darkness. Together with gray clouds that fiercely moved from distant mountain-like hills, a moist dry wind came roaring in with a thunderous growl to attack.

“Hey, put on the moxa…”

When he moved to the edge of the veranda and stripped to his underrobe, as usual his wife came up from the kitchen, still wiping her damp hands.

“Just how long are you planning to stay here?” While holding up the incense flame and scrutinizing her husband’s expression to air her grievances, Washio desperately clenched his lower abdomen and squeezed his eyes shut.

“I’m properly covering my share of food expenses too, yet they snap at me like I’m some freeloader—I’d rather beg in Tokyo than put up with this!” …… “Last night Sister was yelling again about three sho of rice disappearing daily—you know!” “Agh... Just stop.”

Washio went outside again. Yet he couldn’t casually visit the people he wanted to see either, and during this homecoming, visitors had dwindled to practically none. The world felt suffocatingly small.—

All day long, he would traverse this drab town—its single street soiled with horse dung and echoing with the clatter of manure carts and wagons—making the trip two or three times daily. The townscape lay severely uneven, and here too the economic depression lay exposed. There were "For Sale" signs on the white walls of large grain merchants, yellowed from exposure to rain and wind, and there was the once-thriving clock shop sign from Washio's time in the area, now tilting precariously along with its eaves. The Takenaga Rice Shop in the middle of town also bore no resemblance to its appearance from his apprentice days—the earthen-walled storehouse’s plaster had crumbled away, and the noren hanging from the low eaves had grown so faded that its characters were illegible. Washio would peer into the storefronts during his walks back and forth, yet he couldn’t find any trace of the girl in question.

“Hey F, it’s me…” When he pressed his face against the glass door marked “○○ Barber Shop” in red paint and peered inside, a man about his age in a white work uniform looked over reluctantly through the shogi book he was reading; once he finally recognized him, he said, “Oh.”

“It’s cold... isn’t it?”

When Washio entered inside, F said nothing about when he had returned or how long it had been. With a beard ill-suited to his profession and listless eyes, he gave Washio a single glance before falling silent. F was originally Washio's elementary school friend, a man who had converted from being an old Tolstoyan. Though never one to take leadership roles, Washio couldn't help being shocked by this nihilistic change. His inherently reticent nature—as if he'd discarded even himself—now revealed an edge that chilled to the bone.

"Didn't they get you too?" "Hmph…" He forced a bitter smile as if dismissing the matter, then fell silent. Even when Washio pressed him, Mr. F would only respond with vague grunts of “Hmm” or “Yeah” before immediately flipping backwards with his shogi book. “How’s business?” “Not really…”

In the shopfront, slippers lay flipped over, and an old-fashioned mirror with peeling lacquer gleamed dully as if tarnished. When his robust, local-born wife brought tea, F heaved himself upright, blinked his sleepy eyes two or three times, and suddenly spoke as if discussing someone else’s affair. “O’s gone and turned National Socialist, they say.” “O?!” When Washio looked up in surprise, F burst into loud laughter. “When I met ’im t’other day in ○○ Town—y’know, workin’ at that ‘○○ Tenzan’ rag run by some two-bit yakuza—he says real nice-like that if you go spoutin’ nonsense again this time, he’ll cut you down proper. Scary stuff—”

F kept roaring with laughter without pause when—just then—a customer’s face appeared at the shopfront, at which he reluctantly began to haul his body upright. “From what you’ve observed—how do you suppose things will go for us from here on, eh?”

When asked in a low voice, the other man—slowly tying the strings of his white work coat—answered in a loud, emotionless tone. “Well, how’s it gonna turn out—we ain’t got a damn clue.”

And then, as if having already forgotten everything else, he began making small talk with the customer.—

He went outside, but the sky looked ready to start sleeting at any moment. As he walked along the eaves and came before Takenaga Rice Shop, a portly red-faced old man—his balding white-haired head tilted back as he glared at the sky—suddenly turned toward him. “Master? Can it be you? It’s been...” Meeting this obstinate former employer from his past didn’t put him in a good mood. The bald-headed man flusteredly lowered his head and scrutinized him up and down before letting out a shrill cry of recognition.

“Hey—ain’t you Kazuyoshi?!”

The old man called out in the same dismissive tone he’d used twenty years before, then scrunched up his face until his small triangular eyes nearly disappeared into the wrinkles.

“Ain’t you s’posed to be in Tokyo?” “Hmph, economy’s doin’ better over there, ain’t it?”

“What’re you on about? You’re sayin’ the same damn thing.”

Washio too switched to rural dialect as he entered the shopfront. Grains and sundries lay jumbled about haphazardly, while at the counter, the small latticework from bygone days glinted blackly. “Still keeping well, Master?” “Nah—ain’t like th’old days no more.” The cantankerous old taskmaster remained as restless as ever, constantly rising mid-conversation to bark at his apprentice. In the dim earthen-floored area, men in rice bran-powdered work coats labored just as Washio once had. Surveying the scene, he stole a glance beyond the counter lattice and spotted a slender woman of twenty-two or three sewing, her hair done up in a traditional chignon—but she looked utterly unfamiliar.

“Aiko, bring some tea here…” When the old man called, the daughter stood up curtly and came carrying a tea tray. “Huh… So you’re Aiko?” Seeing the girl turn her face slightly away, Washio found himself staring intently. No trace remained of her plump childhood face—she’d grown into a tall young woman with sturdy bones. He immediately sensed something unsettling—a dark, prickly intensity lingering in the angular lines of her pale chin and the worn shoulders beneath her merino haori...

“You’ve grown up real big, truly—” The words slipped out naturally. “What’s with you—just stackin’ years—last year we couldn’t even sniff out a decent match…” “Huh?” “We won’t breathe easy till we’ve shipped her off to wed.” “Huh—you’re gettin’ married?”

Washio feigned nonchalance while stealing repeated glances at the girl. With her back turned and both hands thrust under her arms, she kept staring vacantly into space.— While talking about how his elder daughter already had two grandchildren, how the mistress was always going over there, and whether there was... something in Tokyo as well, the master kept bustling off busily toward the rice mill.

“I’m Washio Kazuyoshi!”

When he seized the moment to say this, the girl’s face—as if startled into awareness—swung toward him. On cheeks reminiscent of her father’s pallor, small narrow eyes flinched with pitiable unease, flushing crimson in an instant before her seemingly heavy hair gradually bowed downward.— "I heard you were at the electric company." “Yes…………” “It must have been hard for you.”

The girl nodded in a low voice while fiddling with the edge of her apron, but when she returned there, she abruptly turned her back.

“What’re you even doin’ in Tokyo?” “Yeah, I’m a laborer.” While giving vague replies, Washio kept looking for an opportunity to say one more thing to the girl—first seeing her crouched in the shadow of the small lattice, then standing motionless facing away by the Buddhist altar in the back—until finally, when rough footsteps sounded, he saw her retreating figure scramble up from the veranda toward the second-floor ladder steps as though unable to bear remaining. ――

He borrowed a bamboo umbrella and went out, but the sleet had already stopped, leaving hail faintly whitening the frozen ground. While emerging onto backstreets and taking shortcuts through rice field paths, he thought how the girl must surely be collapsing in tears just like that.

Along the prefectural road, lights had begun to appear here and there at the sparsely scattered houses, and already underfoot was dark. When the wind howling across the entire field struck him head-on, he felt his breath catch. The ash-gray evening sky, the wilds engulfed by thickening gloom—everything choked into suffocation. How could anyone imagine "spring" lurking anywhere within this ghastly vista?! Washio suddenly wanted to return to Tokyo. His breath felt so stifled that he couldn’t endure staying even a single day longer.

6

――Truly, he felt like a leaf being tossed about in a whirlwind. Amidst the precarious instability of hopping on one foot—angry at himself even as he did so—he found that by today he'd already lost all trace of yesterday's carefully laid plans. Having fled back from Tokyo in disarray, he now felt himself swinging like a clock's pendulum—returning without resolution or prospect. He had moved up his late mother's first memorial service by half a month, perfunctorily completing the rites before gathering his meager belongings—only for his eldest son to contract scarlet fever on departure's eve.

The child, who had caught a cold three or four days prior, had been relying on over-the-counter medicine—he’d assumed they would completely recover as usual by the departure date—but around the third day, the fever suddenly spiked, and red spots broke out all over their limbs and neck. When the town doctor who had judged it to be "genuine" ordered hospitalization in the isolation ward, his wife berated the child with vulgar language as though all this inconvenience were entirely the kid’s fault.—

“You idiot—going and catching some godawful disease like this…”

To the isolation ward at Ryūta foothills—a place like an abandoned house—Washio loaded quilts and buckets onto a cart and accompanied him there. Laying his son down in a filthy room with tatami mats fraying straw and bamboo leaves peeking through crumbled earthen walls, Washio found himself feeling exactly as he had when detained—each day spent reading only the newspaper and eating boxed meals packed by his family. The child grew progressively thinner—something evident even from the feel of their body when holding the bedpan—but around the tenth day, the scarlet spots began gradually fading, and their withered skin started flaking off like powder across their entire body.

“Dad…” One night, Washio was roused by the patient and jolted upright. His entire body dripped with sweat, a horribly vivid dream still flickering behind his eyelids. “I need to pee…” “There, there.” Washio finally lifted his son—staring through half-sleep at those hollowed eyes brimming with vacancy, that grotesquely swollen head—as though moving through a dream. After releasing a thin stream of yellow urine into the bedpan, the child—now laid back on stained sheets—parted cracked white lips to whisper, “Water…”

“Had enough?” As he was spoon-fed, the patient sucked at it like a goldfish and nodded “Mm.” “When I get better, we’re going back to Tokyo, right?” “Ah, that’s why you need to get better soon.”

When he covered him with a blanket, the child fell silent and closed his eyes slightly. As he stared at the blue-withered chin and the area around the emaciated little nose that twitched with each faint breath, he suddenly felt a chill and hastily threw on his workman’s coat.

He no longer felt like sleeping. While reviving the charcoal fire in the dying brazier, he listened to the wind rattling the eaves and what seemed like a second cock’s crow from a nearby hamlet.—

......It was a landscape that seemed at once like the rice fields of his hometown and the wastelands around N in Tokyo’s outskirts. It was dark as evening，and the wind roared with a thunderous howl. Ahead，he could see only the retreating figures of fellow writers—N and T，who should currently be in prison，along with K from last year……………walking away. He thought he had to catch up，but the wind raged too fiercely to run. No matter how much he thrashed about，his legs kept circling back to where they started. When he came to his senses，his comrades were nowhere to be seen—he alone remained on that vast plain. —Hey— someone called from far away. “Hey!” he called back，but their voice grew ever more distant，and suddenly all around him swarmed human figures with terrifying bovine and equine faces，encircling him completely. Their faces matched those demons from “hell scroll paintings” Washio had often seen at temples as a child.—Hey! Just abandon that kid!—someone shouted. He resolved to do so. But when he tried wrenching his hand free from his child’s grasp，strangely enough，emaciated children who should have been dead came tumbling forward one after another，blocking his path. The eldest boy’s rubber-booted feet and his third daughter’s spider-like buttocks swaddled in diapers tumbled away like paper scraps blown by wind—. That was the dream.

To shake off the tedious drowsiness, Washio tried tapping his head and drinking two or three cups of warm water. He tried flipping through two or three pages of the books he'd brought from home, but the words refused to settle into his eyes or mind. He could see the patient’s parched lips parting and closing unconsciously again—perhaps thirsting once more…….

“How about it? You coward…” Someone was whispering close to his ear. “You’re not the only one with parents and children!” “I know that…”

Another voice answered in anguish. “Can’t you make up your mind? Well?!”

………… He remained seated and heard both the third and fourth rooster crows. He watched as the charcoal in the brazier turned to white ash and the last small red flame flickered out. The wind gradually grew calm, and even as a dim dawn light began streaming through cracks in the earthen wall, Washio remained seated, still staring fixedly at nothing—

“Hey, Brother…” When he came to his senses, there was his youngest brother Torakichi—the yellow morning sun at his back—peering through the window with a beaming round face and a youthful voice. “I brought some lunch…”

Since the entrance seemed blocked, the young man wearing a boy conductor’s uniform came in through the window with a spirited shout.

“What’s wrong today?” The youngest brother, who had brought lunch for the first time, made his usually cheerful face grin even more broadly and sat down with his round knees neatly together before his brother. “It’s my day off—my monthly day off!” ...Alas, the young conductor—he sang out the latter part like a ballad, clattering down the lunchbox with a laugh that held not a shred of pity. Peering at the patient’s face to speak, pulling a picture book from his frayed trouser pocket—the filthy room suddenly brightened, leaving Washio’s flustered mind darting about in bewilderment.

“That was unfortunate—the meal could’ve waited a bit longer…”

With that buoyant voice, he spun around sharply— “You’re joking around! Who’d spend their day off sleeping?”

“Ahaha, right, right.” Recalling his factory days self, Washio also laughed. “Today I read lecture notes until noon, then went to the barber, took a bath, and watched moving pictures…” The young man with a low nose and puffy red cheeks—having spread his palm wide when five fingers proved insufficient for counting—started speaking again with a huff. “Um, could you tell us about ‘Russia’s Five-Year Plan’? Me and my comrades got into an argument over that very thing.”

“What? What’s this squabble about?” Torakichi explained that in their comrades’ mutual aid society, there was conflict between those taking a journalistic approach...and those opposing it. He was the youth division manager of that mutual aid society. As Washio finished explaining everything he knew, the young man—fidgeting with a hole in his torn trousers while darting his dove-like round eyes—listened intently, but after repeating questions obstinately, finally declared “Alright.”

“Just watch—tomorrow I’ll give that bastard a proper thrashing—”

This young man carried not a shred of care. One moment he would be loudly singing the newly created military song of the XX Regiment, the next speaking with remarkable clarity about class-based matters. What astonished Washio was that this young man showed not a trace of left-wing affectation—and yet this absence felt not the slightest bit unnatural. Yet he knew everything. When asked by his brother, he could explain their working conditions with remarkable clarity—how the timetables had been intensified, how despite five years of service that made him no longer a boy, his wages remained seventy sen, how reduced shift rotations now forced them to eat bento boxes while standing rigid at the conductor’s platform once daily—and even about incidents occurring locally……………he knew these things to an astonishing degree.

“So even though it’s that bad, your mutual aid society is just keeping quiet?”

When he said that, the younger brother—without so much as a flinch—

“Yeah, they’re keepin’ quiet.” he answered. *Lectures on Electrical Engineering* bulged from the pocket of her uniform jacket, where beneath the collar, brownish single-lidded eyes twinkled with a carefree air.

He felt a strange sensation. He thought this guy might also be a bit of a scatterbrain. Yet when questioned, he would respond with startling criticality. For example, he answered that among the employees in their mutual aid society, up to fifty percent were unsteady, twenty percent were reactionary, another twenty percent were nihilists who had grown weary of the world, and the remaining ten percent were earnest elements, if not proactive. And even that ten percent were just powerless young employees, he continued. The critique was cruelly objective, yet there wasn’t the slightest trace of pessimism in this young man himself. It struck him as maddeningly leisurely.

“But if you all keep idling around, won’t the earnest members just keep dwindling away?” As Washio pressed on, something terrifyingly aged seemed to flash momentarily through those smiling, innocent-looking eyes. "But you can’t wage a war you’re bound to lose…" Washio stiffened. As if his weak point had been struck, he began to panic, yet with a pressing urgency, “Can you know who’ll win before even fighting? Can you wage war if you fear sacrifice—?”

He rattled off impatiently. Though his core increasingly wavered, galvanized by his own words, he listed objective circumstances and numerous tragic sacrifices—but when the other's face shifted from bewildered confusion to utterly collapsing into laughter, Washio found his words choking off as if struck dumb. —— “Now that’s just talkin’ nonsense…” “Impossible?”

The longer the other’s laughter continued, the more flustered Washio became. The flustered state grew increasingly intense until he could no longer remain still. The young conductor scratched his shaven head somewhat sheepishly, but there was an immovable core to his demeanor—something no lever could shift—and Washio abruptly rose to his feet.—— “I-I’ll just go for a quick walk—hold things down here, okay?” “Sure thing, go right ahead.” Washio was in such a panic that he couldn’t properly slip into the geta at the exit no matter how he tried. “Impossible? What do you mean by impossible? What’s this ‘impossible’?!”

When he stepped outside, the youthful voice of Torakichi reading a picture book to children reached his ears.—And there, the slacker corporal… What audacity! What audacity these "workers" possess!! Staring at the frost pillars crumbling with audible cracks beneath his feet in the yellow morning sun, Washio stood rooted to the spot in blank astonishment.—

VII

When the eldest boy was discharged from the hospital, the Washio family immediately departed for Tokyo. When he had his wife and children sit in a corner of the crowded third-class car, Washio remained standing almost the entire time. The boy, whose convalescence was still incomplete, dangled his thin shins wearily from the seat. “Well, stay healthy… Take care now, take care.” Torakichi, who had carried their luggage into the train car, kept poking his round smiling face through the window to fool around with the children until the train began to move. Father stood a little distance away, dazedly.

"Father, well…" When Washio leaned out, his father hurriedly took a step or two forward with a flustered "Y-yes," and stared blankly... Washio was at a loss for words. He thought this would likely be his final farewell with a father who had become so senile, yet he felt no particular sadness. Washio blinked awkwardly, his father stood with mouth agape, and the train began to move—

By the time they reached Orio Station on the Kyushu Line, darkness had already fallen.

While scolding the children who always began growing fussy around dusk, his wife—pregnant with their fourth—nursed their third child with a pale face, perhaps from train sickness. "I'll write without worry—I'll raise the children too—" Washio repeated these words over and over. Even a coward like me—surely even I have some purpose of my own, right?— And his wife watched with a look that seemed both comprehending and uncomprehending as a glimmer of bright laughter—like sunlight breaking through clouds—escaped around his strikingly prominent white hair and sharply angular cheeks.

"K, M, K.T.—they’re all great men of course, but I’m not some cast-off either."

“……?”

Washio, who had spread newspaper over the dirty spot between seats and sat down, drank from the small bottle of sake given as a parting gift by his carpenter brother-in-law while rambling to himself. Recalling the many experiences from his past, he explained to his wife how a labor union was managed and how a strike was conducted. That victory was only possible when all manner of people fully unleashed their diverse traits in unison... "Despite being a laborer, I’d somehow turned into an idealist—no joke—even if I’m aging, Washio Kazuyoshi’s just getting started!"

When the train arrived at Moji, his wife carried one child on her back and two by the hands, while Washio shouldered three or four small pieces of luggage like a redcap porter as they crossed the pier.

When the hulking box of a ferry began to move, Shimonoseki's lengthy platform and shadowed buildings soon emerged into view ahead. Through the vessel's rocking, they felt directly in their bodies the strait's violent currents where black waves churned backward. He recalled crossing here fourteen or fifteen years prior—when first driven from his hometown to the capital. That country youth in a single indigo kasuri robe, two days' rice balls secured at his waist, had leaned against this deck's railing...and sung.

When they disembarked onto the opposite platform, there at the ticket gate bearing a “Korea/Busan-bound” sign…………………………………………………… stood. Around the dim waiting area clustered groups here and there—people who seemed to have just left their hometowns…………………………. Men with long hair wearing crown-like hats and young women in beautiful peach-colored robes—travel-weary and disheveled—sat on their luggage, munching on bananas.

From the opposite platform came a group that seemed to have just disembarked from a train... they passed by. They all wore winter coats, their footsteps heavy.…… Their low voices lacked any of that lighthearted cheerfulness one might see in ordinary times, creating a suffocating atmosphere.

This junction station always bristled with tension. At the platform stretching three or four blocks toward where the Tokyo-bound train appeared in the distance, right before the noses of the seeing-off crowd, a group of men shamelessly scrutinized the passengers. Cold, indifferent eyes glinting beneath fedora brims; youths with modern affectations in iron pillar shadows casting faint smirks at each individual... From halfway down the platform, Washio joined the jostling crowd and broke into a flushed, straining run—only to nearly collapse when a man suddenly emerging from the side seized his shoulder.—

“You there—you—where do you think you’re going?” “T-Tokyo. I’m going to Tokyo.”

Startled into hoarseness, Washio Kazuyoshi noticed with panic his crooked necktie and disheveled hair escaping from beneath his slipping hat. "Where's this 'Tokyo'? Occupation?" Answering each question mechanically while beckoning his panting wife, Washio saw the man—perhaps satisfied—abruptly terminate the interrogation and walk away. "That was terrifying..." "……" His wife kept repeating this with a cowed expression even after the train safely started moving. Washio discovered he'd lost his earlier brightness without realizing it, now incapable of casual replies—yet no matter how he tried, recovery eluded him.

The third-class express charging through the darkness shook violently. His wife dumped their third child onto the seat and clung to the window with a face as pale as paper. Washio carried the baby, bumped into each child left and right while taking them to the toilet, dashed out at every station to fetch water—and once he got the children to bed, had to stand rigidly with the baby still in his arms. He couldn’t tell what was strange about it, nor could he discern what time it might be. The train seemed to dash on infinitely, and it felt as though dawn would never come. Exhausted, his brain—porous and ragged like pumice—jolted alert for an instant before beginning to reel into vertigo. “If even I collapse, it’ll be disastrous!” When such a thought arose, Washio shook the sleeping boy awake and frantically tied the baby to his back. Each time the boy slumped weakly, the baby’s cries grew louder.

He sank down onto the bare floorboards without even laying out newspaper, and covered his face with both hands, squeezing his eyes shut. "I must rest—I must not collapse." It was that desperate, cornered feeling.—And then, for some reason, a certain scene abruptly burst into vivid clarity before his eyes. It was the scene at the "cost-price sale" booth in the factory district of Shibaura—where Washio had also participated—during the "Consumers' Union Day" event held by the Japan Consumers' Union Federation on July 2nd of last year. A woman with a baby on her back—and two or three children clinging to each side—grabbed a bag of bean-jam buns in exchange for a five-sen coin, then suddenly brought it to her own mouth! The face of her tearing away the wailing child on her back and the children desperately clinging to both hands, first bringing it to her own mouth! That face—hair disheveled, eyes bloodshot, yellow teeth bared as they bit into bread—that ugly, ferocious face!! —He felt he understood it completely now.

The baby’s cries and the boy’s shouts could be heard intermittently—now near, now far, or echoing from some distant place…….

“Dad—” With a start, he awoke from his vacant slumber to find the boy’s forlorn face peering at him from where he leaned against the armrest. “Where’s the baby?” The boy pointed to a country-style old woman on the neighboring seat holding the infant. Washio thanked her and took back the baby, then glanced around with some relief. It might have been midnight—the car was full of sleeping passengers. His wife still clung to the window with pale, lifeless eyes half-open, while the children slept in cramped discomfort.

“Hang in there,” he said.

When he said this, his wife nodded faintly.

“Why don’t you have a mandarin orange? Should I buy some at the next station!” She moved her head in refusal. Washio Kazuyoshi tied the baby to his back and, perching on the armrest, suddenly tried to look out the window. To his surprise, there on the steam-fogged windowpane was reflected a terrifyingly aged face with sunken cheeks and hollow, glinting eyes. It looked completely like someone else—

Outside the window, of course, there was nothing to be seen.

Washio soon took out his notebook and, tearing out two or three pages, began writing a letter addressed to his youngest brother whom he had left behind——.

...Torakichi, meeting you was my greatest gain from this homecoming. I had turned away. My feet had left the ground—. You are the modern proletariat. You labor; you possess great endurance; you.... When the baby on his back began to cry, Washio had to rock it while murmuring "There, there"—.

...You do not hurry, yet remain ever prepared. Yes—it is winter now, a terrible winter. But you—more than any in this world—never doubt that "spring" must come... He would begin writing, then lift his eyes while wetting the pencil with his tongue. He couldn't tell their location anymore, nor guess what hour it might be. Only the train's roar persisted—plunging through howling winds and darkness.