Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Kamura Isota

As we walked six ri along the mountain path, an elongated lake whose shores seemed endless no matter how far we trekked appeared and disappeared among successive groves of red-barked old pines; hearing occasional high-pitched singing voices from the treetops along the way, Father and I arrived at Y Town by dusk. That night we stayed at a cheap inn on the outskirts; the next day Father took me to Y Middle School’s entrance ceremony, entrusted me to the dormitory, and immediately returned to the village. At parting, Father said that since he had paid three months’ dormitory fees, I should hand over half of the pocket money he had just given me, as the inn payment was short. With my chest burning, I took out from my kimono the cord-fastened purse tied to my obi and placed several silver coins onto Father’s palm. Father’s eyes held no tears, but his voice was choked with emotion and he couldn’t speak, so I mustered my courage and said, “Father, please be careful. Goodbye.” Nodding with his eyes, Father went to the corner of the hallway, then turned around once more and stared intently at me.

“Hey you—you’re scooping too much of the soup’s ingredients.”

Then, in the dining hall during dinner, I was scolded by the Room Leader; holding my bowl and ladle all the while, I lowered my face, which had turned red to the tips of my ears. For the time being, limited to 150 new students, we went to school every morning at an awkwardly early hour and gathered at the west-side waiting room. At first glance, there was no need to explain how thoroughly pleased they all were with having passed their exams—each wearing new uniforms, caps, and shoes—yet among them were also many students who, like me, had come from deep in the mountains and been abruptly placed into dormitory life; hearts strangely aflutter in this sudden transformation of circumstances, still unaware of how to put hands in trouser pockets, trembling their kneecaps uncontrollably. One stemmed from my inherent nature, the other from my circumstances—a past abundant with suffering had long persisted in my life even from my youth. This occurred on the day of the entrance ceremony: when a piercing bell rang, three teachers guided a crowd of parents to the waiting room, opened the register in their hands to call out names one by one, and divided the 150 students into three groups. I was third from the bottom in Group Three; consequently, an immense amount of time passed before my name was called. Perhaps my passing notification had been mistaken after all—with this pleading thought, I looked toward the parents' seats. There stood Father in his cotton crested hakama, peering over others' shoulders on tiptoe, staring at the teacher reading the register while his heart pounded wondering if his child’s name would come next. That same uncontainable frenzy from long ago—when during my elementary school sports day he had involuntarily cried out watching me run—now pulled every muscle in his face taut. The lingering dread from that time remained, tormenting my nerves day after day, but once I had nearly forgotten it, I had grown accustomed enough to the place that—through observing and mimicking someone’s posture—I could stand with both hands in my trouser pockets, face downcast in a corner, tapping the wainscoting with my shoe tips. Until two years prior, this middle school’s building had been a barracks; as a result, the brick floor of the waiting room had been thoroughly destroyed by the studs of soldiers’ boots and the butt plates of rifles. I detected the smell of sweaty military uniforms and the greasy stench of long boots emanating from the walls.

As days passed, during the ten-minute breaks between classes, I would sit on the clover in the garden beside the waiting room and stretch out both legs. Beyond the fence, across the road by the small stream’s edge, within a thatched roof surrounded by bamboo thickets, a waterwheel ceaselessly turned. The steel mechanical saw split long timbers with a terrifying, dreadfully monotonous screech—grinding, hissing—and to this sound, the row of pine trees lining the schoolyard’s embankment responded with their own groans, entwining into a clamorous roar like crashing waves deep within my ears. When the waterwheel rested, the pines alone played a lonely tune. That sound would often bring me back to the day I had come out from the countryside through the pine forest path with Father. In those days after the entrance exam, whenever I followed Mother to the bathhouse each night as Father took his bath, he would sigh, "If my child fails this exam, I'll have no face to show our neighbors and relatives," and then—as if I had passed—would repeat countless admonitions about post-admission studies and conduct; yet why, when we walked through that pine forest just the two of us, did Father contrary to my expectations not offer a single word of advice? In that situation, my silent Father had rather been such an encouragement to me.

Somehow, such sentiments constantly swirled within my chest. I once blurted out excitedly to a dorm mate—"When I think of my parents, I can't help but study"—and before long it reached the ears of commuter students. From then on, instead of morning greetings like "Good day," everyone would mock me with "Hey, 'thinking of your parents,' eh?" whenever we met on the way to school. Yet I didn't feel particularly embarrassed. With the sound of the ten o'clock lights-out bugle, the electric lights went out; I waited for everyone to settle into sleep, then opened my textbook under the dim electric light at the toilet entrance. This too quickly became talked about; unaware of the rumors calling me a freak, I convinced myself that everyone was praising me in unison—attributing even my sleep-deprived nosebleeds to being studious, I took secret pride in this base, vain studying for studying’s sake. When cold-water rubbing was encouraged, every morning before everyone else, I would strip completely naked and proudly show off my hollow courage by dousing myself with bucket water from head to toe.

In our room called West Dormitory Room Twelve, there were three freshmen—the son of a prefectural assembly member, the son of a third-class postmaster, and myself—along with a second-year Room Leader; however, as the assembly member and postmaster would arrive in splendid Western suits riding horse-drawn carriages to present gifts like boxes of sweets to the Room Leader, he came to favor those two while alienating me. Though not as conspicuous as a cripple, the Room Leader was a slight bedwetter who kept his head down in silence all day long, his pale face contorted with raised eyebrows. Despite being a man with the unsightly habit of regurgitating his food—whether due to some reflex psychology—he would point out how messy my way of eating rice was, berating me to my face about my large mouth, poor manners, and thoroughly inferior character and appearance. In my sadness, I imitated the other two—those of good upbringing—in their somehow refined manners, elegant speech, and gestures, only to make myself a laughingstock. My grandfather came to see me, his grandson, almost every Sunday. Dressed in white traditional pants and straw sandals—his usual rustic farmer’s attire—he carried kashiwa-mochi made at home. I distributed the kashiwa-mochi to the room members, but everyone ate half and threw them out the window. When I wrote home to stop Grandfather from coming, this time Father showed up. Since Father’s appearance and attire were not much different from Grandfather’s, on days when Father would come, I would stand from morning at the eaves of the inn on the main street where we had stayed the night before the entrance ceremony and intercept him there. Having sensed my scheme to prevent him from visiting the dormitory just as I had with Grandfather, Father twisted his lips and snarled, “Am I so shameful then? Aren’t you my own child? Do you find your parents so disgraceful? You ungrateful brat!” In any case, more than anything, I found it excruciating to be mocked by the Room Leader. I wanted to do something—anything, even feats beyond human capability—to ingratiate myself and be cherished. For that purpose, with the pocket money I wheedled from my parents, I constantly attended to the Room Leader, treating him to sweets; moreover, without hesitation following his every command, I ventured out during evening study hours to a downtown milk hall where I made him drink multiple cups of hot milk and risked climbing over wooden fences to return. At night when entering bed, I would comply with his requests—first recounting in a comedic tone like a professional storyteller the many yōkai-filled folktales Grandfather had told me during winter hearthside evenings as a child: how Issun-boshi’s cooper struck a horse trough’s hoops with his mallet until one snapped loose, soared to heaven, and was hired by the Thunder God as his drummer; how raising the sacred mallet for a rumble earned five times five makes twenty-five coins, another rumble another twenty-five coins profit. Next, I would perform half-remembered jōruri ballads with dramatic vocal flourishes to humor the Room Leader. I took upon myself the blame for the sickly Room Leader’s bedwetting and even hung his futon on an inconspicuous fence to dry it out. Thus, by finally forging a path through thorns and surpassing all others, I became inseparable friends with the cantankerous Room Leader. In time, at the start of the third term, the Room Leader returned to a distant northern seaside for kidney treatment and soon died. To the extent that I was the only one in the dormitory to receive notification of his death from the bereaved family—such was how frequently I had sent get-well letters. The pitiful, faint shadow of the Room Leader clung before my eyes for some time. Yet when I snapped back to my senses in shock—due to having neglected my studies too much—I had received warnings in six subjects, and so I frantically began studying, standing under the dim light at the entrance of that familiar toilet with my books open. But even such efforts were nothing but a despicably false form: a habitual tendency to fawn over something, even to the point of obsequiously flattering myself.

I barely managed to advance to the next grade, but with my rank at 138th and ten students having failed, I was practically dead last.

“You’re lowborn scum! No brains at all! No matter how much you study squatting in that toilet…” On the morning of the entrance ceremony at the start of the school year, when I arrived at school, one person from the group huddled together in the waiting room critiquing each other’s grades singled me out as a laughingstock, and immediately everyone burst into laughter in unison. Upon entering the second year, those with poor grades or those particularly likely to bully freshmen—the burly types—had to move to East Dormitory alongside third-year students. Yet I fortunately remained in West Dormitory; though not the Room Leader myself, I still numbered among those who wielded fierce authority as veterans before the first-years. The Room Leader was Saeki, whose father—a prefectural assembly member—had been in the same room during our first year. The postmaster’s son, who had also been in the same room during our first year, had been placed in East Dormitory and wore a resentful expression. One day, on the way to the dining hall, he grabbed my sleeve and said that after we all deliberated today about who exactly would hold sway in West Dormitory, their presumption was that I—despite appearing docile—turned out to be the type who unexpectedly lords over freshmen; then he yanked my ear. In truth, I would puff up the shoulders of my stubby body and stick out my elbows, magnanimously accepting the bows of freshmen passing by in the hallway as I walked with loose, long strides. I would then scrutinize them with hawklike precision to find faults and report them to Room Leader Saeki. Every Saturday night, only the room leaders from each room would gather in one room, summon the freshmen one by one, and carry out unjust punishments. Though I, like other second-years who were not room leaders, ought to have remained desolately in my room, I was able to take my place in delivering fist punishments and futon suffocations as the faithful, necessary, and indispensable lackey of Saeki—who commanded West Dormitory’s adoration through his distinguished lineage and exceptional judo prowess. First and foremost, above all else, I observed Saeki’s demeanor and strove with utmost care to please him.

One day during the routine bag-beating punishment session, Saeki struck the cheek of an insolent freshman nicknamed Bald. Sobbing convulsively, he fled into the hallway. At that very moment—I having been stationed outside the door on lookout duty for the dorm head and supervisors—watched him stride toward the supervisor's office, his bowl-like circular bald spot on the back of his head turned toward me, and intuited with certainty that he had gone to report us. Later I quietly captured Bald, coaxed and cajoled him while pressing him to confess by saying I wouldn't tell anyone—but he persistently shook his head. The next day and the day after that, with that cunning preamble of promising secrecy, I kept pressing until I finally made him confess. I hurriedly reported to Saeki wearing a triumphant look. Interrogated under Saeki's crimson wrath, Bald now wailed at full volume and—slipping through my attempt to seize him—dashed toward the supervisor's office like a swift bird. Three days later on a Saturday after school, a meeting was convened in the supervisor's office. After a shrill whistle summoned all second-years of West Dormitory before him, Teacher Kawashima—acting as principal's proxy during his absence—began earnestly lecturing about how barbaric fist punishments were. In the moment Teacher Kawashima held his breath—amidst a stillness where even rustling sounds had ceased—Saeki's violent convulsive sobs suddenly erupted. Then my name—which I had been dazedly hearing as if it concerned someone else—was called like a thunderclap.

“Step forward!” The retired lieutenant serving as both gymnastics instructor and dorm supervisor abruptly dragged me out to the front of the line. “Y-Y-Your conduct is cowardly.” “You utterly lack honor.” “T-T-To claim you’d tell no one—this is beyond all decency!” “I hereby impose five days’ suspension as disciplinary punishment.” “I had intended to punish Saeki too, but moved by his contrition—a-and since he weeps here now—I shall grant him special pardon!” As Teacher Kawashima—his rat-like face peering through thick glasses slid perilously down his nose—concluded his stammering Tohoku-accented rebuke (which grew increasingly fractured when angered), I buried my face in the arm suspended by a white bandage from my neck—the shoulder dislocated during judo practice two mornings prior—and let out a whimper. All was already lost. I sat hunched in the narrow four-and-a-half-mat room near the toilets, its edges thinly bordered, choking on tears day and night alike. I condemned myself. Nothing had unfolded as anticipated. It was terrifying. The shame burned when restroom-bound students—freshmen especially—pressed faces against the glass with eyes full of mockery and curiosity as they passed. That none—not even Saeki—showed restraint toward me out of deference to the supervisors, that no comfort came, filled me with bitter resentment. Though Father had galloped here by horseback just yesterday upon receiving news of my judo injury—though his parting face loomed vivid before me—what cosmic jest had led to this? When I knelt before Teacher Kawashima during his rounds to beg concealment from Father, each thought that notification might have reached home turned my world pitch black. Each time I pressed my face into the bandaged arm until sobs wracked me and tears cascaded like torrents from clouded eyes.

On the day my suspension was lifted, I couldn't bring myself to go to school. I clung to the barrel of a captured artillery piece set up in the schoolyard, pulled the bag slung over my shoulder close, and stiffly avoided the stares everyone directed at me.

“Well now, you! It’s been an age! Did you get up to some childish mischief or what?” When an oblivious commuter student smirked and called out to me like this, I replied, “No, nothing like that,” overjoyed at finally being able to speak with someone again. I had long considered that commuter student a blessing. By now I’d become convinced academic diligence alone could save me. No harm comes to those who don’t meddle—to keep my heart pure and avoid injury, I resolved there was no path but solitude. However much they jabbed my nape with pencils from behind in class or kicked my heels with their shoes, I never twitched an eyebrow nor blinked once. Returning to the dormitory after school—unlike my former self who’d dawdle from room to room—I begrudged every second spent removing my Kokura uniform before throwing myself at my desk. Growing ever more withdrawn yet indifferent to being shunned by peers, this wasn’t like my past vanity-driven efforts but rather an insular self-reliance and silence leaving no room for others. My sole pleasure lay in seeing how relentless preparation yielded strikingly visible classroom results. Though my dull wits made answers circuitous, their core always struck true.

However, by some twist of fate, misfortune continued to plague me. As the local saying goes, "Fall and you'll land on dung"—exactly following this region's proverb. On an evening in early summer when the crimson sun dipped behind the high mountain ridge, I stepped out of the bathhouse and was crossing the dormitory’s back garden with my towel still dangling in hand when some first-year students—pounding balls on the tennis court surrounded by fresh greenery—called me over. Uncharacteristically exhilarated, I picked up a racket for the first time in my life. Of course, I immediately left my companions and returned to my room, but that night it rained, and the net and racket left abandoned on the court became thoroughly soaked and ruined. Thereupon, an intense complaint arose from the tennis club. When they combed through every detail to determine who had last gripped a racket the previous day, it was concluded to be my negligence. With my cheek muscles frozen stiff and unable to offer any defense, the tennis club executives dragged me to the supervisor’s office. Without permitting any protest, I was made to write a formal report for Teacher Kawashima, after which I received a thorough admonishment.

It was during an occasion not many days after that dinner when all the dormitory students went out to work in the vegetable garden in front of East Dormitory. The rake I had swung down vigorously unexpectedly bit into the long handle of another person’s rake facing me, and in that instant, a startled cry of surprise erupted. The dormitory students surrounded me as I stood frozen in astonishment. “H-Hey—you need to be more careful!” bellowed Teacher Kawashima as he rushed over, livid. His voice wrenched from the depths of his chest, deep vertical wrinkles carving into his brow, teeth chattering furiously. But upon seeing the tears streaming down my cheeks, he muttered, “Well... good... At least it wasn’t XX-kun’s head—the rake handle’s fine...”

Truly, if I had accidentally driven the gleaming iron claws of the rake into that person's skull, what on earth should I have done? In an instant, steaming fresh sweat poured all over my body. For several days afterward, whenever I recalled it, I would cover my face with both hands and let out a pained sigh. In the very instant I moved my hands and feet, I would tremble with fear that yet another calamity from unjust fate might come crashing down upon me, until my capacity to endure gave out entirely.

On the fifth day after returning to the mountain house for summer vacation, the long-awaited report card arrived. Though I had scored ninety points in all but three or four subjects, my newly announced semester ranking stood at ninety-first. I was devastated. Convinced I truly was the imbecile someone had once called me, I abandoned even my cherished pastimes of stream fishing and mountain rambles to spend the entire summer mired in gloom. Come September, I returned to the dormitory pale as a consumptive. Unable to reconcile this discrepancy, I timidly asked Teacher Kawashima to recheck my results—only to learn my actual rank was ninth. “It seems contrition has driven you to study properly,” he said, his face breaking into its first spontaneous smile. My heart soared. Through such moments, Teacher Kawashima’s trust in me underwent sudden transformation. My accumulated bitterness dissolved like morning mist, leaving me so lighthearted I might have sprouted wings to dance through the air. A week later, when faculty convened over his rowdy son’s offense of tearing notices from school boards—the boy being one grade my senior—Teacher Kawashima summoned me from the corridor into his solitary confinement room. “My child will surely face suspension too,” he confided in tear-choked tones. “But if this ordeal reforms him as it did you… well…” An unnameable pity for Teacher Kawashima welled within me.

Before long, I grew conceited from some cheers of acclaim. And before I knew it, had I forgotten my vow to remain alone? It wasn't exactly that I found solitary hell's groans unbearable, but some chance occurrence bound me to Ito. Ito was the second-ranked honor student—lively and agile like a clockwork doll holding an iron rod, leaping twice others' distance in long jump, performing handstands on wooden horses. Beloved by every teacher, harmonizing indiscriminately with classmates, he commanded such popularity that even upperclassmen respected him. Though now fallen into ruinous collapse, he had been born into an ancient lineage of immense prestige, commuting from his aunt's house across the river in gleaming polished shoes. One morning as I walked to school from the dormitory, he broke from his chattering crowd of peers and hailed me with a virile voice befitting an energetic man—"Hey! Morning!"—eyes shining with passionate brilliance. I watched him through eyes clouded with oppressive gloom. We walked through classrooms and playgrounds like blood brothers, arms nearly linked. We sprawled on verdant lawns gazing at late summer's vast skies. He taught me unclear points in our studies. We practiced judo together. "You're not particularly strong," he said—just as I thought he praised me—"but your tenacity makes you tougher than any." Then he unleashed his signature tomoe nage technique, hurling me to the dojo's center. I sprang up instantly and grappled him like a rabid dog. Arching his chest with lordly ease while gripping my straining collar and sleeve, occasionally sweeping at my feet with his own, he maintained unshakable composure. His polished prowess—in studies, athletics, all things—made me increasingly fearful. This entire alliance with Ito beyond my station was watched by friends through eyes half-wondering, half-envious. That love remained impervious to meddling—so pure-seeming it needed no forced sincerity nor sacrifice, utterly unshaken. During moments of overflowing bliss, peaceful reveries, or time spent with our gentle Teacher whose pride lay unconcealed—I'd act uncharacteristically defiant, performing all manner of eccentricities.

A major—a graduate of Y Middle School who had recently graduated top of his class from the Army University and received an imperial sword—visited his former Chinese classics teacher at his alma mater for a day while returning home. When the lieutenant colonel—his shoulders wrapped in gold-braided staff officer epaulettes and a Tenpō coin hanging on his chest—departed through the school gate in a rickshaw and they watched his retreating figure, even the poorest students in the entire school felt their blood surge.

“Ah, I always knew Mr. Haga would rise to his current station,” declared the old Chinese classics teacher—a thirty-year veteran since the school’s founding—as he fidgeted with wire-rimmed spectacles that kept sliding down his nose, his wrinkled face breaking into a proud smile while extolling his prized pupil’s achievements. “Though blessed with uncommon intellect, he embodied not the flashy prodigy but the true striver—exactly as Sanyo described those who triumph through grit.” “Now then,” came a voice from the hushed classroom, “which of us might become the next Haga?” “Aye—who’ll claim that mantle?”

When I left the classroom, I ran up to Ito’s side. “Ito! The teacher saw your face—he definitely saw it! You’re being likened to the second Haga!” I exclaimed breathlessly. “Now, don’t talk nonsense—people will laugh at you. Stop it!” Ito rebuked me with authority. If I graduated from middle school, I had no choice but to return to the remote countryside and become a farmer. Someone like me didn’t matter anymore, I repeated to myself. Years later, only the vision of Ito—the military aspirant with gold-braided staff officer epaulettes on his shoulders and a Tenpō coin on his chest—his glorious rise alone burned within my chest like fire. At times, that distant vision would feel as though it had already materialized in the present moment; in my mountain house as a middle-aged man, listening to the murmur of mountain streams and gazing at the star-flecked sky, I kept conjuring at my classroom desk an illusion of being utterly enraptured by my former best friend’s glorious rise. Whenever I suddenly came to my senses and Ito was criticized for an English mistranslation, my heart would momentarily stop, and an even deeper, more unbearable anxiety—a kind of tragic desperation—would churn endlessly within me.

“You’re dark—your neck’s like spilled ink or something!”

With that, Ito placed his hand on my bony neck and pulled me back two or three steps. A faint fear and sadness raced through me like a whirlwind. “Am I dark too? “Hahaha!”

Pressing further, Ito asked earnestly. I thought he was quite dark, but "No—you're fair," I lied.

Though it held no ill intent whatsoever, Ito would occasionally bring up my dark complexion in a half-jesting manner. That renewed memories of my misfortunes. It was probably around when I was eight or nine years old. My family had gone to plant rice beyond a mountain pass two miles away. The paddies lay under dark low clouds, silent without frog calls. Mother hiked up her kimono hem and urinated in the field. My baby sister fussed at her side. Perhaps finding something grotesque in Mother’s posture there, Father frowned and exchanged scornful whispers with the red-sashed maid tending the kettle fire about Mother’s swarthy skin. As Mother nursed my sister while jabbing chopsticks at her cracked lunchbox’s bottom, she abruptly turned to my complexion. When the maid kindly interjected in my defense, Mother’s face darkened sharply. “No! This child was born dark,” she snapped. “Look here—around his neck? Like ink poured over him! Not sunburn nor dirt—black right through to the bone!” she declared mercilessly. That shadow cast upon my soul remains indelible still. I hid from my family to scrub my face with rice bran wrapped in a hand towel. I stole the maid’s skin lotion and rubbed it in each morning after washing—though Father’s orders were to pray at my alcove enshrined Tenjin figurine for academic success, I’d clap my hands begging instead: Please let no one mention my darkness today; please make me white. Daily my rote prayers grew more desperate. Even when top of my class in elementary school, being taunted “Black Monk! Black Monk! Black Monk!” shattered any pride completely. I couldn’t lift my head among fair-skinned friends. To those refraining from the nickname I’d plead promises of picture books and slate pencils as rewards—bribes delivered until nothing remained worth stealing at home left me branded “Liar Monk” instead.

Then, "Give me too!" "Me too!" they all surrounded me and thrust out their hands from every direction. I stole whatever household items I could get my hands on and gave them out, but in the end, with no suitable items left to fulfill my promises, I was saddled with the nickname "Liar Monk." I thought there was no greater happiness for a human being than having a fair complexion. I had smeared white powder on my face like a precocious little girl and been caught by Father, who scolded me using the word "vulgar." It must have been during well-cleaning season when Father, hurriedly passing through the garden, tripped over the hoe I had brought out. “Agh! Damn you, Black Monk!” he roared, raising his fist. I burned with shame. Father had known that I was called "Black Monk" by my playmates. In a frenzy, I instantly raised the hoe with my mud-soiled hands, closed in on Father from behind, and assumed a stance of bitter resolve down to the marrow. That day, two or three helpers had come to assist, and the well wheel at the large well in the back clattered all day long—even as a child, I had felt buoyant—yet I became utterly wilted and didn’t even eat dinner. When summer vacation came and my sister returned from the girls' school in town, I was astonished by how beautiful her face had become. Finding a pumice stone inside her nickel bath basket, I concluded she must certainly use this to scrub her skin. Entering the bath chamber, I scrubbed my entire face with it, peeling off my skin until blood seeped out.

“Oh dear—this was the stone for scrubbing my heels! Now what am I to do?” As my sister applied ointment to my face—now a pitiful mass of uneven scabs—she wore a strange, pained smile. I spent my days gazing into the mirror, lamenting and grieving. Strangely, the worry about my dark complexion—which had left my heart over the past year or two—suddenly had its old wound throbbing anew from Ito’s words. I began catching my reflection in the frosted windowpanes of the hallway whenever entering or leaving the classroom. Just then, pimples broke out all over my face, and even when I sat at my desk in the study hall, I did nothing but pop them with my fingers, completely distracted and unable to focus on my studies. Around that time, I read a daily newspaper advertisement for “(a medicine that would whiten your skin in three days)”—invented by a woman named Takayanagi Kōko—and thinking it a divine gospel, immediately sent money to Tokyo. However, before long, the package that arrived was unfortunately confiscated in the dorm supervisor’s office, and I was summoned by Teacher Kawashima.

“What’s this?” “Medicine to become fair-skinned…” Teacher Kawashima stared intently at my face, where blood oozed from burst pimples, his gaze severe.

“Th-that is Mother’s.” “If it’s your mother’s, why did you order it from the dorm?” “Because she wanted to hide it from Father—Mother said to bring it home on Sunday...”

Teacher Kawashima twisted his mouth in half-belief and pondered awhile, but ultimately handed it over. I waited several days before opening the package, dissolved the powdered medicine in water exactly as instructed, and applied it morning and night in secret. Though it failed to lighten my complexion, it worked remarkably well on the pimples. Every time I faced Teacher Kawashima's neurotic stare—perpetually fixed on my face—guilt over my successful deception stabbed me, while a sword-blade-walking dread made every hair stand upright.

At the time when the dormitory was rushing to prepare entertainments for the upcoming Tenchosetsu celebration, the son of our village’s resident policeman—who had been my elementary school classmate—transferred from a middle school in a garrison town where his father now served as police chief and moved into the dormitory. His sunken mouth with missing front teeth revealed a long chin protruding like a peninsula so far back it seemed to reach deep within—small eyes beneath a forehead creased with thick wrinkles—giving him the visage of an old woman that earned him the nickname “Baa-sama” upon entering. This nickname perfectly embodied his fussy temperament—a vulgar man who delighted in nitpicking and excavating my past misdeeds to parade before others. He would recount how I’d been mocked as “Black Monk,” then retaliated by dubbing a boy “Six-Nostrils”—a child whose strange condition left six small nasal cavities clustered like bells on either side of his nose—making him cry before exploiting his weakness to sell peepshow pictures at exorbitant prices and embezzle school supplies. He even enumerated my history as a habitual thief who stole hard candies from boxes at the cheap sweetshop front, going around denouncing me as “the pilferer.” Through such malicious gossip and transparent flattery—burdened by his status as an awkward transfer student—he skillfully ingratiated himself with the dormitory’s brutal faction and worked feverishly to secure his position. Baa-sama would march past my room chanting “steal, stole, stolen” in ringing tones. Though I bit my lips in bitter frustration, I could do nothing against his swaggering presence but cower helplessly. I panicked needlessly. Coinciding with this came frequent reports of missing watches and lanterns within the dormitory. I wished I could disappear. Each theft rumor left me trembling—what if someone’s wallet had slipped into my bookcases or trunks? What if one tumbled out when I spread my futon at night? The more earnestly I behaved and spoke, the more it all seemed like calculated ploys to deflect suspicion. On the evening winter break began—when students received travel allowances—seven or eight clasp purses were stolen. Town police arrived declaring the thief must be among us, and during next day’s exam for remaining first-period students, detectives with janitors searched every room down to lifted tatami mats before inspecting each returning student at the cafeteria entrance—stripping uniforms and shoes. When my turn came, Baa-sama gathered companions to pace before me showering meaningful smirks and venomous stares. The harder I tried to empty my mind, the more grotesquely my face contorted. Yet when each crime was uncovered—amidst an eerie wail—we threw down chopsticks to find a third-year from East Dormitory weeping confession before detectives. I felt stabbed through the chest as consciousness blurred into distance.

People must have wondered why, but from around that time, Ito began associating closely with Baa-sama. Just when Baa-sama had been diligently picking apart aspects of my nature that Ito had never noticed and working to slander me, during a shrine festival where all students visited to worship the feudal lord’s ancestors, I—amidst everyone else—snickered at a student who stumbled on a stone while bowing before the main hall. Later, Ito severely reprimanded me for this. Around this same time, as Ito and I were walking along the river through a one-sided town, another young child shot me with a cork bullet tied to a string from a toy gun. When I got angry and scolded them as an idiot, Ito—disgusted by my crude words toward an innocent child—puffed out his cheeks until they turned bright red, looked down, and said, “Tsk—you’ve got all sorts of unpleasant traits.” And then he, who until that moment had been walking alongside me, abruptly left my side beneath a willow tree, furrowed his brows, stared outward, and began whistling.

Day by day, Ito distanced himself from me, and in those moments, Baa-sama steadily wrested Ito away from my grasp, completely isolating me. The moment I thought this, Ito turned his back on me in the blink of an eye. I was appalled. At this moment alone, I was enraged and hated Ito’s betrayal from the depths of my gut. I put up a fence around my heart and never allowed him inside. Even when avoiding each other, there were times we'd suddenly meet alone, but both of us would only exchange a fleeting glance with unnaturally gleaming eyes—Ah, that guy wants to talk to me, we'd each think—without uttering a single word about reconciliation. I became stubbornly reckless, set my shoulders, and walked my own path.

After the prolonged turmoil of my relatives' bankruptcies finally took its toll and my father's finances collapsed, when I became a third-year student, I left the expensive dormitory and rented a room on the second floor of a geta shop on Honmachi-dori. I had rice and charcoal sent from home and chewed through the rice cooked over the hibachi's charcoal fire, which had formed a hardened crust in the middle of the pot. After overhearing the snide remarks from the landlord downstairs who despised my cooking, I mostly toasted dried rice crackers over the fire. The tall army officer renting the detached room downstairs would clang his saber every morning and call out in brisk Tokyo dialect from atop the garden's stepping stones—"I'm off now!"—to which the landlord would respond as if harmonizing with the metallic echo: "Ah, do return safely." I descended the ladder-like stairs clutching my furoshiki-wrapped textbooks and, mimicking the officer's cadence, announced, "I'm off now." The landlord answered only with a derisive snort and a jerk of his chin: "Heh." I felt certain I could hear the landlord, his wife, and daughters pelting my back with mocking laughter. In the dim dawn light, I would rise stealthily to avoid my family's eyes and wash rice at the well—complaints about disturbing their sleep were tolerable enough—but even avoiding toilet visits out of resentment led me to urinate into soy sauce bottles and surreptitiously discard them; I fretted they might search the closet if they noticed. On days when I found evidence that someone had quietly lifted lids from bowls or small pots, my nerves frayed completely. There too, here too—everywhere—appeared wretched little fools. Yet still I drove myself mercilessly forward, never neglecting my single-minded devotion to study.

Abruptly, a heavy, oppressive weariness—one I hadn’t even begun to anticipate in my tautly stretched mind—came crashing down upon me all at once. Just like a spring that had come loose and ceased its motion, I abandoned everything and took an unauthorized absence. I excluded all judgment. I spent several days in a daze.

I quietly returned to my village home and stated that I would leave school—that there was no particular need to graduate middle school to inherit the family occupation as a farmer, and that I wanted to work together with my family.

Father and Mother sat on the engawa, pressing their mouths to each other’s ears as they whispered something in secret.

“So you’ll go through with this?” “You’ve shown great resolve.” “More than scholarship, more than honor—preserving the family fortune is what matters, y’know. You’ve come to realize this at last,” Father said.

To prevent rumors that my withdrawal stemmed from family hardship, Father instructed me to tell everyone it had been entirely my own decision. In half a lifetime, Mother had never worked so diligently and treated me with such kindness as during the brief period immediately following my withdrawal from school. Mother had perhaps been urging Father both overtly and covertly for some time to withdraw me from school. I spent my mornings out in the fields practicing farming and my afternoons reading lecture notes. I suddenly felt as though I had set down the years-long heavy burden from my shoulders. Here, there was no one to compete with academically—no Ito, no Baa-sama, no Superintendent Kawashima, no geta shop landlord. What existed was only liberation. Small though I was, I pushed the dust of worldly cares far beyond reach, contented myself with a snug haven of lofty detachment, and greedily indulged in unclouded moments of happiness and peace.

But even this ceaseless tranquility—this life utterly detached from a world I’d felt no further lack in—proved but a fleeting, ill-fated dream. I, who had inherited every lie in Father’s character—the hypocritical acts toward neighbors that comprised his entire life and pride, the pitiful self-aggrandizement—and who remained perpetually irritated by them, effortlessly touched upon those very points and shocked Father. My father and I would quarrel one moment and reconcile the next, hating each other more deeply than anyone else, yet forgiving each other just as profoundly. The neighbors, startled by the shouting and cursing in the middle of the night, had opened their storm shutters—only to be left dumbfounded come morning when they saw my father and me walking shoulder to shoulder, leading a cow out to the rice fields. Cowardly and boldly, we would hurt others and suspect them; day after day, night after night, our disputes and affection became increasingly entangled, resulting in a prolonged, inescapable standoff.

In the whirlpool of domestic storms, I held Yukiko's image close and wrapped myself in it. Yukiko was still a first-year higher elementary student, her house standing in a chestnut grove beneath Jūōdō Hall's high stone steps, barely ten chō from my home. When I was eight years old—on a spring day when wind rattled paper doors near dusk—I slid open the entrance shoji to find Yukiko standing there in red-laced tabi boots, looking like a water spirit. Why had she come to play? She might as well have been a leaf blown in by the wind. I took Yukiko's hand and led her to Mother. The vision of her I'd chanced upon never left my eyes; when I spotted her entering elementary school one April morning, joy kept me awake all night. Each time we met as children, we exchanged faint smiles and knowing glances, lips trembling with unspoken words. I shamelessly peered into her classroom, touched her flowing hair, lifted desk lids to inspect her neat handwriting corrections. No matter what others said, Yukiko belonged solely to me. When Obon arrived with its rhythmic drumbeats from Jūōdō Hall's grounds, I'd slip out through mountain-edged meadows to watch Yukiko dance—red cords binding her pale cheeks beneath a tilted sedge hat, long sleeves rippling like waves as she moved among village girls to young men's drums. On those nights when mist swallowed riverside trees whole, drum vibrations pulsed through my bedding till dawn. As these annual memories intensified, strange hopeless melodies quickened my pulse. This was love, I understood. I walked past her thatched home behind hibiscus hedges under errand pretenses. Craving her sight, I nightly studied Chinese classics at the downstream temple, staying over to intercept her morning school commute. Though soft-cheeked and gentle-faced, Yukiko would tense under my gaze, temple veins quivering. This love first made me mind my appearance, then agonize over my ugly face. The nickel glasses I'd secretly worn before mirrors now glared openly on my nose. When my village-married sister's poor eyes drew mother-in-law scorn, Mother—fearing hereditary stigma—hated my vanity spectacles and spat every barb, yet I stood firm. I fretted others might act first, aching alone to confess soonest to underage Yukiko. Providentially, Yukiko's mother sensed my heart and discreetly invited me to autumn festival feasts where Yukiko served. Yukiko—habitually biting her plump lower lip till pale pink bloomed in the dent—sat tray on lap, face downturned.

As the meal tray was taken away and I stood up, the Seto hibachi I had been holding slipped from my hand and shattered into fine powder. Yukiko brought a broom and dustpan for me; I tried scooping the hot ashes into the dustpan, but black scorch marks remained scattered across the tatami mats. I flushed crimson and apologized to Yukiko's father.

Finally, in a blind frenzy, I asked Old Woman Otsune—who frequented our house—to have my parents formally approach about arranging a betrothal between us. Meanwhile, I suddenly began paying careful attention to and cherishing Father and Mother. Old Woman Otsune came ceremoniously to the house one rainy evening, ostentatiously carrying a bow-shaped paper lantern.

“Know your shame!” After chasing away Old Woman Otsune, Mother stomped over, jabbed my shoulder, made her blue veins bulge grotesquely while bloodshotting her eyes, and spat venomous rebukes. “Lately, I can’t help but think your behavior’s been strange.” “You claim you were even invited to the festival and went?” “Asking Old Woman Otsune for help, you damn fool!” “Mother!” “I only wanted us to have a pure relationship like Takeo and Namiko from The Cuckoo!” “It’s not like those young men’s.” “It’s not wrong!” I retorted defiantly through gritted teeth, cornered against the wall yet surging with frustration.

“Hey now! What do you think this is? Know your shame!” Mother raised her hand as if to strike.

Father’s disapproval went without saying. After all, he had once fought with Yukiko’s father over the forest boundary to the point of a lawsuit. But he kept his mouth firmly shut. A few days later in the afternoon, Father returned from the orchard, stripped naked while using water from a basin, and saw a filthy beggar at the entrance. He fixed me with a terrifying glare and shouted in a shrill voice, “Lazing around like some worthless good-for-nothing! You’ll end up just like that soon enough!” Immediately, Mother nodded in agreement. The servant also looked at me with eyes that fawned on my parents. Out of sheer stubbornness, I resolved to overcome all obstacles and marry Yukiko someday. Having sworn so in my heart, out of a self-destructive impulse and an innate awakening of sexuality, I entered into a lewd relationship with the housemaid. In the middle of the night, I crawled like a crab into the bed of the newly arrived, red-cheeked, pug-nosed housemaid—but claiming there was another man, she expertly delivered an elbow strike to me as I pressed my suit. Bitter at having my manly pride crushed, I pleaded that she at least accept a gift. The next day I rode my bicycle to town to buy one and stealthily handed it to the housemaid. She sullenly opened the round box’s lid, plucked out the hairpin, held the perfume bottle briefly to the tip of her nose to sniff it, then stored it in the cupboard without a word of thanks.

That, too, was quickly found out.

By now, I was despised by my family and anyone in the neighborhood. When I walked down the road, even children would point and laugh at me. I was most afraid of children who would mock me as I passed by on the road, and whenever I spotted a group of children, I would go out of my way to avoid them, growing more wretched with each passing day.

Two years passed.

Ito, who had until then occasionally sent letters of apology as if regretting his change of heart, this time informed me that he had graduated from middle school and—through the school’s recommendation—gained admission to a high school in K City without taking an exam. As I was crouching by the back pond sharpening a sickle on a whetstone, Father came bringing that postcard, “If you’d kept going to middle school, you could’ve graduated—what a waste... Quitting halfway and doing nothing but racking up shame...” he declared with evident regret, his face stiffening as he pressed his wide mouth into a taut line and heaved a deep sigh.

When I failed the conscription exam, I married the daughter of a superior at the gas company in Y Town. When I entered middle school, a student in a faded uniform caught my eye—the red, blue, purple, and other multicolored pencils lined up in the leather holder on his chest pocket, and the kaleidoscopic nickel caps crowning those pencils had dazzled me. I had looked at that student with astonished eyes, thinking he must be an extraordinary scholar due to his exceptionally proficient English, but later learned he was actually a repeater. When I discovered my wife was that repeater student’s sister, I felt an oddly ticklish yet unpleasant sensation. And what a bungling, foolish affair it was! During the Three-Times-Three Sake Exchange Ritual on our wedding night, I trembled so violently that the trio of vermilion-lacquered cups clinked against the stand as I placed them down. Yet she performed the rite with unshakable composure—no wonder, for I would only learn a full year after our child’s birth that this had been her second time as a returned bride undergoing that very ritual. I kicked her mirror stand to pieces, slammed her sewing box into the garden, raged at her insolence in casually bringing back items she’d once taken to another household. And so I spent many years in unrelenting, foolish quarrels of passion.

In the spring when the child turned seven, I eloped with another woman, set out on an aimless drift, reached Tokyo after enduring all manner of hardships, and ultimately became a foreign correspondent for F Magazine, which at the time stood as a product of literary prosperity.

Shackled Ugly Bird Child of Sin, Mortal Flesh Chains drag the earth, drag the darkness, Daylight’s vain curse… The alcohol-loving, worked-up Mad Poet dictated like this and made me transcribe it. “Teacher, ‘child of mortal flesh’—what does this mean?” The Mad Poet—lying completely naked save for a loincloth on his back before a lacquer-flaked tea tray holding only a meager sake decanter and a single cup, one hairy shin resting atop the other bony, emaciated shin as he tugged vigorously at his grown-out mustache while composing poetry—jerked upright when I asked my question, thrusting his jaw forward and pursing his lips: “That I was born from the womb of common folk! Whether I’m from horse stock or cow stock—who can tell! I’m just a lowborn wretch, that’s what!”

When he answered as though in a violent fit, the poet’s bloodshot eyes brimmed with tears that glistened fiercely. In that instant, I too felt the eternally inescapable shackles binding my body that could not break free beneath the azure sky, and a hard lump surged up, tightening my throat.

Chains dragged the earth and dragged the darkness while twenty years had passed. I wept for my imprisonment, wept for my own sins, wept for being a child of mortal flesh, and it felt as though I had dragged through twenty long years of darkness. How I must have yearned to break free from imprisonment and step into the bright, wide world! Shackled snipe, you shall live under daylight’s hollow curse!—Standing by the roadside in that horse manure-laden suburb, I reread this dictated manuscript that blurred poetry and prose into incomprehensibility, then suddenly noticed myself swallowing a tear as I walked toward the tram road where the afternoon sun blazed down. And I had brought it back to the magazine company in Ushigome ward where I worked as a reporter and had been assigned to live-in night duty with a woman. In the midsummer of 1928, around the time the Mad Poet passed away from this world, my health had also begun to deteriorate. When I once contracted croupous pneumonia, developed a fever, and coughed bloody phlegm, the woman secretly reported my condition to my family home, and Father even notified me by telegram of the time he would arrive in Tokyo. But dreading that the writers who frequented our place would see my shabby countryman of a father, I immediately wired back refusing his visit. In my middle school days, when I detested Father coming to the dormitory in gaiters and straw sandals, he had gotten angry as if to say: “Is there something wrong with me? Are you ashamed of me in front of others? Aren’t you my own child?”—and now, at the sunken hearth of our distant hometown where he had prepared to depart on a long journey to visit his ailing child—if only he were there seething crimson with rage—instead, Father’s lonely face as he silently read the telegram from his son who had spurned parental affection came and went before my eyes as I groaned beneath my futon, and I keenly reflected on myself as an unfilial wretch no matter where I turned. Around this time, my wife back home left our child behind and returned to her parents' household.

Until then, I had pitied the uncertain fate of the woman I was living with and been considerate of her, but now I came to hate her instead. Adopting an attitude where I stingily blamed even her trivial amusements, we ceaselessly snarled at each other like wild beasts. To call it all regret would have fallen short. There had been no self-restraint or stability of judgment—only a drifting along with whatever fatigue and weariness existed.

One year during the autumn cleaning season, on a day when the sunlight had grown markedly weaker and cicada cries had faded, I was at the entrance with my hem tucked up and cheeks covered by a hand towel, tapping the tatami with a bamboo stick. There approached a university student in a new uniform with gold buttons—one who still looked every bit a ruddy-cheeked youth—walking hurriedly toward me, “Are you Mr. Ōe?” he inquired. …… I did not adjust the hand towel covering my cheeks, slightly raised my face, and vacantly looked up at the university student’s face. “Who might you be?”

“I’m Kagawa.” “I have been at W University since April.” “For some time now, I have been wanting to visit you, but I had only heard that your address was Ushigome Yarai...” “Kagawa… Ah, it was Mr. Matae, wasn’t it?” “You’ve truly remembered me well, haven’t you!”

I was completely startled. Kagawa was the child of Yukiko’s sister—Yukiko being my first love. I hurriedly tidied my room, washed my hands and feet, and invited Kagawa inside. Then I ordered à la carte dishes from a nearby Western restaurant and served him beer. In his moist, cool eyes and rounded face with tightly drawn mouth corners, I found traces of Yukiko’s features; finding Kagawa endearing and in a dreamlike, fleeting mood, I lost myself in endless reminiscences of the distant past.

When I went to buy a travel guide at a bookstore on Hirokoji Street in Y Town while attempting to elope with a woman, I encountered Yukiko—pale beneath her spring shawl, parasol in hand—extending her white arm to turn the pages of a new women's magazine. She had remained unmarried for a year or two after my wedding. Since her family belonged to the foot soldier class and was ill-suited for farming, suitors had been scarce. Through others, I heard that Yukiko’s white-bearded father—a man of refined bearing—had lamented: “If only we’d asked Ōe to take her in marriage instead.” Later came rumors she had married a naval petty officer and struggled after moving toward K Naval Port in H Prefecture before falling ill, returning home, and being hospitalized at Y Town’s Red Cross Hospital. At that time I was working in Y Town while leaving my wife and child in the village when Father came to me one day and said: “That girl’s got consumption after all. Just as well we didn’t take her in.” By then I had already resolved to abandon wife, child, and home alike—making me feel intensely sorry for Father as I released an indescribably painful sigh. On his return journey, Father bought me silver-framed glasses with slender vine patterns from a town clockmaker’s shop. Then came the day of execution about a week later when I unexpectedly crossed paths with Yukiko. Our eyes met fleetingly before hers dropped first. I fled the storefront in panic, hastily gathered my purchases, and walked along a shallow stream’s pebble-washed bank via backstreets toward the station. Sparse old pines rustled softly in the faint breeze. Suddenly—strangely—the groaning pines from that long pine grove where Father had escorted me years earlier when entering middle school came surging back into my mind. Now I felt with piercing clarity how I was casting off even Father himself—the ancestral forests and fields—my wife and children too. Raising my head, I saw Yukiko approaching from down the solitary path ahead, parasol in hand. This time we exchanged faint smiles and bowed deeply. Her gaunt face—now faintly flushed—gazed at me with eyes that seemed to ask why I hadn’t taken her as my wife. As we passed each other I looked down once more. It wasn’t that I didn’t love my wife—when she spoke of returning to her parents’ home I’d wept and tried to stop her—but because she was a divorcee who had come back home, I found myself unable to respect her or muster any resolve for lifelong partnership. Had I married Yukiko instead—respecting her purity—such wretched collapse might never have come to pass, I thought. I immediately boarded the train at the station with my waiting accomplice—yet even amidst departure’s flurry while thinking of him and this situation alike—my torso quivered under grief that waxed dim then flared vivid, repeatedly lifting my hips from seat cushions as we raced beneath hills bearing weather observatories while I howled “Aaaaah” through clenched teeth.…

After six full years, with Yukiko's nephew Kagawa before my eyes, what came to mind again was this: had I married Yukiko, I would have spent a sincere, peaceful life as a simple farmer in a rural village; I would not have desired worldly honors; we would have headed out to the fields at sunrise and returned home at sunset side by side, hoe and water jug in hand. The dream of a life where laughter never ceased throughout my days, this longing, flared up suddenly in my heart as if doused with oil. At the same time, overcome by the shame clinging to my own expression, I could not bear to look at Kagawa.

Kagawa spoke of Azamura Village’s affairs just as he had been asked. He told me that over six years there had been three suicides—all childhood friends of mine: one who took poison used to catch raccoon dogs after debts from his eatery left him no way out; a woman who hanged herself with an obi sash, weary of life due to discord between her stepmother and adopted son-in-law; and a sailor who drowned himself in the Korea Strait after a broken heart. I felt an almost ironic pity, thinking that my parents—who had been mocked for their child’s misconduct—must have found some relief in having neighbors facing similar troubles, yet I also realized that all these were due to my own unhealthy, corrupting influence I had scattered across Azamura Village, and I could not bring myself to laugh aloud with any genuine mirth—only hollow “Ahahaha”s.

“It was during this summer break when I returned home,” said Kagawa, his hand trembling like a wave midair as he held the foaming beer glass, laughing loudly. “Since the body couldn’t be found, we placed the unlined summer kimono and straw hat left in the ship’s cabin into a coffin, carried it, and my mother followed behind wailing as we buried it in H Temple’s communal cemetery. It caused a tremendous sensation throughout the whole village, you see.”

This sensation made me smile. Back when I had feelings for Yukiko, whenever young Kagawa came to visit my house, I would call him “Matae-san” this and “Matae-san” that while giving him sweets—so when had he learned to use such foreign terms? The more I looked, the more his face appeared innocent, utterly childlike. I tried getting him drunk in hopes of making him talk. “Is your aunt Yukiko well? Is she happy?”

I swallowed down—forcefully, along with my saliva—the question that was about to leave my lips as I looked downward, occasionally directing an unpleasant, probing gaze toward him. Kagawa probably knew nothing about the unfortunate love affair between his aunt and me.

The new year came, and the magazine was discontinued. I clung to Professor R's compassion—he being the magazine's editor-in-chief—remained at the company where I even received living expenses, and focused on recuperating my failing health through prescribed medication. And in my spare time, I wrote an autobiography. When reaching the part about my unrequited feelings for Yukiko—that mortifying disgrace from when I stood holding the edge of a Seto brazier during an autumn festival invitation at her house, only for it to slip from my hands and scatter ashes across the tatami—the vivid recollection became unbearable; I wished this body could be pulverized in a mortar and vanish.

“Ah! Ah!” I let out a strange cry and pressed my lower abdomen. With all ten fingers of both hands spread out in the air, I thrashed about in front of the desk.

“What’s this madness you’re putting on? Ugh, I can’t stand people who put on this mad act!”

The woman doing needlework off to the side frowned gloomily and pursed her lips tightly. “If you keep up that pretense, you’ll surely turn into the real thing before long.” She had said the same thing on other occasions. Even as I turned forty, then fifty—even should I go mad—I could not bury that disgraceful blunder of smashing the brazier before my lover’s family, etched alive in my mind, nor the shame welling up from my very depths. Each time this happened, I would leap up, throw my body about, and find myself frantically trying to mask the flush of shame by feigning madness. This single trivial matter alone had already condemned me for life; even if a moment came when one or two fragments of happiness entered my heart, it was more than sufficient to immediately tarnish them.

A full year later, the magazine was relaunched, and I once again became involved in its editing. Though still a coterie organization, this iteration leaned decidedly toward commercialism—a proper profit-driven magazine—and the sheer busyness of my handling nearly all sales aspects single-handedly defied others' imagination. Editorial meetings; author solicitation letters; gathering participants for roundtable discussions; anxiety; manuscript reminders; editing while incorporating executives' feedback; inevitably extended deadlines; express mail; telegrams; printing office visits; clumsy proofreading; clashes with the foreman; snide remarks to the photoengraving shop's old man; finalizing proofs after executives reviewed third drafts; berating bookbinders; one night's respite when samples were done; nineteenth-day releases; distributing consignment magazines; processing returns; collecting payments from distributors; ledgers; phone calls—attending to this and that left this foolish worrier unable to distinguish day from night. Yet even as I spun like a top, I drove myself onward by comparing my state to those writhing in unemployment's hell, while simultaneously working with fatalistic abandon—half-surrendering to destiny—as I grew conscious of my body's glaring decline.

On the night when the May issue had been released to the market and we were enjoying a few days of relative calm, detectives from Kagurazaka Police Station arrived, thrust forth an official notice of sales prohibition, and confiscated the remaining copies. In a state of utter panic, I called the Metropolitan Police Department to inquire about the details, but was told something about appearing at the Home Ministry instead, leaving me unable to grasp the situation. The next morning, I had the woman take out the spring Inverness coat from the trunk, put it on, and left home. The spring Inverness coat was something I, a country bumpkin freshly become a magazine reporter, felt compelled to purchase through installment payments since all the seasoned editorial colleagues wore one—but being ill-suited to my appearance and embarrassingly uncomfortable, I ended up discarding it after only wearing it two or three times. Even after trying it on for the first time in years, it still didn’t fit right, giving off a strangely awkward air. As I walked, suddenly, the memory came rushing back—that time when I first wore this speckled Inverness coat and the Editor-in-Chief told me, "You don’t suit it with that dark complexion of yours," sending a chill down my spine. No sooner had this thought come to me than I found myself recalling the text from last month's magazine that had mocked me as being like a Negro among French people. A faint astonishment came over me as I realized that the shame of my dark complexion—unavoidable through childhood, boyhood, and youth—now trailed into the present after unforeseen vicissitudes. What change could there have been in my own self over these long years leading up to today?

Both misfortunes and worries remained indistinguishable from those of the past, uniformly unchanged. Progress in thought, progress in morality—there was nothing at all. Wasn't everything just the same as when I was a child! With belated astonishment yet again, I walked toward the tramway street while restlessly looking myself over. When I sat in the train car and lowered my head, I noticed two holes—each the size of a little finger—that insects had bored into the hem of my Inverness coat. "Ah, what a waste," I muttered involuntarily, reaching out to touch the holes.

After getting off the train at Otemachi, I asked the guard at the Home Ministry's barrack-style makeshift building in front of the stop, stepped on the gravel to enter, and was changing into bamboo sandals in the entryway when—

“Hey,” said a broad-shouldered, solidly built young man who had stepped in front of me. “Brother-in-law?” “Huh?!”

I shuddered momentarily, recoiling as I jerked my face aside. There stood a man—the sleeves of his Western suit too short, rough hands sticking out from shirt cuffs clutching a black leather suitcase, brand-new red shoes on his feet—wasn't this Shuichi, the third brother of my divorced wife? Seeing that face with thick lips clamped in terrifying tension, I abandoned all resistance at once and dropped my gaze to the floor. We faced each other wordlessly for a brief interval. "I'm deeply sorry," I said with unexpectedly composed nerves, doffing my hat in an excessively polite bow—though my voice trembled unmistakably.

“Oh, that’s all in the past now,” Shuichi dismissed outright, yet beneath the black fedora he kept firmly on his head, the frown lines between his eyebrows remained severe, and his gaze retained an unnerving sharpness like unsheathed swords. “I hear you’re staying in Ushigome now?” “I’ve been in Yokohama since last year.” “I come here every other day on business.” Without blinking, Shuichi pulled out one business card from his pocket. Staring at the business card marked “2-8 XX-chō, Yokohama City, Yokohama Meter Measurement Co., Ltd.,” I felt cold sweat beading on my forehead and my mouth twitching as I gave a disjointed response, desperately wanting to flee this place as soon as possible.

“Let us meet again another day and talk at length. “…I’m in a hurry today.” “Yes, please do come visit me. I could also call on you if it wouldn’t be a bother. I’ve been meaning to pay my respects and express gratitude for all your past kindnesses.”

The two exchanged bows and parted ways at the end of the entryway, one turning right and the other left. Led by the attendant boy into the Censorship Section’s office, a clerk with a persimmon-pointed head offered me a chair. With his plain wire-rimmed glasses pressed against an English-language newspaper, he informed me that the sales prohibition was due to disturbance of public morals, then delivered admonishments in an exceedingly arrogant bureaucratic tone. I simply quivered uncontrollably, nodding “yes, yes” until he finished speaking, then bowed deeply and withdrew. Afraid that Shuichi might intercept me again, I hurried down the corridor with lowered head, and even after exiting outside, leaned forward without glancing sideways as I hastened along the pavement.

Since the magazine's leader Mr. R's villa in Sagami Chigasaki was crowded that day with the coterie's executives who had flocked for flower-viewing, I resolved to report the full details as soon as possible and immediately boarded a departing train from Tokyo Station. I put my hat on the luggage rack, leaned my elbow against the window frame, and let the cool breeze hit my heated forehead. In my chest, a still-painful throbbing surged. Narrowing my eyes and clenching my teeth, I tried to fend off the things that came surging in.

Among the many brothers-in-law who were all at odds with me, only Shuichi had always been fond of me. In the year of the Great Kanto Earthquake, when I had just come to Tokyo myself, Shuichi followed me there too—working as a newspaper delivery boy while attending preparatory school—until the fires drove him from Kanda and he took refuge in my Hongo boarding house. When flames forced our evacuation to Komagome Nishigahara with the boarding house family, it was Shuichi who carried my heavy wicker trunk on his back. Though I despised his crude manners and speech—and being poor myself besides—I coaxed him into returning home from Akabane; yet when I learned he'd ridden back clinging to a train roof, the cruelty of having treated him as a burden pierced my heart. After Shuichi tattled to my wife about me getting friendly with the landlady's daughter and having her mend my clothes, she confronted me upon my swift return home with fiery reproach: "Playing bachelor while making me write you letters—hmph! Everyone knows your game!"

The blows I dealt to my wife and her younger siblings—having committed such brazen wrongs in broad daylight—yet here I remain, incapable of genuinely bowing my head in remorse. What manner of wretched creature am I? That defensive stance I took when confronting Shuichi moments ago, that feigned composure, that shameless arrogance—the instant these thoughts struck me like an electric shock, I shuddered and shriveled up, trembling uncontrollably. As fragmented waves of guilt surged and receded, surged and receded one after another, the train arrived at Chigasaki.

Because I was out of breath, I took a rickshaw to the seaside villa. Though not particularly spacious, this elegant detached Western-style building had weighty damask curtains with gorgeous patterns at each window that modulated the light and shadow. There, the group—weary from flower-viewing—had gathered around a central table draped in pure white cloth, sipping tea, nibbling on light snacks, and listening in enchantment to the resplendent music from a Brunswick Banatroph electromagnetic phonograph. When I entered, the music stopped. Squinting my bleary eyes as I reported what had transpired, I received a cup of freshly brewed fragrant tea before promptly taking my leave. I trudged along a powdery white sandy path through the pine forest toward the station. While the ground remained calm, a fierce spring wind whistled through the sky like a whip overhead. The tall pine branches clashed in concert as if grappling with the gale. Covering my nostrils with a handkerchief yet captivated by the roaring pine winds, I suddenly heard echoing in my ears that same pine song from when I was fourteen—when my father had led me to Y Town for middle school enrollment. Facing hope and despair that assailed me in turns, I felt myself wilting. Bitter regret and an aching void existed within me. Abruptly slowing my pace, I looked back far down the path I had walked. If my ex-wife heard from Shuichi about me wearing a spring Inverness coat, she would surely laugh: “My my, look at you all dressed up—teehee!” Her boisterous laughter flashed before me—the triangular eyes when she giggled, those small wrinkles at her nose tip, her buckteeth—all flickering momentarily across my vision. Blushing at this phantom image, I offered a faint smile. I had said to Shuichi: “How is your sister doing? Where did she remarry?” How I wished I could have sincerely asked with humble smile-curved lips: “Is she happy this time?” She must have read that novel I wrote about our history—I who now barely cling to literature’s fringes as an emerging writer. Though you could hate me endlessly without satisfaction—having called me husband for eight years—to hate me now would prove as futile as speaking ill; both equally pointless endeavors. No—she must be quietly willing my success from afar, praying I don’t fail again.

Even if we were physically separated with a child between us—though there may be thickets where children are abandoned, none where selves are forsaken—since being left by my wife who declared this, what first came to mind when picturing the child growing up alone as if clutching a cold stone was not my current live-in woman as wife, nor Yukiko my first love, but Shizuko from whom I remained inseparably estranged. Beloved Shizuko! And so I spoke aloud the true name of my long-estranged ex-wife. "For I am your eternal husband—!" I cried out, emphasizing my sorrowful entreaty. Watching train cars roar past through the trees ahead and clumps of smoke drift above the treetops up close, I walked round and round the same ring-like path bordering the potato field countless times, unaware of my own footsteps heading toward that station. All while listening to the bleak song of pines.

(February 1932 [Shōwa 7])