Pathway to Japanese Literature

During the rainy tail end of September and early October of Shōwa 2 (1927), when it seemed to do nothing but pour, two entirely different crises suddenly bore down on me at once.

The first crisis was that a publishing house called Kaizōsha included several of my old works in volume 22 of their *Modern Literary Collection* and began selling it around September 15th or 16th.
Now then, because this volume contained a work titled *American Stories*—which Hakubunkan had first published twenty years prior—I consequently found myself on the morning of September 29th suddenly confronted by a certified mail demand from Hakubunkan, requiring both the cessation of distribution for Kaizōsha’s anthology edition and compensation payment for copyright infringement.
While Mr. Yamamoto, owner of Kaizōsha, stood mediating between Hakubunkan and me, shuttling back and forth by car multiple times a day, around noon one day a woman came falteringly up to my house and demanded half of my family assets.
This was the second incident.

Hakubunkan, needless to say here, was an enterprise headed by House of Peers member Ōhashi Shintarō that engaged in the business of publishing books and magazines.
The woman who came falteringly to my house was a waitress who had worked at a certain café in Ginza.
Booksellers and café waitresses might differ greatly in profession, but when it came to plotting to seize people’s money by taking advantage of circumstances, there was no difference between them.
And so this had turned into a real mess—yet I alone was left there with a complexion as ashen as dirt.

What manner of man am I?
I am a literary man.
I knew nothing of collaborating with politicians to plan national enterprises—selling reputation and angling for profit—nor was I versed in seizing fortunes through stock market fluctuations.
I am a literary man.
Though literary men may be counted among artists, having grown old I lacked both vigor enough to deceive wealthy widows and passion enough to become some ingenue actress’s convenient swallow.
To obtain money there remained no path but writing fine characters with patience—as ants carry their burdens and water droplets pierce stone pavements.

How will the second crisis be resolved? Depending on how this was resolved, I might have had to sell my house and dispose of my library to become a wanderer on the streets. I found myself in the same position as when the French people, facing invasion by northern barbarians, rallied as a nation to staunchly defend the waters of the Marne and the mountains of Verdun. I had to muster every ounce of wit from my emaciated frame and fortify my defenses. Even to set up defensive positions, what came first was still money. To obtain money, for someone in my position, writing would be the shortest path. To hell with shame and propriety—having resolved myself thus, I wrote out the details of these incidents up to this point in one breath, so let me take a short smoke break and tally the word and page counts as a respite from my brush.

The first time I came to know of cafés existing in the capital was in late spring of Meiji 43 [1910], when Western-style painter Mr. Matsuyama established a café in Hiyoshi-chō—a backstreet of Ginza—hoisting a palette-shaped signboard and giving it the French name Printemps.
I deliberately used the term "foundation" rather than "opening."
For it was indeed Painter Matsuyama's AU PRINTEMPS that became the true pioneering instance of a Parisian-style café opening anywhere in Tokyo.
At that time, countless establishments selling Western liquor and cuisine already existed throughout the capital.
Moreover, American-style eateries where patrons leaned against counters to stand and drink spirits had apparently existed since early days in places like Asakusa Park, yet not one of these was ever called by the name "café."
Before the term "café" came into use, all such establishments were called beer halls.
While Painter Matsuyama's establishment might not merit recognition as an actual pioneer in substance, in terms of nomenclature it unquestionably played the crucial role in popularizing the concept.
At that time, few among the capital's residents failed to grasp what a café signified, yet equally few could accurately produce the "F" sound when attempting to pronounce its name.
But arriving at today—twenty years later—not a single establishment across all Japan now bears the name "beer hall" while selling liquor, and even provincial men can smoothly articulate "Café."

Thus, even Painter Matsuyama—founder of cafés and a man skilled in cunning—had he, like that Hakubunkan now bringing up the copyright of a book they published twenty years prior to demand compensation, collected royalties from each and every establishment in the capital using the name “café,” would no doubt now boast wealth rivaling Zhu Dun’s.

Shortly after Café Printemps was founded, one evening I stopped by that café with two friends—Ikuta Kizan and Inoue Aa Aa—accompanied by a Yūrakuza actress and a Shinbashi geisha.
I saw the adventure novelist Mr. Harunami drinking with several men at a table near the entrance, but since we were accompanied by women, we went straight upstairs without exchanging any greetings.
The three of us had been acquainted with Mr. Harunami since his days studying at Waseda, so we did not consider it rude to go upstairs without greeting him.
Especially since this was shortly after I had returned from the West, I had considered it only natural not to greet male friends when accompanied by women.
However, Mr. Harunami brought along a man we didn’t know, boldly came up to the second floor, and first began picking a fight with Mr. Aa Aa.
Since I was acting like a schoolteacher at the time, I whispered to the actress and geisha, discreetly took my hat, and swiftly fled outside.
Later, when I inquired about that night’s events, it turned out Mr. Harunami had assumed that the three of us had retreated to a teahouse with geisha; upon barging into the establishment he suspected us to be in, he kicked through the paper doors and injured a maid, ultimately leading to his arrest by the Sanjūgenbori Police Station.
Upon hearing this, I not only resolutely severed ties with Mr. Harunami but also ceased frequenting Café Printemps entirely.
The opening of Café Lion at the crossroads of Owari-chō also occurred around that time, but since the Printemps incident, I had resolutely refrained from setting foot in any drinking establishments around Ginza.

Time's rapid passage was like a careening cart wheel.
Before I knew it, twenty years had slipped by.
Both Harunami-san and Aa Aa-san had become denizens of the underworld.
Twenty years was no brief interval.
As society changed, so too did human sentiments.

On a certain night in August of Taishō 15, as I pursued the evening coolness and strolled through Ginza-dori—its scenery changing daily in the earthquake’s aftermath—I first rested at the lone café near Owari-chō’s crossroads.
Since then, whenever passing through Ginza-dori, I began occasionally stopping at this shop for tea.

There were various reasons for this.
For ten years now, I have maintained a rule of eating either lunch or dinner out once daily.
While café fare is nearly inedible in its coarseness, I am not one to forcibly seek gourmet meals.
If it neither poisons nor fails to fill my stomach, I generally endure and consume it.
When truly desiring something suited to my palate, I habitually cook it myself without others’ assistance.
Yet when mundane affairs accumulate, such habits become unsustainable.
Moreover, during sweltering seasons, I cannot muster the will to kindle fires for cooking.
Bearing unpalatability and dining at eateries sometimes proves expedient.
This became one reason compelling me to finally become a café patron.

Since moving Kinsho from Tsukiji's backstreets to my current home, I have not worn long-sleeved Japanese garments.
Even when invited elsewhere, I avoid removing my shoes and sitting on tatami whenever possible.
When dining out too, I find second-floor bird shops inconvenient and resort to cafés for practicality.
This was the second reason.

I had already mentioned that nearly twenty years had passed since cafés first became fashionable along Ginza-dori.
In those two decades, society transformed completely.
With these shifting tides, my own tastes inevitably underwent some change.
However desperately one might try clinging to old customs, certain things ultimately prove unsustainable.
Generally speaking, what first strikes us as strange in worldly trends soon settles into banality through familiarity.
And indeed—I was no longer young.
My capacity for fervor had diminished; my critical eye dulled.
The hoops had slackened.

In the autumn of that year when I was nearing fifty, even when resting at a café on Ginza-dori for the first time and seeing the waitress who brought black tea before me, I did not feel the same disgust as I had at Lion's opening twenty years prior.
This was the third reason.

I no longer viewed not only café waitresses but also actresses of new theater troupes today solely with contemptuous eyes as I once had.
Having come to think it natural that such individuals should now be regarded as artists in today's world, when meeting them face-to-face I had even reached a point where I could offer words of flattery.
Even toward male and female performers associated with moving pictures, today's me found myself able to maintain a solemnly neutral stance without particular disgust.
In essence, modern new actresses, waitresses, shopgirls, and Western-style hairdressers—all were the same breed of new women sharing identical tastes and conduct.

When I now rested in Ginza cafés and closely examined the waitresses’ attire and makeup, their taste being thoroughly modern throughout was no different from the feeling one got when looking at the covers of then-popular women’s magazines.
When an era’s tastes had become so chaotically blended in their decline that they solidified into something beyond remedy, it instead began to evoke in the detached observer—ordinarily isolated from society—a peculiar fascination tinged with faint revulsion.

I likened the modern women’s fashions I witnessed on Ginza’s streets to lithographed magazine cover illustrations.
That also resembled chemically synthesized colored wine in taste.
It was comparable even to exhibition hall architecture imitating Nikko’s temple gates.
It added an extra layer of vulgarity even to chrysanthemum dolls’ peculiar aesthetic.
When did such tendencies first take root?
One could only view this as Meiji civilization’s chaotic trajectory having traversed fifteen Taishō years before finally spawning these customs.
Once turning one’s thoughts here, none could prevent burgeoning interest in social critique from welling up.
This became the fourth reason I leaned calmly against café tables while disregarding journalists’ slander.

The café I frequented had over thirty waitresses and over ten girls with shoulder tucks.
Three or four men tended the bar; five or six women kept the accounts; several cooks; two or three clerks.
Overseeing all these people was one manager who handled all business affairs and had one assistant.
When counted up, they amounted to no small number of personnel.
When these staff members formed a group to conduct their business, it was only natural that a world unique to this collective would take shape there.
Even when lining up along the same Ginza-dori and conducting identical businesses, the character of each shop came to differ depending on the establishment.
If the character of a shop differed, the type of customers would also come to differ.
Therein lay an added layer of fascination for observing societal trends.

All things had their process of evolution.
The methods for observing urban customs too followed their own evolutionary path.
In the Edo period, Santō Kyōden had meticulously observed the distinct customs of each house in the Yoshiwara pleasure quarters and authored several pleasure quarter critiques.
Works like *The Forty-Eight Techniques of Courtesan Procurement* and *Courtesan Gold* (※) stood as their crowning achievements.
The observations of urban customs that Kyōden and other Edo popular writers delighted in conducting were largely learned from Chinese sensual histories.
Thus when Chinese classics came to be disseminated following the Kansei era, Terakado Seiken authored *Edo Hanjōki*, followed by Narushima Ryūhoku producing *Ryūkyō Shinshi*.
The pleasure quarter critiques of the Kyōden school had long vanished by the Bunka era, yet those emulating Seiken’s literary style persisted even into Meiji times: Hattori Busō authored *Ryūkō Shinshi*, Matsumoto Mannen created *Shinbashi Zakki*, and with Miki Aika, this lineage of sensual histories finally reached its end.

As I leaned against café tables, observing with my eyes the fashions of contemporary women and recalling in my heart the writings of past literary masters, I could not help but heave a sigh and lament my own lack of literary flourish.
In the Occident, works such as the poet Musset’s *Mimi Pinson’s Sunday Dress* have long been celebrated by the public without cease.
Verlaine’s poetry collection too is not lacking in fine pieces that depict café scenes.

In the winter of Shōwa's first year, among the cafés lining Ginza-dori, those establishments whose waitresses' striking cosmetics particularly captivated public attention bore names such as Lion, Tiger, Ginbura, Bacchus, Matsutsuki, and Kujaku.
As for these cafés' scenes and the reputational accounts of their waitresses, they formed choice material that filled the pages of contemporary magazines and newspapers.
Indeed, literary magazines like *Sōjin* had already compiled special café editions that occupied entire volumes by collecting celebrated essays about cafés from various literary eminences.
Thus for one of meager talent like myself to now compose some disjointed treatise about cafés would invite nothing but derisive redundancy—like erecting a roof beneath an existing roof.

When among the things I observed in daily life there arose something that seemed likely to become material for a novel someday, I would write it down in my notebook.
Even if it was just the day’s weather patterns—when a rainbow appeared on a moonlit night or a comet manifested in the midnight sky—I similarly recorded these exactly as witnessed.
These served not merely as material for descriptive scenes when writing novels but could also prove unexpectedly useful when reading the works of ancient people.
I had once seen something called tree ice.
Tree ice refers to raindrops dripping on tree branches that freeze due to a sudden cold spell, appearing as if flowers have bloomed.
I had neither known the name 'tree ice' nor been aware that poets delighted in regarding it as an auspicious sign, but upon reading Ōkubo Shifu’s collection in recent years, I finally came to understand these matters in detail.

I had made no small number of notes in my notebook regarding Ginza cafés.
Herein I would compile and present these excerpts for the readers' amusement.

On a certain month and day, seeking the evening cool, I strolled through Ginza-dori with cane in hand.
The night market’s lights blazed like noon; men and women brushing shoulders crowded the walkways.
The nocturnal heat only intensified beneath this glare.
To escape it, I stepped into a drinking establishment.
This Western-style bar represented precisely what people now call a café.
The word “café” itself springs from French origins.
Though our countrymen rashly appropriated this foreign term for their bars, the gulf between label and reality gapes conspicuously wide.
Here again lies proof of our society’s blundering attempts at Western mimicry—endeavors that cannot even achieve competent imitation.
As for the quality of their liquor and tea? Scarcely worth remarking upon.
Every Ginza café stocks bevies of young women who lavish themselves in cosmetics to ply customers with drink—a practice indistinguishable from how courtesans once presided over taverns.
Considered through Edo-period sensibilities, they might equally resemble water-teahouse maidens, barley-seller girls, or inn servants doling out meals.
These café attendants bear designations like “waitress” or the curious hybrid “girl-boy.”
Their costumes and coiffures merit separate documentation.
That evening, a maid who approached my table disclosed this establishment employed over thirty such attendants.
These women commuted daily from homes chosen for cheap rents—mostly in newly developed suburban tracts.
They drew no wages, subsisting entirely on gratuities tossed by intoxicated patrons.
Yet their daily take rarely dipped below ten yen.
With these earnings, some sustained elderly parents; others purchased medicine for infirm kin.
Some furnished school fees for younger siblings.

Some, through licentious indulgence, immediately squandered what they earned without regret.
They each acted differently according to their character.
When the maids in the building invited guests, they formed teams of ten each; when a guest arrived, one on-duty maid from the team would come out to attend to them.
There were three women’s teams.
One was called the Red Team; Two, the Green Team; and Three, the Purple Team.
The women of each team wore cloisonné badges on their chests to clearly indicate their affiliated team and number.
The three teams changed their guest reception assignments daily.
On days when the Red and Green Teams were stationed upstairs, it was said the Purple Team remained downstairs as though by design.
It had been customary to station two teams upstairs and keep one team downstairs as standard practice.
The three teams rotated between upstairs and downstairs in constant cycle.
Therefore, customers desiring to ascend this building and purchase intoxication—if they particularly wished to hear the alluring words of Akyō number such-and-such from a certain team—had first to ascertain which station housed Akyō’s team before taking their seats.
Otherwise, they would merely cast their tips to maidservants of other teams and lose all chance to behold Akyō’s fair countenance throughout the night—or so it was claimed.
In this way, the tavern’s circumstances bore exact resemblance to those of a brothel.
I then inquired further: “What, pray tell, were your previous incarnations as café waitresses?”
As I had heard, in recent years all Western-style taverns around Asakusa Park and Ueno Hirokoji had competed fiercely to employ beauties.
So it was true indeed.
The maidservant replied: “It is just as you say, sir.”
Now, this tavern had been a branch of a drinking establishment outside Asakusa’s Kaminarimon Gate, which first raised its blue curtain here following the earthquake disaster.
Therefore, even among the maidservants at the time of opening, those dispatched from Asakusa’s main store had been few in number.
Now, day by day undergoing renewal, many had gathered from all directions—drawn by the wind.

In the past, even in the capital's pleasure quarters, there had been those who adjusted their sashes.
Hearing this, I was astonished.
What, then, was the reason for this?
When I reflected upon my youthful days frequenting the pleasure quarters where refined music and song flourished, I found that even then, among the geishas of the capital, those who delighted in Edo-period traditions had not yet vanished from the earth.
Once those who had made their coquettish names renowned throughout the capital became puffed up with pride and found self-satisfaction, even if they were to sink into the depths of misfortune, there had been scarcely a single one among them who would feel ashamed and become like waitresses at assignation houses or beef shop women stealing a living through tips from vulgar customers.
Now, people's hearts—without distinction between high and low, refined and vulgar—had completely transformed in a mere ten years.
Artists studied actors' whims to paint their backgrounds, while literary figures knelt unperturbed before booksellers.
As for me—being by nature stubborn and set in my ways—I knew not the ways of navigating the world, indeed even more so than an ordinary woman.
Tonight, upon hearing that among these café waitresses there existed successors to geisha, I was moved to profound realization.
Thereupon, I took up a pencil and compiled a memorandum to admonish myself for my usual failings.

There was a woman named O-Tami at a certain café I had designated as my regular meeting place with literary colleagues. While I was still reeling from copyright infringement negotiations pressed upon me by publisher Hakubunkan, this same O-Tami casually appeared at my home to present an outrageous demand.

Her first visit to our habitual café for a waitress interview had occurred last autumn, when the lingering summer heat still clung stubbornly to the air. A veteran waitress brought O-Tami to our table and introduced her with perfunctory courtesies—thus we first learned her name.

Upon initial appraisal she seemed twenty-four or twenty-five, but when I later inquired directly about her age, O-Tami unhesitatingly declared herself twenty-six. Unlike other waitresses who caked on white powder and crimped their hair with spatula-like combs, she wore her locks in a conventional high-collar style and dressed in a mouse-gray kasuri kimono secured by a Hakata summer obi crossed with stripes.

Her oval face—fair-skinned with sharply defined hairlines at forehead and nape—boasted a statuesque nose and almond eyes whose outer corners tapered keenly, though her mouth's lack of definition betrayed missing incisors. While classically beautiful by Edo standards, contemporaries found her deficient in modern allure; some compared her visage to a Noh mask, others criticized its rigid immobility.

Neither tall nor short, her figure struck average proportions. The kimono's collar always sat slightly open and her obi fastened lower than others', contrasting starkly with colleagues who cinched collars painfully tight and hitched obi breast-high. This distinction made O-Tami conspicuous among patrons who dubbed her Edo-style or geisha-like.

Only after growing familiar did we learn through questioning what her manner already suggested—O-Tami was indeed native to Tokyo's downtown wards.

“I was born in Yagenbori.”
“Father has long since passed away.”

When I heard Yagenbori, I asked if she knew about the archery ranges that used to be in that area, but O-Tami replied that she did not.
I also tried asking about things like the storytelling hall called Fukumotei in Hirokoji and the beef restaurant called Iroha in front of Asakusabashi, but she didn’t seem to remember those well either.
To a girl born around the time of the Russo-Japanese War, even my stories about the town where she was born must have seemed a bit too antiquated.
When I asked where she currently lived,

“I’m living with Brother and Mother in Higashi-Nakano.”
“Mother used to work at a bookstore called Kariginuya-san in Koishikawa, so they say,” she said.

Kariginuya refers to the renowned publishing house Seizandō that existed from the Edo period until around Meiji 40 (1907) in Koishikawa Andōzakaue. This story concerns an incident that occurred on the day when I bought Chinese books at a used book auction held in a rented hall on Higashi-Nakano-dori and stopped by on my way back, during which O-Tami, upon seeing old books, suddenly seemed to remember something and spoke.

When referring to her parents, O-Tami did not use the contemporary terms "Otōsan" and "Okāsan" like girls these days, but instead said "Okkasan" and "Ototsan." In my observation, these are traditional Tokyo dialect terms: while "otōsan" for father and "okāsan" for mother—or their abbreviated forms "tōsan" and "kāsan"—had originated from rural speech and become part of the standard vernacular. In the Toribeyama section of Sonohachi-bushi, there is a lyric that says, "Having a Toto-san and Kaka-san is no different for you." If that is the case, could the terms "Tōsan" and "Kāsan" be from the Kansai region? In recent years, in the pleasure quarters of the capital, geisha have come to call teahouse proprietors or customers "Tōsan," and one hears brothel madams or the wives of pleasure house owners referred to as "Kāsan." In respectable households, children call their strict fathers "easygoing Tōsan." The moral decay of human relations has also reached its nadir, one might say. Incidentally, I note this. When I was raised in the house in Koishikawa, I was taught to say “Father” and “Mother.” Could this be because my family belonged to the samurai class of the Owari Domain? I have not ascertained its origin.

When conversations grew lively, O-Tami would sometimes start to say “Ano atai ga—” then, laughing, correct herself to “Watashi ga—”. Her speech carried an artificially saccharine tone throughout. Though twenty-six years old, her voice retained a girlish quality unexpected for her age—a trait seemingly stemming both from gaps left by missing incisors that caused vocal leakage and from the deliberate slurring cultivated through her profession. She habitually swayed while speaking, gesturing as if beckoning with each word. As familiarity grew, her café waitress affectations gradually faded until she came to resemble a waitress from an assignation house or traditional Japanese restaurant.

“O-Tami, you’ve never worked somewhere like Suehiro before, have you?” one of us once asked.
Then O-Tami answered that she had once worked as a maid at a certain assignation house in Akasaka, so I secretly felt a sort of pride that my conjecture had not been off the mark.

As we gradually grew more at ease with her, O-Tami’s circumstances also became considerably clearer.
O-Tami’s brother first had a geisha enter his household as his wife, but she soon passed away. His second marriage was to a proper wife brought from the countryside, and for a time he operated a small retail shop near Kanda. After the earthquake, however, business gradually declined until he finally closed the shop, relocated to the countryside, and ended up employed by some company. To assist her brother’s household livelihood, O-Tami first became a waitress at Lion Café. While working there for about a year, she became enamored with a certain newspaper reporter called Mr. S, who then took her to the Osaka area where she idled away over half a year.
After parting ways and returning to Tokyo, she wandered through two or three cafés here and there before finally ending up at her current one.

However, regarding matters prior to when she was first employed at Lion in Owari-cho, O-Tami seemed to dislike speaking of them and appeared to avoid doing so as much as possible.
When I discreetly inquired with fellow waitresses, some said she had married at eighteen or nineteen only to be divorced after about a year, while others claimed she had entered service at a noble family’s residence from the age of fifteen or sixteen.
There were also those who asserted it hadn’t been mere ordinary service.
It was impossible to tell which version held true.
In any case, from what we two or three customers observed, O-Tami was a clever woman who understood both the ways of the world and men’s feelings, and remained attentive to everything.
She liked alcohol, and when drunk, she would throw tantrums even before customers—much like a geisha.
There were aspects suggesting she might have grown half-resigned after being deceived by a man once, but since she never displayed any vulgar tendency to grovel with flattery depending on tips received, she was considered to have relatively good manners as a café waitress.

The above observations were not mine alone.
The people who always shared the table with me observed much the same things.
In short, we cautioned ourselves against being ensnared by preconceived biases when observing someone for the first time.
Particularly toward women in such professions scorned as prostitutes by society, even when flaws in their character were visible to the eye, we strove to view them with sympathy, believing there must be underlying causes for these shortcomings.
Sympathy is not only the foundation of artistic creation.
The path to perceiving the truths of human society, too, lies nowhere but in sympathy.
In our excessive desire for impartiality in observation, forcibly maintaining a calm attitude instead easily led us into the error of hasty judgment.
We were neither religious figures nor moralists.
When observing people, we did not necessarily seek to pass judgment on their goodness, evil, deviance, or rectitude.
If we could observe people well, that was sufficient.
We merely hoped to glimpse the truth that under such circumstances there existed such a life.
We made this our true calling as artists.
We once gladly welcomed the literary views of Turgenev, Flaubert, and others in our youth.
We redirected the reverence once reserved for great figures of history and legend and preferred to devote it to the lives of ordinary men and women in humble alleys.
We believed that taking the subjects Impressionist painters favored depicting and turning them into prose would be our life’s work.
Later I came to realize how narrow-minded that stance of ours was, yet the influences absorbed in my youth remain impossible to fully purge even now.
The scenes inside and outside the cafés along Ginza-dori caused me to recall my time in Paris and Mr. Ikuta to reminisce about old Berlin days—all due to those very influences.
We would recall examples of naturalist literature we had completely forgotten for a time, compare them to the scenes before our eyes, debate the similarities and differences between the Western past and the Japanese present, and there were many times when we lost track of the deepening night.

As our comings and goings to cafés gradually grew more frequent, newspapers and magazines across the capital aligned their pens to begin denouncing my conduct. To my recollection, among newspapers it was the *Niroku*, *Kokumin*, *Maishū*, *Chūō*, and *Tōkyō Nichinichi* that brandished their venomous brushes most vigorously, while magazines included those called *Sasameki* and *Bungei Shunjū*, among others. Through these accusatory writings by metropolitan newspapers and periodicals, I—despite my advancing years—was cast as one who haunted cafés and preened himself while dallying with waitresses. Thus it came to pass that O-Tami was designated as the waitress in question.

Mr. Ikuta observed that the newspapers' denunciations of me grew increasingly urgent day by day, and advised that it would be better to refrain from visiting cafés for the time being.
I thanked Mr. Ikuta for his kindness and responded,

“If I were to stop going to cafés simply because I’ve been attacked in the newspapers, that would amount to surrendering to them. It would be no different than bowing to journalists. I will go to cafés whether I like it or not. Whether it rains or spears fall, I won’t feel satisfied unless I go out. I thought experiencing firsthand—through my own person—just how much modern newspapers could persecute an individual might prove rather interesting. If I can demonstrate—by amassing as many examples as possible—just how detestable contemporary Japanese society truly is, in the end it will constitute my victory.”

Then one of my friends said, “I want to say your attitude resembles that of Rousseau rebelling against eighteenth-century Western society—but since it doesn’t suit you at all, you’d better just drop it. You’d do better sticking to your Edo literary research—that’s more your style anyway,” he sneered.

Setting aside the various arguments, even someone as stubbornly prideful as I could no longer sit composedly at the café table.
No sooner had Tokyo newspapers reported that my frequenting cafés was all for waitress O-Tami than a certain Mr. S—the man who had once taken O-Tami from Lion to Osaka—appeared abruptly beside our table one evening and demanded, “So you’ve stolen my woman.”
“Is that true?” he shouted, his face contorted in rage.
Then a young man who claimed to have been discreetly guarding me appeared and ultimately demanded tips and cab fare.
There came times when three or four people would appear in a single night—occasions when many sent waitresses bearing business cards claiming they had matters to discuss.
When Shun'yōdō and Kaizōsha began competing to advertise their one-yen complete collections, those unfamiliar individuals wanting to raise glasses with me increased all the more.
Those who initially mediated through waitresses or sent name cards were still the calmer ones.
In the end, some even went so far as to suddenly sit before me and thrust cups under my nose in tones that said, “Hey you.”

These people appeared mostly younger than I was.
To my disgust mingled an irrepressible curiosity.
For though I was a literary man born in Tokyo who never considered himself particularly obscure to society, how could I have anticipated this?
That such bizarre figures infested Ginza's streets was something I had remained entirely unaware of until now, approaching fifty years of age.

They were what society deems ruffians.
In my youth too, I had often been accosted by their kind within and around the Yoshiwara pleasure quarters.
When drinking at some humble eatery between Senzoku-cho and the embankment, those ruffians claiming territorial rights there would invariably lie in wait for provocation.
Thus began the confrontation.
To escape required feigning a visit to the privy before vanishing like smoke.
The ruffians of that era dressed in instantly recognizable fashion.
Narrow-striped karasanshi kimonos cinched with flat obi sashes, bareheaded, speaking unadulterated townsman's dialect.
Three decades later, observing their counterparts haunting Ginza cafés - clad in Western suits or sateen hakama trousers, some self-styled literati perpetually clutching magazine volumes and newspaper sheets underarm -
their speech betrayed provincial accents.

What I found most bizarre was that the waitresses showed not the slightest trace of fear toward those ruffians.
O-Tami in particular would calmly list each of them by name, saying: “I’ve known so-and-so since my Lion days.
That one may not look it, but he’s a genuine literary man.
A translator.
Since they’re out in the suburbs, I do run into them now and then on the train.
Alcohol doesn’t seem good for you,” she would add—and when we spoke of such impertinent matters, she even let slip a tone that seemed to subtly defend them.
O-Tami was said to be the literature-loving one among this café’s waitresses.
When Mr. Ikuta once asked, “Of all you’ve read, what was most interesting?” O-Tami had immediately replied: “*The Brothers Karamazov*.”
At that time, I had paid no attention to her words.
I had arbitrarily concluded from the start that women working in cafés were more foolish than geisha.
Moreover, I had thought women reputedly fond of literature were actually more lacking in intelligence compared to those who never touched books—their tastes far inferior.
Yet these judgments were proven wrong when O-Tami suddenly appeared at my house demanding money—after our group had ceased frequenting Ginza’s cafés altogether.
Her demeanor showed such calculated precision that one might think she’d studied law—her rhetoric bearing full resemblance to Communist Party members’ parlance.

It was the day after the publisher Hakubunkan had demanded compensation from me for copyright infringement. Shortly before noon, O-Tami appeared at the gate of my house in a quiet residential area of Yamanote—her hair tied in what might be called an ear-covering style, layered over a kasuri-patterned hitoe robe with conspicuously long sleeves that resembled rough stone paving, and topped with a wisteria-purple summer haori whose blurred hem patterns evoked those worn by provincial Genji nobles. In her hand was a fashionable parasol that seemed to proclaim the full bloom of dahlia flowers. For a respectable household, being visited by someone in this gaudy attire—neither quite geisha nor actress—was a far more intense threat than any unsettling words or weapons. It was no different from ruffians of old baring their buttocks at merchant house storefronts to display their tattoos. Before I could even ask why O-Tami had suddenly come to my house, I was thrown into such disarray by that single charmeuse haori—reportedly sold at places like Matsuya Kimono Store—that I nearly lost all sense of my surroundings. Particularly on that day, amid dealings with Hakubunkan and what seemed like more visitors than usual coming and going, I was desperate above all else to hide O-Tami’s presence from the entrance hall. No sooner had I ushered her into a room than I demanded her purpose for coming—whereupon she gathered her long sleeves onto her lap as if lifting them out of the way and took out a cigarette case from the depths of her bag, much like dredging something up from the bottom.

“I’ve already quit Ginza, as you’re no doubt aware.”

“Ah yes, that’s right. I heard from a friend the other day,” I said, subtly gauging the woman’s reaction while awaiting her next words.

Then O-Tami, showing not the slightest hint of awkwardness,

“There’s something I’d like to ask of you today,” she said with unshakable composure.
From her bearing to her speech, she had become an entirely different person from the woman who used to lean against café walls and windows, tearing leaves from nearby potted plants only to chew them up and spit them out while cracking jokes.
Feeling I had finally glimpsed her true transformation, I unconsciously fixed my gaze on her face—whereupon O-Tami shot me a sidelong glance before shifting her eyes to a wall hanging. In that moment, the icy composure of her features and the sword-sharp intensity of her gaze—those elongated eyes that always carried a blade-like edge—seemed to lay bare this woman’s origins and history beyond any need for explanation.

“I, intending to deflate her momentum, spoke before she could voice her demand: ‘This is about money, isn’t it?’ O-Tami nodded with a tilt of her chin. ‘If that’s what you think,’ she replied with unblinking composure, her gaze meeting mine instead of looking away.”

“If that’s what you think, that won’t do.”
“How much do you want?”

In such haggling, it was inadvisable to state a specific amount from my side. The method commonly employed since antiquity was to first let the other party state their demand from their own mouth, estimate a rough figure, counteroffer fifty yen if they proposed a hundred, then gauge their demeanor before incrementally raising the amount by five or ten yen at a time, ultimately settling around seventy or eighty yen. It was with this intention that I inquired about the sum. However, it appeared that my opponent had made considerable rounds soliciting funds at various places up to now and seemed far more accustomed to this than I was.

“Any amount will do.”
“If it’s not enough, I’ll come again to receive more.”
“Today, whatever amount is convenient for you will suffice.”

“Well then, take this.”
“I have some pressing business today,” I said as I handed her two ten-yen bills I had on hand. O-Tami took them and, after staring silently at my face for a while,

“When may I receive the remainder?”

“So that’s not enough, then?”

O-Tami did not answer and slowly began to smoke a cigarette.

"I have no reason to let you take money from me—why on earth do you make such demands?"

"I've quit the café and have nothing to do, so I'm in trouble."

“If you’re in such straits, why not go out and work? I am not so weak as to be approached with such demands. There must be someone else you can consult about such matters. Haven’t I heard that you have a patron who’s even provided you with a house?”

O-Tami once again did not respond and turned sideways.

“Anyway, I have business today. I’m about to go out. Be good and go home,” I said, standing up and opening the entrance door.

O-Tami remained motionless, blowing tobacco smoke with perfect composure.
When I urged again, “Come on,” O-Tami suddenly adopted a tone like a child throwing a tantrum,
“No. I won’t go home,” she said, shaking her head.

“Even though I’m telling you to go home, you refusing to leave is unsettling."
“Then that’s no different from outright extortion.”
“No matter what you say, I have neither obligation nor reason to pay.”
“It’s no use.”

“Even so, I need money.”
“You’re a person with money—isn’t this fine?”
“Those who have should give to those who don’t—that’s only natural.”

“Natural my foot!”
“That might work in Russia for all I care, but it won’t fly here.”
“Anyway, there’s no use arguing.”
“Just how much do you want?”
“Your silence won’t do.”
“You might as well spit it out.”

“I’d like half.”

“Half.”
“Half of 100 yen?”

“No.”

“Then half of 1,000 yen?”

“No.”

“Then half of what exactly?” I pressed. O-Tami turned sideways and blew cigarette smoke toward the ceiling before answering nonchalantly: “Half of your fortune.”

I barely managed to suppress an urge to burst out laughing. “In any case, making such impossible demands is just a waste of time that benefits neither of us.”
“How about this?”
“Let’s split the difference—100 yen to put an end to all this trouble, shall we?”

I took out a hundred-yen bill I had conveniently on hand from the wallet and handed it to O-Tami.
There was no need for a written contract.

Thinking this matter had been settled, four or five days later O-Tami came again to beg for money.
Her words and demeanor had grown even more ominous than before, so thinking it better to rely on someone else rather than handle matters myself, I summoned a lawyer I knew and entrusted everything to him.

It was not more than half an hour after the lawyer had taken O-Tami and left my house that Mr. Yamamoto, owner of the publishing company Kaizōsha, came to pick me up by automobile and asked me to go together to Hakubunkan and bow in apology.
Mr. Yamamoto said that if I were to go with him to Hakubunkan and bow obsequiously, we might be able to avoid paying compensation, so he earnestly requested that I do so.
If a single bow could settle matters, I thought it a trifling affair. I promptly agreed and boarded the automobile with the owner. We raced from Kasuga-cho in Koishikawa—where road repairs had left the streets severely uneven—through Sasugaya-cho, arriving at Hakubunkan standing atop a slope in a dim backstreet.
After being made to wait briefly in an anteroom, we were guided by a waitress toward the far end of the corridor. Expecting to meet Owner Ōhashi, I instead found ourselves in an office occupied by what appeared to be one of their senior employees.
The man stated that he could not immediately decide on the amount of compensation based solely on my opinion, and in the end, no agreement was reached—Mr. Yamamoto and I left in vain.
And three or four days later, it was decided that compensation of several thousand yen would be paid through Mr. Yamamoto’s hands.
In the end, even my trip to the outskirts of Koishikawa to bow obsequiously proved utterly futile—what was to be taken ended up being taken regardless.
Not only that, but I ended up being made to hand over a written letter of apology along with the money.
And on top of all that, Hakubunkan wanted to drag me out and make me treat them to a meal.
However, even someone like me could no longer endure this and refused.

Since ancient times, upright individuals have disdained receiving hospitality from merchants.
For even if it is but a single meal’s kindness from a washerwoman, accepting it even once would mean shouldering a debt of gratitude.

I endured what needed to be endured and avoided what needed to be avoided.
As for myself, I believe I have given due consideration.
The reason I had entrusted matters regarding compensation for the copyright issue of my work to Mr. Yamamoto was that I feared spreading cumulative calamities to others.

The copyright to my work *American Stories* does not exclusively belong to Hakubunkan as they claim.
The manuscript of said work was something I mailed from my lodgings in Lyon, France, during the winter of Meiji 40 [1907] to the Thursday Society; prior to my return to Japan in August of the following year, it had already been published.
At that time, many literati of the Thursday Society were in Hakubunkan’s editorial department and contributed to magazines published by the company; due to this relationship, my work naturally came to be published by Hakubunkan.
At that time, I was still overseas; therefore, there should have been no reason for me to sign or seal any document granting Hakubunkan the copyright to my work, nor did I sign any publication notification that should have been submitted to the Home Ministry when the book was published.
As for those procedures toward government offices and publishers—I suppose they might have been carried out by someone among the Thursday Society members who were at Hakubunkan at the time?
Among the members, Messrs. Oshikawa Shunrō, Kuroda Kosan, Inoue Aa, Umezawa Bokusui, and others are no longer of this world.
As for in whose hands the copyright to my work *American Stories* is exclusively held, it must be viewed that this has never been legally determined to this day.
If Hakubunkan insists on asserting exclusive copyright over my work, then they should have at least consulted me once in the over twenty years since the book’s publication up to the present day.
Yet having habitually neglected this duty, upon seeing the book reprinted in the *Complete Works of Modern Literature*, they seized it as a golden opportunity and abruptly demanded compensation for copyright infringement—a rapacity that defies all words of condemnation.
Despite all this, the reason I remained silent without uttering a single word and left everything to Mr. Yamamoto to resolve was that I feared that if Hakubunkan were to file a lawsuit, it would inevitably force the Thursday Society members to appear in court as witnesses for the original publication.
Hakubunkan has already set a precedent in recent days by filing a copyright infringement lawsuit even against Mr. Iwaya Sazanami, with whom the publisher had maintained a friendship for nearly thirty years.
I lack the courage to contend with such rapacious merchants.

I had already given money to rapacious Shylock-like booksellers.
At the same time, I did not refuse to bestow money upon the café waitress who cherished reading the translated Russian novel *The Brothers Karamazov*.
He was the archdemon of capitalism, and this one was the harpy of communism.
I had unwittingly come into contact with both these parties, witnessed two great evils imperiling our nation, and found myself overcome by thoughts lamenting the perils of our times.
This is why I have written these verbose words here.
There’s nothing for it but to say as much.
With year-end drawing ever nearer, no one likes having their money taken in such times.

October 1927, Recorded