Pathway to Japanese Literature

Counterfeit

I

Having been warned by the conductor, he got off at Fukushima.
It was 5 AM.
He had to wait until 6 PM.

Kōkichi had boarded the 11 PM train from Ueno the previous night, but the Ōu Line detour had departed at 9 PM before that.
In his hurried, drunken state—having been sent off as if driven out by two or three friends—he’d had no time to inquire about such things.
And so, he ended up having to wait for the Ōu Line detour to Aomori—departing Ueno at 9 o’clock that morning—and spend idiotic, tedious hours doing nothing.

"But 'It’s not as if this journey required any particular urgency…,' he told himself."
Comforting himself this way, he read Tolstoy’s *Walk in the Light*—a book given with pointed intent by one of the friends who had seen him off the night before.

Around the stove since morning, customers had come and gone.
Only Kōkichi and one other—a boy of twelve or thirteen—remained seated by it, indifferent to multiple trains arriving and departing.
The boy wore oversized white tabi socks with straw sandals, a tattered knee-length kimono with tube sleeves, and carried a pale blue cloth bundle over his shoulder.

“Hey! You still refusing to leave? This here’s no place for the likes of you. Get out!”

When the station worker who had come to clean grabbed him by the collar and shoved him around, he went outside with an air of annoyance, but soon returned and stood motionless by the stove, head bowed.

“Where are you headed?”
Kōkichi suddenly spoke.

"To Aomori," the boy answered.
Since Aomori was Kōkichi’s hometown, he felt somewhat drawn and became inclined to ask about the circumstances.

The boy had run away from the spinning company in Saitama Prefecture where he had been working under a cash advance system.
The boy repeated with emphasis, "Because the labor was too harsh…"
And so, he had walked all the way to Fukushima over twenty days while begging along the way, but since the snow was piled up ahead making it impossible to proceed, he had been passing his days here in this waiting room for the past four or five days—or so he explained.

“Did you try talking to the police?”

“I did, but they wouldn’t listen.”

“That can’t be right. If that’s really true, then the police would do something about it, I suppose. But how on earth were you managing to get food here? How much money do you have? How old are you? And which part of Aomori Prefecture?”

Kōkichi tried questioning him from a half-believing, half-doubting state of mind, but the boy’s answers came so smoothly and without hesitation that they rather provoked antipathy. He said he was fifteen. “That’s the truth, right? … If you’re lying, it’ll be bad for you,” he pressed. Since it was just past noon, he decided to accompany the boy to the police station.

At the police station, the officer at reception dismissed them coldly: "All such cases fall under municipal jurisdiction—take him to city hall." But when Kōkichi pressed stubbornly, an inspector emerged and took custody of the boy with a perfunctory "You’ve done your part."
"A deadbeat like you has no business meddling…"
Feeling as though someone might shout this at him from behind at any moment, he returned to the waiting room and finished reading *Walk in the Light*. Yet from his current fragile state, he found himself profoundly moved.

It was now late March.
Yet all the passengers still bore the bundled-up appearance characteristic of snow country.
They wore straw boots, wrapped their necks and heads with flannel cloths, and donned thickly padded indigo snow trousers—women included.
And a snowy country odor—one that evoked Kōkichi’s destination and filled him, accustomed to it since childhood, with an inexplicable ease—thickened oppressively in the room as passengers crowded in.

“Starting tomorrow, I too will become one of these people,” he suddenly thought.
He also reflected, “Somehow I’d always sensed it would come to this—that I’d end up returning home.”
While idling near the ticket gate, he noticed the boy from earlier bobbing in from outside and instinctively rushed over to address him.

“So it didn’t work out after all?”
“Did they chase you away?”

“Nah, not like that.
“The cop said he’d buy me a ticket an’ put me on the train—told me not t’tell nobody… Said he’d come here soon t’get it, so I should wait.”

The boy said this but fidgeted restlessly, clearly wanting to escape Kōkichi’s presence. “I see… That’s good,” he replied. “With this you can buy bread.” He handed over ten sen before walking away without asking what had happened next.

Even after Kōkichi passed through the ticket gate, perhaps because the officer still hadn’t arrived, the boy kept pacing restlessly near the entrance and ticket window. Crossing the bridge and boarding the train, Kōkichi leaned out the window. As the platform crowd dwindled with no sign of either figure, he thought, “It’s hopeless after all.” But just before departure, the boy appeared ahead while behind him came an officer clattering down the stairs with his sword.

Twice beneath Kōkichi’s window ran a mustached policeman—sword rattling, boots stomping—shouting flustered orders as he searched for seats alongside that stout boy with his cloth-wrapped bundle and stunted frame for fifteen years.

“Police officers truly are endearing creatures…”

Kōkichi smiled despite himself.

After that, since they were in separate passenger cars, they never saw each other again.

Yet he found himself unexpectedly buoyed by a glimmer of hope on his path ahead. As the train moved forward, he gazed out the pale white window at fields and mountains still thickly blanketed with snow.
The feelings and lives of the people in *Walk in the Light* seemed profoundly dear and yearned-for.
He felt that not only could he come to share such feelings himself, but that leading such a life might not be entirely beyond his reach.
The chance incident with the boy had added fuel to the flames of such feelings within him.

“That’s it! When I return to the countryside, there will likely be many such incidents and pitiable people. In such places too lay a new path he ought to walk. And through his own incompetence and misconduct, he would gather his wife and children who had been scattered so pitifully, working with humble heart to assist his Stepmother in fieldwork. ‘…and create the most simple, true art…’—pursued by one happy fantasy after another, he found himself unable to sleep despite days of intense fatigue.”

II

The next morning, he transferred from the main line to a private light railway and went to visit his brother Sōji, who ran a business in a mining town in Akita.
He stayed there for four or five days.
At this brother and his wife’s place, since last autumn, his seven-year-old eldest son had been taken in.

Sōji had been sorely tried by his brother all this time, but even he couldn’t maintain a dismissive attitude when faced with his haggard older brother’s careworn face.
He tentatively suggested to his older brother that he gather his wife and children on the second floor.
Feeding them wasn’t such a big deal, and he thought that if his older brother wrote something with that apparent confidence of his, it might even turn a profit.

“As we were just discussing—given that things escalated all the way to bankruptcy scares and ended with our ledgers being audited by our business partners—with circumstances being what they are, they might raise some trivial complaints if we were to put you and your family upstairs. But even that wouldn’t amount to anything serious.”
“If you all don’t mind—since it’s in a rented room anyway—if we just say the finances are separate... that settles it.”

That night, when the alcohol had thoroughly taken hold, Sōji said to his older brother:
Given his older brother’s fickle nature, he thought that even if he did return to their father’s house, he wouldn’t stay put after all.

“But when it comes to alcohol—since this will a long-term arrangement—I can’t very well be drinking with you every day.”
“If you drink alone upstairs by yourself, that’s perfectly fine—but if I join you and we end up drinking daily like that, well, it wouldn’t look proper for someone overseeing the accounts.”

This was what Sōji had most feared.

"...Of course, I came back this time fully intending to quit drinking," Kōkichi answered.
"Well...I thought if I could just stop drinking, there might still be room to make a life back home..."

Kōkichi had added this reflexively, but even he could feel his face redden.
Before long, his brother noticed the drawstring cloth bag in the discarded-looking alcove,

“Brother, is that all your luggage?” asked Sōji with an air of nonchalance.

“That’s right,” Kōkichi had no choice but to answer. And then, as if he had just remembered something, he brightened up,

“Actually, my friends who saw me off at the station and I had a good laugh over this drawstring cloth bag.”
“After all, they call it ‘Wealth and Longevity.’”
“They say it’s humanity’s highest ideal—and since you’re carrying this drawstring cloth bag back home, you must be quite the fortunate one yourself. Ha ha ha.”

To Sōji, it wasn’t amusing.
He felt his brother was still spouting such nonsense and drifting aimlessly as ever, so he averted his eyes from the bag.
Inside the bag with “Wealth and Longevity” characters woven like patterns lay a soiled padded robe, shirts, a few stationery items, several books, a sack, sinister-looking medicine, and souvenirs for the child—colored pencils and sweets.

Even through his long years of dissipated living, the seed of affection he had nurtured for his eldest son withered when they finally met after so long—the boy was neither leisurely nor city-pale and glossy as he had imagined.
He wore a shrunken expression, coarse and hardened as if battling through endless winters.
“It can’t be said he fought only against winter,” he thought—the moment he saw his child’s face, he felt his conscience rebuke him.
As he spent days playing with the boy, realizing his intellect hadn’t developed as expected further darkened his mood.

If I had properly finished school, worked a steady job, or even trained in translation, I might not have ended up like this now. But instead, I wasted time fantasizing about creative pursuits that were never suited to me—perhaps that was my mistake.
After all, someone like me—a good-for-nothing—could never manage city life while shouldering a family of a wife and three children.
Returning to the countryside was only the natural course of things.
How on earth did I manage to keep making a miserable fool of myself all those years, mingling among those young, talented singles…

He had sent his pregnant wife back to her hometown when this eldest son was three years old.
After that, she would return briefly only for him to end up living alone again.
But now, when it came to figuring out how he would support such a large family on his own starting tomorrow, no concrete plan materialized.
The boy incident and tasks like carrying fertilizer for his stepmother or picking insects from apple trees—ideas he’d conceived in his excitement over Walk in the Light—now struck him, even without Sōji’s admonition, as things utterly unsuited to his nature.
“I suppose I’m just my brother’s dependent after all…” was all he could think.

Through the second-floor window glass, the two raucous smokestacks responsible for smoke pollution could always be seen belching sulfurous fumes.
Trains carrying coal and ore ran with a deafening roar right beside the house, day and night without respite.
On the surrounding mountains where nothing but stunted bamboo grass and pampas could grow, snow never accumulated deeply.
The whole area had been dug up, leaving an ochre-stained landscape.

“When is Mom coming?”

“In a little while.”
“This time, Tā-chan and the baby will all come too.”
“And we’ll all be here together… It’d be good if they came soon.”

“Ah…”

With a somewhat gloomy heart at the thought of having to bring his wife and children to such an unhealthy land, he had these conversations with his son Kōtarō.

On the afternoon of one of these several consecutive days, worried by Sōji’s letter, the old father from their hometown suddenly appeared.

“I’ll go and send him back.”
“Even if he isn’t sent back, keeping him by Sōji’s side won’t do any good.”
“He won’t do anything decent.”
“Anyway, go see what the situation’s like.”
Old Father had come out with this resolve.

That evening, drinking began among the three, but the old man, whose tolerance had weakened, was soon drunk.
And then he loudly berated Kōkichi.
In the end, Kōkichi began to cry.

“Aren’t those just crocodile tears?”
“Are those real tears?”
“Even between parent and child, there comes a time when you have to shed plenty of crocodile tears.”
“You’re not planning to use those tears to manipulate me and Sōji into letting you idle around for half a year or even a full year, are you?”
“Well, if that’s how it is, fine.”
“I can’t very well turn you away now—not when you’ve supposedly returned with the same resolve as Śākyamuni Buddha entering Mount Dandaka for ascetic training.”
“In exchange, I’ll stop Sōji’s remittances from my side. You’d better find your own way to make a living.”
“In any case, living together is out of the question.”

The kind-hearted Old Father, moved to pity by Kōkichi—who, for better or worse, was the father of three—as he tearfully offered what sounded like excuses, ended up offering some comforting words as well.
What particularly angered Old Father was that Kōkichi had suddenly sent a divorce notice to his wife’s parents’ home early in the New Year.
The incident remained unresolved, and because of this, the relationship between the two households had been cut off.

“What a lawless man you are! Is this not an act devoid of gratitude or obligation?!”

Old Father refused to listen to Kōkichi’s excuses.
And early the next morning, Old Father returned home.
Encouraged by this, Kōkichi set out for his hometown the very next day, taking along Kōtarō, whom his childless younger brother and sister-in-law had wanted to keep with them.

III

On a warm afternoon when steam rose from melting snow on the thoroughfare, Kōkichi, Old Father, Kōtarō, and Old Man Hisasuke—the four of them—left the house together, for there was said to be a vacant house in Old Man Hisasuke’s village that would suit Kōkichi.
After traveling about one *ri* along a snow-covered path soiled by horse manure—a route that followed a river roaring with rapids and was lined with intermittent rows of pine trees—they reached G Village.
Situated along the national highway yet shrouded in the shadow of a great mountain, it was an utterly destitute hamlet with barely a hundred households.

At the very edge reached after rounding a rather long, steep cut-through slope along the mountain’s base, the vacant house deemed suitable for Kōkichi stood modestly.
The front of the west-facing house was blocked by a cedar-covered mountain across the road and a bald mountain towering nearly two thousand *shaku* above it, while behind, the valley beneath the foothills where cedars and pines grew had been turned into rice paddies and fields; beyond those, as far as the eye could see, every mountain had been cleared into apple orchards.
In the lowland adjacent to the front, tall poplars and acacias stood next to the cedar grove, their gray slender branches densely stretching toward the sky.
Beyond the field to the right, the thatched roof of the house owner’s dwelling could be seen.

Tattered straw mats and frayed rush screens hung filthily around the house, while the unkept, roughly thatched roof had decayed into uneven bumps.

“...So this is it? What a terrible house.”

Kōkichi involuntarily widened his eyes as he spoke.

“Farmhouses ’round here are generally like this,” said Old Man Hisasuke.
“Even so, if you folks move in and tidy it up proper, it’ll make a decent enough home.”
“Vacant houses in the countryside are rare as hens’ teeth. There’s a better one further down, but that’s where a tuberculosis patient lived. Couldn’t very well let you folks move in there—figured you’d take offense.”

Old Man Hisasuke intended to say this was more than sufficient.

"With children coming along too, we can't possibly take a house where some sick person lived," Old Father concurred.

"My word, this is rather dreadful," he said in surprise.

When they opened the front door, four tsubo of earthen floor lay before them with straw piled high.
In the eight-tatami wooden room stood a large hearth fire pit, serving as both kitchen and living space.
Beyond that lay a pitch-dark four-tatami bedroom.
The only other feature was a half-tsubo washing area - no closets nor floor mats to be found.
Under the steeply sloped thatched roof's attic space hung thick black soot deposits that stained pillars, beams and floorboards iron-dark.
The unfinished rough walls cracked and crumbled freely, letting outside light stream through unchecked.

“Looks like a house where foxes or raccoon dogs would live.”
Kōkichi thought this through thoroughly and involuntarily voiced his dismay.

“After all, it’s a house that costs just seventy sen a month in rent—this is about what you’d expect,” Old Father said, though his tone carried pity for his daughter-in-law and grandchildren too.

“It’s an old house, no denying that.”
“This was the temple school when I was a boy.”
“A house that’s been rebuilt many times over. The family bought and built it planning to make their second son a blacksmith here, but since he went off to Hokkaido, it’s just been left abandoned, I tell you.”
“Even so, if folks move in and tidy it up proper-like, it’ll look completely different, I swear…”

Old Man Hisasuke repeated this with an unperturbed expression, so Kōkichi wasn’t enthusiastic about it, but in the end, he had no choice but to settle for this...

About ten yen each month was being sent from Sōji to cover such expenses as loan interest and Old Father’s drinking costs. This was the money that Kōkichi had taken from Old Father. The life of Old Father and his family, who had even handed over their house and land to others, was wretched. Old Father earned pocket money through small trade. The Stepmother, working alongside Kōkichi’s fourteen-year-old cousin—her own charge—had become as dark as a demon from laboring in the apple and grape fields. She was an energetic woman with an extraordinary streak and a penchant for sarcasm.

“Our dear brother never seems to age, no matter how often one looks at him.”
“Judging by how you never show your years—they say Buddha was like that too—our brother here might just be a Buddha-like person after all.”
“Heh heh heh.”
In this manner, she would stare unblinkingly at Kōkichi’s sickly face, while Old Father—recalling some lecture he’d heard about Dantokusan—found the whole spectacle darkly amusing.
Through the intuition of a hardworking woman nearing fifty: “No good after all.”
“With a face like that still, he’ll never earn a penny.”
It wasn’t the countenance of a man thriving in his prime.
“Must’ve spent his days reeling about—nothing but drink and debauchery.”
This was what she believed in her gut.
She pitied the wife’s stubborn sense of duty toward such a man.

“In our family, all the women are capable, but the men are a bunch of good-for-nothings.”
“Whether it’s aunts or sisters-in-law… I don’t intend to lose to Old Father either.” … “The mother from across told old woman Kimura, ‘I hear Kudō’s brother has come back with a brain disease this time—Kudō must be at his wit’s end,’ but when you think about it, it really is something like a brain disease after all.”
“Heh heh heh.”

While Old Father and Kōkichi were engaged in a long evening drinking session, the Stepmother would make such remarks, souring the mood between them.

Though they doubted what he could possibly write, Old Father—clinging to Kōkichi’s promises of earning money through novels—kept scraping together funds to buy household goods in town.
Carrying poles for buckets and pot stands were things he crafted with his own hands.
Whether overseeing carpenters repairing the house or pasting old newspapers onto rough walls, Old Father went about these tasks accompanied by his cousin.
All such expenses were meticulously recorded in a ledger titled “G’s Ledger,” its columns filled with expectations of income from Kōkichi’s writing.

One evening, while drinking sake, Old Father turned to Kōkichi,

"I’m doing my best for you here, but just look at other parents—they’re not like this."
"If this were to become known, they’d surely brand me a doting fool."
"...If we’d refused to take you in when you came back this time—since you claim you’d never return to Tokyo to work—what exactly did you plan to do with your wife and children?"

he said with probing eyes.
And so Kōkichi ended up talking about that final plan he had fantasized about in Tokyo.

“At that time, I saw no other way, so I thought of taking my wife and setting out on a pilgrimage through the provinces.”
“For someone like me, trying to work in society would ultimately be futile, and I couldn’t endure that hardship.”
“Of course, whether my wife comes along or not is her choice…”

“Begging for alms, or… what do you plan to do with the children?”

“The children will end up being given to people who want them.”

“Hmm…”
Old Father fell silent.

A few days later, Kōkichi lashed himself past his intense hesitation and rode a train for about an hour to apologize at his wife’s family home.
The wife had reached a state where she could no longer come and go freely.
So he told himself, “If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to them the left also.”
He had whipped up these feelings within himself and set out, but the father-in-law no longer possessed the vigor to drag him close and berate him.
[The father-in-law] listened in silence to his plans for a new life while wearing a smile of contempt and cold derision, but ultimately could only say, “Then I’ll have them prepare and send her within a day or two.”
He had resigned himself to entrusting matters to his daughter’s will this time—there being no alternative.

IV

"My refuge may be poor, but it is safe."
“Now at last I can cast those mask-wearers of art far beyond a thousand miles and calmly contemplate the preciousness of life and the grand, sorrowful fate of humanity…”

In the dimly lit study—where he had cut a crude window through the rough wall of the bedroom and laid down straw mats—he secluded himself with what he imagined to be fortress-like resolve.
Puffed up with pride, he sent letters containing such phrases to his friends in Tokyo.
The five family members had moved to G Village in early May.

He was ecstatic about this ramshackle house and his new life.
And he tried to think earnestly about things like life, the fate of humanity, god, and love.
He believed this would purify the memories of his ugly and humiliating past.
He thought of himself as perhaps a warrior engaged in a tragic battle between fantasy and reality.
And now, having conquered the real world far beneath his feet, he could not help but think that a new life had begun—one that allowed him to solemnly meditate on the great principles of cosmic existence and eternal, unchanging truths.

While his wife laughed at his unsteady posture—unfamiliar to him—he drew water from the roadside gutter below with a shoulder-aching carrying pole and heated the bath.
On mornings when he couldn’t sleep, he would smolder damp firewood in the hearth before dawn and lose himself in the country songs of horse drivers passing along the road.
And due to the novelty of his surroundings, in the afternoon he took Kōtarō for a walk.
Butterbur sprouts were emerging everywhere around them.
They descended from the cliff behind into the rice fields, crossed the railway tracks, and walked all the way to the distant riverside, buffeted by the cold wind.
They brought back things like butterbur sprouts and catkin willow branches.
The snow was almost gone.
Even so, at times the peak of Bōzu Mountain ahead would turn white and cloudy, its feather-like snowflakes forming streaks as if fearing to intersect with one another before being blown diagonally across the early afternoon sky...

“With all these children we have, you being a man might think nothing of it, but did you imagine I could part with them so easily?”
“You don’t have the slightest understanding of what it means for children to be precious.”
“Not even one-tenth of the hardships I bore by intervening could you fathom.”
“I can’t begin to describe how everyone blamed me… ‘We’ll settle things however you like—since there’s clearly no future here, just leave him,’ they pressed daily. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to abandon these children.”
“So I suppose it just proves I’m a fool…”

“There, there—that’s fine too.”
“Everything is in the past.”
“A complete fresh start—our life begins now!”

To Kōkichi, who believed in and was elated by this revolution in their lives, he could not muster genuine sympathy for his wife’s grumbling.

Sōji would visit G Village for overnight stays, bringing various souvenirs out of fondness for the children, as if making excursions to a vacation home.

“It’s so peaceful and quiet here—feels like I’ve stepped into another world.”
“The sort of life where you can go all day without seeing another soul.”

Sōji always said that.
…he would come wanting to spend a day leisurely playing with the children without having to hear unpleasant talk about money.
Kōkichi found it amusing that his brother, having come out from that mountain town, marveled as though he’d entered another world entirely.

“Hmm, I wonder... But for me, the daytime quiet like this is fine, but the nights are scary.
“The wind’s so terrible—it’s like being caught in raging waves—I can’t wait for morning to come.”
“And then there are things like spiders and centipedes falling from the ceiling...”

“It’s not exactly like that… You probably wouldn’t understand, Brother, but I don’t think there’s anything more painful than running a business solely through scrimping and saving.”
“From morning till night, it’s nothing but money troubles.”
“So even when I occasionally come out to relax like this, the thought of what unpleasant incidents might have occurred while I was away makes going home feel so troublesome I can hardly bear it.”
“So when I come here and have a drink like this, I truly feel that way.”
“If I had at least two or three thousand yen left, I’d hole up in a place like this, tend an apple orchard, work in straw sandals—anything to live leisurely… My health isn’t so strong anymore, you see.”
“Even now, that pleurisy of mine acts up a bit when winter comes.”

When the alcohol had circulated through him, Sōji would brush back the long hair hanging over his forehead with his palm and say such things in an elderly tone that clashed with his normally taciturn demeanor.

“I suppose that’s right—business isn’t something that goes smoothly easily.”
“If I could have at least thirty yen in income, you could give up your business and we could all live together.”
“Since Stepmother has no children anyway, my wife and I will take care of my children, and you can work the fields and read books.”
“And let’s keep a horse too.”
“...Can you ride a horse?”

“Of course I can!”
“Because when things got desperate at home, I even bought a horse and strapped on a pack saddle.”

Rather than growing angry at his brother’s perennial habit of spouting nonsense, Sōji felt something between envy and resentment toward the man’s character—how he could casually speak of grasping clouds while asking when this “creative work” would ever materialize into actual income.

“I suppose it’s that our natures differ, isn’t it?”
“I could never stay as composed as you, Brother.”
“Though I suppose without that composure, one couldn’t even think of writing novels or such things.”

“Not really.”
“I haven’t been able to sleep much lately.”
“It’s partly because the nights are scary, but mostly I end up worrying about my work and the kids.”
“I’m currently working on something titled Apparition—meaning I intend to write about the life I’ve lived these past two years or so.”
“When I say ‘apparitions,’ I don’t mean others’—but I’ve often encountered my own.”
“…You’ve never had such an experience, have you?”

Kōkichi said with a serious face.
It had been happening for about two years now—he said that when winter, which he feared most due to his chronic bronchitis and poverty, arrived, he would often be assailed by these apparitions.
He said he lived as miserably as a sick dog driven from its home.
And it was during times like these—when he wandered through parks unable to return to his lodgings, or walked through cold late nights too stingy to pay for a rickshaw while seeking a night’s fleeting pleasure—that he claimed to have often encountered those apparitions.

“…I do get that sort of foreboding in those moments.”
“A strange shiver runs through my body like this, and when I think ‘Ah, you’ve come,’ a white mist-like form slips coldly past my face from behind over my left shoulder.”
My knees clattering and trembling, I whisper with a laugh that wants to be a sob, “Seems it’s too much—here it comes again.”
“I believed my own apparition would occasionally break free from its original form when it couldn’t endure my mistreatment any longer.”

“Hmm... Is that so?”
“Does that sort of thing really happen?… Anyway, you should just write it quickly.”

“That’s right… If only I could write this.”
“After all, I was living a terrible life back then too.”
“I understood nothing of hope or faith—nor things like humanity or love—so I thought to cling to those apparitions instead.”
“My friends said they were hallucinations from alcoholism, but those hallucinations suited me well enough.”
And so I concluded that I—as a person—was ultimately a man with no ability beyond spending my life facing my own apparitions.
“…You may think what you will, but even that sudden divorce notice I sent to my wife’s family—that too stems from such motives…”

To Sōji, his brother’s ghost stories rang hollow, and he felt skeptical of the tone that now seemed to profess an understanding of things like love and humanity—but the diagnosis of alcoholism struck a chord.

“However, that’s rather reckless of you.”
“If you go sending divorce notices so abruptly out of such motives, she’d be put in a difficult position, don’t you think?”

Sōji felt a wry smile at his brother’s logic.

V

April came to an end, and May passed by.
He remained shut away in his dimly lit study, immersed in delusions of apparitions, but no matter how long he waited, those apparitions never materialized on paper.

One day, to repair the roof leak, he hired a man from the village—an acquaintance—for the day.
He felt palpitations in his chest from climbing up and down a ladder not even two ken long.
He was too scared to even approach the edge of the roof.
The man, nonchalantly exposing his dirty loincloth, crouched at the sagging eaves that gave way under his weight and inserted new thatch.

He sat on the roof ridge, basking in the warm sunlight as he recalled his healthy childhood, mocking his own feeble nerves.
The dusky thatched roofs of the village he had never once entered peeked through the fruit trees and cedars now bearing young leaves.
In the cedar grove ahead, cuckoos and bush warblers called back and forth.

Suddenly, from below the street, a man around thirty with a pale face, beard and hair wildly overgrown and dressed like a beggar sauntered past—a sight that caught Kōkichi’s eye from above.

“Who’s that?”

“That? Oh, that’s Sekijirou—the village idiot.”

“Hmm… I see.”

He said it casually enough, but it felt as though his breath was stifling.
"So I'm like that too... So I do resemble him after all."

He perfunctorily descended from the roof and shut himself away in his study.

Pale-faced, avoiding people’s eyes, and living in seclusion, Kōkichi’s existence struck the villagers as something inexplicable.
“Just as I thought—Kudō’s brother here also ruined his mind by failing in his studies…”
They seemed to have reached this conclusion.
Each time the villagers with their stern, burnt sienna faces cast brazenly suspicious gazes upon him, Kōkichi felt terror and oppression.
Even in the depths of his mind—sodden with delusions of a new life—he could not help but feel bitter reflections on his own existence occasionally surfacing like jagged edges.
Tormented by lonely thoughts akin to being a “heretic of life,” he found himself increasingly afflicted.
And he had to watch with sorrow as that same corrosive influence seemed to seep into the tender minds of his young children.

For a long time—nearly ten years—the wife had suffered hardships from Kōkichi’s recklessness and even been made to bear three children. Now that he had decided to return to his hometown, she rather felt contempt for his motives.

“You have no understanding of causing others trouble or showing compassion, do you? You’re completely unperturbed...”

His wife berated Kōkichi at every turn for his lack of independence.
That her husband was being supported by his brother’s hand yet regarded it as perfectly acceptable now struck her as even more pitiful and disheartening.

“You’re far too naive… too honest.”

With these words, she sneered at his insensitivity to others’ emotions and the roundabout way he interpreted every act of kindness as pure goodwill.
“Only someone both idiotically honest and shameless could do such a thing.”
Thus had she assessed her husband’s character.

“Shut up! What do you know…”
He feigned composure as he said this, but deep down still felt reproached…

Morning mist drifted through the valley below, acacia trees still drooping their paired leaves in slumber—on such an early dawn, he who was troubled by insomnia took the early-rising children along, the smallest one carried on his back inside his padded kimono, and played at pulling up bamboo shoots beneath the cedar grove ahead.

“Good morning.”

In the dim light, the village men who ate their morning meals and were heading off to work called out as they passed.
To him, they even seemed like serious, healthy philosophers who deeply understood the meaning of life and existence.
And the feelings he had felt that spring when he saved the boy at Fukushima Station—those very feelings—echoed once more in his chest.

“That’s it!
When I return to the countryside, there will surely be many such incidents and such pitiable people.
In such places too, there lies a new path I should walk…”

However, when he realized that the pitiable person needing salvation was ultimately none other than himself, even he couldn’t help but feel the bitter irony of it all.

Even when apart, Stepmother never failed to send Kōkichi sarcastic letters from time to time.
“Studying too much is bad for your health. Why don’t you get some exercise by gathering horse manure from the roads around here?” she would write.
Whenever Kōkichi received such letters, he felt embarrassed even in front of wife and children but could only mask it with a bitter smile.

“Stepmother’s an honest, hardworking soul who never rests—I’ll grant her that—but I just can’t handle that venomous tongue of hers. If only she’d stop that one thing, though… Even Old Father’s been carried away and turned into a complete weirdo. Stepmother’s been with us over a decade now, but I’ve never even lived three straight months under the same roof as her. I used to think you couldn’t find a more ideal stepmother anywhere in Japan—but now I’ve finally figured out her true nature.”

When Kōkichi drank, he would vent foul-mouthedly to his wife about his grievances toward Stepmother and his indignation toward Old Father, who seemed unable to stand up to her.
The wife sneered at Kōkichi’s foolishness—his having once believed Stepmother to be the finest in all Japan—now laid bare as naivety.
“I, for one,” she declared proudly, “knew from the moment I married into this family that she was no ordinary woman.”

“I may not grasp such matters myself, but they say stepmothers are held especially dear.”
“Stepmothers must inevitably be younger... Had you been in my place and hers, you’d have secured yourself a lovely young replacement by now.”

“That might be how it is.”
“Then you should feel sorry for Old Father too…”
“I’m a complete fool—can’t even understand these things without asking you... Someone like me can’t write a damn thing.”

The stamina to sustain his ghostly delusions had run out, his walks through fields and mountains abandoned, and he spent each day panting through labored breaths. More than ever, he found his own tendencies loathsome—this inclination to lose himself in vapid musings about nature’s embrace being grand or beautiful, as if such things held any relevance to himself. The measure of his evening drinking alone steadily grew. Nearly half of the ten yen became his liquor fund. As a consequence, Kōtarō was often made to carry letters pleading for money and dispatched on the two-mile trek to Old Father’s house… timing these errands to coincide with Stepmother’s absences in the fields. Even so, Old Father,

In letters stating things like, “In light of Kōtarō’s endearing nature, I hereby present one yen. Henceforth, I earnestly entreat that no further requests be made,” Old Father would enclose one or two yen—money he had hidden from Stepmother—and send them.

“If only I’d returned two or three years earlier.”
“Had I been tangled in those petty family squabbles, I might’ve grown shrewder by now—but living adrift like this, I can’t even manage myself properly.”
“Compared to that, Sōji’s far more shrewd than I am.”
“No matter how drunk he gets, he never speaks of such things to me—but only lately have I finally understood how he must’ve felt leaving home to start a business elsewhere.”
“To slip away without letting Old Father and the rest suspect a thing—that’s true shrewdness right there.”

“Well, Sōji’s endured real hardships—he’s nothing like you.”
“So you should never have come back here in the first place.”
“What on earth made you change your mind and come back here?”
“Never knowing what life your parents were living, acting like you’re above everyone else—it would’ve been better for you to keep living exactly as you pleased forever, wouldn’t it? ……For your precious *art*, too, that might’ve been far better—not that we’d understand such things.”
In a tone that seemed to carry confidence that she could live apart from her husband her whole life without hardship, the Wife said.

“It might have been so,” Kōkichi thought.

“After all,” he thought, “it seems it would have been better for someone like me—born a fool—to have resolved to spend my life contending with apparitions.”
“Even if I talk about starting some new life unsuited to me, in the end it just subjects my wife and children to unnecessary hardship.”
Yet he couldn’t believe everything would be resolved even if he followed Stepmother’s proposal—pushing trolleys hauling lumber down from the mountains to earn thirty sen a day.

From early summer onwards, lizards and strange caterpillars would frequently find their way into the house. Every time he saw such creatures, he grew tormented by nerves, convinced they might be envoys of Stepmother’s curses—but according to his wife, it was he himself who posed the far more intolerable threat to their lives, a venomous insect in Stepmother’s eyes.

Every night he would get drunk and sleep soundly until around one o'clock. Whenever he awoke, he was tormented by relentless delusions. At times he would be swept up in visions of being the owner of vast farmlands, splendid mansions, abundant talents, and provisions; at others, he earnestly tried contemplating God, love, and faith—but all ultimately became the scourge of despair that lashed back at him. Exhausted beyond measure, trembling with the paroxysmal fear of pressing a blade against his throat and abdomen, he would sink into another sickly slumber from around dawn. Even when confronted with the children’s vitality—growing as vigorously as nature’s plants and trees—no sense of admiration arose; it was painful.

Six

It was already past mid-October when a letter arrived from Sōji—who had fallen into a second bankruptcy and continued his wretched, futile flailing day after day—saying he had somehow persuaded their uncle to lend him scrolls worth about a thousand yen, and asking Kōkichi to come to Tokyo to dispose of them.
Around that time, a major Army exercise was being held in the prefecture, and soldiers and horses streamed past Kōkichi’s house along the national highway.
One such morning, Kōkichi boarded a train from Old Father’s village and transferred after about an hour to the light railway bound for the mines.

The small steam locomotive—which had that familiar toy-like appearance—pulled along two passenger cars lined up behind a long string of freight cars loaded with ore and coal, chugging along as it went.
Kōkichi was thinking back to how he had felt that spring when he first rode this train, when suddenly it struck him: “I wonder how many more times I’ll have to ride this toy-like train in the future?”—and it seemed to him as though this were his eternal fate.
Tossed about without reason by my own bottomless existence, even my pitiful self—lamenting things like pessimism and anguish—was spared.

The shop was in a state akin to closure, and Sōji’s face had turned gaunt and pallid. Then he promptly guided him upstairs to show the artworks.

There were works attributed to Shūbun, Kazan, Shōhaku, Chokunyū, Mokuan, Teisai, Gahō, Kanbo, Gyokushō—even a fabricated letter by Kumazawa Banzan and calligraphy bearing Danjūrō’s signature. Seventeen pieces existed in total. Their mountings were nothing but splendid. Sōji hung each scroll one by one on the alcove nails, cross-referenced them with the small valuation booklet, and explained each in detail.

“As for this Shūbun landscape—this one is suspicious.”
“If this were the real thing, a single scroll would fetch two thousand yen, but since even Uncle said as much, of course it’s no good.”
“Then there’s Kazan—this one also seems to be no good.”
“Actually, the other day—through an introduction from a doctor at the town hospital—I sent the Kazan and Mokuan pieces to an appraiser connected to a museum. But they were both declared blatant counterfeits and sent back.”
“To our amateur eyes, the ink used in this ‘Kazan Gaishi’ seems far too fresh.”

However, in Kōkichi’s eyes, each and every one was nothing but splendid and appeared to be quite valuable.
The large Kazan hanging scroll depicted an old man riding a tiger that had its mouth wide open in apparent contentment and its tail raised high, with a young man leading it—a vividly colored, detailed painting.

“But even this is quite splendid, isn’t it? You can’t blindly trust what those Tokyo appraisers say anyway. They’ll probably nitpick it for being some country bumpkin’s work and try to swindle us out of it cheap… But this could be the real deal.”

“Well, this Kazan really does seem to be no good.”
“I’ve been hanging them up like this every now and then each day, and the ones that seem suspicious—their flaws gradually become apparent.”
“So, the ones we can stake our claim on from this lot are Shōhaku’s two paired works, Chokunyū, Banzan’s Seiyūken, Teisai—and then Gahō, Gyokushō, and Kanbo. These last three are newer pieces, so they should be fine, of course.”
“Especially this chicken by Gyokushō—a few years back, when Uncle went up to Tokyo and sold Ōkyo’s carp painting or something for two thousand yen, he had Gyokushō paint this one on commission. So there’s no mistake here.”
“And as for Banzan’s letter—this one comes with a certificate of authenticity, so it’s safe.”

The Banzan piece—apparently meant as a tea room hanging—was housed in an imposing paulownia box of its era with leather fastenings.

Though Kōkichi had heard names like Gahō and Gyokushō, he had never seen their works—much less names like Shūbun, Shōhaku, or Chokunyū, which were entirely new to him—making their authenticity impossible to gauge. Yet when cross-checked against the price list, even he conceded that Sōji’s appraisals showed little discrepancy.
And regardless, he found himself awed by Sōji’s shrewdness in securing such a trove.

“It’s really something.”
“Even estimating fifty yen per scroll makes this no small sum!”
“We’re talking five or six hundred at minimum!”
“Anyway, I’ll depart each morning without fail.”
“And have them appraised posthaste for you.”
Kōkichi declared with mounting fervor.

“Let’s proceed accordingly.”
“Initially I exhausted myself trying to foist these upon mine officials, yet when pressed they balked at opening purses.”
“Just recently, some self-proclaimed Kanbo enthusiast brought photographic reproductions from seal imprints for comparison, only to quibble about stroke irregularities in the ‘bo’ character—thus ending negotiations.”
“Therefore, while piecemeal sales might prove feasible locally, securing substantial funds demands Tokyo’s marketplace.”

That evening found Sōji—in rare high spirits—joining Old Father at accounts counter where all three men slaughtered chickens and drank late into night.
The mere prospect of securing at least thousand yen within days cast gleam of delight even upon bleary-eyed figures tending ledger books.

"Brother," Old Father said between drinks, "had we seen this sooner—had you shouldered burden from start..."
"No market here for such wares."
"Tokyo remains our only recourse."

The old man—who had spent this past month sitting at the counter every day with no real work to speak of, merely being made to carry scrolls here and there—now seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

If they sold at the budgeted prices, the uncle would take only two or three hundred yen from the proceeds and lend the rest to Sōji until he turned a profit—a most favorable arrangement.
Uncle said he would use the money for poultry farming—half as a hobby. ……Since losing his ancestral inheritance years earlier through some business venture, Uncle had been scraping by through selling off the remaining artworks and antiques.

“There’s never been a deal this good.”
“God must have saved you, I guess.”

Kōkichi, moved by his uncle’s kindness, said tearfully, his eyes brimming in his drunken state.
And rejoicing that an opportunity had finally come to lend his brother a hand, he set out for Tokyo the next morning, filled with hope.

Seven

Arriving at Ueno Station in the morning, Kōkichi immediately called the inn where Yoshimoto, the up-and-coming writer, was staying.

“You see… I’ve come out here for business this time… Brought items worth around a thousand yen… So lodging costs won’t be an issue. Let me stay at your place for four or five days.”

“Well, just come over then,” Yoshimoto replied after receiving Kōkichi’s faint telephone call.

Wearing a dreadfully outdated serge summer coat borrowed from Sōji and shouldering a large pale-green cloth bundle, Kōkichi boarded the train for the first time in years—yet even he felt awkward about his country-bumpkinish appearance.

It was still before eight in the morning, but Yoshimoto had already finished breakfast, taken a walk, and was sitting properly at his desk.
One or two years prior, a literary magazine had published a caricature of Yoshimoto drinking tea from an absurdly large teacup that seemed to engulf his entire frame. Now, he sat with his delicate, small body cinched in a stiff obi, drinking tea from that same large Raku-ware teacup.

“Well now, you’ve gone full rice merchant—Kakigarachō style, no two ways about it.”
Yoshimoto looked up at Kōkichi slipping into the room, his round eyes gleaming beautifully as he smiled to show perfectly aligned white teeth.
Kōkichi said, “This is it,” and placed the cloth-wrapped bundle in the corner of the tatami room,

“Truth is, this time I’ve brought out our family’s ancestral treasures.”
“Even fire-sale prices should clear a thousand yen.”
“Not for my use—it’s capital for my brother’s business.”

Though his brother had often said as much to him too, Kōkichi believed this warranted such extravagant praise, and so he deliberately imbued the phrase “ancestral heirlooms” with significance when he spoke.

“Well well, let’s save the talk for later. Anyway, you should go take a bath first.”
“Aren’t you covered in soot?”

Fastidious Yoshimoto, concerned about Kōkichi’s unkempt face—unwashed for so long and with a scruffy beard—took out soap and a hand towel himself and kept pressing him.

Yoshimoto had always said, “I lose out constantly through fastidiousness—no, rather through arrogance.
I’m forever being inconvenienced by others.
I’m always chasing after beautiful things only to have mud flung at me instead—in short, arrogance is my affliction.”
He had often declared this.
Kōkichi had suddenly recalled these words in the train car and, after agonizing over whom to impose on for four or five days at most, had settled on Yoshimoto.
Even a request from the disliked Kōkichi—with Yoshimoto’s so-called beautiful arrogance at play—wouldn’t be carelessly refused, or so Kōkichi had reasoned.

“I don’t see how not a single one of all these items could have an appraisal...”

After listening to Kōkichi’s story in its entirety, Yoshimoto said:

“Well, you see, these are just things my uncle took in lieu of loan repayments—so there’s no appraisals or anything.”

Kōkichi answered insincerely.
Then Yoshimoto promptly called his friend S—a Western-style painter—to request an introduction to a suitable Japanese painter, but:

“Apparently S is relocating to Nara with his entire family on tonight’s train—he’s swamped but says he’ll come by this evening to make the introduction. …Anyway, I need to get some work done. Sounds like someone’s here.”
“You go ahead and read a book.”
With these words, Yoshimoto left the room.

A room in the inn had become a temporary editing room for a certain bookstore. Every day, four or five young writers would gather there to work on voluminous translation projects in shifts. Yoshimoto was one of them. There were also one or two familiar faces Kōkichi recognized who, after hearing about it from Yoshimoto, would swing by on their way to the restroom, unfold his heirlooms with apparent care, and remark, “Not bad at all. With this many, you could drink quite a bit.”

The next morning, carrying a letter of introduction from S, he and Yoshimoto visited the residence near Hanzōmon of a rather famous Japanese painter known as M.
Because they had also made arrangements via phone through S beforehand, they were immediately ushered into a bright Japanese-style studio.
Contrary to Kōkichi’s expectation that masters of Japanese painting would be rather unpleasant and pretentious figures, Mr.M spoke in a friendly, cheerful tone.

“Mr.S is enviable, I must say.
“I too am quite fond of moving—even now I keep relocating here and there—though shamefully, it’s always within the city.
“In contrast, Mr.S can relocate wherever he pleases—Osaka, Nara, anywhere his whims take him—straight from Tokyo. Quite the dashing figure!”

After briefly glancing through the letter of introduction, Mr.M also made remarks like this.

In place of the inarticulate Kōkichi, Yoshimoto gave a full account of Kōkichi’s circumstances for coming to the capital.

“Well then, let me take a look…”

While having his young disciple clear away the unfinished silk paintings and paintbrushes from the felt carpet, Mr.M adjusted his seating.

With his heart pounding in a mix of anticipation and unease, Kōkichi began taking out each piece one by one, starting with the major artists: Shūbun, Kazan, and Shōhaku.

“Shūbun, is it…”
After merely unfolding it for a brief look, he made a face that said “Oh my” and pushed it toward the disciple sitting deferentially beside him.
The disciple meticulously rolled it up and tied the string.

Among them, a few pieces seemed to make him tilt his head and examine them carefully, but most received nothing more than a cursory glance before being pushed into the disciple’s hands.
The appraisal of seventeen pieces was completed in no more than thirty minutes.
Throughout this, Kōkichi gathered his attention to conceal his anxious gaze as he peered at Mr.M’s expression, but only the same faint smile lingered at the corners of Mr.M’s lips.
Having finished looking them over, Mr.M seemed somewhat hesitant, but—

“This is rather troubling, I must say.”
“However, given your circumstances for coming to the capital—and since Mr.S’s letter explicitly instructed me to speak plainly—I must say I’d call almost all of them counterfeit.”
“I’m afraid it won’t turn out as you hoped.”
“To speak bluntly, if I were to sell them all, I imagine the proceeds would barely cover the travel expenses at best... This is rather harsh, to say the least.”

Despite everything—Kōkichi’s face, which showed he’d come all the way from the backwaters of Oshu intending to raise business capital with such goods—Mr.M couldn’t help but reevaluate it, speaking in a brisk tone.

“Then does that mean even the newer ones are all counterfeit?”
Yoshimoto interjected with a look of dismay.

“That seems to be the case.”
“As for Mr.Gahō’s works—these don’t appear to have been painted by his disciples either.”
“Likely work from artists of the ○○ school.”
“At one point with Mr.Tamazusa’s pieces alone—even by our known counts—dealers distributed dozens of counterfeits daily to rural areas.”
“I think Mr.Kanpo’s works here are reasonably well imitated—but genuine pieces still show far greater vigor in their brushwork.”
“Truthfully—had there been even two or three decent pieces—I would have introduced you to reputable dealers—but with these—there’s nothing to be done.”
“You’d find it more advantageous to take them back after all.”

Though his tone betrayed irritation at having his work interrupted and being shown such unsightly items, Mr.M went on explaining various matters—perhaps taking pity when he saw Kōkichi’s demeanor, the man’s despondent eyes darting about as if unsure where to rest—
“However, has Mr. Chokunyū ever visited your home region?”
“If he has indeed visited your home region, then perhaps this might be a genuine article.”
“As for what’s called Bansan’s letter here—I can’t authenticate it myself—so this too might fetch a considerable sum.”
“After all, none of these seem to have been passed down in your family for very long, do they?”

Kōkichi felt as if the final remark had dealt him a mortal blow. Overwhelmed with shame, he stepped outside.

After parting ways with Yoshimoto—who had boarded a train saying he was heading toward Ginza—Kōkichi walked along Kōjimachi Street to Yotsuya Mitsuke, switching the cloth-wrapped bundle from his right hand to his left.
The autumn sky stretched clear and bright above streets where decorations for the Imperial Enthronement Ceremony neared completion.
His last hope now hung on two pieces: Chokunyū and Bansan.

He entered a large antique store and first presented the Chokunyū work. The man who emerged from the back—likely the young master—merely unrolled it halfway before rolling it shut again.
Hoping its unremarkable appearance might signal authenticity, he next showed Kitabatakeisai’s ukiyo-e print, only to meet identical dismissal.
Then came Bansan’s letter—the piece he’d retrieved from its paulownia box counting on to fund his return trip. The dealer unrolled it slightly, tilted his head, and muttered, “Hmm... Bansan? —No,” but upon spotting characters on a talisman-like paper inside the box,

“Oh… Bansan’s son—Yūken? Heh heh heh.”

He let out a derisive laugh and retreated to the back with an unfriendly demeanor.

“We do not handle such items here, but another establishment may be willing to consider them.”
The clerk sitting nearby suggested a store in the same district, but Kōkichi, lacking the courage to visit it, returned home utterly exhausted.

“Kumazawa Banzan’s son—Yūken? Heh heh heh… Well, isn’t that grand.”

The editorial staff burst into derisive laughter upon hearing Kōkichi’s story.

“If it were someone like Kumazawa Banzan, we might have some inkling,” said Yoshimoto, his round, beautiful eyes glinting mockingly. “But this ‘Master’ son of his? We haven’t the foggiest clue what he even did. How did this person make a living? No one knows a damn thing. And honestly—what possessed you to go through all that trouble to grandly present letters from such a nobody? I just can’t wrap my head around it.”

“Is Yūken around?”

After Yoshimoto left for work, Kōkichi would lie around reading books when friends began visiting and entering with such remarks.
The letters he had begun sending to Sōji—asking him to send travel expenses so he could return home as soon as possible—did not arrive even after ten days had passed, nor after twenty days of waiting.

“I’ve never met your brother, so I can’t say what sort of man he is—but perhaps he’s decided this is his chance to banish you to some remote island, no?”
“That’d be just great.”

Yoshimoto, increasingly plagued by discomfort and restlessness, began uttering such remarks nearly daily to Kōkichi, who sat with a darkened expression, listless and withdrawn.

“Surely not…”

While imagining Sōji sinking ever deeper into death’s agonizing throes, Kōkichi too became tormented by these mounting doubts.