Pathway to Japanese Literature

The hordes of the dead with familiar eyes gushed forth from my eyes, a multitude living there.

―Baudelaire 1

A doctor died. That was his cousin's spouse. The man lay with a large bruise suffusing his left temple, placed in a long plain wooden box, loaded onto an iron transport cart, and positioned feet-first toward the crematorium’s iron door. Among the rows of iron doors rusted red by intense heat, the largest one—granted special first-class honors—bore silver arabesque patterns entwined like a head waiter’s ceremonial decorations. At the head of the transport cart, a temporary incense burner was placed, from which smoke was rising mechanically. A small-statured old priest in purple robes was reciting sutras in a shrill voice. He abruptly reached into his robe, then flusteredly glanced back over his left shoulder. This time, he glanced back over his right shoulder. And when he noticed Shigeo, he gestured with his palm upturned. He had forgotten. Shigeo took out a folded scroll from his uniform pocket, stepped forward, and handed it over. It was the hymn.

Priest Kōten—argumentative yet witty, even prone to sudden eccentricities—now recalled that he had forgotten the hymn earlier, just as the coffin was about to be moved. “Nope, nope—this ain’t workin’!” he declared in deliberate Osaka dialect, then rushed into the examination room and quickly scrawled onto a nearby scroll. “In this urgent moment—hmm, don’t I have any decent phrases lying around?” he muttered to himself. Though the words seemed hastily improvised, the ink flowed with such masterful vigor that it commanded respect. When he finished writing, he handed it to Shigeo and said, “You, hold onto this for me. “This scatterbrain might drop it again—can’t have that now.”

Shigeo returned to the back row of mourners, leaned his shoulder against the tile-framed window, and lowered his eyes. The sutra ended, giving way to the hymn. The voice deepened into a conversational tone. Somewhere came the sound of a woman stifling her sobs. The hymn advanced toward its final stanza. Encounter now—the bright moon, clear breeze, and your own samadhi Blue mountains, green waters—forge them as one From the very origin, there is no hell Nor does paradise exist If you have not yet encountered Behold—the mountain priest takes by hand and departs... Priest Kōten’s right shoulder jerked upward. He suddenly seized a fistful of powdered incense and flung it into the burner. The hallucination of scattering sparks stabbed at Shigeo’s eyes. Without pause,

The wooden dove cries amidst the flames. ...Katsu! In that instant, within Shigeo’s eyes, the sparks transformed into a raging conflagration. The fire blazed fiercely. Beyond it, Priest Kōten bent forward with officious diligence, opened the coffin’s viewing window, and stuffed the folded paper atop the marguerite flowers. The incense made its rounds. A woman’s stifled sob. The eldest son Tōru—wearing the uniform of a middle school renowned for gifted education, his black necktie crumpled—returned with nervous twitches playing about his eyebrows. Close behind came the deceased’s second wife Umeyo, the hem of her ill-fitting mourning robes flapping clumsily as she returned with bloated bluish features, the rims of her eyes stained crimson. Soon the iron door opened. The transport cart lurched into motion, drawing the coffin inward. The iron door shut, its lock falling with a resonant clang.

Just when he thought stillness had settled, it hadn’t. Shigeo doubted his own ears. Until moments before, the conflagration had blazed within his eyes. Now it had vanished, only to begin roaring thunderously within his ears this time. It was a ferocious sound. It was as though the entire crematorium itself had begun to groan. The moment the coffin was drawn in and the lock clanged, there was undeniably a sense that ignition had occurred beyond the iron door. Yet even then, the noise was too loud.

The over a dozen other iron doors lined up to the left and right were all utterly silent, and though he hadn’t touched them, they felt unnaturally cold. Could it be that they had all been ignited at once? Probably that wasn’t the case. But of course, it wasn’t an auditory hallucination. "The wooden dove cries amidst the flames..." Priest Kōten intoned in a sing-song voice. But it was utterly inconceivable that the deceased, now being cremated inside the coffin, could have transformed into a dove and made such a loud noise. By now, he might be sitting in serene meditation, taking the pulse of the blazing flames. That it must have been Director Kodama who would look most fitting in such a state—this Shigeo thought with his head where a headache was gradually beginning due to the strange sound.

He exited to the courtyard from the very back. Though it was a swirling midsummer heat typical of late July, the air hung yellow and heavy. The crematorium’s peculiar stench lingered because, though there was wind, the air remained stagnant. Amidst this, he saw the deceased’s elder brother—who had hurried from the mountain depths of Tottori Prefecture—tuck up the front of his summer hakama and urinate against a chinquapin tree.

The spacious rest area held only the Kodama family entourage, left eerily empty. Priest Kōten promptly took off his purple robe, bared the chest of his white underrobe, and while busily fluttering his fan, began chattering in a shrill voice about something. The other party was a man named Senba—a director of K Academy rumored to hold considerable sway in a certain ultranationalist organization. Indeed, this was the man who had brought some ten students wearing matching black haori with puffed-up shoulders to today’s memorial service, made their representative read an interminably solemn eulogy, then at his command had them perform the incense-offering ceremony in precise formation. Shigeo had begun dimly perceiving that K Academy’s relationship with Director Kodama went beyond that of mere school physician and institution. Yet what truly lay beneath this remained beyond the grasp of Shigeo—a twenty-three-year-old engineering student. It was less indifference than a wary avoidance born of creeping unease. Mr.Senba himself was said to have wandered the continent for many years—on the right side of his round, boyish face sat what appeared to be an old sword scar. He always maintained dignified composure in haori and hakama formal attire, yet his bearing leaned toward geniality—his well-trimmed thin mustache and small eyes perpetually exuding an amiable smile. He was not one to raise his voice in debate; even toward Director Kodama he assumed the listener’s role. And on rare occasions he would make his small eyes glint and casually utter something conclusive in a smooth voice.

To these two men was added the deceased’s elder brother, who had finished urinating and returned. This man never spoke a word. He was tall, bearing no resemblance to his brother, holding his serious horse-like face upright as he continued listening intently to others’ conversations. Whether he understood or not remained completely unreadable on his expressionless face. Even his laughter held no expression. In this manner he would stay for a week or even ten days. A respected figure in the region, he had long served as county magistrate until the county office was abolished four or five years prior. This was why he occasionally came to the capital for petitions and similar matters. Though born to impoverished peasants in a mountain village, through livestock improvement he had once enjoyed considerable influence. At his zenith he kept as many as three mistresses’ houses and was said to have lavished attention on a Shimane geisha. Thus emerged political ambitions. Or rather, it seemed that ambition had been innate from birth. In his youth he had tried forcing the family trade onto his younger brother Kanji while plotting to leave home himself—but Kanji, who utterly detested farm life, ended up in a violent quarrel with his elder brother and instead became the one to flee. He went to the capital and became a doctor. Having absconded there, his studies were naturally ones of hardship. By the time that arduous study finally began bearing fruit, his elder brother had completely squandered his wealth through successive election failures, ending up smoldering as a county magistrate in remote mountains. It seemed some manner of reconciliation had eventually been reached between these brothers. Yet the younger brother had never once returned to his hometown.

The reason Shigeo had caught wind of such biographical details was that he had occasionally overheard his cousin Teruko coming to his aunt’s house and engaging in family gossip. In his boyhood, Shigeo had been under the care of this aunt. “With the Naval Disarmament Conference turning out like that, even Mr.Wakatsuki and Mr.Takarabe have come back, but will things really settle down now?” “The Privy Council seems set on rubber-stamping things, but military discontent sounds pretty serious.” “I’d say there’s bound to be one hell of a storm brewin’,” “What with unemployment swelling nonstop and Mr.Hamaguchi harpin’ on austerity—might as well say corpses litter the land. Never seen times this dire in all my years.” “Like we’re stuck in a dead end, ain’t it?...”

Priest Kōten was chattering about such things. Mr. Senba responded with deferential “Ah, ah” sounds, offering respectful nods.

“So then, if we don’t get a proper storm comin’, that’d make it a second March on Rome, eh? What d’you say—’bout time next year or so?” “...The Commies took two iron hammer blows—year before last and last year—so they can’t even stand on their own feet now.” “Now it’s your lot’s turn.” “Dr. Kodama was awful anxious too, but just what is this March on Rome...” “Well now, it ain’t quite so simple...” Mr. Senba narrowed his eyes and smiled, flourishing his white fan grandly.

"You insist he won’t go. “But will that suffice? From our Zen perspective, Mussolini’s methods bear some resemblance to Nansen’s cat-slaying. Say what you will, Zhao Zhou handled that situation more skillfully. But looking at Mussolini’s subsequent policies—well now, this ends up being Director Kodama’s borrowed rhetoric, but…” The conversation shifted into prolonged glorification of Mussolini. Mr.Senba listened with a smirk.

Some distance away from the three men, in the innermost seats of the rest area, Umeyo and the bereaved family sat in silence. The eldest son Tōru was a fifth-year middle school student, followed by the eldest daughter Sakiko, second son Shin, second daughter Yukiko, and third daughter Shigeko. And Susumu, the youngest child born to Umeyo, who would turn four this year. Earlier during the incense offering, Susumu had been carried by a nurse in white as he approached the coffin, but now he sat quietly on his mother’s lap. He had a bluish, swollen face resembling Umeyo’s and moved with terrible sluggishness. He hardly made a crying sound. He merely twisted his mouth. Shigeo sat beside Tōru, and in some lonely corner of his heart, he perceived the seven bereaved family members like shadow puppets in dim light.

Near the entrance, in one corner, a group centered around Kanai, the perennial pharmacy clerk, was gathered around a round table, speaking little. Kanai was a stocky, short man around forty years old, with a dark, square face covered in warts and thick-lensed glasses. Then there was Yanagisawa. This was the man who had faithfully driven for the Director—a dilapidated Ford on the verge of collapse—for over a decade now. There had been countless opportunities for him to switch to a more luxurious private car, but this upright man never bent his "principles". Then the economy had slumped, and now he encountered the Director’s death. There were also two young nurses and three hired car drivers.

In short, everyone currently forming the Kodama household from both within and without had now gathered there without exception. These people, having suddenly encountered their central figure's death, now stood at the threshold of embarking upon a new process of dissolution and regrouping.... 'If there were anyone among them struck by profound regret, it would likely be Umeyo-san rather than Yanagisawa. This person held a license as a physician. What kind of history she had in her youth remained unknown, but when she first appeared before us, any interest in life or love for people—whether she had ever possessed such things to begin with—had long since been abandoned somewhere, making her a perfect example of emotional numbness. Had she been allowed to remain as she was, that would have been best for her. Had she merely repeated those motions—following behind the Director or acting as his proxy, her heavy-lidded elongated eyes clouded with drowsy hues as she recorded critical patients' charts or reluctantly applied her stethoscope—then even if not happy, she at least might have avoided becoming an unhappy person. To put it another way, she resembled someone who had uprooted every animal or plant-like element from what we call life, existing solely on mineral matter thereafter. That's right—a listless mechanical doll......Yet this woman, at thirty-eight years old, had been forcibly dragged into the arena of "life," crushed beneath Director Kodama's overwhelming vitality. She had been coerced into becoming a second wife, then made to bear that child who seemed born with congenital aphasia. It was a consummately tragic accident. Not only that—she had also been forced to shoulder that oppressively heavy five-story hospital (unthinkable for a private practice) along with debts likely double the building's weight, only for him to then die abruptly there. Of course in practical terms, that debt wasn't truly hers—no more than the hospital itself ultimately belonged to her. Had she so chosen, she could have left the house at any time as a "stranger" once more. Her medical license would at least prevent Susumu from starving. But even so—whether she could truly return to being that mechanical doll again remained deeply doubtful. Whether through accident or violence—the claw marks of branded "life"; an awakening to something human; the experience of childbirth as a woman; that belated realization (surely both unwelcome and unexpected) that she too had been a woman—in short, this forced inoculation of desire's poison would not readily restore her former cold freedom. She was a pitiful person.

That person’s tears did not appear to be mere tears of sadness. They were likely tears of resentment rather than regret. And that expression—it was one of astonishment and revulsion toward the physiological process itself, whereby tears as bitter as bile were being wrung from tear sacs she had until now believed completely desiccated.… While Shigeo was kneading his capricious thoughts within his youthful mind, the wind direction seemed to shift, and that familiar stench of burning human flesh began settling heavily within the rest area. Umeyo suddenly started coughing violently. Pressing a handkerchief to her mouth in haste, she rose from her seat and vanished beyond the glass door at the rear. Maybe she’d felt nauseous, Shigeo vaguely thought.

That strange odor was, of course, not his first encounter with it today. He probably hadn’t been taken to his grandmother’s cremation, but he clearly remembered his father’s. The father who had died on the dirty tatami mats of a Beppu hospital was cremated on a cloudy autumn morning in the shadow of deserted sand dunes. It was no proper crematorium, but rather a small hut enclosed by straw mats.

That evening, they rode a rickshaw along the long rice field path under slanting sunlight to collect his bones. In the hut behind the sand dunes were only mother, the boy, and a middle-aged mortuary attendant. No—there was one more thing: his father’s skull that had strangely remained intact without crumbling. The mortuary attendant broke apart the skull with long fire-tongs. At that moment wind rose and carried a faint strange odor from within the straw-mat enclosure. It was his father’s lingering scent. For a ten-year-old boy, discerning what that smell was wasn’t particularly difficult. But having his father’s secret—or perhaps an adult secret—thrust upon him in such manner was overwhelming. Moreover, the boy had another worry. He did not want mother to notice that smell. If impossible, he at least didn’t want her realizing he’d detected it himself. ……Fortunately for this secret-loving boy, mother was wholly preoccupied elsewhere then. She remembered well how many gold teeth Father had possessed and kept insisting one was missing. Not greed. It was her innate Edoite stubbornness. Finally,the mortuary attendant dug out from his gathered ash-mound—using cedar chopstick tips—the last gold tooth blackened by furnace heat.Holding it high in triumph,he dropped it into the urn. The boy felt ashamed toward him. To hide this shame he deliberately climbed dunes pretending to watch sea. The overcast sea roared with tide.

The memory of that autumn evening now belonged to thirteen years past. From then until today he had smelled cremation's odor several times. He had been a boy unusually acquainted with death. Each inhalation of pyre smoke had bred this habit - faintly hearing tide's roar somewhere in his heart while sensing brine's scent. To call it sacred memory would be false. Rather its inverse held true. For that ten-year-old boy Father had been distant figure. Far too little had he known of Father. To him cremation smoke's lingering scent first revealed Father's living flesh. Though guilt for glimpsing adult secret clung there through bond with tide-scent it differed little from species of longing. Longing laced with regret's bitterness. For ancient Japanese what lay beyond sea was said to be Land of Dead. Shigeo diverged. Father lingered nearer - within tide-roar within brine-scent. That crematorium stench stirred neither disgust nor fear nor drew him toward impermanence's sense found cause herein.

However, today was quite different. From Kodama Hospital in Nihonbashi Hamachō where the farewell ceremony had been held, Shigeo—alongside small daughters and Kanai—served as the rear of the funeral procession in Yanagisawa’s dilapidated Ford. But no sooner had they passed Sannō Garage and turned into a squalid back alley than he found himself continuously assailed by a menacingly eerie sensation. The back alley was dark. The fiercer the 2 p.m. sunlight grew, the more the townscape seemed to sink into shadow. From one side came the stench of rotting vegetables; from the other, a foul black odor from the tannery assailed them violently. Through this chaos stretched a disorderly line of cattle being dragged toward the slaughterhouse. The automobile came to a standstill. Seizing the moment when the funeral procession scattered apart, a swarm of beggars suddenly surrounded the car. A half-naked boy lay down before the car and impishly stuck out his tongue. The old woman’s wrinkled hand reached into the window. A red-haired woman in nothing but a waistcloth clung to the steering wheel, refusing to let go.

“This is a full-blown paupers’ revolt!” exclaimed Kanai, the perpetual pharmacy student who usually did nothing but smirk, his voice rising shrilly. “They’re exploiting our weakness, damn them!” “No, Yanagisawa—don’t do anything.” “They’ll only grow bolder.” “Better to steel yourself and plow through!”

Yanagisawa began to slip a hand into his pocket before turning red and fidgeting. "This isn't what you'd call a paupers' revolt." "This is an organized revolt of the outcasts," Shigeo thought. This scene somehow made him feel as though he had seen it long ago as a child at the outskirts of some town in Taipei.

After several such disturbances occurred, the car finally passed through the crematorium's gate. Just before reaching it, when they came under attack from the final group, the foul stench of cremation grew oppressively thick, and Shigeo felt a wave of nausea rise in his throat. It was his first time experiencing this.…

Before he knew it, the rest area fell silent. When he looked, Umeyo had joined Priest Kōten’s group and they were whispering among themselves. The one shaking his head repeatedly while continuing to murmur was Priest Kōten. With an expressionless upturned gaze, Umeyo would occasionally give slight nods or shake her head decisively. The strange odor had grown fainter than before. The roar of the conflagration had also receded into the distance. "But still, this is hell," Shigeo thought. "Where? Beyond that iron door now engulfing Director Kodama’s flesh in raging flames?" "In that dark alley where people cackle while extorting coins?" "At the seat where four whisperers conspire?" "Surrounding those bereaved children forming silent circles like shadow puppets?" "Or where Yanagisawa and Kanai—integral parts of the Kodama household these ten-odd years—reside?" "No—could hell dwell within this very self contemplating such things?" "Or..." Shigeo murmured almost aloud, vacant eyes sweeping over them all—"Or was their existence itself hell from inception? Those former Kodama household members who died one after another these ten-plus years—two or four or six... Was their very living hell itself?"

With utterly unexpected vividness, Shigeo saw the dead rise up in the darkness behind his eyes. Simultaneously, unexpected cross-sections from his boyhood began to emerge one after another, as if illuminated by will-o'-the-wisps. He sank deeper into the world of recollection. Like a mariner on the verge of drifting toward unknown islands……

2

A compact red-brick hospital. The gateposts—also built from red bricks and pressed nearly flush against the entrance—bore a weather-beaten wooden signboard boldly inscribed with "Kodama Hospital." A signboard jutting from the low brick wall disclosed that the director was a "physician" named Kodama Kanji specializing in internal medicine and pediatrics. Sandwiched between two-storied shuttered houses on either side, the bricks appeared unnaturally darkened, straining under their cramped conditions like something struggling to endure. This was the impression imprinted on ten-year-old Shigeo when—having returned from Taiwan to Tokyo—he first passed through Kodama's gate.

At the point where the Kanda Aqueduct passed Ochanomizu and neared Yanagihara Riverbank, there was a canal that branched off to the right and ran straight south. What the canal was called he did not know, but it was that which eventually flowed into the foot of Nakasu. Spanning it was a small wooden bridge called Hisamatsu Bridge, and directly across from it stood the Meiji-za theater. The hospital was situated directly facing the side of the Meiji-za, which must have made it appear even more cramped-looking.

When one stepped up into the entrance cluttered with haphazardly discarded footwear, there in the waiting room—where a threadbare carpet covered every inch of floor—three or four figures would always huddle in backlight as if crouching. The light came from the pharmacy where lamps burned even in daytime, filtering through the frosted glass partition. The dead end opened onto a mere token of a courtyard, blocked by neighboring houses' tall wooden fences where light scarcely penetrated. There stood a narrow veranda like a covered corridor, its corner stacked with four latticed wooden boxes emitting a vile stench. Guinea pigs were kept there. Patients and visitors would slip past these cages to reach the restroom. Within disinfectant-tainted twilight, the boy would find his bodily urges vanishing. Looking up revealed large glass tubes of unknown purpose hanging ominously from walls......In those early days, the boy's impressions remained imprisoned within this world alone. So strangely vivid were these impressions that escape proved impossible.

The boy, with his pale willow-like constitution that meant he would develop a fever at the slightest provocation, was made to commute quite frequently to this hospital via the Tsukiji-Ryōgoku-bound train from his aunt’s house within Yotsuya Mitsuke—where he stayed with his mother. It was an arduous journey that took a full hour each way, and especially as dusk approached, the sense of loneliness was beyond description. That terror too must have been projected onto Kodama Hospital’s image. Gradually, the boy’s eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. To him, Kodama was less a cousin-in-law than a terrifying doctor—though he must have already been forty at the time—his pockmarked red face always meticulously groomed as he sat neatly in a swivel chair wearing his white examination gown. When the boy gingerly took a seat on the small chair, Kodama stopped writing something in crude Western script, turned around abruptly, and said without smiling, “You’re still as pale as ever.” He would invariably pick up a round spoon and command, “Open wide.” Having his throat vigorously swabbed and being forced to gargle, on the white wall of the examination room from which he would flee panting, glass tubes identical to those hanging near the restroom always dangled down as if forgotten.

The boy who fled found his first refuge in the pharmacy. After all, he needed to get the medicine and go home—that necessity too played its part. Waiting in the waiting room among sullenly silent people was utterly unbearable. Everything there—newspapers, entertainment magazines, zabuton cushions, chairs with exposed cotton stuffing—no, even the very air itself seemed to him swarming with disease-causing germs. But climbing up to the second floor to disturb his cousin Teruko also felt too forward. Teruko was petite and looked young, but she was seventeen years older than the boy. She was constantly occupied with housework and childcare (she had three children, the eldest being four). His aunt had mentioned she was soon to have another—something the boy had overheard—so it stood to reason that someone of her inherently unsociable nature couldn’t be expected to act amiably even toward a relative’s child. At times she would call him upstairs for tea and ask about school matters, but even without malice, the boy keenly sensed her underlying distraction. With an infant on her lap, she would begin tallying numbers on the abacus. The boy, feeling ill at ease, invariably retreated downstairs. When that happened, only the pharmacy remained as his sanctuary.

The owner of the pharmacy was Kanai, the pharmacy clerk. The Director had taken in his nephew Shirō from the countryside and made him attend medical school; Shirō too occasionally helped prepare medications. He resembled his father Kodama Ichitarō with his horselike face, pale complexion, and sheepish eyes behind thick nearsighted glasses. The protrusion of his jaw perfectly mirrored Amako from Kitazawa Rakuten’s popular ponchi cartoons of that era. He specialized in blurting out absurdities that made everyone laugh. But since he too was usually absent during daytime hours, Kanai became terribly busy whenever patients crowded in. Thus when the boy entered and busied himself reading boys’ magazines in corners or peering warily at poison-labeled glass cabinets with locks and rows of bottles behind intimidating “Hazardous Drugs” notices, Kanai would sometimes ask him to grind mortars or divide measured powders into equal medicinal wrappers. This work delighted the boy. To be trusted by adults—what a marvelous thing that was. Perhaps Kanai was the first—and might remain the last—person in this world to place faith in Shigeo. Kanai praised him as quite a good lad and would mix tasty drinks from saccharin and citric acid as rewards. He himself would then narrow his eyes as if savoring the flavor while drinking. “Oh, it’s nothing special,” he’d say through sips. The boy felt fondness for this kind soul who bore the nickname “Warty Toad.”

In contrast, the young nurse Nakagawa was someone the boy had disliked from the very beginning. She had plump cheeks that swelled like translucent cherry blossoms. They were droopy eyes dripping with saccharine sweetness. Yet she was appallingly arrogant and stingy to the core. At night she would roam about still wearing her terrycloth nightgown. When the Director was away she would crank the examination room's gas stove to full blast, sit with legs cocked high, and flip through Entertainment Graphic's pages by licking her fingers. Her hair always hung disheveled yet emitted a pungent Western perfume when passing by. ......One time while helping Kanai in the pharmacy he realized he'd left his furoshiki bundle on the examination room's corner stool. The boy slipped into the corridor slid open the glass door and peered inside. Then Nakagawa flusteredly emerged from behind a curtain darting out as if to bar his path.

“You mustn’t come in now!” she said. Her face clearly bore a look of base contempt. “Get that bundle,” the boy pointed. Nakagawa swiftly snatched up the furoshiki bundle, used it to push him back against the chest, and sharply slammed the sliding door shut. Her red mouth twisted as she jerkily rolled her eyes upward at an angle—that expression of hers was visible through the glass. She seemed to click her tongue. The boy felt a searing humiliation. But through a fissure in that fury, he swiftly noticed: the white curtain inside the room half-drawn, the enigmatic glass bottle—the usual one—suspended from a cord stretched across the ceiling, its black rubber tube dangling beyond the drape. Behind that curtain, something that must not be seen was being conducted. Of course, the boy had not even a clue to imagine. But when he thought about it that way, Nakagawa’s expression now seemed to be saying he was a child not to be let out of sight! That doubled his frustration.

(This was a story I first heard from my aunt years later—though Kodama had publicly listed internal medicine and pediatrics as his specialties, due to Hamacho’s location, his clientele apparently included many from the demimonde.) Since that was his specialty, and given that old Dr. Kawai’s Naniwa Hospital operated just behind them on the adjacent street, Kodama had initially restrained himself out of deference. But ultimately unable to refuse such cases, he fell helplessly into deepening animosity with the elderly physician....When Shigeo heard this story, he finally realized why there had been so many female guests with yellowish faces and upturned eyes in the backlight of the waiting room.)

In time, the boy became a sixth grader in elementary school. At the Kodama household, his "radius of action" began to gradually expand from this time onward. In other words, it was as if he had been granted partial entry into the adult world. This was also due to circumstances that as Kodama Hospital had become increasingly prosperous, during the ostentatious social engagements of Bon and year-end seasons when the housewives could no longer manage everything, the boy had come to be relied upon as a convenient and unassuming assistant who would stay overnight to help. The boy’s mother seemed to regard this as an ideal opportunity for life education for her timid and reserved son who tended to be daunted by society; far from opposing it, she rather adopted an attitude of encouragement.

Teruko’s nature too had gradually become comprehensible to the boy. Her initially brusque appearance stemmed partly from an unpretentious, unadorned character, and partly from days so hectic they made one’s head spin—a busyness that often plunged her into trance-like detachment. Perhaps reflecting this uncomplicated nature, her features were by no means beautiful yet possessed an agreeable harmony. To be precise, this assessment accounted for the innocent air born of her wide-set jaw—what might be called a goby-like spread—and slightly oversized nostrils. To put it simply, she remained both physically and mentally unable to shed her schoolgirl-like disposition despite being a mother of four.

There was an interesting episode regarding how Teruko came to marry Kodama. After graduating from a girls' school in Yokohama, she worked for a time as a substitute teacher at an elementary school in the Tsurumi area. One windy day, as Teruko gathered her female students in the schoolyard for calisthenics practice, a gentleman emerged from the school entrance and began observing them from beneath a cherry tree. Assuming him to be just another visitor or parent, she boldly bared both arms with her tasuki sash crossed in an X-shape, demonstrating forms to the students and dashing about to correct their postures—yet whenever she moved positions, the gentleman would shift his own location too. He darted between cherry tree trunks with swift strides, never breaking his intense gaze. She ultimately concluded he was scrutinizing her from every possible angle. "A strange man came to observe today," Teruko told her mother upon returning home. "He might be some sort of pervert." Some time later when marriage arrangements materialized and they finally met face-to-face, they discovered it had been Kodama all along. "A meeting where you only look at faces is so dull—you must observe humans in motion," Kodama reportedly declared with a Rodin-esque flourish. True to his medical discernment—which proved unerring—Teruko was consequently made to bear children in rapid succession year after year. "How could you ever bring yourself to live with such a bear-like man?" the samurai-descended aunts would often taunt Teruko. Not only was Kodama pockmarked, but coarse hair covered him from face to knuckles. "But it worked out well enough, didn't it?" "A man who works that hard is rare these days." Their tone vibrated equally with envy and contempt—aristocratic women toward this upstart.

Indeed, this doctor was a monster of fighting spirit and relentless drive. He had struggled through a second-rate medical college, but if asked about the hardships of establishing—small in scale yet rock-solid—his foothold in Nihonbashi’s prime location, he would only laugh and never answer. He was deeply inquisitive, logical in reasoning, and possessed a dreamer’s temperament that perpetually aimed for tomorrow. “Clinical work? Utterly boring stuff. Merely prolonging five or ten lives by a little bit, you see. The true essence of medicine lies in theoretical medicine... What’s that? Does it hurt? Well then, if you want to get better, you’ll have to endure a little.” He would casually make such abrasive remarks even during house calls. From the time when patients found injections unsettling and fellow doctors rarely used them to cater to that sentiment, he had been administering them vigorously. To patients of that time who had not yet become injection-weary, it worked surprisingly well. Because of this, there were colleagues who whispered behind his back, calling him a quack doctor, but when it came to pediatrics, the sharpness of his diagnoses and treatments had honestly left them speechless. For it was not uncommon for infants who had been given up on by other doctors to be brought in and then miraculously revived by him.

There was nothing that made Kodama’s expression as serious as when he examined children or read German medical journals. He would pull his clean-shaven, rugged jaw firmly tight, unconsciously jut out his upper lip adorned with a small mustache, lower the eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses that until moments before had glinted with sardonic amusement, and remain utterly still like that for five minutes, even ten. The children too became quiet, as though cowed. While taking the pulse or applying a stethoscope, it felt as though he was gazing intently not at the sounds within them but at something beyond.

"Indeed, an eminent physician truly is different," said the middle-aged cousin to Kodama, who was examining his son—this being the first time he had witnessed such a scene. This cousin—a second-generation aristocrat—clearly felt a class-based distinction toward Kodama, hence his somewhat mocking tone. "When it comes to you, Dr. Kodama, we adults get treated like daikon radishes or potatoes. “We get grabbed firmly and suddenly jabbed with a needle.”

“Well, perhaps so,” Kodama retorted with a smirk while ordering the nurse stationed behind him to prepare an injection. “Adult illnesses are utterly uninteresting.” “They’re already fully formed, you see.” “Whether they heal or not becomes obvious either way.” “But children differ.” “Children never cease to terrify us.” “There exists nothing more incomprehensible than this.”

Then he washed his hands, requested some traditional Japanese sweets, popped two or three into his mouth with relish, and briskly departed by automobile. It was a used Ford, and the driver named Yanagisawa had been hired along with it to live on the premises. Yanagisawa was not the only one. By that time, the number of people at Kodama Hospital had increased considerably, at least from what the boy could see. The nurses had increased to two.

Shirō left school and loitered around the pharmacy and examination rooms. The maids increased by one—a middle-aged, slightly plump woman—who mainly looked after the children. Another part-time worker appeared: a tall man in a serge suit who strode into the examination room and even came and went through Teruko’s second-floor living quarters. He was called Nagase-san, but the boy never figured out his role. He always clutched a document bag. Sometimes he would settle into Yanagisawa’s automobile and leisurely depart for unknown destinations.

The boy couldn't quite grasp how Kodama Hospital's already cramped building accommodated its swelling population. To be sure, while presenting as a two-story red-brick structure from the front, the interior followed conventional Japanese housing design—divided moreover into a front second floor and back second floor. Not only that, but just when you noticed what appeared to be a mezzanine-like space in some odd corner, there'd be a staircase beside it that seemed to ascend to a third floor. In essence, as Kodama Hospital expanded, it had likely kept layering increasingly haphazard extensions upon extensions. It stood as an archetypally Japanese predicament.

For the boy, there should have been no forbidden zones left by now, but since the back second floor seemed to be the domain of nurses and maids, he had neither reason to go there nor had he ever done so. Even on the front side, the range he could freely enter was limited to two rooms on the second floor—the housewife’s living room that doubled as the couple’s bedroom and the children’s shared room further back. The mezzanine and what appeared to be third-floor rooms above still retained their labyrinthine mystery, remaining a world of darkness for the boy.

As the population increased, gradual changes began to appear in people’s lifestyles. The role of managing the pharmacy gradually became Shirō’s responsibility, with a newly arrived teenage trainee nurse serving as his assistant. The cages for guinea pigs and rabbits continued to multiply until finally a roof was erected over the courtyard, occupying most of the space there, and Kanai had apparently been promoted to caretaker. “They reek something awful. “Hey there, boy, take a whiff of this!” Kanai had once dashed into the back servant’s dining area—though it was really just a four-and-a-half tatami Japanese room with thin straw mats—and thrust his cupped hands toward the boy’s nose. More than the stench, more than anything, his palms were thickly smeared with bluish filth, and the boy involuntarily averted his face. Still in his white lab coat, Kanai dashed from the kitchen into the bathroom and began making splashing sounds with the faucet. Even so, Kanai was diligent. “What on earth are they planning to do by keeping so many rabbits? “I just can’t fathom the Director’s thinking,” he grumbled with a congenial expression, yet all the while diligently jotting something down in a blank notebook. There were times he would make microscope slides from small glass fragments. He would sometimes examine them under the microscope in the examination room. After finishing that, he would revert to his nonchalant expression, coil up in a corner of the pharmacy, and as always, use citric acid and saccharin to make tasty drinks for the boy.

Among them, the one who appeared to be bearing the brunt of the inconvenience was Yanagisawa, the newcomer driver—or so it seemed to the boy. Though secondhand, Dr. Kodama had acquired an automobile ill-suited to a small private hospital, intending to boost efficiency as his workload grew increasingly hectic. Yet from an external viewpoint, this efficiency showed no signs whatsoever of improving. Mornings being reserved for house calls should have left Yanagisawa idle, yet he rose at dawn to sweep the front grounds and such. It was simply in his nature. Around one in the afternoon, he would drive out with the director on his rounds. After that, they wouldn't return until one or two in the dead of night—not because patient homes had multiplied significantly, but rather because Dr. Kodama's argumentative tendencies had intensified under the convenient pretext of automobile ownership.

It had been mentioned before that the boy was staying at his aunt’s house with his mother. In that house, there was also a cousin attending liberal arts at a private university—in other words, Teruko’s younger brother. In addition, they were caring for two children from relatives. The dark house, with only four rooms, took on an appearance somewhat resembling a daycare center. Among them, the two children were precious charges entrusted by certain relatives, so the aunt’s distress was far from ordinary. Even if there was just a slight fever, they would call Kodama. Since it was a request from his wife’s mother, Kodama too would reluctantly arrive by automobile. When he examined them, it was usually nothing serious.

“Well now, Auntie, you might as well go to some shrine and get yourself a worm-warding charm instead.” “If you leave it be, it’ll heal in another two or three years. There’s no call for a doctor here.” He said such things bluntly. Dr. Kodama was well aware of the environment and circumstances surrounding the boy’s birth. Instead, once the examination was over, he would seize the cousin and launch into lengthy debates. The boy remembered the name “Oiken” frequently popping up, but beyond that, he could make no sense of what was being discussed. The cousin was a man who seemed like a cross between a naturalist and an adherent of the passionate school, living a deliberately grimy life very much like that of the typical private university student he was. To this cousin, Kodama appeared to be vigorously expounding on the merits of philosophy. “You know, I should have become a philosopher rather than a doctor.” “Even if you take someone’s pulse, you can’t grasp the essence of life.” “Your own pulse, your own pulse.” “For that, it’s still philosophy.” “Huh? Literature?” “I’ve read my share of naturalist novels.” “That’s not taking a pulse—it’s more like you’re stroking your own navel, you see.…”

Thus began another round of the Oiken debate. Even when notified through the relayed telephone call about an emergency patient’s arrival, he kept stubbornly arguing while picking at Japanese sweets until his opponent conceded with a “Yes.” Finally on the third call—“Damn, my apologies!”—he hastily grabbed his briefcase and departed. This appeared to be more or less the same at every house call he made. The only variation lay in the discussion topic.

“If he keeps that up soon all our patients will lose their goodwill,” warned aunt-like relatives through thin lips yellowed by years of herbal cigarettes. “I’m fine with such matters,” Teruko answered while smoothing her faded apron’s hemline—a habitual gesture from her boarding school days. “If anything we gain more patients until it becomes troublesome.”

When he returned home past one o'clock, then came the late-night meal. Since he didn’t drink alcohol, that part was manageable, but after the late-night meal, he would read for a while longer. Kanai came up and diligently reported on the guinea pigs and rabbits. He gave tomorrow's instructions to Kanai. Teruko, during that time, opened the ledger on the nearby desk and calculated with the abacus. Of course, the boy had not frequently witnessed such aspects of the director’s daily routine with his own eyes. However, the clinic’s life—brimming with vitality, sleep deprivation, and another element altogether: an unfamiliar downtown bustle that intrigued the boy—was more than enough to pique his curiosity. The boy’s eyes gradually opened. The layers of labyrinthine darkness were peeled back one by one.

3

The eldest son, Tōru, had been made to learn the violin even though he had not yet entered elementary school. Ever since he was four or five years old, he had been sensitive to the rhythms of things. Whenever the maid washed rice in the kitchen, he would toddle over, place both hands on his hips, and begin counting out the beats—"One, two, three, four..." Since this occurred every morning, it wasn’t long before he was declared a genius. It was Kanai from the pharmacy and Nurse Nakagawa who first started making a fuss, but when the half-joking theory of genius reached Director Kodama’s ears, he immediately became serious. Amidst his busy schedule, Dr. Kodama even went so far as to station himself in the kitchen for about a month to observe his eldest son’s movements. As a result, a petite non-commissioned officer around twenty years old—the son of a fellow townsman serving in the military band at Toyama School—began visiting every Sunday in his flashy military uniform.

Tōru was a nervous yet affectionate child who had grown particularly attached to Shigeo. There was even a sense of him clinging with devotion. On Shigeo’s part, he felt something akin to repulsion toward this precocious "genius child." Of course, it wasn’t jealousy. A visceral revulsion kept rebounding within him. The very sensation of being clung to proved unbearably repulsive. Shigeo was a boy who had convinced himself that precocity was something he alone should possess in full measure… He was the sort who might seriously warn, "If you touch me, your skin will get sullied." For him, physical disgust outweighed spiritual revulsion by untold degrees.

Among the people in the Kodama household, the first to strongly capture Shigeo's interest was Tōru's mother—that is, his cousin Teruko. When Shigeo, now in sixth grade, went to visit Hamacho during spring break, Teruko was in the second-floor living room reading a magazine, her face bearing a rare, leisurely look of idleness. The children were nowhere to be seen.

As Shigeo sat silently in a corner, Teruko suddenly seemed to notice and said: “Ah, I’ve gotten a craving for Western food... What do you like, Shigeo-san? Just say whatever you want.” The boy turned red. He was too poor to know the names of Western dishes—and what’s more—the very act of being treated stirred up a precocious sense of humiliation. "There’s no need to hold back," Teruko said breezily and rang the bell on the square telephone atop the office desk. The boy pricked up his ears at the names of dishes being ordered—unusual names he couldn’t understand.

When the plates appeared from within the lacquered food carrier—stacked like a tower and divided by wooden rings—the boy likely felt genuine joy and curiosity for the first time in his life. An impeccable fragrance and the promise of flavor lingered there. The dream had been realized. The boy ate as though studying, stealing furtive upward glances at his cousin's fork and knife movements all the while. His gaze would occasionally wander up to her profile as well. With her usual vacant expression, she slowly brought the fork to her mouth. Each time her white temple moved, he noticed a single vein visible beneath the skin. He thought his cousin beautiful. Yet what made him happiest above all was finally sharing a secret that belonged solely to them.

On rare occasions, Teruko would drop by Kōjimachi no Sato on a whim. In Hamacho, one wouldn’t have noticed, but upon coming to the house in Kōjimachi, even from her casual movements, the smell of medicine wafted. It was that smell—the one that makes doctors unapproachable to us. That was the odor Kodama was always emitting. The boy felt jealous. He felt as though Teruko's sacredness had been tainted. Her visits to Kōjimachi always occurred in the early afternoon, their purpose being to compensate for sleep deprivation. She would come up with a pale, exhausted face. “Your eyelids have gone double again,” said Auntie. Teruko would sometimes mutter in a low voice, as if tossing the words aside: “Ah, I’m so sick of this life.” She lined up cushions in the inner room and hurriedly lay down. Quiet breathing began. The boy, in the adjacent room separated by sliding doors, clung to a small desk while holding his breath. He felt himself like a knight guarding a princess’s sleep.

Among the boy's relatives, there was a family gathering called the "clan meeting" held twice a year, in spring and autumn. Usually held around midday, the venue would either borrow a spacious residence from among the relatives or head out to an amusement park in the suburbs. It was a family gathering that had been started with the intention of comforting the old viscount—the most senior member among all the relatives—in his retirement after he had abdicated the family headship to his son. There were so many relatives. When things were going well, nearly fifty people would gather. Though he was a boy who disliked being among crowds—one who usually looked down on most relatives or held resentment toward them—he had unwittingly come to attend these gatherings willingly. Because there were many relatives, there were also numerous cousins—whether distant or close. The boy also had many girls who were like older sisters around him. A girl who had a sun-darkened face when seen in spring might by autumn become an unrecognizably prim and proper young lady, her yuzen kimono sleeves weighted with dignity. But above all, what truly enlivened and enhanced this gathering was the group of about seven female cousins. Among them were some he found disagreeable, but at least five captivated the boy’s heart in various ways—through their unadorned elegance, their beautifully oval faces, the ineffable cadence of their conversations, or their smooth, graceful gait. The boy may have dimly discerned something like a hierarchy of beauty there. If "class" sounds too harsh, I could rephrase it as "categories of beauty." Those female cousins, on that day, cast aside their usual pretenses and let loose in wild commotion. They reveled in the civic freedom of a standing oden buffet. But when mingling with such female cousins, Teruko—petite, schoolgirlish, and utterly unremarkable in appearance—somehow seemed to the boy to be the most important person. The sense of her preciousness carried an almost carnal intensity…

When it came to Kodama, he was an indispensable popular presence at these clan meetings. Yet he never remained in that seat for even an hour. In his professional attire of black suit and striped trousers, he would appear like a black wind in Yanagisawa's dilapidated Ford, then vanish like a black wind. When Dr. Kodama materialized, the middle-aged men's group would suddenly stir with excitement and swarm around him. Amidst their circle, he would voraciously demonstrate his appetite, emit monkey-like shrieks of laughter, scatter venomous remarks like "Well now, still alive are we?", repeatedly extract his gold pocket watch to examine it, then hastily depart with an ape-like crimson face.

The boy became a middle school student. From the end of that year into the New Year, he stayed over at Kodama Hospital for about ten days. As usual, he had been introduced as an assistant for Teruko’s household management, but this time, being a middle school student had earned him greater trust, and he found himself quasi-promoted to a secretarial role. The boy both stumbled and felt somewhat proud.

As the pressure mounted, the disorder in Teruko’s living room continued to rise sharply. In the shallow alcove, a mountain of year-end gifts in assorted sizes had been piled up. By the desk, no sooner were bundles of bills stacked than they began rapidly collapsing. Where they came from and where they went—the boy couldn’t begin to imagine. “This year really has gone mad!” Teruko muttered in an irritated tone, impatiently flicking the abacus beads. The blue vein on her temple even appeared to pulse visibly. Two young attendants from the Meiji-za theater carried in crates of mandarin oranges bound with coarse straw ropes. Catching sight of them mid-stride, the Director offered a curt “Ah” before departing in the Ford.

The already cramped waiting room became so crowded at times that one couldn’t move. The pharmacy counter, which normally used only one window, now had both open. One was used for handing out medicine, with Shirō—wearing thick glasses resembling goldfish eyes—in charge, while Nurse Nakagawa temporarily assisted with the task. Unlike her usual indolence, Nakagawa moved with peculiar eagerness, her disconcertingly rosy thick fingers working deftly. The boy went back and forth between the pharmacy and the second floor at intervals. The other window served as the cashier’s station where Kanai dispensed flattery while handling paper trays. Beside it piled bills and silver coins that the boy came down from the second floor to transfer.

One evening (though since electric lights burned in the pharmacy even during daytime, the exact hour remained unclear—) there came a moment when, as Kanai struggled with counting bills, the boy found himself absently watching the movements of Nakagawa’s fingers. At terrifying speed, the chubby rose-colored fingertips moved, and in the blink of an eye, medicine packets were folded and stacked like bugles. Of course, since that mortifying experience long ago, the boy had maintained a physiological revulsion toward this nurse. Yet in the glow of the daylight-colored lamp, those briskly working fingers held a cloying allure.

“Now then, I’ll entrust this to you,” Kanai said, turning around at that moment. His glasses gleamed dully, their light fleetingly catching the rose-colored fingers under the boy’s gaze—or so it seemed. —The boy hastily averted his eyes. Yet in that instant, he noticed Shirō’s drooping eyes were likewise fixed on Nakagawa’s fingers—and had been for some time. It became an odd collision of gazes. Feeling blood surge to his face, the boy raced upstairs as though slipping beneath Kanai’s smirking visage.

Teruko, her white forehead creased into an eight-shaped wrinkle as she glared at the ledger, showed the boy a postcard when she saw his face and said, “Could you write the reply for me?” “A simple one will do.” The boy managed to decipher the feminine scrawl and began pondering. The vexation from earlier kept interfering with his thinking. He wanted to offer Kanai some word of explanation. Yet he felt keenly aware of its impossibility. At the same time, I found myself most contemptible for even considering such a cowardly act as making excuses. The pen trembled violently in his grip. Maintaining his thin veneer of composure, he began writing in archaic formal prose. Each successive phrase betrayed his confidence.

That evening, Dr. Kodama returned early from his house calls, slid open the living room shoji with a clatter, and said, “Ah, I’m starving. Could you fix me some tea-soaked rice?” he told Teruko, then scooped up the postcard from the desk and began reading silently, one hand thrust into his coat pocket. Then, flipping it over with a flick, he muttered, “This is dreadful. Who wrote this?” and tossed it aside. Teruko answered expressionlessly, “Who knows?” and rose from her seat...

That night, even after burrowing into bed in the back children's bedroom, the boy found himself unable to fall asleep. Though the Meiji-za theater had long since closed, through the window glass he could still sense the dull swirl of heated commotion in the streets. There lingered an atmosphere like some dark crimson river flowing. As this gradually subsided, the frost of the winter night began to permeate. The sound of a street vendor's flute slowly drew near, then slowly faded away. Mingling with it, the crisp clatter of wooden clogs hurriedly coming and going suddenly grew distinct. The noise clung to his ears, making sleep increasingly impossible. The boy half-rose and peered out through a narrow gap in the window curtain. Beneath the arc lamp at the bridge's foot, geishas with chins buried in white shawls appeared and vanished like butterflies with frozen wings. What could those people be? the boy wondered. He burrowed his head completely under the bedding, yet the clatter of clogs seemed to linger in his ears for nearly another hour.

It had been a year-end marked by such cold impressions continuing unabated, but when the calendar changed to New Year's Day, Kodama Hospital's atmosphere underwent a complete transformation into one of marked brightness.

Even when he returned to his aunt’s house, the boy’s mother was no longer there. She had entrusted him to his aunt and remarried. The boy did not insist on going back. Teruko, perhaps sensing this, said, “Let’s make the next karuta party truly grand.” “I’ll speak properly to your mother, so do stay longer,” she added. “This time I’ll definitely defeat Yoshi-chan for you!” Yoshi-chan referred to her younger brother Yoshiō. The boy’s passion for karuta had grown quite fervent under this male cousin’s influence.

The formal karuta party was set for the fifth, but intense practice began from the afternoon of the second. Teruko, ever competitive, wore a face that had cast off all weariness from New Year's Eve as if it were nothing, returning to her usual schoolgirl demeanor. The pharmacy staff were also drafted as practice partners. Young people from nearby patient households also crowded in. Among them were the daughters of Shimojō, a large Western goods store in Ningyōchō. The elder daughter had a withered, plain face and had long since graduated from girls' school, but due to having a weak chest, she was still idling around at home. The younger sister had a round face with large, expressive eyes—likely meaning 'a dove hit by a pea shooter'—which had earned her the nickname 'Hatomame' from the pharmacy staff. The boy had joined these sisters at last year's karuta party as well. The boy, originally distant from downtown tastes, had merely formed the impression that there were various types of downtown girls.

However, upon reuniting after a year's absence, the boy was astonished at the younger sister's remarkable transformation. It felt as though a peony—or some great blossom—had suddenly burst into full glory. Her noticeably fuller, broad shoulders bore a haori that shimmered like captured rainbows. The rims of her eyes glowed crimson as if brushed with rouge, and when she cast her gaze upward, an emerald light flashed momentarily from their depths. The radiance proved too dazzling for the boy to look directly at her face. His impressions formed solely through stolen glances.

The day of the karuta party was customarily an all-night affair. The second-floor living room couldn’t accommodate everyone, making it Class A’s main battleground. Class B would be conducted in the back children’s bedroom. The boy and Shimojō’s younger sister belonged to this group. The Genpei War matches that had gradually commenced around four o’clock retained their festive bustle until nightfall, but thereafter abruptly grew earnest. For the half-hearted participants withdrew, leaving behind only what might be called true professionals and contemptible amateurs. The playing area too merged into the living room quarters, transforming the children’s bedroom into a greenroom where players occasionally came to catch their breath or eliminated contestants sprawled for naps. The children seemed to have been bedded down in the maids’ room on the rear second floor or somewhere on the third floor, remaining unseen since dusk. Director Kodama too was nominally part of this group, materializing two or three times to snatch sushi morsels only to be met with venomous pleasantries each time before vanishing altogether. He possessed not the slightest interest in competitive matters.

The grandfather clock struck two. The boy, having been forced to serve as the reader one after another since earlier, grew weary of everyone’s bloodshot eyes and the yellow-tinged stagnant air of the venue, so he retreated to the children’s bedroom, where he now sat warming himself by the brazier while looking at a book. The book in question was a large-format Arabian Nights with two-color printed text and abundant color illustrations. The boy treasured this book, and whenever he went somewhere to stay overnight, he would always wrap it in a furoshiki cloth and carry it with him. It was something like a talisman. Although he had nearly memorized the story’s contents by heart, gazing vaguely at the illustrations still brought him great pleasure. Courtiers and merchants wearing turbans like millstones, women in trousers ballooning like fabric-wrapped balls, their tiny shoes curving upward like bows at the toes, noblewomen veiling their faces in muslin… Each and every one of them dragged mysterious tales behind them. The boy was flipping through the pages when he suddenly came upon the story of Zobeida. The porter, heaped with the noblewoman’s purchases, accompanied her to her residence. The one who opened the door was a young woman—tall, full-bosomed, with gazelle-like eyes, eyebrows shaped like crescent moons, cheeks resembling anemone blossoms, and lips akin to Solomon’s seal. This “Solomon’s seal”—the boy had no idea what it meant—but that very lack of understanding only served to make it feel all the more mysterious. Her breasts were like a pair of pomegranates.……Yet later, when the woman madly tore at her own garments, her chest would be covered with raw scars resembling whip marks.……Though identified only as “the second noblewoman” without a name, the boy had arbitrarily called her Zobeida—borrowing the title of a queen from another story further ahead in the book. The boy loved the resonance of this name.

The corridor's sliding door opened, and someone came in. Slipping past the boy, she plopped down directly across from the brazier. A sweet smell drifted. It was a smell like purple marshmallows. The boy lost the opportunity to raise his face. Shimojō’s younger sister took out a compact mirror and began to fix her makeup. The marshmallow smell grew even stronger, and the boy felt almost suffocated. But that wasn’t all. A kind of guilty sensation throbbed within him. The boy realized that while reading the story of Zobeida just moments before, he had unknowingly associated this younger sister with her. He realized that the name Zobeida had smelled like marshmallows. The boy quietly raised his eyes and stole a glance at the large arrow-feather-patterned fabric covering her chest. Was she catching her breath? It rose and fell heavily. “Are there whip marks seeping beneath this?” The boy suddenly thought and shuddered.

“I thought you were missing since earlier—so you were reading something here after all.” “N-no, I was just…” Snapping her compact shut with a click, the younger sister stared fixedly into the boy’s eyes. An emerald hue flashed through them like a shooting spark. The boy froze, yet felt glad she had noticed his absence. Even if it was mere politeness, it felt as precious as a tiny gemstone. “That’s a pretty book. What is it?”

In the act of passing the book, their fingers touched. They were cold-enough-to-make-you-shiver, smooth fingers. She began flipping through the pages carelessly. Whenever pages stuck together, she wet her finger with saliva and turned them. The thought of Nurse Nakagawa flitted through the boy’s mind. The boy, with a chill of apprehension, found himself at a loss over this strange emotion intermingling disgust and fascination.

“That looks interesting.” “May I borrow it?” Before long, she said in a tone that was practically an assertion. “I’ll return it soon, okay?”

Bewildered by her carefree manner of speaking, the boy agreed as if under a spell. He recalled when he was small and dropped a charm bag with a bell attached. At length, in the room where pale morning light began filtering through air yellowed by sleeplessness and excitement, the boy watched his precious Arabian Nights—now exchanged for her neatly folded coat and shawl—being wrapped in a shibori-patterned furoshiki. "When it comes back, it'll probably reek of that marshmallow smell..." Bitter regret gnawing at him, the boy suddenly thought.

(However, this prediction proved wrong.) The book finally returned to his hands when spring break arrived, and what’s more, it was the boy who had timidly pressed for its return. Shimojō’s younger sister widened her eyes and said, “Oh, right, right. I still haven’t returned that, have I?” The following day, the book delivered to the pharmacy counter was wrapped in the store’s elegant paper, but its contents presented a dismal sight. Not only had the gold lettering on the cover peeled in places, but two circular marks from a teacup’s base exposed the cloth binding beneath. Moreover, both covers bore stains from spilled liquid—water or saliva—with some white and pink substance clinging everywhere. This appeared to be face powder. When touched, it felt sticky and clammy in a rather unpleasant way. The boy recalled having considered keeping the book as a memento of divine punishment, but he had lost it before he knew it. (I have no recollection of meeting Shimojō’s elder sister or younger sister after that.)

From this point onward, Shigeo’s recollections grew hazy, and from within that dimness emerged only the figure of Ms. Okumura. Ms. Okumura was a middle-aged woman who seemed lonely—remembered solely as someone always clad in a dark haori—and judging by this limited impression, the boy must have seen her during that year’s autumn turning to winter. In any case, it was not an extended period.

When Ms. Okumura first appeared before the boy, her composed demeanor gave the impression that she must have already been residing at the Kodama household for quite some time. At first, they passed by each other two or three times in dimly lit corridors like those near the pharmacy and examination rooms. Each time, she would press herself against the edge of the wall and quietly make way. She had a slender, refined face with delicate features, wore small glasses, and always walked with her gaze slightly lowered. The boy wondered what kind of person she was. He couldn’t very well ask his cousin about her, nor did his cousin go out of her way to introduce her.

On a day of uncertain season, the boy was reading Fujimura's poetry collection alone in the second-floor living room. It was the only literary work in the Kodama household's small bookcase, appearing quite old with its large wisteria-patterned cover lightly soiled by hand oils and spine partially torn on both sides. It might have been a book my cousin loved in her youth. The combination of Kodama and Fujimura's poetry felt too incongruous. Be that as it may, it was through that worn-out book that the boy first encountered Fujimura's verses. Lines like "When a man's gentle breath touches Natsu's hair/When his quickened sighs rush like hail" and "Know you not my longing appears not in flower-bird paintings/Nor in sky-mirror's imprints, sand-written characters, nor wind-sound through treetops"—though their meaning eluded him—stirred uneasy anticipation in his breast. The boy had reached that age. "There's something there, something there—" He strained to peer through the veil over his eyelids with single-minded intensity. To comprehend carried an eerie terror.

At that moment, a low voice said “Excuse me” in the hallway, and the shoji slid open quietly. The one who bent slightly at the waist to peer into the room was Ms.Okumura wearing a black haori. “Oh, are you here all alone, boy?” When the boy answered that Teruko had gone out shopping with the children, Ms.Okumura showed a moment of hesitation before murmuring, “Well then, I’ll just get some documents,” and headed toward the file shelf at the back of the room. In her hand was a bundle of documents. For a while, there was the sound of paper rustling, and Ms.Okumura left quietly holding what appeared to be different documents. It was then that the boy first became aware of where Ms.Okumura lived and worked. The ladder steps leading up to the mezzanine had made a faint sound. When turning at a right angle, there was a third-floor room of about six tatami mats that served as Director Kodama’s study. The boy had once been summoned there for some errand. The room was filled with scattered printed materials resembling medical journals, where Dr.Kodama sat upright before a desk like those used by elementary students, writing something intently. At that time I first noticed the existence of the mezzanine, though I had thought it little more than a storage space. In that room, Ms.Okumura had quietly settled without anyone noticing.

Before the boy, another unknown door had opened. Before long, he came to somewhat understand Ms. Okumura’s role. She would not appear in the pharmacy or examination room unless there was a truly pressing matter. She always shut herself away in the mezzanine. The place she appeared most frequently was the second-floor living room—though whenever she did visit—she would invariably go to retrieve or return documents from the back shelf. The only ones who used that shelf were Director Kodama and Kanai from the pharmacy; Teruko had never once laid hands on it. From such observations—the boy imagined—her work must relate to those experiments with guinea pigs and rabbits. In essence—she served as something like a research secretary for him. This supposition would later prove accurate. One night—he remembered seeing charcoal braziers out—likely winter—while entertaining children—he lost track of time returning home—and ended up staying over.

Kodama returned quite late and began eating supper while having Teruko serve him. Even during meals, the Director never allowed his eyes or mind to rest. At that time too, a bundle of documents he had brought down from the shelf lay on the dining table, and while skimming through them, he shoveled down his tea-soaked rice. And then he would hurriedly jot down something with his fountain pen on memo paper. Teruko remained completely unperturbed, wearing her usual vacant stare, and stood silently by his side. Such a spectacle made the boy fidget with impatience. He felt an unexplained rage welling up—not toward Kodama, but toward Teruko. “So she’s finally completely become the doctor’s wife.” “That smell of medicine whenever coming to Kōjimachi... That’s what it is.” “And that mechanical rustling like some machine…” The boy started to think of even harsher words but hurriedly suppressed them.

That evening, Kodama seemed to be in a foul mood. As usual, he collared Kanai who had come up with the guinea pig experiment reports and began droning on with complaints. “This won’t do—not like this,” he kept repeating. Kanai neatly straightened the hem of his white lab coat and listened solemnly, submissively responding “Yes, yes.” Gradually, the wind direction changed, and criticism began to be directed at Ms.Okumura. “Well now, I wouldn’t say it’s entirely your responsibility alone.” “Lately, Ms.Chiyoko’s”—only the Director referred to Ms.Okumura by her given name—“typographical errors have also been too egregious.” “This is a perfect opportunity—since you’re finished here, go call Ms.Chiyoko.”

“But it’s already late—there’s no need to go out of your way to wake her,” Teruko spoke up for the first time.

“Late?”

Kodama looked at the wall clock. It was half past midnight. “It isn’t that late yet. Kanai, go and tell her that.” The sound of Kanai going up to the mezzanine could be heard. He knocked on the sliding door and could be heard saying something in a soft voice. After Kanai had gone downstairs and some time had passed, Ms.Okumura entered quietly. She had changed into a proper Oshima garment and was wearing a darkish haori.

“Were you already asleep?” Kodama’s gold-rimmed glasses glinted mockingly. “The copy of the statistical table I requested yesterday still seems undone. How about it?”

“Ah,” Ms.Okumura shot a brief suspicious glance at the Director through her small glasses before lowering her eyes again, “I am working on it, but the numbers are so minute that my eyes keep flickering...” It was a low, steady voice. “You have astigmatism.” “Why don’t you go see Mr.△△ as soon as tomorrow?” Dr.Kodama said spitefully and picked up the documents on the desk. “I was just looking at this now—setting aside the German spelling errors, having incorrect numbers is problematic.” “Zeros are being turned into sixes, sevens into nines.” “Major errors I can catch right away, so that’s manageable enough—but with something like this, even when I specifically request it, there’s simply no reliability to be had.” “Even slight discrepancies in numbers—unlike financial transactions—cause our research to go awry from its very foundation...”

“I am well aware.” “It’s due to my own inadequacy...”

“Fundamental research, you see—it’s a bad habit of the Japanese to tend to belittle such things…” Kodama shifted the topic, slipping into his favored lecturing tone. Once it came to that, they had no choice but to remain silent and listen respectfully. It wasn’t that he intended for anyone in particular to listen—it was merely that he was voicing his thoughts aloud, no more than talking to himself. His caustic wit and ironic gaze receded into shadow as the demeanor of his medical student days returned. That he was a person with childlike aspects was something the boy had gradually come to understand.

After finishing his usual spiel, he shifted gears, picked up a German journal that had been lying nearby, and began dictating its key points to Ms. Okumura. "For the title, please use 'Munich University, WH.'" "Are you ready? From March 19×× through August, concerning five male and seven female domestic rabbits subjected to variable dosage experiments of vitamin B, the observed findings regarding their rickets are as follows." "1.……" Difficult technical terms were interspersed here and there. Ms. Okumura asked, "Huh?" Kodama taught her the kanji with visible impatience. Before long, just as the gathering suddenly fell silent, Ms. Okumura sat upright but was nodding off. Having watched this scene for a while with a mischievous childlike gaze, the Director said, “That’s enough,” and briskly began tidying the documents. Teruko also began tidying up the office desk, seemingly relieved.

The clock struck two.

I think it was not long after that when the boy was playing in the pharmacy and Ms.Okumura entered. She seemed to have come to ask Kanai about some numerical discrepancy. Kanai was saying apologetically, "Ah, that was my mistake," but when Ms.Okumura tried to leave after concluding their discussion, he called out to her, "Earlier, the landlady of Bunmatsuha came by and left something interesting here." "When she was cleaning, it apparently came out from the back of the closet." "She says to appraise whether it’s any good, but I suppose I’ll ask Mr.Yoshio or someone later."

Rattling the drawer, Kanai took out a rather large, old Japanese-bound book. The edges of the book were curled up from hand grime and saliva. Kanai showed no particular sign of finding it eerie; moistening his own finger with saliva, he turned through the first four or five pages. It was a compilation of vividly colored brocade prints. The prints mainly depicted theatrical scenes: chambermaids holding paper lanterns peering over a railing into a dark garden; a princess in full regalia brandishing a naginata at an angle as she vanquished masked villains. Then, an unexpected image appeared. A naked woman was tied with her hands behind her back to a pillar in the tatami room. On both legs raised in a kneeling position, the red fabric flowed, tracing intricate lines from which her toes—fingers curled back—peeked out softly. The woman wore an expression of bitter resentment, with two or three strands of disheveled hair caught in her mouth. “Quite risqué, isn’t it?” Kanai said boastfully. Ms.Okumura remained silent for a moment before murmuring, “How cruel... people in the old days were...” It had been a quiet tone, almost reverent in its care. The boy, while looking at that illustration—though to be precise, his chair was wedged between Ms.Okumura’s chair and the desk, making it impossible for him to avert his gaze—found himself recalling a certain scene from Arabian Nights. A girl who called herself the Princess of Ebony Island had been abducted by a demon king and confined in a basement. There, a young prince arrived by chance and comforted her. When the demon king discovered this, the girl had her garments stripped off, was bound to a stake, and was tortured with a whip...

The boy was startled by his own association. For he had never imagined the scene of the Princess of Ebony Island writhing in torment as resembling this illustration now laid bare before his eyes. Though cruelty remained cruelty, he sensed something lewdly calculated lurking beneath this painting's surface. Was this not the true intent behind Kanai's boastful remark? Moreover, he could not deny feeling secret temptation toward this Japanese-style (the boy consciously noted this--) torture depiction. It infuriated him that he himself was growing increasingly sullied.

The words Ms.Okumura suddenly murmured—"How cruel... people in the old days..."—lingered in the boy’s ears long after. There was a tone to it, as if she were telling herself. Ms.Okumura might have recalled her own past. Or perhaps, while saying "people of the past...", she had included those of the present as well. The boy tried to imagine what Ms.Okumura looked like in her youth. If one were to wipe away that dark, weary expression from her slender, elegant face, she would likely become an intellectual type—yes, Ms.Okumura could well have worn glasses—a somewhat detached young wife. It was a face that bore no resemblance whatsoever to the woman in the painting—the one with two or three strands of disheveled hair caught in her mouth and an expression of bitter resentment. In other words, it was the face of someone who would never experience such things... The boy forced himself to believe this.

For some time after that, Ms.Okumura's memories ceased.

And the dark night when the boy last met Ms. Okumura rose vividly like a hellscape painting. Was that truly something that had actually occurred? Moreover, even though he had "met" her, the boy hadn't actually seen Ms. Okumura's face. It was an uncanny night. Though indistinct in season, it was a dark night with bone-chilling cold. The boy had woken mid-night to relieve himself. By then there were five children, and with a ruddy-cheeked nursemaid from the countryside having moved in, both second-floor rooms had been converted into bedrooms. In the children's room slept three women alongside the nursemaid, while the couple and two boys slept in the living area. The boy's bedding had been placed in the children's room.

After relieving himself and returning to the second floor, just as the boy was about to open the sliding door at the end of the hallway, he heard a human moan from the ladder stairs immediately adjacent. The boy released his hands from the door handle and pricked up his ears. The people of this house were afflicted by sleep deprivation and overwork, so being tormented by nightmares was a frequent occurrence. Director Kodama was like that too, and Teruko was no exception. All the more so for the nervous eldest son Tōru’s sleep-talking, which the boy had to listen to every time he stayed over. But the moan he heard at that time was entirely different in nature from those. He sensed it intuitively.

The moan grew lower. It seemed stifled yet continued reaching him intermittently. When it swelled again, the boy resolved to step onto the ladder stairs dimly lit through the windowpane by the streetlamp's residual glow. Softening his footsteps, he stood before Ms. Okumura's room on the mezzanine. For a timid boy, this amounted to extraordinary resolve. There too, he lingered while sensing the presence within. That the moan's origin was Ms. Okumura now lay beyond doubt. Her apparent agony manifested even through the sliding door—the sound of nails clawing at sheets and pillows. The boy knocked gently on the door. The moaning ceased. After moments, it resurged louder. Something resembling a cup clattered over. He knocked again. All sounds stopped abruptly. She seemed to be steadying her breath.

“Who is there?” After a short while, Ms.Okumura’s voice was heard.

“It’s me, Shigeo.” “Is something wrong?”

“Ah, Shigeo,” came the reply after another pause. “No, it’s nothing. “It’s just that suddenly… a cramp came… In the darkness, I couldn’t find the medicine.” “It’s fine, it’s fine—I finally figured it out.” “……It’s fine now.”

The boy stood frozen. The moaning had stopped, but the gasping still continued. “Shall I bring some water?”

“Water?” “No, I don’t need any,” Ms. Okumura refused flatly. “Rather than that, it’s subsided now... You should get some rest, Shigeo.” “I’m fine now… really, it’s all right.……” As if sensing the boy’s intention to leave, Ms. Okumura added, “I beg you—don’t tell anyone.” It was a voice that sounded painfully strained, as if being wrung out. The boy obeyed this command. What struck the boy as strange was that not a single person had noticed those moans or his conversation with Ms. Okumura. When he placed his hand on the sliding door’s handle of the children’s room, Director Kodama’s high-pitched snoring could be heard in the living room. The darkness outside the window seemed to be nearing dawn.

After that, the boy never saw Ms. Okumura's face or heard her voice again. Before anyone realized, Ms. Okumura had disappeared. It might have been because the boy's visits had become less frequent. In any case, it was several months later that the boy learned of Ms. Okumura's death. The boy did not know the date and had no memory of the funeral.

However, afterward, when the boy awoke late at night in the Kōjimachi house, he heard with vivid clarity through the sliding door the following whispered conversation between his aunt and cousin. "I couldn’t help but feel Ms.Okumura’s death wasn’t an ordinary one." “Something seems off,” the cousin muttered in a hushed voice. “Shh!” The aunt hushed him. “Because you see… it’s exactly as you suspect.” “Teruko kept hiding it, pretending it was an angina attack, but in truth that was... mercuric chloride.” “They say she suffered terribly.” “Kanai whispered it to me secretly.” “He said, ‘Don’t you go spreading this elsewhere—it would cause real trouble.’” “Well, that’s only natural.” “If someone from a doctor’s household has a suspicious death, it’ll affect the practice no matter what.” “Did the police manage to handle it properly?” “Well, that was Kodama for you... In other words, that’s how the world works.” In the darkness, the boy could clearly visualize his aunt’s expression as she formed a circle with her thumb and index finger. After some time, their whispers continued: “But what a poor woman she was.” “She was an educated woman—such a fine wife from a good family,” the aunt muttered more loudly. “I was worried too—were you alright?” “I pressed Teruko about it many times...” “Since she was so carefree—‘It’s fine，you bothersome mother?’” “What was it she used to say... but really, it wasn’t something to be said after all.”

“So...” The cousin asked. After that, their conversation returned to whispers. Of course, the boy had not clearly grasped the content of this eavesdropping. A feeling of something being desecrated welled up inside him with searing intensity.

And not long after that came the Great Kanto Earthquake. Seeing flames rising from the rear and flank, Kodama directed the household members with his usual mechanical composure. He had each person make a bundle with just their sleepwear, underwear, and personal effects, and did not let them touch anything else. He gathered his research documents into a bundle, lined everyone up at the gate, tied the red cloth-wrapped bundle to the tip of his cane, and raising it high, led the group across the teeming Hisamatsu Bridge to safety. Thanks to this, the large extended family with many children arrived at their relatives’ house in Yotsuya without a single child going missing.

4

Fortunately for Kodama, several years before the earthquake, a fairly large hospital—though little more than a barracks-like structure—equipped with inpatient facilities had been built on land he purchased along a suburban railway line. It was built when S Academy had planned to develop an academic village on that land; Kodama, who greatly sympathized with the idealistic views of its principal and directors, had volunteered to serve as their school physician and constructed it with an eye toward the future development of the academic village. However, even though the academy had long since opened and even the hospital had been built, the vast planned site for the cultural village—where they had cleared a red pine grove—remained nothing but bare subdivided lots, no matter how much time passed. The hospital was left abandoned like a deserted place, with only children going to stay there during summer vacations. The boy had gone to play there two or three times, but in the neglected backyard where foxgloves, sunflowers, and cockscombs bloomed wildly, they formed a striking contrast with the hospital building whose paint was now beginning to peel. It looked as though one could have hung a plein-air style painting there titled something like “Abandoned Hospital in Midsummer.” In summer, the work of animal experiments was temporarily moved there. At the hospital’s back entrance, Kanai was squeezing a rabbit’s intestines, his palms and fingers stained with a viscous yellowish-brown substance. “It’s so damn smelly,” he said, grimacing in apparent delight. “You see,” “During the day it’s still bearable, but wait until night comes and see.” “In the pine grove over there, foxes cry.” “Kon-kon-kon, kon-kon-kon,” he said.

After renovating this hospital, the Kodama family moved in. The boy had once stayed there too. The assigned room was one of the second-floor hospital rooms. This space where likely no one had ever slept—much less died—had strangely reddened tatami mats that made the boy recall the Beppu hospital from distant memory. It brought back his father's emaciated face and shins—the father who had wasted away and died from Taiwan dysentery, an illness that perforates intestines with small holes.

Kodama used this hospital as his base and began his ambitious endeavors. The old Ford had been cleverly preserved through Yanagisawa’s resourcefulness. Commuting daily along the bumpy suburban roads to Tokyo, transporting the Director, had become the new fate imposed upon this gentle man. The shaking was so severe that Kodama had the car slow down— he couldn’t read his book otherwise.

Within less than a year, Kodama Hospital had been rebuilt as a barrack-like structure on Hamacho's fire-scorched ruins. This time it stood two full stories tall, with none of those enigmatic rooms like where Ms. Okumura once dwelled. The flames had incinerated the old histories. The boy rarely set foot in this new building. Owing to its swift reconstruction, the hospital thrived more vigorously than before the earthquake. This very prosperity meant constant comings and goings, leaving no quiet corner for leisurely visits anymore.

Just once, during a summer vacation stay, the event had remained as a strangely mortifying stain upon a page in the boy's spiritual history. Though he was still called a boy, that summer vacation had been his last as a middle school student.

At the Kodama household, sleepless nights seemed to continue as always. Around eight o'clock still felt like daytime; only around nine did it begin to feel like early evening. The boy, deciding to stay over after a long interval, was talking with the pharmacy staff in the downstairs dining hall. The eldest son Tōru, now a second-year elementary student, entered carrying his violin. When everyone applauded, Tōru assumed an exaggeratedly serious expression and played Ave Maria for them. Kanai mocked him by saying Elman played barefoot or something of that sort. Tōru proudly played another piece. This child had unwittingly begun cultivating pretensions of genius.

Then Teruko entered. Without properly surveying those present, she stood before the kitchen's glass-paned door and began untying her obi. Taking her time, she slowly unwound the bleached cloth belly band wrapped around her lower abdomen. A heavy silence fell over the gathering. Though this perception stemmed from Shigeo's overactive imagination—for the household members, such scenes might have been commonplace. After all, it was a cramped house. With no proper changing area, one had no choice but to undress in that very room when bathing. Moreover, only family members were present. Even with such logic, an odd dissatisfaction lingered in the boy. He secretly observed their expressions. While others averted their eyes with practiced nonchalance, nephew Shirō alone stared fixedly at the housewife's back—thick glasses reflecting unabashed curiosity—its dull waxen hue faintly revealing shoulder blade contours. Of course, this boy too witnessed his cousin's naked form for the first and last time then. No sacredness permeated it. Rather than sanctity, an arrogant authority that denied others' humanity overflowed from her fully bare back. When she vanished beyond the glass door with casual detachment, the boy finally regained composure. He silently rose from his seat.

That night became one marked by an unbroken chain of strange turns. It might well have been called a procession of ill fortunes. Beyond the second-floor eight-mat room existed no other space usable for sleeping. The director's study remained as ever - magazines and pamphlets strewn about leaving no footing - while facing outward stood only a narrow storage room. The rear served as sleeping quarters for nurses and maids. The boy found himself made to sleep at the deepest recess of the eight-mat chamber. The night hung thick with sweltering heat. Compounded by being wedged into the edge where seven family members lay packed together like sardines, the suffocation proved unbearable. Just as he began drifting off, a kick from the eldest son beside him struck his flank and roused him awake. Thereafter sleep refused him regardless of time's passage. The sliding door opened; someone entered. For some minutes came sounds suggesting changing into nightclothes. When at last she seemed to burrow into bedding, Teruko's razor-edged whisper sliced through: “Shigeo-san is here.” That sharpness piercing his ears might have been born from night's utter stillness. Regardless, within dim light equivalent to two candle flames - even after the Director's snores commenced - the boy lay unable to open eyes or shift position, body clenched rigidly tight.

What tormented him was above all self-reproach. The boy contemplated deeply the meaning of "living hell." But that wasn't all. Near dawn, bodily need roused the boy awake. The same thick oily glimmer persisted. In that viscous light he endured long before finally rising and descending. No one slept in the downstairs dining area. He passed through and slid open the frosted glass door to the corridor. From mid-corridor's unexpected brightness a white shape suddenly moved past him. It was Nurse Nakagawa sloppily wrapped in her usual towel-like nightgown. As they passed she curled venomous lips and flashed a sneering laugh. The boy deliberately hunched his shoulders as he walked by. Returning from his task, he peered through blazing electric light at the waiting room door. Under forgotten hundred-candlepower glare lay Kanai and Shirō in disheveled exposure. Particularly Shirō flaunted the very physical trait that had long shamed the boy. Associating this with Nurse Nakagawa's recent sneer, he felt self-loathing like flayed flesh.

After that nightmare-like night, the boy never stayed at the Kodama house again. Before long, after about half a year had passed, rumors of Shirō and Nakagawa's double suicide reached the boy's ears. They had apparently used some toxic drug from the pharmacy, but it ended in failure. Nakagawa had been pregnant. The woman was sent back to her hometown in Shinano as she was, and Shirō was taken in by his father in Tottori. It seemed the boy had even heard such things by eavesdropping through the sliding door on his aunt and cousin's whispered conversation late one night at the Kōjimachi house. He felt an involuntary impulse to cover his ears. How far would that nurse Nakagawa Kiyoko continue to torment me? It resembled someone's revenge. Disgust and hatred had now departed, leaving behind only a pallid resentment.

When spring came, Teruko gave birth to her sixth child. It was a girl, given the name Miyoko. At some point—through what circumstance it had been—the cousin’s words whispered scornfully into the aunt’s ear, “What? The pronunciation’s the same as Chiyoko-san’s,” struck the boy’s ears with violent force.

On the fifth day after childbirth, Teruko died of puerperal fever. The boy went to the Hamacho house for the first time in ages and saw his cousin's sallow death-mask face glazed like congealed fat. That face still wore its characteristic dazed expression. As she closed lips that revealed a fang-like tooth protruding from their corner, his aunt painstakingly applied final makeup to them. “Teruko, it’s enough now.” “Everything’s finished now.” “You see? It’s enough now...” His aunt kept repeating these words like a lullaby through her tears as she withdrew her hands.

The waiting room was designated as the venue for the farewell ceremony. When it was finally time for the coffin to depart, before driving in the nails, family members bid their final farewells. With a young trainee nurse bringing up the rear, once the farewells concluded, Kodama again strode briskly to the coffin's side. He pressed his palm firmly against his wife's forehead buried in white flowers. It was that earnest expression he always wore when checking a patient's temperature. His russet mustache twitched. He might have tried to say something. Teruko's beautifully made-up face showed no reaction. Only her crimson-painted lips had parted like a pomegranate fruit, faintly revealing pale red gums. The boy felt some indescribable obsession concentrated on that single point. Everyone held their breath. At last Kodama removed his hand. Nails were swiftly driven in; the hearse raced straight away. The boy did not go to the crematory.

With a few relatives, he sat silently in the second-floor study awaiting the bone urn's return. Before the new mortuary tablet, he would occasionally offer incense as if suddenly remembering. Each time, the boy felt compelled to apologize before his cousin. Perhaps it was an apology for the bitter remorse that had permeated his entire boyhood. The boy abruptly picked up a green-covered book from Kodama's desk pushed into a corner. It was a translated edition of Gitanjali. Tagore had visited Japan the year before. The boy knew how Kodama's inherent "nationalistic" fervor had since driven him to obsessively revere this elderly poet. Eucken and Bergson had abruptly vanished from Kodama's conversations. The boy opened the book. On the randomly revealed page lay crude double underlines drawn in pencil. There he read these lines:

Evening draws near, yet shadows do not fall upon the earth. Go to the riverside; it is time to fill my water jar. ………… In the lonely alley, no human figures remain; the wind dies down, Ripples dance all by themselves upon the river’s surface. ………… Shall I ever reach home? Shall I chance upon some soul? In that shallow stream, a stranger sits playing a flute.

5 Shortly after Teruko died, Kodama obtained his doctorate. His long-term vitamin research had been recognized. Through an acquaintance, he was recruited by Manila Municipal Hospital. Though an ideal offer for reinvention, he firmly declined after brief consideration. He burned with a new and different ambition. He fixed his gaze on the Ginza Grand Avenue development plan—now beginning to stir amid Tokyo's reconstruction wave. Eventually, the major trunk line running straight southeast from Akihabara to Nakasu was finalized, and construction finally commenced.

Ginza Avenue was the name that the locals had given to the section of that trunk line belonging to Hamacho. That could not be dismissed entirely as a grandiose appellation. According to the locals’ explanation, this was because the vicinity had been the site of the Gold Mint during the Edo period. The Meiji Theater’s reconstruction had been delayed, but it was an established fact that it would vacate the cramped base of Hisamatsubashi Bridge and advance onto this grand avenue. With this theater and the pleasure quarters that had begun reviving early from behind its planned site all the way to the Ōkawa River as their backdrop, the locals boldly set their sights on creating a bustling thoroughfare to rival Ginza. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say they had dreamed it. This was because they utterly ignored the existence of Ningyocho—though it had been reduced to ashes, of course—which was right under their very noses.

In hindsight, it was ultimately akin to trying to extract fresh gold from a long-dried-up abandoned mine.

As reconstruction of the downtown area progressed, the outcome inevitably emerged as a cold, hard reality. Yet the locals' defiant spirit persisted beyond such practical considerations. Kodama too had become one possessed by this dream. Or rather, he may have been one of its chief instigators. There was likely some susceptibility to flattery in his nature as well. Regardless, he resolved to establish his presence directly across from the Meiji Theater. Overcoming relatives' and acquaintances' apprehensions, there arose a five-story reinforced concrete colossus painted chocolate brown. The Meiji Theater itself would not be completed until roughly two years later.

According to the auntie circle's assessments, Kodama had plunged into constructing such an outrageous hospital out of rivalry with his longtime competitor Dr. Kawai's Naniwa Hospital—though by that rationale, the scale seemed rather excessive. Indeed, Naniwa Hospital had materialized as a squat wooden two-story structure just north of the Meiji Theater's planned site. Of course, Kodama likely harbored some impatience toward this. But that alone couldn't fully account for it. The five-story Hamacho Building was, so to speak, a castle of dreams erected upon the fantasy of Ginza. It stood as a bizarre offspring born between Kodama's blazing idealism and his formidable drive for execution.

Kodama’s idealism could be found in every part of the building. On the cornice of the top floor, a group of frolicking infants had been arranged as white reliefs. This likely signified that his true calling lay in pediatrics. On the rooftop, a small hermitage referred to as a Zen hall had been installed. The fifth floor housed a grand lecture hall; besides hosting weekly spiritual lectures, it was also meant to serve as a public hall for Ginza’s residents. Another crucial detail demanded attention: the first-floor section facing Ginza Avenue had been partitioned into five imposing rental storefronts. Hospital wards occupied the second and third floors, while the family lived on the fourth.……Had Ginza Avenue prospered as envisioned, the massive debt incurred for this grand structure would have been fully justified.

However, when the building was finally completed, Kodama’s grand ideals were marred from the very beginning. First and foremost, the ground-floor rental storefronts—which had likely been subject to the greatest expectations—failed to receive the authorities’ approval no matter what. For hospitals with inpatient facilities, it was said that the coexistence of commercial establishments was not permitted. As a result, they altered the layout and decided to shift the room assignments down one floor at a time. In other words, examinations and treatments were to be conducted within the large glass doors intended for shops. Even so, because there was floor space, a sign reading "Regeneration Clinic" was hung at the entrance facing the side street. In essence, this meant attempting to run a charity hospital through private means—something that could be seen as another manifestation of Kodama’s idealism, but ultimately remained undeniably a measure born of desperation. The young physician who had been welcomed as its director soon had a major quarrel with the hospital director and left. The one who assumed that subsequent position was Umeyo, the woman doctor who had become a widow. Kodama married her in the autumn of the year the Hamacho Building was completed.

Once flaws began appearing, there was no end to them. The aunts' prediction had hit the mark. There had been an incident involving illegal substitute diagnoses. Harassed by fundraising and plagued by lack of time, Kodama finally resorted in desperation to using the unqualified Kanai for substitute diagnosis. Because of this, Kodama ended up being detained by the police overnight. Even the abortion procedure he had been begged into performing against his will was reported to the authorities from some unknown source. The aunts single-mindedly believed it to be the machinations of Dr. Kawai. The derogatory label of "quack doctor" was spread about, and patients noticeably dwindled. In fact, even when Shigeo occasionally went to receive examinations, none of that obsessive fervor from years past could be seen in him. His expression of intently listening to the pulse remained unchanged, but clearly, other thoughts were coming and going in the depths of his ears.

When Mussolini was assassinated, a signed photograph of the Duce soon appeared in Kodama’s study. It had been sent from Rome by a man named Uehara who was close to Mussolini. It was around that time that Kodama had become the school physician at K Academy and Mr. Senba's figure began appearing frequently and conspicuously. Priest Kōten, who while authoring voluminous lectures on the Hekiganroku was detested by part of his sect due to his eccentricities, was originally an old acquaintance from the same prefecture; yet from around that time as well, he began making frequent visits accompanied by his beautiful young wife.

After Teruko’s death, Shigeo naturally stopped visiting this house. He could feel no familiarity with the new hospital’s structure either. Seeing the children’s faces—frightened by their father’s abrupt lifestyle changes—pained Shigeo. Apart from occasional medical visits, his memories of entering Hamacho Building remained surprisingly sparse. There was the time Tanaka—a distant relative and high schooler—attempted Calmotin suicide in a third-floor ward. This followed shortly after the Second Communist Party arrests. The timid prodigy met his end crushed between obsessive compulsions and a failed romance. Then came Shigeko’s death from dysentery soon after the building’s completion. Shigeo remembered how eerily adult-like and elongated the five-year-old’s corpse appeared—laid on a thin futon in a fourth-floor room, dressed in muslin. “Both parents doctors yet letting their child die of dysentery?” gossiped the aunts. There was also Toru’s near-addiction to morphine. Injecting it half-jokingly at the pharmacy had spiraled into dependency. This they managed to curb temporarily.

The accumulation of such incidents had undeniably cast a dark shadow over Kodama's state of mind. His life rapidly descended into disorder. He who had prided himself on being a lover of sweets abruptly transformed into a heavy drinker. His eccentric behaviors multiplied. Even what reached Shigeo's ears included these instances: There was a young man named Kawada who carried Mr. Senba's bags - his penis had become legendary among the pharmacy students. Having heard this, Kodama apparently once cornered Kawada in a hallway and forcibly dragged the resisting man to a toilet to inspect him. Kawada later told the pharmacy students he'd seemed slightly drunk. When neighborhood banquets began their customary light drinking rounds, Kodama would apparently time his moment to sprawl supine on tatami mats, reveling solitarily. Though one might call this party antics, those who'd known him formerly grew somber whenever such rumors reached them.

On the other hand, he lived in terrible fear of his rising blood pressure. He constantly measured his blood pressure himself and had developed the habit of performing bloodletting on himself without fail before bed. One late night, while having a meal with Tōru and slowly sipping his evening whiskey, Kodama muttered as if to himself, "I feel strange." Tōru saw a pale shadow of anxiety flicker across his father's face. "No, it's nothing. "It's probably just my imagination," Kodama murmured as if to comfort Tōru. The next instant, he suddenly pressed his hand to his left temple and, groaning, collapsed onto the dining table. And he cried out, "Hey, bloodletting! Bloodletting!" That became Kodama’s final words. Umeyo, who had been examining patients downstairs, did not even need to rush over.

Later examination revealed the entire left temple suffused with a deep purple bruise. It appeared a considerably thick artery had ruptured, blood spraying against the skin with violent force.

By the stir of people rising from their seats, Shigeo's daydream was shattered. Unnoticed by all, the setting sun had filled the earthen floor of the waiting area with its light, and through that red-tinged glow, the bereaved family members began walking toward the step-up frame. Priest Kōten and Mr.Senba already stood at the eaves of the waiting area, awaiting everyone's arrival. The bones had finished burning.

Following the guide in his high-collared uniform, the group entered the bone-collecting area. It was a stark whitish room enclosed on three sides by plaster walls. With iron wheels clattering and echoing, the transport cart was pushed in. The guide assisted in lowering the large square iron basin. The Director's bones were laid out in the basin with unanticipated precision. They still seemed to hold residual heat.

Priest Kōten clasped his hands in prayer and chanted a brief sutra. “Now Tōru, you first. …That’s your father’s skull.” Priest Kōten pointed with the tip of his chopsticks but suddenly let out a shrill cry.

“No—look here! This temporal bone has discolored.” “There’s a large black stain.” “I see—it appears there was an exceptionally severe hemorrhage.” “Truly a death befitting Dr. Kodama.” “I see, I see…” The bereaved family members took turns peering at the discolored bone. Then, in order, they began placing the bone fragments one by one into the urn, clinking their chopsticks together as they worked. Shigeo gazed intently over the shoulders of the bereaved family members at another part of the remains. It was a scene where robust lumbar vertebrae, perfectly preserved in their original form, overlapped and lay lined up with heavy solidity. It was as though even after being burned, they still sat in serene meditation. Shigeo thought he had finally discerned the true nature of Kodama as a person.

When he suddenly noticed, Mr.Senba's gaze too was directed at the lumbar vertebrae. His gaze was tinged with a gentle, almost compassionate hue.