Pathway to Japanese Literature

What a dreadful thing this was.

Ōyama had been waiting for his elder brother’s death. It was now, over a decade later, that he came to clearly understand this fact.

Ōyama had received the news that his two children had died while working at the Ochiai River power plant on the Kiso River. And now, over a decade later, at a railway construction site along the Tenryū River—a place hemmed in by mountains like Kiso Komagatake and Mount Ena—he learned through a letter from his aunt that his brother had died in Korea. The brief postcard, after stating that his brother had died in Korea, continued: "The eldest son has been hospitalized with appendicitis, while the other children are each being looked after at temples. Children without parents are truly pitiful. Wherever I looked, there were only people already burdened with many children—so I couldn’t very well insist and was at my wit’s end."

That was all it said. Ōyama, who had taken a break from the work site, saw the postcard and immediately sent a reply to his aunt before lying face up in the dimness of the laborers’ quarters. ——Ah, so big brother’s finally dead too. In Korea—

And thus, a recollection unaccompanied by sorrow—one that had become utterly exhausted, as if turned to mummy flesh—sank into memories of the past. Ōyama had kept dreaming of his two deceased children from over a decade prior. Because of this, he increased his consumption of the liquor he'd always loved. No matter what he felt, Ōyama would drink until numbed, purchasing drunken slumber through intoxication. To achieve this, he sold not only his later-acquired wife's possessions but even the kimonos of the two children born between them to ragpickers—or else knowingly guzzled what might have been "murderous shochu."

The true nature of the dreams stemmed from not knowing the cause of his children’s deaths.

Wanting to grasp the true nature of what one cannot understand—what torment that must be. If humans were to become so desperate that they must demand an answer right now—this very instant—to the question of what man truly is, that would surely be an infinite hell. Even if I knew, it wouldn’t make any difference. Is it not fortunate that I at least didn’t have to witness how the children died? If I were to actually witness a child falling headfirst into a manure pit by the roadside and dying, or be shown—for no discernible reason—a child wasting away to death with no means to intervene, that would truly be unbearable.

And precisely because they hadn't died before his eyes that such speculations arose—yet could one truly say deaths of infants like that were nonexistent in reality?

What sort of mental state—from a medical standpoint—would lead someone to continually see the same single dream?

Due to the postcard’s phrase—“Children without parents are truly pitiful”—Ōyama found himself forced to relive those dreams again: dreams resembling a focal point formed from countless imagined scenarios about his children’s deaths—causes he could never know—which he had nearly forgotten through tremendous effort and alcohol’s numbing power over a decade prior. Ōyama believed humans weren’t born to live in misery. He had thought people must strive to live as happily as possible.

However, for Ōyama, misfortune visited him far more often than happiness.

The fact that his brother had died was a matter of the past. But he had come to know it only now. And Ōyama felt a kind of weariness of life stemming from that—not through visceral experience, but all the same. "Why the hell are the light rays creeping up from below?" "Isn't this exactly the kind of light that makes the whole world utterly gloomy?"

Ōyama thought. An area about two ken wide, where the white sandy soil of eroded granite reflected the direct sunlight, sent light rays shooting into the room from beneath their feet. On the opposite side of the garden, from the low eaves downward for over four shaku, walnut trees, cedars, and wisteria formed a dark backdrop with their deep green hues. In other words, because the upper area was dark and only the soil was white, the light rays crept up from below.

This severely tired the eyes. To make matters worse, the atmospheric pressure was abnormal. It resembled the hold (ship hold) of a steamship where ventilation could only be achieved through the ventilator.

On the rare occasions when airplanes passed over the Tenryū River, one could hear their roar, but discerning their silhouettes was nearly impossible. Air pockets must have been scattered haphazardly across the river surface and the cliffs lining both banks.

At the railway construction site, when fires were lit, the smoke drifted downward. If light rays crept up from below while smoke crept down from above, then the world had turned completely upside-down. This inversion was reality here. Had this inverted reality suddenly gaped open and swallowed him whole, Ōyama would have accepted it as the normal state of things. Yet despite this, he had scooped up fragments of his past into a large cloth wrapper and shouldered the burden. Had its contents been treasures, there might have been some pride in unpacking and displaying them—but what filled it was rags, stink, poverty, and humiliation.

If that large cloth wrapper—if that wrapper were real, he could toss it down on any doorstep like a pursued thief and escape unburdened. But the large cloth wrapper called the past was a tumor-like burden he shouldered under the same skin. Moreover, this large cloth wrapper of the past would occasionally bare needle-like tips and poke at his back.

——I’ve had enough—— And still lying on his back, Ōyama put both hands under his neck. Thinking things over—pondering and feeling—were fundamentally unnecessary. Look—they say this place has more insects than anywhere else in Japan. Insects don't think or ponder. But they must feel something. Alright then—you just keep on feeling! "That hurts." "Ah...worn out." "If you feel 'Ah I need a drink' or 'I'm sleepy,' cut it off right there." Don't think ahead. Quit moping. Just space out——

When he tried to think in that way—to just space out—he found that thoughts themselves were a problem. It leaves an aftertaste.

Ōyama kept thinking.

——Hmph. I'm carrying this big cloth bundle of a past. But this bundle's even got ancestral tablets in it! Those tablets ain't in the bundle though—they're flowing through my blood. Got 'em in my bones too. So here I am at rock bottom, settled like booze dregs—hauling my own bundle along with generations' worth of tablets in this topsy-turvy world. Hell, I'm already making my two kids lug around their own damn bundles too. Guess that's just how life works. If only I had a proper house, a solid foundation, real plans—couldn't I live by those plans then? Like prison—right. Too many rules'd suck the fun out though. Anyway, every night I let those ancestral tablets swim through my blood and ferment 'em with alcohol. All my ancestors are dead. Not a single one left breathing. The old man and old lady both kicked it. Bet there's a shitload of dead folks on both sides of the family. Must be one helluva number. Anyway, that thing's been dangling down to me with two more knots hanging below. Right—well, ain't nothin' to it. That's this messed-up era for ya.

There’s no reason I alone should have to go probing into life or whatever. “What in the blazes are you supposed to do to make humanity happy?”

Asking the likes of Hitler, Mussolini, and Prince Saionji about such things one by one would be too much trouble, wouldn’t it? First of all, these are dangerous times. It’s not just Japan. The entire world’s in turbulent times. In times like these, if you went around asking everywhere about some vague nonsense like “humanity’s happiness,” any hothead you came across would probably beat you up. Even so—can’t I manage some kind of coherent way of thinking instead of these aimless thoughts? I want to live properly—methodically, logically sound, with that clean slash through tangled messes—in a rhythm like some crisp “one! two! three!” cadence, pushing forward with ironclad resolve. I’m just... born into this world, so I’m living ’cause I gotta. Getting by somehow. Anyway, alive. Living ’cause there’s no choice. That’s how it goes. Damn—

“Damn, that hurts!”

With that shout, Ōyama suddenly leapt up. A horsefly—one that should’ve been on a horse, as large as a cicada—had tried to suck blood from Ōyama’s leg and stabbed its sharp mouthpart into him. “Damn it! You’re mistaken! I’m not a damn horse!”

With that, Ōyama shouted at the fleeing horsefly at the top of his voice and applied spit to the sting mark.

“What’s wrong? Did a centipede bite you?” Yūkō said. “If it were a centipede, there’d be some logic to it—but a damn horsefly?”

Ōyama’s child returned from school. He had just started elementary school that year, but given that he had to climb a steep three-and-a-half-mile slope from the banks of the Tenryū River up to the highland area at Ōakashi’s base, this commute to school was literal in every sense.

Being a late-born eight-year-old, this daily climb to school was too much for his physical strength as a Tokyo-raised child. As a result, he would attend one day only to take two days off. Days like these kept repeating. Just when it seemed he might keep going consistently, he’d start crying halfway and return home. “Take-chan stuck out his leg and tripped me!” “A big kid hit me even though I didn’t do anything!”

“My book’s gone!” “I’m too late!” Saying such things, he would come crying down the steep slope and return home. “You say your book’s gone—where the hell did you lose it?” “I lost it somewhere along the path.” “How’d you realize it was lost?” “I just did!”

Hah! The brat must've thrown away his textbook somewhere or hidden it in the grass 'cause he didn't wanna go to school―

Ōyama thought. "'I just did' doesn't make sense." "When you left home, it was properly in there. Even if you ran, it wouldn't just fall out—look how snugly it fits." "You'd need to really yank hard to pull it loose." "So how'd it disappear? Doesn't that seem strange?" When he said this, Taabō—still standing at the laborers' quarters entrance—tilted his head.

—Even I don’t understand— He struck such a pose. “Go look for it.”

When he said that, leaving his school backpack behind, he once again climbed up the steep slope along the stream.

Ōyama was seized by a feeling impossible to put into words. The steep three-and-a-half-mile uphill slope from the laborers' quarters to the school was at once an equally precipitous path through the children's social lives. There, this frail eight-year-old child had to live as an independent individual. Each of those children had their own different homes and environments in which they were raised. Some were children of the foreman, some were children of master craftsmen, and some were children of laborers. Some were children of innkeepers, some were children of company employees, and some were children of small-scale farmers.

Each of them had different ways of living. There, moral standards had not yet been established. Their cultural levels varied unevenly. Even without such disparities, though the children loved adventure and change, among their parents were those who lived violently turbulent daily lives.

For these reasons, Ōyama abandoned the idea of making the child attend school according to his own intentions. The child who had gone to search for "the textbook" returned saying, “I couldn’t find it.”

“Alright then, go play however you want.”

Ōyama said.

――A long life. And a painful one at that. If health allows, it’s a life that must stretch sixty, even eighty years. That long harsh journey—this child too would walk it searching for “happiness.” Like mistaking a viper’s eye for a firefly and getting bitten, he’d grasp misfortune instead of joy. Seeking freedom, he’d swallow bitter constraints. If I tried plucking “happiness” from my life’s memories, love and marriage would all vanish. What faintly lingers: ‘Father never scolded me. Mother left fruit by my pillow as I slept. I’d dream of fruit at my bedside, reach out, and clutch real ones. Biting in, I’d wake to find them sitting there—Father and Mother smiling by my pillow. Three years old—no, four.’ That’s all I could call happiness. I’ll let him be free while childhood lasts. Once I die or he stands alone, freedom and happiness won’t exist. There’s only existence. Even when life twists against him, forcing smiles through gritted teeth—that warped servile existence will claim him again. Let it. But I won’t send him into it sickly and weak. Yeah.

While you still can, become as strong as a monkey in the mountains. And bravely grapple with life and press onward.—

Having thought this, he set the child free in the mountains. That day marked the final day before summer recess began. Inside the school backpack lay a student report card alongside practice notebooks for summer recess and guidelines for parents concerning the recess period.

Ōyama’s wife had seen it. “His nutrition grade is poor.”

Ōyama’s wife said to him. “It can’t be helped, I guess. This one takes after you.” “An illegitimate child.” “How pitiful.” “That can’t be helped either. Since my previous wife remains missing, it’s all rigidly set in the family register. This too is something you’re well aware of. I’ve left the procedures to you, but you’re not trying to do anything about them either.” “When we return to Tokyo this time, we’ll handle this somehow.”

“Alright then. But people don’t think about family registers more than a few times in their whole lives when trying to get by. In the end, they’ll vanish before those registers even matter, you see.”

“You’re just spouting carefree nonsense. What on earth do you plan to do?” “What do you mean? I’ll leave it to you.” “Even if you leave it to me, there’s nothing I can do about it! When stealing carp from someone else’s pond, it’s troublesome if they thrash about in the water, right? So you thread a broken-bottomed sake bottle onto the fishing line—then when a carp bites, you reel it up smoothly. Then the carp gets dragged trembling into that big bottle, so it can’t thrash or splash around at all. It’s exactly like that, see?”

“Hmph. That’s a clever method,” he said. “Maybe instead of fishing in the Tenryū River, I should try that trick at a fish farm.” “You fool,” she retorted. “I’m saying you’re exactly like that carp being caught. If it were just you, fine—but isn’t it pitiful for the children? Ta-chan keeps saying things like ‘Tokyo would be better.’” “Well now,” he countered, “if I could find us comfortable living somewhere, I wouldn’t hesitate. To let you live easy—hell, I’d take you to Ethiopia.”

“I don’t want some easy life or anything, but I do want peace of mind.” “Anyone would want to live in peace.” “But does even a single person exist right now who’s living in peace?” “In this day and age, the only ones living in peace are blissful idiots and infants. People aren’t living in peace at all—far from it.” “No matter how much they suffer, people who ‘can’t make ends meet’ are piling up and swarming like sludge worms in a drainage ditch.” “And just as you pester me, every last wife in the world has convinced herself her husband’s a worthless fool.” “And they’re fabricating tragedies left and right.” “You think I’m a fool and spineless.” “That’s exactly right.” Then this time I thought—maybe whoever’s closest should show me more kindness. Then that spreads endlessly. So what do you think happens? “Everyone ends up thinking someone ought to treat them more kindly.” “But nowadays everyone just wants kindness for themselves while refusing to give any.” “Why do you think that is?” “That’s how society’s gears got jammed.” “And rusted solid.” “Look—you make me out to be some model fool.” “Fine. That’s exactly right.” “I’m having my very life taken by this money humans created for convenience—and because of that, people now value money over life itself.”

“That’s what makes me sick to my stomach.” “Alright then—if that’s how it is, I’ll at least treat that gold bastard like trash myself,” I resolved. Though I had neither money nor prospects, once any came in, I’d kick it out more cruelly than even a bad wife. I’d sever all ties so thoroughly that even the sight of it would turn my stomach. But here’s the thing. If you drove out a bad wife, you’d have to polish rice yourself and look after the children—immediate hardship—but if you expelled that money bastard too thoroughly, you’d immediately struggle to survive. So even without you telling me, money’s a damn nuisance—but as long as I’m breathing, I’ve got no choice but to keep at this life. “The children aren’t at fault.” “When the child takes their school trip savings to school, I can’t let them feel ashamed—that’s what I’ll do from now on.” “It’s a damn nuisance, but I’ve been thinking—though it’s shameful to admit even to myself—that I should treat it a bit better and aim for a point where I don’t recklessly drive it out.”

Ōyama spoke with volcanic intensity, as though part of the mountain itself had been ripped away. It appeared less an address to his wife than a desperate incantation to his own crumbling resolve.

“That’s a positive development.” “No need to feel ashamed.” “Even if you alone try scorning money, it won’t make you any more respectable. In the end, you’ll keep suffering for it—and worse still, even the children, who don’t fully agree with you, have to get splattered with the backlash.” “You’re the one who said it yourself.” “‘I’m living for the children now.’ ‘Like an oak stump surviving for its saplings’—isn’t that enough if you just remember that?”

“Don’t go waving ‘the children, the children’ around like some torture device.” “It’s not like I’m Sakuramon Sōgorō.” “‘For the children’—sure, that exists—but there’s one critical flaw in that logic.” “‘For the children’ means precisely that—for the children’s own time. You must never use them as bargaining chips.” “Take folks alive now whose kids already have kids themselves—grandfather-aged men.” “Most of those old-timers valued money under the same pretense I do—‘left it for the children.’” “But here’s what happens.” “When those kids spend recklessly, they get declared quasi-incompetent or even disowned in bad cases.” “You call this being ‘for the children’?” “This is torture!” “Like tying a stick to a dog’s back while dangling beef before its nose.” “They leave money ‘for the children’ but won’t let them touch it.” “Meaning they can lick all they want—” “—but never take a bite.” “Look—no harm done if they just keep licking at the interest.” “But sink their teeth into the principal? That’s forbidden.” “Really chew on that point.” “To cut through it—want me to use your old man as Exhibit A?” “Quit grimacing—examples need real sting to work.” “What’d your father tell me?”

“I lived on barley rice and miso for my children’s sake and amassed assets.” “I have rice paddies, fields, and a house and land.” “But my eldest son only knows how to spend it—never tries to grow it.” “That’s why I disowned him.” “I tried to have my daughter marry a son-in-law to take over the shop, but she went and eloped with ‘some penniless wretch like you.’” “As for my third son—this one’s been trained by you too, so he’ll never amount to anything decent.” “I left assets for my children’s sake, but none of them would take them.”

“Didn’t he say that? ‘You needn’t worry about such things—I’ll take them for you,’ or something like that?” I had put on a look of heartfelt sympathy. Truth be told, I did sympathize with his motive. When it comes to children’s happiness, no matter how much you cry and scream, in today’s society it won’t matter without money. If you go around scorning money these days, it won’t just mean sacrificing the children’s happiness—it’d lead to a whole family suicide pact. So the slogan “money for the children’s sake” sounds fine at first. But once money starts piling up bit by bit through sheer luck, people begin valuing it more than their own kids. In the end, they end up disowning their children just to protect their money. Why? Because kids aren’t as convenient to use as money. You can break off pieces of cash to spend, but you can’t tear children apart. You blow money on women and booze, but if that kid ends up buying women and drinking without even earning it himself, your whole grand principle starts crumbling.” “It’s despicable, don’t you think?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” “You? Saving money.” “You can’t even earn enough to pay off your debts, so stop thinking up all these strange ideas and just go make some money already!”

“That’s right. If only earning money easily were that simple. That’s a real masterpiece coming from you.” But apparently I wasn’t born with the disposition to earn money easily. I think I probably don’t even understand myself. I am angry at Hitler. This is absurd. But it is a fact. I am angry at Hitler. This is an undeniable fact. For what purpose? Why? I have never met Mr. Hitler, and what’s more, I have never even been to Germany. I don’t even know where the German embassy is. I don’t know any Germans either. Why on earth did I get angry at Mr. Hitler? For some reason, even I don’t understand why. It must be something like this, I suppose. In other words, if you get too angry at someone close at hand, you end up arguing with them, and if things go south, you might even come to blows. That’s just too much of a hassle.

I must've been thinking I should just get angry at some big-shot bastard who rarely comes around—someone unlikely to pick a fight but with a face I can't stand—no matter who it was. If I didn't think of it that way, I had absolutely no clue why I'd gotten angry at Mr. Hitler.

“You’re an idiot. You... You’re a coward. You... When you ought to get angry, you sulk instead, then rage over things that don’t concern you at all. I’ve finally begun to understand what kind of man you are. You split everything into two categories—big matters and small matters. You treat worldly affairs like injuries, sorting them into major wounds and minor scratches. So you only care about grand events while brushing off the little wounds. That’s why when a scratch turns into life-threatening tetanus, you panic and make a scene.”

“Clever talker, aren’t ya? I’d heard Shinshu folks were all logic-obsessed, sharp-minded neat freaks—but have you really gotten that much smarter since coming to Tenryū? Not even half a year here yet. Is Shinshu’s mountain air really that good for your brain? If we’re not careful here, we won’t make it back to Tokyo. For the children’s sake, y’know. But what you just said hits true. You mustn’t treat big events like they matter most and brush off the small ones. That’s gospel truth.”

At that moment, the postman carefully handed over an envelope.

It was addressed to Ōyama and had come from a friend.

When he opened it.

Mr. Ōyama:　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 From Y.

Omitted text

As this month is the settlement period, By all means, please remit payment within the next few days. I humbly request your kind consideration. Re:

was written as follows:

“So it’s Bon season. This ain't good. There’s still two or three more! Now I’m really in trouble.”

Ōyama’s head grew hot. Whenever he saw a debt collection letter, his head would grow hot. The head growing hot—this was by no means beneficial for arteriosclerosis. But even so, it was the inevitable result of his rebellious thought: "I’ll at least squander the money myself." “Debt collection letters really do have a way of raising your blood pressure, I tell you. But the fact of borrowing money is a very healthy thing—it’s when you get the collection letters that they turn downright unhealthy, I tell ya.”

Ōyama said while tying a headband with a wet hand towel.

Ōyama’s wife, who had been preparing lunch pickles, “Now that I see it, you do seem concerned after all.” “That’s proof you’ve still got a conscience left.” “Don’t go praising me at a weird time like this.” “That’s just gonna make me feel even more down.” Ōyama took off his workman’s jacket, stripped down to just his loincloth, crawled over to the dark corner, and flopped down. It was as if the letter itself were the very person trying to escape from his sight.

Ōyama lay in the dark, beginning from this personal fact of debt repayment,

――If I can’t repay him, he can’t repay his own debt. Then he can’t repay either. So what happens then? If you push it to the absolute limit, the one who has plenty wasn’t repaid. So maybe all we have to do is endure for a while longer. Hmm― As he tried to pursue that line of thought, the shrill chatter of the old woman from the laborers' quarters just a single plank wall away began grating on his ears.

“Apparently they’re saying she’s pregnant or something, so the police are dragging her in for questioning—that’s the story going around.” “They say it’s three men involved.” “Then again, well, there’s also talk she was forced into it.” “Over there where there’s so many people, that sorta thing happens, I suppose.”

Then came the sound of men chiming in agreement.

“It’s darkest under the lighthouse—we’ve got our share here too.”

“Well, here too?” “Here too, I tell you—it’s not just one or two!” Heh heh heh. Ha ha ha. The mingled laughter of four or five men and women erupted. Ōyama could neither understand nor explain how his debt connected to society at large, nor why it extended all the way to Hitler, but even his attempt to probe these connections through intuition was cut short by rasping, obscene laughter.

――Ah, there exists a world governed solely by instinct. There exists a world governed solely by carnal desire. There are people who, having been given the rails of habit to ride upon, move along as they are pushed. Happiness is something only those people can enjoy.

“Who the hell snatched my man? Come out here!”

There came a woman’s voice tinged with mockery, followed by several men shouting over one another, and then an indistinct clamor like nails rattling in a box continued afterward.

Ōyama felt his head growing increasingly hot. Unable to bear it any longer, he stood up, raised the sliding window, and propped it open with a stick. And his eyes met with a chicken coop of less than three square meters, the bathhouse below that, the toilet beneath it, and the gray muddy flow of the Tenryū River running below.

Everything was deep green, white, and gray. The mountain on the opposite bank was green, the riverbed stones were white, and the flow was gray. Gazing at those wearyingly familiar scenes as he tried to drive away the seething, indefinable thoughts churning in his head, another thought crept maliciously into his mind.

That had been during planting season.

It was a place that could almost be said to consist entirely of waterfalls; drawing water from the mountain stream to prepare seedbeds, the mountain farmers were in the thick of their busiest season.

Because the laborers’ quarters’ toilet was about to overflow, they had relocated it about a meter lower along the riverbank.

There, four farmers came around the corner of the toilet to dig a ditch for channeling water to the fields. And the four of them huddled their heads together as if whispering about some grave matter.

To avoid complicating the story, details will be omitted, but essentially: "When digging the irrigation ditch, the toilet’s foundation pillar was in the way by about ten centimeters." The obstructive portion belonged to a different owner than the laborers’ quarters’ land. Therefore, this constituted an unjust occupation of another person’s land. and they had reached the conclusion that "the toilet must be relocated."

Therefore, the farmers brought their argument to Kobayashi—the foreman of the laborers' quarters living closest to the toilet.

“If the pillar’s in the way, we’ll cut it down.”

The laborers—men who travelled all across Japan from worksite to worksite—were the ones wanting quick resolutions. The farmers stayed rooted like trees that had grown into the land, never moving their entire lives. Their patience knew no equal. Moreover, they nursed something like resentment toward these navvies who came unceremoniously barging in, boldly reshaping nature with their hands—twisting it into some artificial mechanical beauty.

Intense stimuli brought delight to city dwellers but were a source of pain for mountain people. As Ōyama was making his way down from the worksite toward the laborers' quarters for a meal, Kobayashi was shouting loudly on the narrow ridge path between the rice fields and the quarters. Listening to the conversation, the farmers gave no clear response to Kobayashi's "If the pillar's in the way, we'll cut it down," and their mood seemed dissatisfied with merely cutting it. There seemed to be something more beneath that. Kobayashi remarked to Ōyama.

“Trespassing on someone else’s land was wrong—but could they really just say that and be done with it?” “Is that really how it is?”

Ōyama asked. “It’s not that we’re saying it’s wrong, but...”

replied one of the farmers.

“Just say it clearly. Clearly. If you want rent money, say you want rent money straight out! You think I can put up with this nagging? If we let farmers push us around, how’re laborers supposed to eat? We ain’t doing this shit work for laughs! Even if it looks rough, we’re carrying out a national project here—connecting the Pacific and Japan Sea!” “If you’re gonna talk that rough, we won’t let you use this ridge path anymore.”

“What? ‘Don’t use the ridge path’?!” “If we do pass through, what’ll you do about it?” “Oh, that’s rich!” “If y’all gonna tell me I ain’t allowed through, then I’m damn well gonna make sure I do!” “You bastard!”

Ōyama stepped in between them.

“Cut it out.”

“When laborers and boatmen quarrel and someone steps in to mediate—that’s just an old folktale now, I tell ya.” “Quit it already, brothers!” “Even if you say we can’t use the ridge path, we can’t sprout wings and fly here. And about the land—if it were one or two tsubo plots, we’d pay proper rent. But these three- and five-sun squares? There’s no making sense of that math. Couldn’t we settle it like this instead?” “If you’ll overlook this unauthorized borrowing—it hasn’t been long—how ’bout we buy you a jug of sake to bear with us a while longer?” “Since we’re neighbors livin’ cheek by jowl, lockin’ horns ain’t good for nobody. I’m beggin’ this one favor of ya.”

“Right…” replied one of them. “Hey everyone, let’s have them agree to that.” “Not good.”

And so, the matter was settled.

On the other side of a single plank wall, there was still laughter that seemed wrung from the tops of heads, and stifled, ticklish giggles could be heard.

――What should I do? What am I supposed to live for? What!

Ideals can be placed as high and far as one likes. And reality stifles under the weight of past habits, traditions, and sheer instinct—so oppressive you can hardly breathe. It’s suffocating, like that muddy Tenryū River water has turned into air itself. Both farmers and laborers stand on cliffs sharp as scalpel blades—try gazing up at those lofty ideals in the sky and your vision blurs; you’d tumble right off. So they stay rooted there instead, transfixed by the ground underfoot and all its surrounding dangers. And what’s an ideal? Could ponder it my whole life and my debt wouldn’t shrink by one damn sen. Since it’s not worth even that sen coin, everyone’s gone and tossed theirs away. But here’s the kicker—even if every last person chucks theirs out, that thing won’t disappear. What exactly is this pain-in-the-ass nuisance? Nowadays it’s like chains shackled to my legs. Dangle something like that and it’ll wrap around your ankles—trip you flat on your face. But why the hell am I stuck thinking this garbage in these laborers’ quarters? Maybe those debt collection letters have gone mad—racing through my skull between cells like they’re possessed. Right. But my brother who died in Korea—never had ideals like mine. Still ended up dead anyway. Left behind a bunch of kids I don’t understand. Just gotta keep breathing. Like that Omutsu does. Yeah—think I’ll go mess with Muttsu-pei—

Mutsumi was the cook at Kobayashi’s laborers’ quarters. This woman hated roofs more than anything. She was a woman of twenty-seven or twenty-eight. She had a round face with childlike features.

She had been given the nickname “Sēfutī Bārupu” (safety valve). By all accounts, she had once married into a household in Tokyo but, due to not getting along with her mother-in-law, ended up leaving behind a four- or five-year-old son and separating—or so her history went. She was an astonishingly indifferent woman. “With that attitude, even if she weren’t your mother-in-law, you’d throw up your hands!” Even Kobayashi had thrown up his hands by that point.

However, when the rumor spread that "A maid is coming from Tokyo!", the upheaval in Kobayashi’s laborers’ quarters was considerable. Into this world of only men, a single woman—and a young one at that—was coming, so the rumor went. Thinking deeply about things or observing them was a bother for the laborers, but imagining a young woman’s appearance, demeanor, or even body odor was not just no bother—it was a great pleasure. Omutsu’s feet had cracks like glacial crevasses around the heels in winter, and in summer, they transformed into white, festering patches of athlete’s foot.

But the young men of the laborers’ quarters did not try to discover beauty or allure in a woman’s legs like foreigners might. Centered around Omutsu, a kindness competition erupted among the young men of Kobayashi’s laborers’ quarters. After finishing their long day’s labor of eleven or twelve hours, some would return carrying heavy bridge girders on exhausted shoulders to chop them into firewood, while others would prop that firewood around the quarters’ hearth to dry—but rather than such indirect goodwill, there were those who went straight to expressing their intentions by patting Mutsu-chan’s buttocks.

The one who injected mass entertainment elements into this romantic rivalry, turning it into a revue, was Hayashida—a diminutive man who had that very year reached military draft age. Hayashida was so short that he seemed to fall just short of five shaku. “Hey Hayashida, when you go to the inspection site, there’s a rope hung at the entrance.” “At Mr. Five Shaku’s mark.” “Guys tall enough to get caught they let ’em in through another entrance, but you—they’ll make you crawl under that rope.” “And finally, at the very end, the commander says, ‘Those who pass under the rope today without touching it get to marry a big, strapping wife,’ y’see!”

“You bastard!” (You idiot!)

And so, Hayashida retorted in Korean. This diminutive charmer had been particularly close with the Korean laborers. More often than not, Japanese laborers and Korean laborers couldn’t freely exchange words; while they didn’t harbor resentment, instances of them growing close could hardly be called numerous. But this diminutive man was an exception. This was because he had first become a laborer at a Korean laborers’ quarters.

But it wasn’t solely for that reason; this diminutive man, owing to his utterly innocent nature free of malice toward others, was not disliked by anyone.

This diminutive young man would finish his day’s work, return to the laborers’ quarters, wash off the grit and sweat in a bath, and after finishing dinner, stealthily take down Omutsu’s face powder from the shelf. He would slather it all over his face, tie a hand towel around his head like an older sister’s kerchief, then don Omutsu’s kimono hanging on the plank wall, fasten the obi, and hide deep behind the rice bales propped up in a corner of the quarters. The older, more seasoned men outside would have their evening drink and kick up a racket or two yet still remain seated at the earthen-floored dining tables.

A single swig of liquor soaked into their hollow stomachs as if being splashed there, further stimulating their appetites; the young workers devoured their meals to an astonishing degree, only to grow drowsy once finished. A section of the plank floor had been cut out for a sunken hearth, where they would deposit embers from beneath the kettle and spend the brief interval before sleep lost in reminiscence or writing letters. It was precisely until that moment that Hayashida, who had been holding his breath and hiding behind the rice bales, burst into playing his harmonica. It was the Tokyo Ondo.

Then, of course, the young laborers—and even Omutsu, who had been in the middle of placing dishes into a basket to wash them—came rushing over.

“Who is it?” “You sure know some impressive hidden talents!” When that voice called out, Hayashida—unable to let go of the harmonica with one hand—grasped a stiff fan in the other and, despite the Tenryū Valley’s February cold, the harshest in seventy years, appeared onstage in his Mutsu-chan disguise, gesticulating wildly with hands and feet. “Hyahaha!” With a laugh that convulsed her whole body, Omutsu threw her head back and rolled across the straw mats of the laborers’ quarters. The young laborers, having had their protagonist role snatched by Hayashida yet unable to conjure any good parts on the spot, simply stood there grinning as they watched intently.

But once Omutsu had finished rolling about, she let out a laugh that scraped deep in her throat like scrubbing dishes, and lunged at Hayashida. Since Hayashida couldn’t fathom why he had been lunged at, the diminutive man panicked in earnest and began scrambling away. But what with his face slathered white with powder, wearing a woman’s kimono, and even having an older sister-style headscarf tied tight, venturing outside the laborers’ quarters in midwinter—hardly cherry blossom season—was out of the question.

Finally, the diminutive Hayashida was pinned down by the sturdy-framed Omutsu and pressed onto the pile of bedding stacked in the corner. And his headscarf—tied in the older sister fashion—was snatched away. If this game dragged on late into the night, Hayashida would have no time to wash his face in the morning and had to rush straight to the worksite after eating. At that very time, as concrete was being poured daily for the tunnels and culverts, Hayashida—his face still coated in white powder—would be the first to leap onto the concrete mixer’s platform, untie bags of white soil despite no measurements being needed yet, and pour their contents into the mixing boat.

If he was assigned to measure white soil and cement, it was no wonder he became whiter than any woman. “You’ve slipped right into a sweet spot, haven’t you?”

And so, the foreman who knew of this entertaining idea didn’t reassign him to another role, leaving Hayashida in charge of measuring the white soil and cement. This game held its appeal for about half a month. The costumes remained unchanged, but they gradually modified only the storylines—for instance, replacing the removal of a headscarf with untying an obi, or playing the Ina Ondo instead of the Tokyo Ondo—thereby warding off both the bone-chilling cold of winter nights and the tedium that seeped into their very marrow.

Had things continued this way, Kobayashi’s laborers’ quarters would have remained harmonious and convivial—the young men staying put, finding enjoyment, their bitter familial circumstances left behind in hometowns perhaps blurring somewhat. But it was not such an era. In other words, things had been fine as long as Omutsu was simply a young woman—bright-spirited and fond of jokes. But no one could compel Omutsu to remain perpetually in such a state.

Just because Omutsu disliked cleaning and tidying up, preferring instead to go into the mountains to gather firewood or head to the office to haul rice bales—in short, because she favored men’s work over women’s—that didn’t mean she wasn’t a woman.

Omutsu did laborer work, miner work, and even tried her hand at blacksmithing—and by all appearances, she seemed to have gotten involved with Sasamoto, a senior laborer. Sasamoto was a man around thirty years old with femininely gentle features. Why was it that he never looked people directly in the eye, always kept his head bowed, and had convinced himself that no true love existed on this earth? He was a man steeped in a loneliness that offered no foothold for comfort or consolation.

For Sasamoto—this lonely man without refuge—winning Omutsu’s affection had been a joy beyond measure. However, for Sasamoto and Omutsu to simply rejoice in this, it would have sufficed had they been isolated from the others—but the predicament lay in another man who had set his sights on Omutsu. “Even beggars aren’t faring well these days—that’s why I became a laborer.” To the extent of cracking such jokes, even those who had fallen into utter destitution were sinking deeper within this society. It resembled how iron filings would become embedded in a blacksmith’s anvil block and sink into it unnoticed.

Just as iron filings could not rise from the anvil block, so too were there laborers among them bound by a bond that kept them from escaping. And there were so many of them! Sakata, too, was that type of laborer. He was a man probably not yet forty—his work meticulous, a senior laborer capable of handling most tasks—but he had one critical flaw. It was another one of his virtues—or perhaps flaws—that he was too kind.

Moreover, it wasn’t that he was unattractive—he was tall, well-built, and possessed a more pronounced muscular build than even boxers. There was just one thing—his upper eyelids protruded slightly too much. It was as if the eaves protruded too far, leaving the room inside dark. That too had its merits. But he lacked confidence toward women. In other words, he wasn’t bold. Therefore, instead of abruptly wooing her, grabbing her hand, or stroking her buttocks, he had to go through the cumbersome procedure of delivering a self-introduction in front of the woman he’d set his sights on.

However, Sakata's self-introductions would inevitably exceed the bounds of mere introduction, descending into self-praise and conceit. "If we don't let him get away with that much," they said, "there'd be no way for Sakata to go on living."

The companions all listened with deep sympathy from the bottom of their hearts, and some of them merely pretended to listen while thinking of other matters. However, Omutsu did not care for Sakata’s self-introduction. Of course, later on, had Sakata and Omutsu actually gotten together, it would have led to major complications. Seeming to have realized this, Sakata said, “If I’d ended up with a half-baked chatterbox like that for a wife, it would’ve been a lifetime of bad harvests.”

Having declared this and completely resigned himself, he watched without jealousy as Omutsu chased from man to man, merely observing with evident displeasure. Omutsu seemed convinced that "X was her absolute freedom." No—she probably hadn't considered such things at all. Such women do exist from time to time. “I’d like to move on for a while. They’ve got a position at the Oigawa power plant where they’ll put this busybody to work.”

Having said that, he requested leave from Kobayashi and held something like a farewell party, yet after his departure, not a trace of loneliness could be detected in Omutsu’s demeanor. On the contrary, she grew even more cheerful than when Sasamoto had been present and began acting restlessly. As a result, all manner of crossed wires ensued.

“Last night, Omutsu-san went up to the worksite with Ono-san and didn’t come back for about two hours.” “The night before last—she went on a whole four-hour walk downstream with Ōyama-san though!”

“Well, since Sasamoto-san’s gone, whenever she doesn’t go out anywhere, there’s definitely something shady going on with someone.” Such conversations spread among the yama-no-kami crowd, and when Kobayashi’s wife—who had been away—returned, Ono’s missus and Ōyama’s missus got riled up, sparking little fires here and there. These sparks of domestic squabbles could sometimes blaze into full-blown disasters. But with Omutsu’s case, nothing serious ever caught flame.

Allow me to insert here an amusing episode—though some may chide that it’s less amusing than sheer obstinate folly. It was a case of failing to abandon his wife. That’s how it went.

There was a laborer couple where the old man was a drunkard, his wife was also a drunkard, and they were evenly matched in their drunkenness. When they first got together, they’d take turns treating each other with phrases like “Your turn!” and “No, yours!”—getting along perfectly in sync—but as married life brought increasingly dire financial problems, they gradually found themselves unable to drink to their hearts’ content. So the old man dumped his wife and headed by train to another construction site. However, his wife—who should have been collapsed dead drunk at home—though indeed plastered, rushed to the station just before departure and leaped onto the same train as her husband. And there she stood before her husband’s seat, grabbing him by the collar,

“You think there’s a man who’d forget his wife?!” When she said this, the husband scratched his head and, “What a waste—I’d finally managed to forget you.” he said. That was how it was.

Such stories were not particularly rare incidents. Had this been Omutsu’s situation, she might have gladly been "forgotten."

That Omutsu too finally took her leave and went off somewhere. “I’ll come around to visit now and then,” she said with casual flair before leaving—likely having found some “hole” nearby that suited her style.

Women of this sort leave no trace of their lives behind, turning on their heel and departing cleanly.

But when it came to householders like Ōyama and Kobayashi, strings were attached to both sides of their lives, and these had wound themselves around their necks. If they tried to forcibly impose order, those strings would tighten around their necks.

But now, the construction was advancing. As Kobayashi had said, the extremely difficult construction connecting the Sea of Japan and the Pacific Ocean was steadily progressing.

Dynamite echoed through Tenryū Gorge Valley day and night, lifting the pillows from deep slumber. Yesterday, during their work break, four laborers were taken away. The Bon holiday had ended, and from tomorrow, the sweltering labor would begin again like a sealed retort.

Tenryūkyō Gorge along the Tenryū River, renowned as a scenic wonder, was so to speak the modest gateway to the great valley carved by the river's prolonged course through mountainous terrain. To tourists arriving abruptly from Tokyo or the Ina Basin, the Tenryū River flowing through narrow channels between grotesque crags and rock formations must have seemed extraordinary indeed. But were one to venture further downstream, they would discover the mountains growing ever taller and the gorge ever deeper. And in the end, they'd likely grow weary of it all.

"How much longer would these mountains lining both banks—this winding muddy current—go on?" The river flowed on and on, sinking deep between the mountains to such an extent that one grew uneasy midway. River boats went down, and then were pulled back up.

There was a place called Monjima where they prepared those riverboats. It lay directly below the station bearing the same name.

From there, about seven or eight *chō* downstream, stood a shop called Midoriya—a hotel and boarding house that sold tobacco, groceries, alcohol, beer, canned goods, sweets, carp, and so on; in short, it had everything. Midoriya had been coiled there for forty years. To say Midoriya had been coiled there—though not in any way that could be considered disrespectful—it stood at the very foot of a precipitous mountain, likely a thousand shaku high. However, despite the mountain being unbelievably precipitous, it had remained safe for forty years at any rate. This was because dense vegetation had covered the mountainside.

For the railway line to pass about fifteen or sixteen ken above Midoriya, they had to cut away part of the mountain. To call this mere "cutting" would be misleading—it wasn’t ordinary soil but solid rock. To breach the mountain’s outer layer, they had cleared away all vegetation half a year earlier. Next came drilling holes into the bedrock and setting dynamite charges. If Midoriya hadn’t stood directly below them, they could have blasted through the mountain with thunderous explosions—but that approach was impossible.

Even without that, it wasn’t just once or twice that dynamite-blown rocks went flying and blew holes in Midoriya’s roof. Each time this happened, the spirited and rough-mannered proprietress of Midoriya Inn would rush outside and look up at the mountain looming directly above,

“You idiots! Watch it, damn you!” she would bellow, her face turning deathly pale. Ōyama was assigned the task of sealing the dynamite holes.

At first, they would gather old straw mats discarded by the roadside, and when the fuse hissed and began burning, prop them against the holes and flee. But when three or even four holes had been drilled, he couldn't keep up alone. Even knowing full well these were slow-burning fuses that wouldn't detonate abruptly, working at such a leisurely pace proved impossible before dynamite holes spewing ash-white smoke just six feet away.

When there were about four holes, two people would light the fuses, prop up old straw mats against them, and ring a bell as they— “Dynamite! Dynamite!” —shouted while fleeing down the mountain slope, clutching at tree branches and roots as they went. Once they reached what seemed a safe distance, they would press against tree trunks like shields while frantically ringing their bells, eyes fixed on the dynamite holes spewing smoke. Even when doing this five times a day, each time made their hearts tighten.

Boom! Kaboom! Bang! The blasts echoed off the sheer cliffs flanking the Tenryū River, knocked over the old straw mats, exposed the holes, and sometimes hurled debris four or five *ken* into the air. The old straw mats quickly became useless. However, in these mountains, procuring old straw mats was an arduous task. So they bound brushwood with wire as a substitute for the old straw mats. They wove oak branches with leaves still attached into mats exactly the size of a single tatami. Then they stretched No. 10 wire (thick wire) horizontally across the cut surface at a height of six or seven *ken* from the bottom and lowered another wire from it so it could shift over a span of five or six *ken*.

By doing so, they could prevent each dynamite cover from being blown down to the base of the cliff, and even if dynamite holes were drilled five or six shaku higher up on ledges, they could suspend the covers from above. It was grueling work. The woven brushwood was quite heavy, and positioning it properly over the holes took considerable time. However, this was work that didn’t allow them to take their time. But even with the woven brushwood, within just one or two attempts, the oak branches in areas directly hit by the holes would snap and crumble away.

On the cut surface, six or seven holes would be completed; covering each one, igniting them, and watching while ringing bells made for a fascinating sight. Once, because there was only a single wire stretched across, with each Boom! Boom! the covers were kicked upward like a crazed horse kicking up its hind legs, and as they kept being flung up, the cover on the last hole—"It definitely shifted a bit," someone thought—but once it came to that, even the bravest among them couldn’t pit their courage against dynamite.

When it went Boom! Boom!, rock fragments came flying as though machine gun barrels were trained their way, scattered and skimming low across the ground. Ōyama and his men had taken cover behind standing trees, so they remained unharmed, but those pushing trolleys and workers raking the dumping grounds instantly ducked their heads.

The holes were facing this way. Fortunately, there were no injuries, but many sharp-edged rock fragments lay scattered. For some reason, whenever the dynamite roared and rock fragments came flying in a scattered shower, everyone would instantly duck their heads forward as if bowing in unison. Not a single person jutted their chin out and looked upward. In this way, they extended the cutting above Midoriya upstream at a width just sufficient to lay the trolley tracks.

However, between that cutting and this cutting lay a small mountain stream. Though called a mountain stream, even when rain fell it barely formed a small current, and when none fell, it merely seeped beneath rock pines and moss to trickle along—this was what served as the water source for Midoriya and another inn called Shinya. That year, the weather was alarmingly erratic. During the rainy season, the sun blazed so fiercely it seemed to bake every drop of moisture from their bodies; once the Dog Days arrived, the weather turned erratic—sometimes drizzly, sometimes unnervingly cool, other times as dark, muggy, and stifling as a fermentation room. With rice prices rising, rumors spread that in the Tohoku region—around the time of deciding whether to plant rice seedlings or not—an official notice had been issued along the lines of: "This year, it would be wise to start digging up bracken and kudzu roots early."

During that parched rainy season, the drilling reached the drinking water stream above Midoriya. The slippery, water-washed rock surfaces, the moss clinging to those rocks, the iris-like grasses growing in hollows—all vanished without a trace from a single dynamite blast, leaving behind a portion of the earth’s inner layer—perhaps witnessing sunlight for the first time in recorded history—now crumbled into jagged fragments and overturned. Now, because the surface of these rock fragments spread out haphazardly, the small stream could not flow downward and was instead absorbed into the rocks.

Then, the Midoriya Inn proprietress would come up from below.

“The water isn’t coming through at all. What’s wrong? If you’re diverting it toward the stone embankment, I’d ask you to redirect it here today. I could endure half a day or so without, but if not a single drop comes all day long—well, that’s truly heartbreaking. This is a customer business—we can’t even let our guests bathe!” When Ōyama was cornered by the Midoriya Inn proprietress, her demand being not unreasonable left him struggling for a response, and as for solutions, he found himself utterly helpless—with no water flowing, he tried to flee but couldn’t escape in time. Since he was the dynamite cover operator, he kept removing the covers while—

“No, you’re absolutely right. Not a drop’s coming through?” “That’s no good.” “This is bad.” “Day after day like this—you folks without water must be at your limit, but damn if I can take it either.” “Let’s head down now and have a proper discussion.” “Please do that.” “Ōyama.” “This is life or death!” “If this keeps up, our lodgers won’t stay anymore—we’ll dry up completely.” “We’ve lived here forty years now.” “That we should face a water siege now... it’s heartbreaking.” “Ōyama...”

And so, this emotionally intense proprietress even began to well up with tears.

Ōyama descended the slope. In front of Hanaya too stood a sturdy barrack that seemed to belong to a supervisor from some hydroelectric power plant. In the rice fields and mulberry fields around there, White Leghorn chicks—marked with red ink, black ink, and red oxide—were busily pecking for food.

This may require some explanation.

Even in this deep valley, newly hatched White Leghorn chicks—the same as those sold at Tokyo night stalls—were being "packed" into perforated cardboard boxes. There were merchants who came to sell them, loaded on the backs of bicycles. They were sold at cheap prices. And since they could fetch a good price if raised successfully, the various laborers' quarters bought them.

However, since even humans were living in chicken coop-like laborers' quarters, they couldn't exactly give chickens the same treatment as people. Therefore, they fashioned sleeping spaces for the chickens using bamboo scraps and cement paper bags, while during daylight hours decided to let them "roam free, eat whatever they want, and grow big."

However, they soon noticed that every night, the number of chickens sleeping in the coop would "multiply or decrease." Wherever they were, having them 'multiply' posed no issues, but when it came to decreases—since they grew bigger each day—things were far from calm. So they tried tying strings around their legs. But this too proved not very effective. Red strings—fifty or sixty of them—might be gathered, but even if they tore cloth into strips that were still usable, they couldn’t afford to use them so recklessly. On top of that, they came undone or got so dirty they became indistinguishable.

In the end, the owner who kept the largest number of chickens and suffered the greatest losses had no choice but to catch them one by one and slather thick red stamp ink across their backs. For these reasons, along the roadside near the river in this mountain valley, White Leghorns of various colors could be seen pecking for food.

“Please look at this.” “Not a single drop is coming out.” “This is just too heartbreaking...” And so, the Midoriya Inn proprietress lamented sadly. Sure enough, from the end of the lengthy water channel that had been buried underground from the upper stream, not a single drop of water emerged. Even in the wooden water storage barrel, only a tiny amount of leftover water remained. Beneath the water bucket lay a pool spanning over two tsubo, its water blackly murky where carp moved sluggishly.

“Moreover, like this, the carp won’t last through today.” “In these mountains, if we don’t keep even carp alive, we can’t get any fresh fish from outside.” “There’s still fifteen or sixteen kanmonme stocked here.” “This is disastrous.” “If it were anything else, I could manage somehow, but it’s just the water.” “It’s what you’d call the water of life, isn’t it?” “It’s truly heartbreaking.” “Still, there’s no reason you should lack water living right by the Tenryū River.” “But isn’t this kind of drought unusual?” “It’s drier than midwinter.” “Would digging a well not work?”

Ōyama said, feeling pity, as he considered whether they ought to dig a well if circumstances permitted. “Well...” “Water would come if you dig for it, I suppose—but what a waste when we’ve already got such fine springwater here.” “This water is really good for your health, you know.” “Even the people lodging at my place start putting on weight after two or three months, I tell you.”

“They said that too—at Shinya, they also claimed that if you boil it for baths, it’s good for rheumatism.” “But somehow, if you keep drinking it too long, won’t you end up getting thin again like you here—come to think of it, the old man too?” “Too much is just as bad as too little, as they say.” “Shinya’s old man still doesn’t seem to have good legs either. How about you, proprietress?”

And so, feeling more at ease, Ōyama decided to stir things up. "You’ve got a sharp tongue!" "It’s just my nature, Mr. Ōyama. You’re as thin as if you’ve been squeezed by a barrel hoop yourself, aren’t you?" "Now who’s sharp-tongued? Comparing me to a barrel hoop—that’s something! Makes me think of those old wooden cannons." "But you do come up with clever lines, don’t you, Proprietress?" Ōyama said this and laughed.

At that moment, sixteen or seventeen laborers came running along the road in front of Midoriya Inn from upstream, each shouting something as they went. One of them was carrying two long bamboo poles with something like cloth wound around them. “What’s that?” “What’s going on?”

With that, the two of them got to their feet and went out front. At that moment came running up Hayashida—the short man who had previously been at Kobayashi’s laborers’ quarters where he would apply white powder and dress in Omutsu’s kimono to clown around. Rumors had circulated that after undergoing an inspection and staying at Kobayashi’s quarters awhile longer he was now working at the upstream power plant weir for what they called jackhammer training. “Hey there Hayashida! Been ages.” “What’s happened?”

Ōyama asked, blocking his path. “Two people just got swept away. We’re chasing after them now!” “What the hell—two people got swept away?” “We’re going back, going back. We can’t stand around talking about this!” Having said that, the short man Hayashida dashed off downstream after his comrades, looking like leaves caught in a whirlwind. “Hey! Wait up, Hayashida! Just let me hear what happened!”

With that, Ōyama added the latter part of his remark so that the proprietress would hear it, then broke into a run and followed after Hayashida.

――Things need a trigger, you see――

And Ōyama felt relieved that he had managed to escape from the Midoriya Inn proprietress.

About one block downstream from Midoriya Inn stood Kobayashi's laborers' quarters, where the path sloped down two or three ken from the roadway. When Hayashida ran up to the utility pole just ahead, Kobayashi himself emerged from his barracks onto the roadway.

“Hey.”

Hayashida stopped and greeted Kobayashi. “What happened?”

“We’re working over at the weir now.” “Just now, the boulder came loose and drove our comrades below into the drainage channel.” “We pulled one up from a whirlpool, but the other got swept away—now we’re going to search for him.”

Ōyama also caught up there and listened to the story. “Did it come loose on its own? That place is pretty high up, isn’t it?” “No, since it was dangerous, they’d tried to remove it and put in a lot of effort, but it just wouldn’t come out. Then, since we had to build a scaffold down below, two more guys came over. They said, ‘Hold on—let’s pull out this boulder first,’ so the two of them tried working on it together, but they just couldn’t get it out. Since they figured that even after all this effort, if they didn’t remove it, it wouldn’t fall, someone said, ‘Just do it—it’ll be fine,’ so they started working on the scaffold. But somehow or other, the boulder came loose.”

“Hey! Here it comes! Clear out! Clear out!” By the time someone shouted that from above, the boulder had already collided with the waist of the worker up there. At the moment of impact, he threw his hands high in the air. Then the one below also raised both arms like he was shouting “Banzai!”, and right when the boulder struck the waist of the upper worker, the two of them were embracing each other. Then both the rock and the embracing pair tumbled into that drainage channel in an instant—turned into a real mess, I tell ya.”

“So they both got swept away? Still holding each other like that?” “Still holding each other?” Kobayashi asked. “When they fell, they were holding each other, though. The one who was hit in the waist seems to have died right away—from where the suspension bridge stands past the drainage channel, you know where it forms that whirlpool? At that whirlpool spot, they said the man who was still alive managed to swim up and climb out on his own. It’s still unclear whether he survived. The man who was hit in the waist seems to have been swept away along the riverbed as he was. So now everyone’s taking stretchers—there’s that one shallow spot downstream, right? We’re going there to keep watch. If we don’t get ahead of the corpse, once it passes that point, it’ll be all the way from Hamamatsu to the Pacific Ocean. This is no joke. It might already be flowing past the Kaneyama worksite area, tumbling over the riverbed as it goes. I’m sorry.”

Having said that abruptly, Hayashida once again stumbled forward and dashed off in quick, short strides. "That bastard, that no-good bastard! When he said he was going for his conscription exam, I thought he'd at least get himself a proper haori coat—so I even gave him some pocket money along with his wages. But he comes back, stays a day or two, then splits his ass and starts working somewhere else! Because he's such an interesting guy, it seems he gets taken a liking to wherever he goes."

Kobayashi said to Ōyama. “He’s young, you see. “He can’t just sit still in one place, you know.” “He apparently asked Kinbō, ‘Get some money from your old man,’ you see.” “Maybe he met some childhood friends at the exam and discovered the pleasures of women, don’t you think?” “They’re holding a cremation across the river again, aren’t they?” “How many cremations do you think we’ve seen since New Year’s?” “That’s quite a number, isn’t it?”

Across the river from the Kobayashi laborers’ quarters was a place for cremating those who died in nearby villages and at the construction site. On a narrow slope resembling the mouth of a gorge with towering mountains on both banks—slightly elevated above the water’s surface—lay nothing but a hole measuring five shaku in length, two in width, and three to four in depth. The area immediately upstream of that crematorium had become a collection site for sand and ballast from the power plant construction. The coffin had to cross suspension bridges, pass through newly built roads, suddenly descend from sections not yet opened to mountain cliffs leading to the riverbed, navigate narrow elevated remnants of excavation at the ballast collection site, and finally reach the crematorium.

During outbreaks of typhus, thick plumes of smoke would rise from there about twice a day. The smoke lingered stubbornly over the valley for lack of wind, hanging thickly until even those in the laborers’ quarters across the river had no choice but to breathe its foul stench.

It was during the lingering cold season. The previous day, a small coffin had been brought by just a handful of people and cremated. The next day, from early morning, what appeared to be the mother of that small coffin came and remained almost entirely inside that hole until evening.

At the laborers’ quarters across the river, they too noticed this and grew concerned, occasionally glancing over while wondering, “What could be happening?” Just when they thought she was gone, she would listlessly raise her head from the hole. She must have been trying not to leave even the tiniest bone uncollected from her child who had passed away so young. And with winter’s early sunset, by the time her figure had vanished from sight, those on this side could no longer witness her departure.

The issue of Midoriya’s drinking water was neatly resolved when rain began that evening, as with all previous water disputes without exception. But this time, Midoriya’s building itself and the people inside entered a state where they "might not be safe."

No one could have ever imagined that such a thing would arise. This was because the quarried rock contained what might be called a fault—or something like that—a geological stratum running through it. Just like an onion as big as a mountain, the rocks of the cliff had formed distinct layers. They had repeatedly blasted away the lower strata with dynamite as they advanced, leaving nothing to support it from below. Now, under the mountain’s pressure aligned with the rock strata, it had reached a point where “it could not be guaranteed that the upper cliff wouldn’t collapse.”

This situation left the entire group utterly at a loss. Just two months or so prior, there had been an incident where a stone about the size of a medium wicker trunk had fallen from that quarry and—despite there being no reason for such a thing to happen—rolled down the steep slope, shattering not just the threshold but even the lintel and walls before coming to rest there. At that time, they had intended to gently lower it from the railway grounds onto the compensation road just below by giving it a slight pry with a crowbar. But the malicious stone, upon reaching the compensation road, rolled ponderously once or twice as if deliberating. Pretending to tumble toward the upstream ravine, it veered off the road and violently collided with bamboo thickets and zelkova trees. These impacts sent it spinning like a cannonball down the slope until it rebounded off the cliff edge above the house, soaring nearly six feet high before causing the aforementioned damage.

And at the spot where the stone had always fallen, Midoriya’s only daughter—a lovely twenty-one-year-old girl named Mizuho—would sit doing her sewing. However, during that first rude intrusion of the stone, Mizuho had gone to the kitchen area, so there had been no harm to anyone.

At that time, they had managed to obtain forgiveness by apologizing through every possible means and compensating for the damages.

This time, that didn’t work. It wasn’t a single stone or a solitary rock—their adversary was the mountain itself.

It was the beginning of June.

Early morning—it was still cold at the worksite, so they lit a bonfire to warm themselves. The quarry above Midoriya now had the mountain’s white entrails towering forty to fifty shaku high. On the cliff of that quarry rested a boulder roughly two tatami mats in size. Though called a rounded boulder, having sat motionless there for decades or perhaps centuries, grasses and shrubs had grown thick upon it, blanketing it in moss. And whether it was an outcrop of the bedrock forming the mountain below or an independent boulder was not immediately apparent.

Both considered themselves “gods,” yet even between these two miners, opinions diverged—one insisting “It’s an outcrop,” the other countering “No, a boulder.” In any case, the quarry had to be cut deeper into the mountain’s interior; if so, then regardless, that boulder-like mass was a “thorn in their side.” If that thing were to collapse along with the mountain, neither Midoriya nor the barracks in front of it would remain an issue at all.

Before cutting into it from below, they drilled holes into the boulder atop the cliff and set off a light charge of dynamite. However, when they suddenly blasted this boulder bastard with dynamite after it had spent hundreds of years sunbathing its shell in peaceful slumber, it must have been terribly startled—scattering fist-sized tears everywhere. One of them fell right onto Midoriya’s roof once more, piercing clean through from roof to ceiling, crashed down onto the box of displayed sweets, and smashed the glass panes and confections into a mangled mess together.

Right after that incident, Ōyama passed before Midoriya Inn while returning from having gone out on an errand to the barracks area. “Mr. Ōyama! Mr. Ōyama!”

As soon as the proprietress of Midoriya Inn spotted Ōyama’s figure from the kitchen area, she called out to him in a loud voice. “Oh, has the water stopped again?” When Ōyama joked, “This isn’t about water! Take a look at this. Unless you implement thorough protective measures, we’ll have no choice but to demand suspension of construction work. When they’re punching through roofs and ceilings—smashing sweet displays and ruining merchandise like this—we can’t just sacrifice our livelihood! You’re supposed to be responsible—where exactly have you been loafing around?”

“Oh hell, we’ve really gone and screwed things up this time.” “Even with all that gear set up, why’d the damn rocks go flying?” “No, my apologies.” “I’ll cover the damages, so please let this slide.” “Thing is, if you leave it to the miners, they’ll half-ass it ’cause they can’t be bothered.” “There’s some damn fool saying ‘Course rocks fly when you blast dynamite—that’s the whole point!’” “Well sure, if dynamite didn’t send rocks flying, we wouldn’t use the stuff.” “The real headache’s Midoriya Inn being dug in here forty-odd years.” “If this’d been some slapdack shack thrown up last year, we could’ve hashed it out—but let’s be straight, proprietress, that’s just how it stands.” “I’ll get roof and ceiling boards brought over pronto—look here.” “Mark down those sweets and boxes as my personal tab in the ledger.” “I’ll square it when we settle accounts, so I’m off to fetch them boards now.”

Ōyama was already heading outside while delivering the latter part of his spiel. Ōyama obtained a bundle of roof boards from the distribution office and handed them to Midoriya’s old man—who closely resembled a burlap sack for dried goods—saying, “We were supposed to handle this ourselves, but since we’re busy today, I’ll have to ask you to take care of it,” then ascended to the worksite via the winding path. It was when Ōyama, having climbed the steep path, just stuck his head out over the half-finished railway construction site.

From the quarry above Midoriya came a desperate shout that sounded like someone risking their life.

Loud voices were nothing unusual at the open worksite. You could say they were always shouting, yelling, cursing. This arose from necessity. When situations occurred—like having to roar "The trolley's overturned! Hold off winching!" from a riverbed a hundred yards away to the worksite's winch operator—they needed to bellow with full force just to be heard. But Kobayashi's shout at this moment was neither mere loudness, nor anger, nor desperation.

When Ōyama appeared at the worksite, the area around the quarry above Midoriya sank into a hushed stillness, as if submerged in water’s depths.

Kobayashi had moved away from directly beneath the quarry and was standing near the downstream embankment. “Go to Midoriya and tell them to get out immediately! “The mountain’s coming down!” “The mountain’s coming down!” Then once more Kobayashi spoke to Ōyama in a voice that bypassed the ears and resonated directly in the skull. Kobayashi was an unflappable, composed man. But when his opponent was a “mountain,” and on top of that, it was starting to move, even he seemed slightly shaken in that moment.

Ōyama became acutely aware of the gravity of the situation. It wasn’t that he had comprehended the words, but rather that everything Kobayashi must have felt as he faced the collapsing mountain struck Ōyama’s entire being through those brief words and their tone.

Like a motor switched on, Ōyama began rotating into motion simultaneously with those words and raced down the dumping ground of the compensation road. There exists an expression called "single-minded frenzy"—this feeling resembled that state, though rephrased differently, it also bore similarity to when a human possessed by some ideal becomes utterly fixated on that ideal while disregarding everything else along the way. "He must save Midoriya Inn's people."

The single-minded thought that "he had to save the people of Midoriya Inn" completely dominated Ōyama's entire mind. Therefore, down a slope so steep that even goats or dogs couldn’t scramble down it, Ōyama leapt in one breath. Ōyama later reflected that in such moments, the human mind becomes free from distracting thoughts. A time when daily life was filled with suffering—when notions like justice and goodness had vanished from the earth, when even the mere act of "living" like insects required cunning—and further, an era when humans could not possibly remain indifferent to such unreasonable deaths night after day yet grew numb to cruel "death" itself. And it was an era when many people had ceased even trying to think.

In such times, he found it remarkable that even for just a minute or two—flaring up in agitation—his entire being was unified by the single imperative of saving Midoriya Inn.

“The mountain’s coming down! Get out now!” Ōyama shouted this as he came crashing into Midoriya. “Dynamite?” asked the two travelers who had been eating boxed lunches. “Don’t be ridiculous!” Ōyama snapped. “Not dynamite—the mountain’s collapsing! Move your asses outside! We’ll talk there!” He rushed out front as if drawing them after him,

“The mountain’s coming down.” “A mountain about sixty feet high is coming down!” “If it doesn’t stop at the compensation road, this house’ll get buried.” “Proprietress, come out quick!” “And get over here to watch the mountain!” Ōyama shouted at the proprietress who had gone to the back room directly beneath the mountain and was rummaging about searching for something. The Proprietress had been pacing through the dark back room as if hunting for some vital treasure—maybe something worth more than life itself—but whether she’d abandoned her search upon hearing Ōyama’s unnaturally charged words or finally found what she sought, she came clattering out in her geta.

When he confirmed that everyone had rushed out, Ōyama turned back and tried to head toward the base of the crumbling mountain—but upon returning as far as the lower path from which the mountain was visible, he found himself unable to tear his eyes away from it. While they were still climbing up—the mountain might come— No sooner had this thought crossed his mind than he found himself rooted to the spot at the area—where camellia trees grew thick and graves stood in sparse rows—staring fixedly at the quarry’s cliff. Five seconds, ten seconds, a minute—time passed with excruciating slowness.

Ah, time—there are moments when it crawls, and others when it frantically rushes without reason. For the unemployed, time crawled at a maddening pace; while for those who finally secured work, between one payday and the next, it rushed by as if through a vacuum. As for the speed of time on payday in particular—that was something no wage earner who’d ever received their due could possibly comprehend. Before time that felt maddeningly slow and clinging, the mountain stood almost vertically, its skin stripped away to expose white bedrock that floated starkly amidst the surrounding expanse of green.

It still wasn’t moving. It was as immovable as a mountain. But trickling down, trickling down—already for five hours now,

"The mountain's coming"—the warning itself had been issued by the mountain. Following Ōyama's lead, travelers drawn by novelty and Midoriya folks driven by dread stood beneath the camellia trees gazing fixedly at the collapsing slope. Yet only the Midoriya Inn proprietress appeared incapable of focusing her gaze single-mindedly on the mountain. Viewed from half a cho away, the slope betrayed no visible peril; but even had danger been apparent, someone of her temperament could never have stayed put.

She paced back and forth countless times between her inn and the cemetery. “Whoa!”

A stifled sound—neither quite a groan nor a sigh—escaped in unison from the mouths of the people looking up. The mountain had begun to shift. In that instant, it was unclear whether the mountain had swayed unsteadily or people’s eyes had wavered dizzily. But then, with a dull reverberation, the earth let out a groan. It struck the people's ears and made their legs tremble.

The mountain produced a deep rumble and slid down deliberately while making the ground reverberate. A sturdy protrusion appeared at one point along the fault line's structure; its central portion slid three to four shaku before halting, while both ends crumbled down in orderly succession from the lower section onto the railway track cutting. Only the excess debris that couldn't be contained there leaped over the four-to-five-ken cliff, plunging their jagged heads three to four shaku into the soft surface of the two-ken-wide compensation road—and thus the "mountain" that had overflowed the tracks piled up layer upon layer upward.

And, fortunately, it did not come crashing all the way down. The protrusion at the mountain’s central section saved Midoriya and thereby rescued the contractor who had undertaken this project as well. But how long did the entire collapse of that mountain take, I wonder. That event delivered a day’s worth—no, two days’ worth—no, an even greater upheaval of the heart to Kobayashi, Ōyama, and the Midoriya people.

But from when it began sliding to when it came to rest, it probably didn't take more than two minutes. "Banzai!"

With that, Ōyama raised both hands high and shouted to Kobayashi. Kobayashi wore a solemn expression at the collapse site, like a physician tending to a dying patient. But now, having seen that the mountain had fortunately been stopped midway, he seemed to breathe a sigh of relief and showed an indescribably tearful smile.

Then Ōyama dashed toward Midoriya and called out to the proprietress who had returned there: "We survived." "There was no danger." "I apologize for worrying you." "In any case, our safety is what matters most." He delivered these words while facing her directly.

From before Midoriya Inn, looking through the standing trees, what had until then been high above—the mountain’s exposed viscera—now loomed close and white, searing into their eyes as if peering straight down from overhead. The Midoriya people and the company employees’ families standing before them remained in the street, belatedly expressing astonishment that “the mountain had drawn near”—a reality far surpassing their expectations. “How terrifying that was.” “I thought it was the end.”

The women whispered to each other in hushed voices, exchanging such phrases. They would start to raise their voices only to check themselves, as if fearing the mountain might come again.

Ōyama ran up the mountain like a rabbit. Kobayashi too—along with the miners who until moments ago had been drilling holes with chisels, prying with crowbars, and wielding pickaxes at that very mountain—now appeared frozen in various postures as if bolted in place, staring fixedly and lost in thought. Truly, it was a countless multitude of contemplations. Even before one thought could take root, the next would already emerge—countless thoughts about the mountain, about daily life, wild associations—all coming one after another in a nebulous swirl. That could also be said to have been, at the same time, a state of utter daze.

The collapsed mountain had dispersed into hundreds-kan and thousands-kan boulders, pointed fragments, flat slabs, sand, and soil—all piling upon one another to fill the railway track excavation. Overflowing the rock masses left as earth retaining, they were barely held back by the compensation road’s embankment. Yet despite such a massive mountain collapsing and throwing people into turmoil, all the collapsed slope did was expose its innards here and there. The remaining sections still wore the mountain's outer skin just as when they had been contiguous with the upper slopes. Upon them grew five or six azalea shrubs and one young sansho tree with elegant charm—as if asking to be made into bonsai or something—as though nothing at all had happened.

The wind, as if conjured by the mountain's collapse, shook the slender trunk of the young sansho tree. "Divine protection indeed," Ōyama said.

Ōyama said. There must have been better words or expressions out there somewhere, but Ōyama said what he did. “Human beings are strange creatures, aren’t they? While you’re thinking ‘the mountain’s finally coming,’ it seems you aren’t truly believing it will come.” “You think, ‘It’s finally coming,’ and then sand begins pattering down from all directions. As it gradually increases in quantity, you start believing, ‘This is it—it’s really coming.’” “Your whole body trembles in small shivers for no reason, thinking: How much mountain will come? If it’s a big one, everything’s finished—Midoriya’ll get crushed and buried. If that happens, my nearly fifty years of work’ll hit a dead end here. But can’t we do something? Isn’t there any way to stop this mountain? It hasn’t fully collapsed yet—no method at all? Then you make them tidy up the crowbars and hammers and ropes and scoops and chisels, make them push out the carts, make them pull up the miners from both above and below the mountain. Once everything’s cleared away, you start thinking: Maybe by some miracle the mountain’ll stay put like this. You wrestle with all these thoughts and just can’t settle your mind.” “But once the mountain sways unsteadily, the earth groans, and it finally starts sliding—that’s when you completely make up your mind, huh?”

“The mountain was coming.” “We did what needed doing—gave all there was to give.” “The mountain was coming.” “Burying Midoriya would’ve been pointless.” “The mountain was coming.” He’d made up his mind then. With that resolve, he found himself calmly watching the slope slide and crumble. “When it finally went—just kept collapsing till it stopped—and I saw Midoriya’d been spared… Didn’t feel happy or grateful.” “Wasn’t about gain or loss—different thing altogether. How to put it… Felt like I oughta bow to that ruined slope.” “‘My apologies,’ maybe.”

After the excitement and turmoil, Kobayashi spoke quietly as if tears had pooled in the depths of his heart. Ōyama found himself tearing up as he listened, though he couldn't say why. It was a quiet atmosphere and tranquil mood. As if nothing at all had happened until mere moments before, a desolate stillness lingered there.

What a stark chasm lies between the thoughts forced out by the relentless weight of daily life and those that seize people immediately after this landslide!

The mountain had concluded its movement in a minute or two—or perhaps ten to twenty seconds. Yet neither the miners nor the caretakers could tear themselves away from the collapse site—whether for two minutes, ten, or thirty—and having come to rest upon rocks that had broken free from part of the mountain, they sat down and gazed intently into the fault. What a magnificent fault it was! It stood nearly vertical in triangular form, its slick surface resembling an enormous tombstone hewn from natural stone. And across its face lay a thin layer of fine white soil, as though dusted with ceremonial face powder.

“I never imagined it would come this big. But how terrifying it is. That within this earth—so thickly covered by lush forests and seeming eternally unshakable—yes, even within its bedrock—there exists such a principle as this. How truly terrifying.”

Ōyama continued quietly to Kobayashi. "It was bound to give way, I tell you. Even if we left this place completely untouched, in a few hundred or thousand years, it would surely have broken free from this principle." "Observe—from the top down about nine meters, the roots have penetrated. They've become as thin and flattened out as a cord used to tie luggage. The transformation is gradual, but it's taking hold tenaciously."

“It must be changing constantly, but unless it comes crashing down like this mountain did, would we never understand it? When the ground rumbles like this and it comes crashing down, anyone would understand. Wasn’t Midoriya Inn’s proprietress furious? ‘Going and dropping a damn mountain or something...’”

Kobayashi said.

“No, she was utterly quiet.” “Almost pitifully so.” “Since it was like a localized quake disaster.” “I see. That’s a relief.” “I’d braced myself for another tongue-lashing—we’re the damn blasting crew after all. Figured she’d grab my collar this time, maybe even sink her teeth into my arm.” With that, Kobayashi laughed softly for the first time.

It was a quiet afternoon.

On the Tenryu River, boats with hoisted sails were making their way upstream; rain must be nearing. When sailing boats went upstream, rain would fall—or so people used to say in these parts. And that's exactly what happened.

The sun slowly walked toward the Central Alps mountain range. The sun was still high. Yet, as though they had completed some grand task, a relief of heart and hollow weariness of soul seized the people.

The people from the embankment area who had gone downstream to search for corpses had not yet returned. If sailing boats ascended the river, rain fell, and the slumbering Tenryu stirred—summoning clouds, bringing down rain, and setting riverbed stones rolling—then the search for corpses would become not merely difficult but nearly impossible.

(Shōwa 9 [1934] October "Kaizō" Volume 16, Issue 11 · Shōwa 10 January (1935) “Kaizō” Volume 17, Issue 1)