Pathway to Japanese Literature

What a dreadful turn of events. Ōyama had been waiting for his brother’s death. It was now, over a decade later, that he came to know this clearly. Ōyama received the news that those two children had died when he was working at the power plant on the Ochiai River of the Kiso River.

And now, over a decade later, at the Tenryū River railway construction site—separated by mountains like Kiso Komagatake and Mount Ena—he learned through a message from his aunt that his brother had died in Korea. The brief postcard, after stating that his brother had died in Korea, continued: “The oldest son has been hospitalized with appendicitis, and the other children are each being looked after at temples.” “Children without parents are truly pitiable.” “Wherever I look, there are only people with many children of their own—I can’t very well ask them for help—so I’m at my wit’s end.”

That was all it said.

Since Ōyama was taking a break from the worksite, when he saw the postcard, he immediately sent a reply to his aunt and lay down on his back in the dimness of the dormitory.

Ah… So brother’s finally gone. In Korea— A recollection unaccompanied by sorrow. It had become utterly exhausted—as if turned into a mummy—and sank into recollections of the past. Ōyama had continued to dream of his two deceased children over a decade ago. Because of this, the alcohol he had always loved increased in quantity. No matter what he felt, Ōyama drank alcohol, entered a numbed state, and sank into a drunken slumber.

To that end, he sold not only belongings of the wife he later married but even clothes of the two children born between them to scrap dealers, and guzzled what might well have been “murderous shochu” in full awareness of its dangers. The true nature of the dreams came from not knowing how the children had died. What torment it was—this craving to grasp the essence of what remained unknowable! If humans were to desperately begin rushing this very moment to answer “What is man?”—that would surely be an infinite hell.

Even if I knew, it wouldn’t change a thing. Is it not a blessing that I didn’t have to witness why the children died? If I were to see a child fall headfirst into a roadside manure pit and die before my eyes, or be forced to helplessly watch another waste away and perish for no discernible reason—that would truly be unbearable.

And perhaps it was precisely because they had not died before his eyes that such speculations arose—but did that mean deaths of infants like those were truly nonexistent in reality? To keep seeing the same dream—to have just one recurring—what sort of mental state would that be, from a medical standpoint?

Ōyama, because of the postcard’s phrase—“Children without parents are truly pitiable”—found himself forced to keep reliving dreams that coalesced into a singular focus: the cause of his children’s deaths, which he would never know, and the countless imaginings about that cause—memories he had nearly forgotten over a decade prior through tremendous effort and the numbing power of alcohol. For Ōyama, humans were not born to live in misfortune. He had thought that one must live as happily as possible.

However, for Ōyama, misfortune visited more often than happiness. The fact that his brother had died was a thing of the past. But it was now that he came to know it. And then Ōyama—though not with tangible awareness—felt something like the weariness of life that stemmed from this. "Why on earth does the light creep up from below?" "Isn’t this the kind of light that makes the whole world utterly dreary?" Ōyama thought.

About twelve feet wide, the white sandy soil from eroded granite, exposed to direct sunlight, glared back, streaming into the room from beneath his feet. The area beyond the garden formed a dark backdrop from the low eaves down about four feet due to the deep green hues of walnuts, cedars, and wisterias. In other words, with the upper area dark and only the soil white, the light crept up from below. This severely strained the eyes. To make matters worse, the atmospheric pressure was abnormal. It resembled the hold (ship’s hold) of a steamship, where the only way to ventilate was with a ventilator.

When airplanes occasionally passed over the Tenryū River, one could hear their engine roar, but spotting their silhouettes was nearly impossible. There must be air pockets scattered haphazardly over the river surface and along the cliffs on both banks. At the railway line construction site, when they lit a fire, the smoke flowed downward.

If light crept up from below and smoke crawled down from above, then the world became utterly inverted. That inversion was reality here. Had this inverted reality suddenly gaped open and swallowed Ōyama whole, he might have accepted it as the natural order. Yet Ōyama had bundled his past into a grandiose cloth parcel and carried it on his back. Had that parcel contained treasures instead, there might have been value in unpacking and displaying them—but what filled it were tatters, stench, poverty, and humiliation.

If that thing—if that grandiose bundle—were a real furoshiki cloth, he could toss it onto any doorstep like a chased thief and make a light-footed escape. But the grandiose bundle called the past was shouldered beneath his own skin like a tumor. Moreover, this bundle of the past would occasionally bare needle-sharp points and jab at his back.

—I’ve had enough—

And so, Ōyama, still lying on his back, slipped both hands beneath his neck.

Thinking, pondering, feeling—these were fundamentally unnecessary things. Look—this was said to be the place with the most insects in all of Japan. Insects didn’t think or contemplate. But they probably felt something. Then fine—just keep on feeling! "It hurts." "Ah, I’m exhausted." When you felt like "Ah, I want a drink" or "I’m sleepy," you cut it off right there. Don’t think about what came next. Don’t dwell on it. Just space out—

When he thought in such a way—told himself to space out—he realized that thinking itself was a dangerous thing. It lingered on.

Ōyama kept thinking.

—Hmm. I was carrying this grandiose bundle of the past. But this grandiose bundle of the past—it even had ancestral tablets in it. As for ancestral tablets—these things weren’t in the bundle; they flowed in the blood. They were in the bones too. So then, I’d ended up here at the very bottom of life, settled like dregs of sake, shouldering my own grandiose bundle alongside generations of ancestral tablets in this utterly inverted reality. Moreover, I’d even made my two actual children shoulder a considerable grandiose bundle already. Hmm, I guessed life was just that sort of thing. If I’d had a proper home of my own, a solid foundation for life, and could’ve made proper plans—was it really impossible to live according to those plans? For example, prison—that was right. Even with too many rules, this wasn’t interesting. Anyway, I’d let my ancestors’ tablets flow into my blood, fermenting them nightly with alcohol. The ancestors were all dead. Not a single one was alive. Dad was dead. Mom was dead too. The ancestors on both my father’s and mother’s sides must’ve died in great numbers. What a dreadful number that must’ve been. That had dangled its way down to my place anyway, and now two generations below were dangling in knots. That’s right—well, it wasn’t such a big deal. It was such a chaotic era.

There’s no reason I alone have to go around probing into life or whatever. “To make humanity happy—how exactly might one go about doing that?” Going around asking Hitler, Mussolini, or Prince Saionji about such things one by one would be too much trouble, wouldn’t it? For one thing, it’s a dangerous era. It’s not just Japan. The whole world’s in turmoil. In times like these, if someone were to go around asking about such aimless things as “human happiness,” they’d probably get beaten up by some hothead. Even so—why can’t I manage some coherent way of thinking instead of these rambling thoughts? To live properly—logically, exhilaratingly—like a sharp blade slicing through tangled threads... With a “Nay! Tay! Down!” rhythm, resolutely—that’s how I want to live. I was born into this world, so I’ve got no choice but to keep living. I’m scraping by. Anyway, I’m alive. Living against my will. That’s how it is. Damn—

“Damn, that hurts!”

As soon as he shouted, Ōyama suddenly leapt up. A horsefly—one that should have been on a horse, as large as a cicada—had stabbed its sharp proboscis into Ōyama’s leg, attempting to suck blood. “Damn it! “You’ve got the wrong one! “I’m not a damn horse!”

With that, Ōyama shouted at the fleeing horsefly in a loud voice and applied saliva to the bite mark. “What’s wrong?” “Did a centipede get you or something?”

Yoshikazu said. “If it were a centipede, there’d be some logic to it—but a damn horsefly?!” Ōyama’s child came home from school. He had started elementary school this year, but given that he had to climb a one-and-a-half-*ri* steep slope from the banks of the Tenryū River up to the highland area at the base of Ōakashi, this was quite literally “climbing to school.” Being a late-born child of eight and raised in Tokyo, this commute to school proved too physically demanding for him. Therefore, he would go one day and rest for two. Such days continued.

Just when he thought he could go out again, he would start crying halfway and come back home.

“Take-chan stuck out his leg and tripped me!” “A big kid hit me even though I didn’t do anything!” “The book’s gone!” “I’m so late!”

Saying such things, he would come crying down the steep slope back home. “So the book’s gone—where’d you lose it?” “Must’ve lost it somewhere by the roadside.” “How’d you even know it was gone?” “Just did!”

Hah! That brat—since he hates going to school, he must’ve tossed his reader somewhere or hidden it in the grass—

Ōyama thought. “Saying ‘It just did’ like that—that’s odd. When you left the house, it was properly in there—even if you ran, it shouldn’t fly out. Look how tightly it’s packed in here. Even if you tried to pull it out, you’d need to use a hell of a lot of force to get it loose, wouldn’t you? For it to be gone like that—isn’t that strange?” When he said this, Taa-bō stood at the entrance of the workers’ dormitory and tilted his head.

—I don’t even know myself— He stood there as if to say, “I don’t even know myself—” “Go look for it.”

When he said this, leaving the backpack behind, he climbed up the steep slope along the stream again.

Ōyama was seized by an indescribable feeling. The one-and-a-half-ri steep uphill path from the workers’ dormitory to the school was, at the same time, the rugged social life of children. There, this frail eight-year-old child had to live as an independent person. Each of those children had their own different homes and environments in which they were raised. Some were children of the dormitory foreman, some were children of bosses, and some were children of laborers. Others were children of innkeepers, company employees, and small-scale farmers.

Each child lived by a different set of rules. There, moral standards remained unformed. Cultural backgrounds varied wildly. Even so—though children craved adventure and novelty—among their parents were those who lived by brute force.

For these reasons, Ōyama abandoned the idea of making his child commute to school according to his own will. To "look for" the textbook, the child who had gone came back saying, “It wasn’t there.” “Then fine, go play however you want.”

Ōyama said.

Life was long. On top of that, life was hard. If health permitted, it was a life where one had to live sixty or even eighty years. That long, harsh life—this child too would walk it in search of "happiness." Mistaking a firefly for a viper’s eye, he would grasp misfortune instead of happiness, as if bitten. If one sought freedom, they would suffer severe constraints. If I were to look back and try to pluck "happiness" from my life, love, marriage—everything would vanish. What faintly remained was that neither my father nor my mother ever scolded me. They left fruit by my pillow while I slept. I dreamed of fruit lying by my bedside—reached out my hand and grasped real fruit. And when I bit into it and woke up, my father and mother were sitting there by my pillow...smiling at me—or so I remember. "I was about three—no—four years old at the time." If I had to call that my happiness...then I suppose I could. I too would let the child be free—at least while he remained a child. If I died or he became independent...there’d be no such things as freedom or happiness left. There’d only be life. A distorted, servile life—one where even when things went against you...you had to keep your face smiling—would seize that boy again. Even so...it was fine. I didn’t want to send him out into that life weak and sickly. Yeah...that’s right.

Become as sturdy as a monkey in the mountains while you still can. And bravely confront life and keep going— With that thought, he sent his child into the mountains.

That day was the last day before summer break. Inside the backpack, along with things like practice notebooks for the break and guidelines for parents during the break, there was a student report card.

Ōyama’s wife saw it. “Nutrition’s second-rate.” Ōyama’s wife said to him. “It can’t be helped. This one takes after you.” “An illegitimate child…” “How pitiful.” “That can’t be helped either. Since my ex-wife remains missing and is still officially registered in the family registry. This too is as you well know. I’ve left the procedures to you, but you aren’t even trying to do them.” “When we go back to Tokyo next time, let’s do something about this.”

“Fine.” “But when you think about it, humans don’t dwell on family registry matters many times in their entire lives.” “In the end, we’ll vanish before the registry even matters.” “You’re just spouting carefree nonsense.” “What exactly do you plan to do?” “What do you mean? “I’ll leave it to you.” “You’ve left it to me, but there’s nothing I can do about it.” “When stealing carp from someone else’s pond, you don’t want them splashing around and making a fuss, do you?” “That’s why you thread a broken one-shō bottle onto the fishing line—so when you hook a carp, you can smoothly reel it up without a fuss.” “Then the carp gets dragged trembling into the one-shō bottle, unable to flap or splash around at all, they say.” “That’s exactly how it is.”

“Hmph.” “That’s a fine method there.” “Rather than fishing in the Tenryū River, maybe I should go to a fish farm and try that trick.” “You’re such a fool.” “You’re just like that carp that got caught, I’m telling you.” “If it were just you, that might be all right, but I feel sorry for the children.” “Even Taa-chan’s been saying things like how Tokyo would be better, you know.”

“Well, if I could live an easy life somewhere, I sure as hell wouldn’t hold back.” “If I said I’d let you live easy, I’d even take you to Ethiopia.” “I don’t want some easy life or anything, but I do want peace of mind.”

“Everyone wants to live with peace of mind.” “But is there even one person living with peace of mind now?” “In these times, only blissful idiots and infants live peacefully. We’re nowhere near living safe.” “No matter how much they suffer, people who ‘can’t make ends meet’ pile up like sludge worms in a ditch—squirming and crawling over each other.” “And just like you nagging me, every wife out there’s convinced her own husband’s a worthless lout.” “They keep cooking up tragedies everywhere.” “You think I’m a fool and spineless.” “Exactly right.” Then I thought—this time—how good it’d be if whoever’s closest would just show me more kindness. If that happened, it’d spread endlessly. Know what happens then? Everyone ends up thinking someone oughta treat ’em nicer. But nowadays, folks only wanna be treated kindly—never lift a finger to do it themselves. Why d’you think that is? ’Cause that’s how society’s gears got jammed in place. And rusted solid. “Listen—you call me the poster boy for fools.” “Fine. Dead right.” “Me—I’m having my life sucked dry by the very money humans invented for convenience. And ’cause of that, folks value cash over living now.” “Makes me sick to my guts.”

“All right then—if that’s how it is, I’ll at least scorn that money bastard myself,” I resolved. Even though it neither existed nor had any prospect of returning, if it ever dared show up again, I’d drive it out more cruelly than I would a wicked wife. I’d sever all ties cleanly and completely, in a way that even the very sight of it sickened me. But here’s the thing—if you drove out a wicked wife, you’d immediately have to start polishing your own rice and looking after the children. But if you drove out that money bastard too cleanly, you’d immediately find yourself struggling to make ends meet. So even without being told, money absolutely infuriated me—but as long as I was alive, I couldn’t just stop living. Children weren’t at fault. Because when the child took their school trip savings to school, we mustn’t make them feel ashamed—that was what lay ahead now. It was infuriating, but I’d been privately thinking—though it shamed me to admit—that I should treat it a bit better and settle for not recklessly driving it out.

Ōyama spoke with fervor, as though a mountain had been uprooted. It seemed less like he was saying it to his wife and more like he was trying to convince himself.

“That’s a good tendency.” “You don’t need to feel ashamed.” “Even if you alone go on scorning money, it won’t make you any more valuable—in the end, you're the one who'll keep suffering for it. On top of that, even the children who don't fully agree with you have to get splashed by the backlash.” “You're the one who said it yourself, aren't you?” “‘I'm already living for the children.’” “‘Like an oak stump living for new sprouts,’ you said—isn't it enough if you just don't forget that?”

“Don’t go brandishing ‘the children, the children’ like some torture instrument.” “I’m no Sakura Sōgorō.” “There may be cases of ‘for the children,’ but there’s one critical flaw in that.” “When we say ‘for the children,’ that means for their era—their future—and you absolutely mustn’t exploit them as bargaining chips.” “Take someone alive today whose child already has children—a grandfather-tier man.” “Most of those old folks still hoard money under the same pretense I do, claiming they’ve ‘left it for the children.’” “But here’s what happens.” “They declare those kids quasi-incompetent for squandering money, or worse—disown them entirely.” “Is this still ‘for the children’s sake’?” “At this point it becomes torture.” “Like tying a stick to a dog’s back while dangling meat before its nose.” “They leave money supposedly for their children but forbid them from using it.” “Meaning they can lick at it all they want,” “but never take a bite.” “Listen—so long as they just lap up the interest to scrape by, no one complains.” “But devour the actual meat—the principal—and that’s forbidden.” “Consider this carefully.” “To put it plainly—shall we use your father as an example?” “Don’t grimace—examples lack teeth without personal experience.” “What did your father tell me?”

“I lived on barley rice and miso for my children’s sake and built up a fortune.” “I have rice fields, fields, and a house plot.” “But the eldest son only knows how to use it and doesn’t try to increase it.” “And that’s why I disowned him.” “I tried to have my daughter marry a son-in-law to take over the shop, but she ended up eloping with ‘a penniless wretch like you.’” “As for the 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 will take them.”

“He said that, didn’t he? ‘There’s no need for such concern on your part.’ ‘Couldn’t I also say, “I’ll take it off your hands”?’ And I wore an expression of genuine sympathy. Moreover, actually, I do sympathize with that motive. For children’s happiness—no matter how much you cry or scream—in today’s society, without money, it won’t matter a damn. If you were to scorn money in today’s society, it wouldn’t just be the children’s happiness at stake—it’d be a family suicide. ‘So the slogan “money for the children” is fine.’ ‘But once money luckily starts accumulating bit by bit, they begin to value it more than their children.’ ‘In the end, they end up disowning their own children just to protect their money.’ ‘The reason is, children aren’t something you can use as conveniently as money.’ ‘You can tear off money and hand it over, but you can’t tear off children.’ ‘They spend money on women and drink, but when their child also buys women and drinks without earning a single yen themselves, the original pretense starts to crumble.’ ‘It’s despicable, don’t you think?’”

“Don’t be absurd. You saving money? Don’t be absurd. Even though you can’t even earn enough to pay off your debts, stop thinking about all those weird things and just earn money straightforwardly.”

“That’s right.” “If only earning money were that simple.” “That’s a real gem coming from you.” “But it seems I wasn’t born with the disposition to earn money straightforwardly.” “I think I probably don’t even understand myself.” “I’m angry at Hitler.” “This is absurd.” “But it’s a fact.” I am angry at Hitler. This is an undeniable fact. What for? Why? I have neither met Mr. Hitler nor, for that matter, ever been to Germany. I don’t know the German embassy either. I don’t know any Germans either. Why on earth did I get angry at Mr. Hitler? I don’t know why myself. Probably, this is how it is. In other words, if you get too angry at someone close at hand, you end up arguing or, worse yet, getting into a fight. That kind of thing is just too troublesome.

It must have been that I was thinking something like: “Just pick anyone—someone who hardly ever comes around, isn’t likely to start a fight, is a big shot, and has a face I can’t stand—and stay angry at them,” no matter who it was. If I didn’t think of it that way, I had no earthly idea why I got angry at Mr. Hitler.

“You’re an idiot.” “You are.” “You’re a coward.” “You are.” “When you should be getting angry, you’re just sulking, and then you get angry over things that have nothing to do with you.” “I’ve started to get a sense of who you really are.” “You divide everything into two categories—big matters and small matters.” “You think of worldly matters as if they were injuries—dividing them into serious ones and minor scratches.” “So you’re only interested in big events and cast aside the small wounds.” “So when a small wound leads to life-threatening tetanus, you panic and make a fuss.”

“Smooth talker, aren’t you? I’d heard Shinshu folks were argumentative, clever, and neat as pins—but has barely half a year in Tenryū really made you that much smarter? Is mountain air that good for the brain? If we’re not careful here, we’ll never get back to Tokyo. For the children’s sake. But you’re right about one thing—you can’t just care about big events and ignore the small ones. That’s the truth.”

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

It came from a friend, addressed to Ōyama. He opened the envelope.

Mr. Ōyama　　　　　　　　From Y.

[Omitted text]

As this month marks our closing period, we must insist upon receiving your remittance within the coming days. We respectfully urge your immediate attention to this matter.

End of notice

was written as above. "I see—it’s Bon." "This is no good." "There are still two or three more installments." "Well, this is bad." Ōyama’s head grew hot. Whenever he saw debt collection letters, his head would invariably grow hot. When one’s head grows hot—this is by no means a good outcome for arteriosclerosis. But even so, it was the inevitable outcome of his defiant notion—"At least I’ll squander the money myself."

“You know, things like debt collection letters tend to raise your blood pressure.” “The fact of borrowing money is perfectly healthy, but once it turns into a collection letter, it just isn’t good for you anymore.”

Ōyama said while wrapping a wet towel around his head as a headband.

The wife was serving pickles for lunch, “So it seems even you’re concerned.” “It’s proof you still have a conscience.” “You pick a strange time to praise me.” “Now I’m getting even more depressed.”

Ōyama took off his *hanten*, stripped down to just a loincloth, crawled over to the dark corner of the room, and flopped onto his back. It was as though the letter itself were the actual person, trying to escape from his sight.

Ōyama lay in the dark corner, starting from the personal fact of debt repayment. If I can't repay him, he can't repay his debt. Then he can't repay either. So what happens? If you push it to the very end, even the one who's got plenty wouldn't get repaid. Wouldn't that just mean we have to tough it out a while longer? Let me see—

Just as he tried to pursue that line of thought, the shrill, incessant chatter of the old woman from the neighboring dormitory—separated by just a single plank wall—pierced his ears.

“They say she’s pregnant or something, so they’re dragging her to the police for questioning.” “Three men involved, they say.” “Then again, there’s also talk she was forced into it.” “Over there—with so many people—such things do happen.” The men chimed in with interjections. “The darkest place is under the candlestick.” “We’ve got our share here too.” “Oh? Here too?” “Here? We’ve got more than one or two ourselves!”

Heh heh heh. Ha ha ha. And then, the laughter of four or five men and women mingled together as it erupted. Ōyama could neither understand nor explain how his debt connected to society at large—or why it even extended to Hitler—but even his attempt to probe this through intuition was cut short by scratchy, lewd laughter.

――Ah, over there lies a world governed solely by instinct. There exists a world ruled by nothing but lustful obsession. There are people who cling to the rails of given habits, moving wherever they’re pushed. Happiness belongs solely to those people. “Give back my man!” “Come out here!”

A woman’s jest-laden voice rang out, followed by several people shouting over each other, then an unintelligible commotion—like shaking a crate of nails—erupted in succession. Ōyama felt his head grow increasingly hot. Unable to endure it any longer, he stood up, slid open the window, and propped it with a stick. There came into view: a chicken coop smaller than three square meters; a bathhouse; beneath that, an outhouse; and below it all, Tenryū River’s grey-mud torrent. Everywhere glared deep green, white, and grey. The opposite mountain stood green; riverbed stones lay white; the current flowed grey. As he stared at these sights grown stale from overfamiliarity—trying to banish the seething, formless emotions boiling in his skull—another thought slithered maliciously into his mind.

That was during planting season.

It was a time when the mountain farmers were at their busiest—drawing water from a mountain stream that was almost entirely composed of waterfalls to prepare their seedbeds.

The workers’ dormitory toilet was about to overflow, so they relocated it to a spot about three feet lower near the river embankment.

At that moment, four farmers came to dig a ditch around the corner of the toilet to channel water to the fields. And the four of them huddled together as if whispering about some grave matter.

To avoid complicating the story, I'll keep this brief: when digging the ditch, the toilet's foundation pillar obstructed the path by three or four inches. The obstructive section belonged to a different owner than the dormitory's land. Therefore, this constituted an unjust occupation of another's property. Thus it was decided that "the toilet had to be relocated." Accordingly, the farmers brought their argument to Kobayashi—the foreman of the workers' dormitory who lived nearest to the toilet.

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

One side consisted of laborers who traveled all over Japan for work—the type who wanted to settle matters quickly. On the other side were farmers, rooted in the land like trees that would never budge in their lifetime. Their patience knew no equal. Moreover, they harbored something like resentment toward these laborers who came barging in with noisy abandon—men who boldly reshaped nature at will, transforming it into an artificial beauty of mechanical precision.

The intense stimulus was a delight for city dwellers but a torment for those living in the mountains.

When Ōyama came down from the worksite toward the dormitory to eat, Kobayashi was shouting loudly on the narrow ridge path between the fields and the dormitory. As he listened to their discussion—the farmers proposing things like “If the pillar’s in your way, let’s just cut it down”—Kobayashi wasn’t giving them a clear answer, and his demeanor suggested that merely cutting it wouldn’t satisfy him. There seemed to be something more beneath the surface. Then Kobayashi said to Ōyama: “Can they really keep insisting it’s wrong to have borrowed someone else’s land without permission?” “Is that really how it is?”

Ōyama asked. “I’m not saying it’s wrong, but...” replied one of the farmers.

“Just say it straight. Be clear.” “If you want land rent, then just come out and say you want it!” “You think we can put up with your constant nagging?” “How’re we supposed to make a living as laborers if you farmers keep messing with us over every damn thing?” “We ain’t out here busting our asses for jokes!” “Might not look like much, but we’re running a national project here—connecting the Pacific and Japan Sea, I tell ya!”

“If you’re going to speak so roughly, we won’t let you use this ridge path.” “What? ‘Don’t use the ridge path’?! “What’ll you do if we do use it?” “Funny.” “If you’re tellin’ us not to pass through, then we’ll make damn sure to pass through!” “You bastard!” Ōyama stepped between them.

“Stop it! When laborers and boatmen fight, anyone dumb enough to mediate between ’em might as well be reciting fairy tales. Quit it already, brothers! Even if you forbid the ridge path, we can’t grow wings and fly over here. Now about the land—if this were a tsubo or two, we’d pay proper rent. But these three- or five-sun patches? There’s no clean way to tally that up. How ’bout letting this one go?” “We’ll overlook the unauthorized borrowing—it hasn’t been long anyway—and settle things with a shō of sake. Can’t you stomach that much? We’re neighbors here—no sense locking horns over trifles. Do me this solid.”

“Yeah,” one of them replied. “Hey, everyone—why don’t we let ’em handle it that way?” “That won’t do.”

And so, the matter was settled.

On the other side of a single plank wall, there were still bursts of laughter that seemed squeezed from the tops of their heads, and stifled, tickling laughter could be heard.

――What the hell was I supposed to do? What should I aim for to keep living? What! Ideals could be placed infinitely high and far. And reality—under the suffocating weight of past habits, traditions, and instinct alone—was stiflingly oppressive to the point of breathlessness. It was suffocating, as if that muddy water of the Tenryū River had turned into air itself. The farmers and laborers alike stood upon a cliff sharp as a scalpel’s edge—as if to say that should they try to gaze upward at the lofty sky where something like ideals resided, their vision would blur, sending them plummeting from the precipice—and so they remained transfixed, their minds consumed by the peril encircling their planted feet and the ground beneath them. And what was an ideal? Even if I spent my entire life pondering that, not a single sen of my debt would ever decrease. Since not even a sen was worth anything, every last one of them had thrown it away. However, even if every last one of them threw it away, it didn’t disappear. What in the world was this troublesome, vexing entity? Now, it was like a chain shackled to my leg. If someone dangled something like that, it would wrap around their leg and trip them over. But why the hell did I have to sit here in this damn workers’ dormitory thinking about such stupid things? Was this not some delusion born from the debt collection notices racing through my head, madly darting between my cells? That was right. But my brother who died in Korea—he had never once held ideals like mine. But still, he had ended up dead. He left behind so many children—I couldn’t make sense of any of it.

Just keep living. Like that Mutsumi-kō. That’s right—I’ll even go tease Muttsupee—

Mutsumi was the cook at Kobayashi Workers’ Dormitory. This woman hated roofs more than anything else. She was a middle-aged woman of about twenty-seven or twenty-eight. She had a round face with innocent features.

She had been given the nickname “Safety Valve” (safety valve).

By all accounts, she had once married into a family in Tokyo but left after failing to get along with her mother-in-law, leaving behind a four- or five-year-old son.

She was a woman of astonishing indifference.

“With that kind of situation, even if it weren’t a mother-in-law, anyone would’ve thrown in the towel.” Even Kobayashi had nearly thrown in the towel. To be sure, when rumors began circulating that “A maid’s coming from Tokyo!”, the commotion at Kobayashi Workers’ Dormitory grew immense. Into this world of men came word of a single woman—and a young one at that. For the laborers, deeply pondering or observing things proved burdensome, but imagining the young woman’s appearance, demeanor, even her body odor—this was no chore at all. Rather, it brought them immense delight.

Mutsumi’s feet bore chapped cracks like glacial fissures around the heels in winter, and by summer these transformed into whitish, festering patches of athlete’s foot. But the young men of the workers’ dormitory did not attempt to discover beauty or allure from a woman’s legs, as foreigners might. Around Mutsumi, a contest of favors erupted among the young men of Kobayashi Workers’ Dormitory. After finishing their long day of labor—eleven or twelve hours—some would return with heavy bridge girders slung over their exhausted shoulders, chop them into firewood, and prop the logs around the dormitory’s bonfire to dry; others, rather than such indirect kindnesses, would abruptly express their intentions by patting Mut-chan’s behind.

It was Hayata—a short man who had reached conscription age that very year—who injected popular entertainment elements into this romantic competition, turning it into a revue. Hayata was so short that one might have thought he fell just shy of five shaku.

“Hey, Hayata—when you go to the exam site, there’s a rope strung up at the entrance.” “Set at five shaku—the tall mark, eh?” “Guys who’re tall enough to snag it get let in another way, but you’ll have to crawl under that rope.” “Then at the end, I hear the commander says, ‘Anybody who slips under today without catchin’ on that rope gets himself a big sturdy wife!’” “Nikimi, shibara!” (“Bastard!”)

Hayata retorted in Korean. This short man with amiable charm had been particularly close with the Korean laborers. More often than not, Japanese and Korean laborers found themselves unable to freely exchange words; while they may not have harbored resentment, instances of them growing close were far from common. But this short man was special. This was because he had first become a laborer at a Korean workers’ dormitory.

But it wasn’t just for that reason alone—this short man, with his utterly innocent nature devoid of malice, was not hated by anyone. This short young man, after finishing a day’s work, would return to the dormitory, bathe to wash off the dust and sweat, finish his evening meal, then—unnoticed by anyone—take down Mutsumi’s face powder from the shelf, slather it all over his face, tie a hand towel into a headscarf like an older sister’s, put on Mutsumi’s kimono hanging from the plank wall, fasten the obi, and hide deep within the rice bales stacked in a corner of the dormitory.

The older, more experienced brothers, after having a drink and getting rowdy, still hadn’t risen from the dirt-floor dining table. A drink would seep into empty stomachs as if being sprayed, further stimulating their appetites; the young men devoured their food with astonishing voracity, and once finished, they were already growing drowsy. A hearth had been cut into one section of the plank flooring, where they would dump the ashes from beneath the kettle, passing the brief interval before sleep by losing themselves in reminiscence or writing letters.

Hayata, who had been holding his breath and hiding behind the rice bales until that very moment, began to play the harmonica. It was the Tokyo Ondo.

Then not only the young laborers but even Mutsumi—who had been placing bowls into a basket to wash them—came running. “Who is it?” “You’ve got quite the hidden talent there!” When that voice called out, Hayata—unable to let go of the harmonica with one hand—appeared on the makeshift stage in his Mut-chan disguise, clutching a shibui fan in the other and gesturing theatrically despite Tenryū Valley’s February cold, said to be the fiercest in seventy years.

“Hyahah!” With a convulsive laugh bursting forth, Mutsumi rolled about on the dormitory’s straw matting. The young men had been upstaged by Hayata, and though no good role ideas came to them on the spot, they watched on with smirks. But once Mutsumi had finished rolling about—still emitting from deep in her throat a squeaky laugh like bowls being scrubbed—she lunged at Hayata. Hayata had no inkling why she’d lunged at him, so this short man panicked in earnest and began fleeing. Yet with his entire face slathered white in powder, clad in women’s garments and even sporting a headscarf tied like an elder sister’s, venturing outside the dormitory in midwinter—no cherry-blossom-viewing season this—proved impossible.

Finally, the short-statured Hayata was subdued by Mutsumi’s sturdy build and pressed down onto the stacked futons in the corner. The hand towel from his older-sister-style headscarf was snatched away. When these games dragged on late into the night, Hayata would have no time to wash his face come morning, forced to bolt straight to the worksite after wolfing down his meal. During that period—with concrete being poured daily into tunnels and culverts—Hayata would leap onto the concrete mixer’s mixing platform while still powdered white, tearing open bags of white clay and dumping their contents into the trough long before measurements were required.

If one was assigned to measure white clay and cement, it was no wonder they ended up even whiter than a woman. “Landed yourself in a sweet spot there.” And so the foreman, aware of this amusing scheme, made no move to reassign Hayata elsewhere, leaving him in charge of measuring white clay and cement. This game retained its charm for about half a month. The costumes remained unchanged each time, but they gradually modified the scenarios—replacing hood removals with obi loosenings, or playing Ina Ondo instead of Tokyo Ondo—thereby enduring winter nights of bone-seeping cold and relentless tedium.

If things had continued this way, Kobayashi Workers’ Dormitory would have maintained its harmonious atmosphere—the young men would have stayed rooted there, found their diversions, and the bitter circumstances of the families they had left behind in their hometowns might have blurred somewhat. But it was not such an era. In other words, things had been fine as long as Mutsumi was simply a young woman—cheerful and fond of jokes. But no one could bring themselves to force Mutsumi to remain in that state indefinitely.

Just because Mutsumi disliked cleaning and tidying up, preferring instead to go into the mountains to gather firewood or carry rice bales back from the office—in short, because she favored men’s work and shunned women’s—it did not follow that she was any less a woman.

Mutsumi seemed to have taken up with Sasamoto—a veteran who dabbled in everything from construction labor to mining, and even tried his hand at blacksmithing. Sasamoto was a man in his early thirties with a gentle, almost feminine face. For some reason, he never looked people directly in the eye, perpetually hung his head, and seemed to have convinced himself that no such thing as true love existed on this earth—a man imbued with an inconsolable loneliness that offered no means of approach or solace.

For this man without refuge, this lonely man, to have gained Mutsumi was an immeasurable joy. However, for them to simply rejoice in this, it would have been no issue if only Sasamoto and Mutsumi had kept apart from the many others—but the trouble was that there was another man who had fixed his gaze on Mutsumi. “I became a laborer because even begging wasn’t panning out.” In a society where people could crack such jokes, even those who had hit rock bottom found themselves submerged within it. It was just like how iron scraps would become lodged and sink into a blacksmith’s anvil block before anyone noticed.

Just as iron scraps could never rise from an anvil block’s foundation, among the multitude of laborers there existed those shackled by a pact never to rise from it either. And how many there were!

Sakata, too, was that type of laborer. He appeared to be around forty, was highly skilled at his work—a veteran who could handle most jobs—but had one critical flaw.

It was what could also be considered a virtue—being too amiable. Moreover, it wasn’t that he cut a poor figure as a man—he stood tall with a robust build, possessing musculature more sculpted than even boxers. There was just one flaw—his upper eyelids protruded slightly too far. They overhung like deep eaves, leaving the space beneath perpetually shadowed. This too might have been fine. But he lacked confidence with women. Meaning he couldn’t be forward. Thus instead of bold moves—sweeping declarations, hand-holding, or casual groping—he resorted to the laborious ritual of delivering formal self-introductions before whichever woman had caught his eye.

However, Sakata’s self-introduction transcended the bounds of mere introduction, devolving into self-praise and conceit. “If we don’t forgive him that much, Sakata would have no way to go on living.” And so, the comrades all listened with deep sympathy from the bottom of their hearts, while some pretended to listen and thought about other things.

However, Mutsumi did not like Sakata’s self-introduction. Of course, had Sakata and Mutsumi actually gotten together later on, it would have led to a major incident. Seeming to have realized this, Sakata said, “Having a chatterbox like that as my wife would’ve been a lifetime of ruin.”

Having said this, he gave up entirely and simply watched with displeasure as Mutsumi chased from man to man, not even feeling jealous. Mutsumi seemed convinced that “×× was her absolute freedom.” No—she likely hadn’t considered such things at all. There are indeed such women in the world. Sasamoto said, “I’d like to go make a round. They’ve got a spot for me at Ōigawa Power Plant—they’re willing to put up with my ways.”

After saying this, he requested leave from Kobayashi, they held a farewell party for him, and once he had departed, there was no trace of anything resembling loneliness to be found in Mutsumi’s demeanor. Far from it—she became even more cheerful than when Sasamoto had been around and even started acting up. This led to all sorts of entanglements.

“Last night, Mutsumi-san went up to the worksite with Mr. Ono and didn’t come back for about two hours.” “The night before last, Mutsumi-san went for a walk downriver with Mr. Ōyama for four whole hours, you know.” “Well, since Mr. Sasamoto’s gone, when she doesn’t go out anywhere, there must be something wrong with whoever she’s with!” Such conversations spread among the mountain goddesses, and when Kobayashi’s wife—who had been away—returned, Ono’s wife was incited here, Ōyama’s wife was incited there, and small sparks flared up all around. These small sparks of domestic dispute could sometimes escalate into utterly disastrous breakdowns. But in Mutsumi’s case, nothing major ended up happening.

There, allow me to insert an interesting episode—though some might scold that it’s not so much interesting as utterly tenacious. It was about failing to forget one’s wife. So goes the story. There existed a laborer couple where the husband was a drunkard and the wife equally so—they were evenly matched. When first together, they got along splendidly—one pouring for the other in that “you take some, I’ll take some” way—but as married life brought increasingly dire financial problems, they gradually found themselves unable to drink to their heart’s content.

So the old man abandoned his wife and set off by train to another construction site. However, the wife, who should have been blind drunk and passed out at home—though indeed drunk—rushed to the station just before departure and leapt onto the same train as her husband. And there she stood before her husband’s seat, grabbing him by the collar, “What kind of man forgets his own wife?!” When she said this, the husband scratched his head and— “I went to all the trouble of forgetting you...”

“I went to all the trouble of forgetting you...” he said. So goes the story.

Such stories were not particularly rare incidents. If this had been Mutsumi’s case, she might have gladly "been forgotten."

Even Mutsumi finally took her leave and went off somewhere. “I’ll come visit again from time to time,” she remarked as she left—likely having found some “hole” befitting her somewhere nearby.

Women of this sort left no trace behind in their lives, turning away cleanly and moving on.

But when it came to family men like Ōyama and Kobayashi, there were strings attached to both sides of life, coiled around their necks. If they tried to forcibly impose measures, those strings would tighten.

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

Dynamite blasts echoed ceaselessly day and night through Tenryū Gorge Valley, jolting awake those lost in deep slumber. Yesterday, during their idle hand games, four laborers were hauled away. With the Bon Festival holiday over, tomorrow would bring back sweltering labor sealed tight like a retort’s boiling chamber.

Tenryū Gorge at the banks of the Tenryū River—acclaimed as a renowned scenic site—was, so to speak, the small-scale gateway to the great gorge where the Tenryū River carved its way through mountainous terrain over an extended stretch.

To tourists suddenly plunging in from Tokyo or perhaps the Ina Basin, this place—where the Tenryū River narrowly carved its way through bizarre rocks and strange crags as it flowed—must indeed have seemed a rare spectacle. But then, were one to venture further downstream, they would have discovered the mountains growing ever taller and the valley ever deeper. And in the end, they’d have grown sick and tired of it all.

“How long would these mountains on both banks—this winding muddy current—continue?” The river flowed on and on, sinking so deeply between the mountains that one grew desolate just witnessing its course. River boats descended, then were pulled back up. There was a place called Monjima where they outfitted the river boats. It lay directly below the station of the same name.

From there, seven or eight *chō* downstream stood "Midoriya Inn"—an establishment that served as both a hotel and boarding house while selling tobacco, sundries, sake, beer, canned goods, sweets, carp, and so on—in short, a shop that had everything. The Midoriya Inn had been coiled there for forty years. To say it was coiled—though such phrasing might not be considered terribly rude—the inn stood at the very foot of an extremely steep mountain likely measuring a thousand *shaku* in height.

However, despite that mountain being extremely steep, it had remained safe for forty years. This was because the mountainside was covered by densely growing plants. For the railway line to pass about fifteen or sixteen *ken* (roughly 27 to 29 meters) above Midoriya Inn, the mountain had to be cut into. "To put it simply as 'cutting away,' it was not ordinary soil but hard, dense rock." To breach the mountain’s surface, they had cleared away the vegetation half a year ago. Next, they would drill holes into the rock and set charges for blasting.

If only there hadn’t been Midoriya Inn directly below, they could have blasted away the mountain with deafening explosions—but things didn’t go so smoothly. Even without that being the case, rocks from the blasting charges had flown and punched holes in Midoriya Inn’s roof more than once or twice. Each time, the bold and brash Midoriya Inn proprietress would rush outside and glare up at the mountain directly above. “You idiots!” “Watch what you’re doing, damn it!” her face pale, she would bellow.

Ōyama had been assigned the task of sealing the blasting holes. At first, they would pick up old straw mats discarded by the roadside, and when the fuse hissed and began to burn, they would prop the mat against the hole and flee. But when three or four holes were drilled at once, one person couldn’t keep up. Even though they knew full well that slow-burning fuses wouldn’t detonate abruptly, working at a leisurely pace was impossible when standing before blasting holes spewing ash-white smoke just six feet away.

When there were about four holes, they would light the fuses together, then prop up the old mats while ringing the bell, “Blast! Blast!” yelling warnings as they scrambled down the mountainside, clutching at branches and roots. Then, where it seemed safe enough, they used tree trunks as shields and stared at the smoking blast holes while urgently ringing their bells. Even when detonating them five times a day, every single time, they felt their hearts tighten.

Boom, kaboom, bang! The blasts echoed off the cliffs flanking Tenryū River, knocking down the old straw mats, blasting open holes, and sometimes hurling debris four or five *ken* (roughly 7-9 meters) upward into the sky. The old straw mats quickly became useless. However, in these mountains, replenishing the old straw mats was no easy task. So they wove brushwood bundles with wire as a substitute for the old straw mats. They wove oak branches with leaves still attached into mats exactly the size of one tatami mat. Then they stretched No. 10 wire (thick wire) horizontally across the cut surface at a height of six to seven *ken* (roughly 11-13 meters) from the base, and lowered another wire from it so that it could shift along a span of five to six *ken* (roughly 9-11 meters).

By doing this, they could prevent each blast mat from being blown all the way down to the base of the cliff, and even if blast holes were drilled on a ledge five or six *shaku* high, they could suspend the blast mats from above.

That was a difficult task. The woven brushwood mats were quite heavy, and fitting them properly over the holes required considerable time and effort. But this was the kind of task where they could not afford to take their time.

Even with the woven brushwood mats, there were times when oak branches directly over the holes snapped and crumbled away.

On that cut surface, six or seven holes were completed; sealing each one, lighting the fuses, ringing the bell all the while—it was fascinating to watch. On one occasion, because only a single wire had been stretched across, the blast mats were flung upward again and again—Boom! Boom!—like a crazed horse kicking up its hind legs. As this happened, someone thought, “The mat over the last hole definitely shifted a bit,” but once things reached that state, even the boldest among them could not “compete in courage against the blast.”

When the blasts boomed—Boom! Boom!—rock fragments came flying in a scattered spray, skimming low along the ground as if a machine gun muzzle had been turned toward them. Ōyama and his crew had taken cover behind standing trees, so they remained unharmed, but the others pushing trolleys or clearing the waste dump ducked their heads abruptly. The holes were facing their way.

Fortunately, there were no injuries, but sharp-edged rock fragments lay scattered everywhere. For some reason, whenever the blasts roared and rock fragments came flying in a scattered burst, everyone would bow their heads forward abruptly as if performing a polite gesture. There was not a single soul who jutted their chin out and looked upward. In this way, they pressed onward with the excavation upstream above Midoriya Inn, maintaining just enough width to lay the trolley tracks. However, between that excavation and this one lay a small stream. Though called a stream, even when rain fell it barely formed a trickle, and when none fell, it merely seeped beneath rock pines and moss—this was what served as the water source for Midoriya Inn and another inn called Shinya.

That year, the weather was terribly erratic.

During the rainy season, it blazed so fiercely that every drop of moisture in one’s body felt baked dry; then when the Dog Days arrived, it alternated between incessant drizzle, unseasonable chill, and days as dark, muggy, and stifling as a fermentation room.

As rice prices rose, rumors spread that in the Tohoku region, an official directive had been issued around the time of planting rice seedlings—something to the effect of, “This year, it would be wise to start digging up bracken roots and kudzu roots early.”

During that parched rainy season, their excavation reached the drinking water stream above Midoriya Inn. The slippery, water-washed rock surfaces, the moss clinging to them, and the iris-like plants growing in the hollows—all were obliterated by a single blasting charge, leaving no trace behind. In their place, a portion of the earth’s inner crust—perhaps witnessing sunlight for the first time since the dawn of history—crumbled away and overturned. As the surfaces of these rock fragments spread out haphazardly, the small stream ceased flowing downward and instead became absorbed into the debris.

Then Midoriya Inn Proprietress would come up from below.

“The water isn’t coming through at all. What’s going on? If you’re diverting it toward the stone embankment, I’d like you to redirect it here today. I could endure half a day or so, but if not a single drop comes all day long—it’s truly heartbreaking. In this line of work where we cater to guests, we can’t even let them take baths.” When Ōyama was cornered by the Midoriya Inn Proprietress, her demand being not entirely unreasonable left him at a loss for a response. As for solutions, he was utterly helpless. With the water cut off, he tried to make an escape but wasn’t quick enough. Since he was the one in charge of the blast mats, while removing them,

“Ah, you’re absolutely right.” “Not a drop coming through?” “That’s no good.” “I’m in a bind.” “With this happening day after day, those without water will find it unbearable of course, but I can’t stand it either.” “Let’s head down now and discuss this properly.” “Please do.” “Mr. Ōyama.” “This is life or death for us.” “If this continues, our lodgers will leave—we’ll shrivel up and vanish.” “We’ve lived here forty years now.” “To face a water siege after all this time—it’s heartbreaking.” “Mr. Ōyama.”

And so, this emotionally intense proprietress even had tears welling up in her eyes.

Ōyama went down. In front of the flower shop as well, there stood a high-class barrack that seemed to belong to a supervisor from some hydroelectric power plant. In the nearby rice fields and mulberry fields, White Leghorn chicks marked with red ink, black ink, and red ochre were foraging for food in great numbers.

This required a bit of explanation.

Even in this deep valley, newly hatched White Leghorn chicks—identical to those sold at Tokyo night markets—were being "packed" into perforated ball boxes, There were merchants who came to sell them, loaded onto the backs of bicycles. They were sold at low prices. And since they could fetch good money if properly raised, the various workers’ dormitories bought them. But with even humans living in workers’ dormitories resembling chicken coops, treating chickens and people equally proved impossible. So they fashioned sleeping areas for the chickens using bamboo scraps and cement paper bags, deciding to let them "eat whatever they liked, roam freely, and grow big" during daylight hours.

However, it soon became apparent that every night, the number of chickens sleeping in the coops would "increase or decrease." Wherever it was, there had been no problem as long as they were increasing, but when it came to decreasing—since they grew bigger day by day—it was anything but peaceful. So they tried tying strings around their legs. But this too had little effect. Even if they had fifty or sixty red strings at their disposal, and even when they tore cloth into strips—strips still usable—they couldn’t exactly afford to use them so recklessly. On top of that, they would come undone or get so dirty they became indistinguishable.

Having no other choice, the owners—those who kept the most chickens and suffered the greatest losses—ended up catching each bird one by one and slathering red stamp ink thickly onto their backs. Due to these circumstances, along the roadside near the river in this valley, White Leghorns marked with various colors could be seen foraging for food. “Take a look at this.” “Not a single drop is coming out, you see?” “This is simply too heartbreaking.”

And so, Midoriya Inn Proprietress lamented her “sad” plight. Indeed, from the end of the long bamboo pipe buried underground from the upper stream, not a single drop of water emerged. In the water-storage wooden tub too, only a scant amount of leftover water remained. Beneath the water tub lay a pool spanning a little over two tsubo*, its water black and murky, where carp moved sluggishly. “Moreover, if this keeps up, the carp won’t last through the day!” “Here in these mountains, if we don’t keep carp alive, there’s no way to get fresh fish from outside.” “Even so, there’s fifteen or sixteen kanmon* of them here.” “This is disastrous!” “With other things I could manage somehow, but water...” “It’s what you’d call life-giving water!” “Truly heartbreaking.”

“Really, living right next to the Tenryū River—there’s no reason one should suffer from water shortages.” “But isn’t this kind of drought unusual?” “It’s even drier than midwinter.” “Would digging a well not work?”

Ōyama said, feeling sympathy for her, as he considered whether he might have to dig a well for her depending on the circumstances.

“Well, you see.” “It’s not like water wouldn’t come out if you dug, but what a waste when there’s already such good spring water here.” “This water does wonders for the body.” “Even folks lodging at my place—within two or three months, they’re sure to put on weight, I tell you.” “They said the same over at Shinya—claimed boiling it for baths helps rheumatism and whatnot.” “But drink it too long and you’ll turn scrawny like yourself here—or wait, come to think of it, like that old codger at Shinya too.” “Too much of a good thing ruins the broth, as they say.” “That Shinya old-timer still can’t walk right—what’s your take on that, ma’am?”

With his mind now at ease, Ōyama stirred things up. “You’ve got a sharp tongue!” “It’s just your nature, Mr. Ōyama. But look at you—you’re as thin as a barrel hoop yourself, aren’t you?” “Who’s the sharp-tongued one here? Comparing someone to a barrel hoop—now that’s a real shocker. Damned if it doesn’t remind me of those old wooden cannons from way back.” “But the proprietress sure has a way with words, I must say.” Ōyama laughed as he said this.

At that moment, along the road in front of Midoriya Inn, sixteen or seventeen laborers came running from upstream, each shouting something. One of them was carrying two long bamboo poles and something wrapped in cloth or something similar.

“What could that be?” “What’s going on?” With that, the two of them rose from their seats and went out to the front. At that moment, Hayata—the short man who had once been at Kobayashi’s dormitory, where he would apply white powder, wear Mutsumi’s kimono, and clown around—came running up. He had heard rumors that Hayata had undergone an examination, stayed at Kobayashi’s dormitory for a time, and then was working up at the dam of the upstream power plant—ostensibly to practice using a jackhammer. “Hey, Hayata—it’s been a while, hasn’t it?” “What’s going on?”

Ōyama asked, blocking the way. “Two people just got swept away.” “We’re chasing after them right now.” “What do you mean—two people got swept away?” “Let’s go! Let’s go!” “Can’t waste time talking about that now!”

With those words, Hayata—the short man—ran off downstream after his comrades, looking like leaves being whipped about in a gale. “Hey, Hayata! Wait up!” “Just tell me what’s going on!” With that, Ōyama tacked on the last part of his words for the proprietress’s benefit and dashed off after Hayata. Everything needs a trigger, after all—

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

About a block downstream from Midoriya Inn, Kobayashi’s dormitory stood where the path sloped down two or three ken from the road. When Hayata had run to the vicinity of the utility pole just ahead, Kobayashi himself emerged from his barracks onto the path.

“Hello,” Hayata said, stopping to greet Kobayashi. Hayata stopped and greeted Kobayashi. “What do you want?” “I’m working over at the dam now.” “Just now, a boulder came loose and smashed the guy below right into the spillway.” “We managed to pull one guy up after he got caught in a whirlpool, but the other got swept away. We’re heading out to search for him now.” Ōyama also caught up there and listened to the story.

“Did it come loose on its own?” “That area’s really high up, isn’t it?” “Well, since it was dangerous, we tried hard to remove it—put in a lot of effort—but it just wouldn’t come out.” “Then, since we had to build scaffolding down below, two guys came over, you see.” “‘Hold on—let’s get this boulder out first,’ they said, and tried working on it together, but it just wouldn’t budge.” “Since they figured that even after all this effort, it wouldn’t fall unless they removed it, they said, ‘Just do it—it’ll hold,’ and started working on the scaffolding.” “But somehow, that boulder came loose.”

“Hey! Let’s go! Move it! Move it!” By the time they shouted from above, the boulder had already slammed into the waist of the guy up there. “At the moment it hit him, he threw his hands up high, I tell ya.” “Then the one below also raised both hands high—like someone shouting ‘Banzai’—and right when the boulder struck the guy above’s waist, they clung to each other.” “Then both the boulder and those two clinging together tumbled straight into that spillway in a flash, and all hell broke loose, you see.”

“Did both of them get swept away?” “While clinging to each other?”

Kobayashi asked. “When they fell, they were clinging to each other, you know.” “The one who got hit in the waist seems to have died right away—from the suspension bridge past the spillway, there’s a whirlpool there.” “At that whirlpool spot, they said the man who survived managed to swim up all by himself.” “Still unclear whether he made it or not.” “The man who took that hit to the waist—looks like he got swept straight to the riverbed.” “So now we’re all hauling stretchers downstream—you know that one shallow spot?” “We’re heading there to keep watch.” “Gotta get ahead of the corpse—if it slips past that point, it’s Hamamatsu-bound straight to the Pacific.” “No damn joke.” “Might already be rumbling past Kaneyama’s worksite, scraping along the riverbed.” “Sorry.”

Having said that, Hayata once again stumbled forward and dashed off in quick, short steps.

“That bastard—what a piece of work! I gave him spending money along with his wages so he could get himself a proper haori when he went for his conscription exam, but no sooner had he come back than he tore his ass away after a day or two and started working outside again.” “He’s such a character—seems like folks take a shine to him wherever he goes.” Kobayashi said to Ōyama. “Well, he’s young.” “He just couldn’t stay put in one place.” “He apparently asked Kanebō to do something like ‘Get money from your old man.’” “Maybe he met a childhood friend at the exam and got a taste for women or something?”

“Another cremation across the river, huh? Since New Year’s, how many do you think we’ve seen?” “That’s quite a number.”

Across the river from Kobayashi’s workers’ dormitory stood a place used for cremating those who had died in nearby villages and at the construction site. On a narrow slope resembling a gateway where both banks rose into towering mountains to form a gorge, there was merely a hole dug slightly above the waterline—five shaku long, two shaku wide, and three to four shaku deep.

The area immediately upstream of the crematorium had become a collection site for sand and ballast from the power plant construction.

The coffin had to cross suspension bridges, travel along newly built roads, abruptly descend from sections of those roads that hadn’t yet opened down steep mountain cliffs to the riverbed, and pass through narrow elevated remnants left by excavations at the ballast collection site to reach the crematorium. During times when typhus was prevalent, thick smoke rose from there about twice a day. With no wind to disperse it, the smoke lingered stubbornly over the valley—so persistently that even the workers’ dormitory across the river had to endure its foul odor.

It had happened during the still-cold season: the day before, a small coffin had been brought by a handful of people and cremated, and on the following morning, a woman who appeared to be the mother arrived early and remained almost entirely inside that pit until evening. At the workers’ dormitory across the river, they too noticed this and, wondering “What’s happening?”, found themselves glancing over from time to time. Just when they thought she might be gone, she would listlessly raise her head from within the pit. She had likely tried to ensure that not a single bone—no matter how small—of her child who had died young remained uncollected. And with winter’s early sunset, those on this side could no longer witness her departure as darkness swallowed her figure.

The issue of Midoriya Inn’s drinking water was resolved without fuss that evening when rain began, true to form for all water disputes. However, this time, Midoriya Inn’s building itself and those inside had entered a state of "might not be safe." No one could have imagined such a thing arising. This was because the quarried rock contained what might be called a fault line—or something like that—a structural pattern within it. The mountain’s rocks had layers, much like an onion the size of a mountain.

They had been chipping away at the lower part of the structural pattern with pickaxes and advancing until nothing remained to support it from below, whereupon the mountain's pressure caused the upper section to align with the rock's structural pattern—resulting in a situation where "it couldn't be guaranteed not to collapse."

This left everyone utterly at a loss. Just two months or so earlier, there had been an incident where a medium-sized rock—about the size of a willow basket—fell from the quarry and, despite there being no logical reason for such a thing to happen, rolled down the steep slope, shattering not just the threshold but even the lintel and walls before lodging itself there. At that time, they had intended to carefully lower it from the railway grounds onto the compensation road just below, prying slightly with a crowbar. But that malicious boulder, after rolling sluggishly once or twice on the compensation road as if deliberating—even feigning a trajectory toward the upstream ravine—the moment it veered off the road, it violently collided with bamboo thickets and zelkova trees. Spun into rotation by these impacts, it tumbled down like an artillery shell and, rebounding off the cliff edge above the house, bounced nearly six feet high before inflicting the aforementioned damage.

And at the spot where the rock had fallen, Midoriya Inn’s only daughter—a lovely twenty-one-year-old named Mizuho—would always be sewing. However, during that first impudent visit from the rock, Mizuho had gone to the kitchen area, so there were no human casualties. At that time, they had apologized in every possible way and were forgiven by compensating for the damages. This time, that didn’t work. It wasn’t a single stone or a lone boulder—they were up against a mountain.

It was the beginning of June.

Early in the morning, since it was still cold at the start of work, they lit a bonfire to warm themselves by. The quarry above Midoriya Inn now rose forty or fifty shaku high, the mountain’s white entrails towering starkly. Perched atop the quarry’s cliff was a boulder roughly the size of two tatami mats. Though referred to as a boulder, having sat motionless there for decades or perhaps centuries, grasses and shrubs had overgrown its surface, blanketed in moss. And whether it was an outcrop of the bedrock forming the mountain below or an independent boulder was not immediately clear.

Both men who considered themselves gods disagreed so vehemently that even between these two miners arose arguments where one would insist “It’s an outcrop!” while the other countered “No—a boulder!” In any case, since the quarry needed to be cut deeper into the mountain’s interior regardless, that boulder-like mass became nothing less than “a thorn in their side.” If that thing were to collapse along with the mountain, Midoriya Inn and even the barracks before it would no longer matter at all.

So before cutting into the lower section, they drilled holes into the boulder atop the cliff and gave it a light tap with their pickaxes. However, this boulder—having basked its shell and slept for centuries—seemed utterly startled when suddenly struck by pickaxes, scattering fragments the size of fists. One of them came crashing down onto Midoriya Inn’s roof once more and, with meticulous force, punched through from roof to ceiling before plummeting down onto the box of displayed sweets, smashing both glass pane and confections into an indistinguishable mess.

Immediately after that, Ōyama passed in front of Midoriya Inn on his way back from an errand to the shantytown district. “Mr. Ōyama! Mr. Ōyama!” Midoriya Inn Proprietress spotted Ōyama from the kitchen area and called out loudly to stop him. “Oh, has the water stopped again?” When Ōyama joked,

“This isn’t about water!” “Take a look at this.” “Unless you implement thorough defensive measures, we’ll have no choice but to demand you halt construction.” “When roofs get punched through, ceilings smashed open, display shelves wrecked, and all my merchandise ruined—well, you can’t save your back if you have to protect your belly.” “As the person in charge, just where have you been dawdling around?”

“Oh man... I’ve really gone and done it now.” “Even with all that equipment set up, why’d they go making rocks fly like that?” “No—I’m real sorry.” “I’ll pay for everything, so please let it slide.” “Thing is, if you leave it to miners, they get lazy and half-ass the work.” “‘Course rocks fly when you whack ’em with picks!’—no shortage of dumb bastards spouting that crap.” “Well if rocks didn’t fly when hit, there’d be no point hitting ’em!” “Trouble is Midoriya Inn’s been squatting here forty damn years.” “If they’d slapped up some shacks here last year, we coulda blamed that—but hell, ma’am, let’s cut the crap—that’s just how it goes.” “I’ll fetch roof boards and ceiling planks pronto, but... y’know how it is.” “For the sweets and boxes and whatnot—just mark ’em down as me eating ’em in the ledger.” “I’ll settle up when accounts come due—gonna grab those boards now.”

Ōyama was already rattling off the latter part of his speech while heading outside. He obtained a bundle of roofing boards from the distribution office and handed them to Midoriya Inn’s proprietor—a man bearing uncanny resemblance to a dried-goods sack—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 he ascended toward the worksite via the winding uphill path. Ōyama had just emerged headfirst into the half-finished rail worksite after climbing the steep path when—

From the quarry above Midoriya came a loud, desperate cry—as though someone were staking their life on it. Loud voices were not at all uncommon at the worksite. You could say they were constantly shouting, yelling, and cursing. It was done out of necessity. When needing to relay something like “The trolley’s overturned—hold off winding!” from the riverbed barely a hundred meters away to the worksite’s winch, they had to shout at the top of their lungs to get the message across.

But Kobayashi’s loud voice at this moment was neither a mere shout, nor an angry roar, nor a desperate scream. When Ōyama appeared at the worksite, the area around the quarry above Midoriya sank into a stillness as though submerged in water’s depths, quiet and hushed.

And Kobayashi had moved away from directly beneath the quarry and was standing near the downstream reclamation area. “Go to Midoriya and tell them to get out immediately! The mountain’s coming down! The mountain’s coming down!” Once again, Kobayashi spoke to Ōyama in a voice that bypassed the ears and resonated directly in his skull. Kobayashi was an unflappable, resolute man. But given that the opponent was “the mountain,” and moreover, that it was beginning to move, even he appeared slightly shaken at that moment.

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

Like a motor that had been switched on, Ōyama began to spin and ran down the spoil bank of the compensation road at those words. There exists a term called “a state of frenzied desperation”—his current state resembled that—or, to put it another way, it was akin to a person possessed by some ideal, single-mindedly fixated on that ideal and never looking back along the way. “I must save the people of Midoriya Inn.” The thought that he must save them now completely occupied Ōyama’s entire mind.

Therefore, down a slope so steep that even goats or dogs couldn’t scramble down, Ōyama leapt in one breath.

It was later that Ōyama realized: in such moments, the human mind remained untroubled by distractions. A life filled with daily anguish; concepts like justice and goodness had vanished from this earth—moreover, an era when even the mere act of "living" like insects required cunning; an age when people could not remain indifferent to such irrational deaths day and night yet grew numb to cruel "death" itself. And it was an era when many people had even stopped trying to think.

In such times, he thought it remarkable—this rare instance where, even for just a minute or two, his entire being had flared up and become unified around one singular resolve: he must save Midoriya.

“The mountain’s coming down! Get out now!”

With that, Ōyama shouted as he rushed into Midoriya. “Is it the pickaxes?” The two men traveling together—who had been eating their lunch in a manner befitting wayfarers—asked Ōyama. “Don’t be absurd! “It’s not pickaxes or anything like that!” “The mountain is coming down!” “Please get out quickly!” “We’ll talk outside.”

With that, Ōyama rushed outside as if to draw them out,

“The mountain’s coming!” “A mountain sixty feet high is coming!” “If it doesn’t stop at the compensation road, this house’ll get buried!” “Proprietress, get out now!” “Then come over here and keep watching that mountain!”

Ōyama shouted at the proprietress who had gone into the back room directly beneath the mountain and was rummaging for something. The proprietress had been wandering through the dark back room as if searching for something crucial—perhaps more vital than life itself—but whether she abandoned her quest at Ōyama’s unnaturally resonant words or finally found what she sought, she now stumbled out in her geta. After verifying everyone had evacuated, Ōyama turned back to approach the mountain’s crumbling base—but when he reached the lower path where the slope stood visible, he found himself transfixed by it.

—While it’s rising—the mountain might come.—

No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than he found himself rooted there—where camellia trees grew thick and graves stood in sparse rows—staring fixedly at the quarry mountain. Five seconds, ten seconds, one minute—time passed with excruciating slowness. Ah, time—sometimes it drags on, and other times it rushes headlong. For the unemployed, time crawls by with agonizing slowness; for those who’ve finally found work, between one payday and the next, it rushes past as if through a vacuum. Especially the speed of time around payday—that is something only wage earners who have actually received their wages can comprehend.

Before time that felt both agonizingly slow and viscous, the mountain stood towering nearly vertically, its stripped bedrock exposed starkly white, floating amidst the surrounding expanse of green. It still wasn’t moving. Unmoving as a mountain should be. But clatter, clatter—it had been going on for five hours already, "The mountain is coming!"—the warning itself was being issued by the mountain. Following Ōyama, travelers drawn by novelty and Midoriya Inn people driven by terror and apprehension stood beneath the camellia tree and gazed at the collapsing mountain. Yet the Midoriya Inn Proprietress alone seemed unable to fix her gaze single-mindedly on the mountain.

Even from half a cho away, the mountain showed no sign of danger; and even if it had, someone like the Midoriya Inn Proprietress could not have remained still. She paced back and forth countless times between her shop and the cemetery. “Woah!” A stifled sound—something between a groan and a sigh—escaped in unison from the mouths of the people gazing upward.

The mountain began to shift. It was unclear in that instant whether the mountain swayed unsteadily or people's eyes quivered.

But then, with a dull reverberation, the earth let out a groan. It struck their ears and made their legs tremble. The mountain rumbled deep within, making the ground shake as it slid down with deliberate care. A sturdy protrusion in the fault structure appeared to halt the central section after sliding three or four shaku, while both ends collapsed in orderly succession onto the excavated railway tracks below. Only the excess debris that couldn’t be contained there vaulted over a forty- to fifty-foot cliff, plunging its jagged head three or four shaku into the soft surface of the twelve-foot-wide compensation road—and layer upon layer, the “mountain” that had overtopped the tracks piled higher and higher.

And, conveniently, it did not come crashing all the way down. The protruding section at the mountain’s center saved Midoriya Inn and also saved the contractor who had undertaken this project.

But how long did the entire collapse of that mountain take? It delivered a day's worth—no, two days' worth—no, even greater emotional upheaval to Kobayashi, Ōyama, and the Midoriya Inn people.

However, from when it started sliding until settling completely, it probably didn’t take more than two minutes.

“Banzai!” With that, Ōyama shouted to Kobayashi, raising both hands high. Kobayashi wore a solemn face at the collapse site, like a doctor tending a terminal patient. But having now confirmed the mountain had fortunately been halted midway, he seemed relieved and showed an indescribably tearful smile. Then Ōyama dashed toward Midoriya Inn, where the proprietress had returned, and said:

“We made it.” “It was all right.” “I’m sorry for worrying you.” “Anyway, it’s a relief we’re all safe.” he said. From the front of Midoriya Inn, looking through the standing trees, what had until now been far above—the mountain’s innards—now loomed close and white before their eyes, as if peering straight down. Both the Midoriya Inn people and the company employees’ family members standing before them had gathered on the street, now belatedly expressing astonishment at how “the mountain had approached”—a reality far greater than they had anticipated.

“It was terrifying, wasn’t it?” “I thought what would become of us.”

The women whispered such things to each other in small voices. They would start to raise their voices only to check themselves, as if fearing the mountain might come crashing down again.

Ōyama darted up the mountain like a rabbit. Kobayashi, who along with the miners had until just moments ago been drilling holes with chisels, prying rocks with crowbars, and levering boulders with pickaxes on that very mountain, now appeared as if fixed in place in various poses—staring intently and lost in thought. Truly, it was a multitude of thoughts. Before one thought could settle, the next would already surface, and then countless thoughts—about the mountain, about their lives, bizarre associations—swirled like a nebula. It could also be said that this was, at the same time, a state of stunned detachment.

The collapsed mountain had dispersed into hundreds of kan, thousands of kan of huge rocks—jagged ones, flat ones—along with sand and soil, piling atop one another to fill the railway excavation. Overflowing the remaining boulders from the earth retaining, it was barely held back by the compensation road’s barrier. And yet, despite such a massive mountain collapsing and throwing people into turmoil, the collapsed portion merely exposed its innards here and there, while the remaining parts retained their surface cover just as when connected to the upper mountain—and upon them, as if nothing had happened, five or six azalea shrubs and a single young pepper tree grew with elegant charm, looking as though arranged for a bonsai display.

The wind shook the small pepper tree’s trunk, as if born from the mountain’s collapse. “It was heaven’s mercy,” Ōyama said. There might have been better words out there, but that was what he uttered.

“Humans are such peculiar beings. “Even when thinking ‘the mountain’s finally coming,’ they don’t truly believe it yet. “When sand starts pattering down everywhere and keeps increasing—that’s when they think ‘It’s hopeless, it’s really coming.’ “Their whole bodies trembling uncontrollably—thinking ‘How much mountain will come? If it’s a big one... everything ends here—Midoriya Inn crushed and buried... my fifty-year livelihood finished... but can’t I do something? Isn’t there a way to stop this? It hasn’t fully fallen yet...’ while making them clear away crowbars and hammers... ropes... scoops and chisels... push out trolleys... pull up miners from above and below... Then once everything’s cleared—‘Maybe by some miracle it’ll hold?’—endlessly agonizing without reaching any conclusion. “But once the mountain sways and the earth groans into motion—that’s when their resolve solidifies.’”

“The mountain is coming.” “They accomplished what needed accomplishing and exhausted all that had to be exhausted.” “The mountain is coming.” “Burying Midoriya Inn would be pointless.” “The mountain is coming.” ‘And they made up their minds,’ ‘Once they made up their minds, they could calmly watch—for the first time—the mountain sliding and collapsing.’ ‘When the mountain finally collapsed completely—crumbling down until it reached its stopping point—and they realized “Midoriya Inn wasn’t buried after all,” there were no feelings like happiness or gratitude, were there?’ “It wasn’t about gains and losses—it was a different emotion. How should I put it… They felt almost like wanting to express gratitude to the collapsed mountain.” “‘We’re terribly sorry about this’ or something like that.”

After the excitement and turmoil, Kobayashi spoke quietly, as if holding back tears in the depths of his heart. Ōyama found himself tearing up as he listened to the story, though he couldn’t say why. It was a scene of quiet atmosphere and sentiment. There was a desolate quietness there, as if absolutely nothing had occurred until just moments before. How starkly different were the thoughts forced out by the weight of daily life—whether one liked it or not—and those that seized people immediately after this landslide.

The mountain had concluded its collapse in one or two minutes—or perhaps ten or twenty seconds. But the miners and meddlers alike—unable to tear themselves away from the collapse site for two minutes, ten minutes, thirty minutes—had fallen onto rocks that broke free from the mountain’s mass, sat down on them, and were gazing intently at the fault line. What a magnificent fault line it was. It stood nearly vertical in a triangular shape, its slippery surface evoking a massive tombstone of natural rock. And upon its surface lay a thin coating of fine white soil, as if dusted with face powder.

“I never imagined it would come this big.” “But it’s a terrifying thing, isn’t it?” “That within this earth—so thickly shrouded by dense forests and seeming immutable through eternity—even in its bedrock lies such a structure.” “A terrifying thing indeed.”

Ōyama continued quietly, speaking to Kobayashi.

“It was bound to come.” “Even if we were to leave this place completely untouched, hundreds or thousands of years from now, it would surely break away from this structure, wouldn’t it?” “Look—from the top down to about five ken, roots are embedded.” “It’s flattened out like a cord tying up luggage—the changes are gradual, but they’re happening tenaciously, aren’t they?” “It must be constantly changing, but unless the mountain gives way in a manner like this, we wouldn’t realize it, would we?” “When it rumbles like this and comes crashing down, then anyone would understand.” “Wasn’t Midoriya Inn proprietress furious?” “‘Damn mountain had to go and collapse on us,’”

Kobayashi said. “No—she was utterly quiet, wasn’t she? It was downright pitiable. It’s like a partial earthquake disaster, you see.”

“I see. That’s a relief.” “I’d steeled myself to be called a worthless piece of shit this time—since I’m the foreman and a lousy one at that—thinking she’d seize me by the collar and sink her teeth into my arm.”

With that, Kobayashi laughed quietly for the first time.

It was a quiet afternoon.

River boats with hoisted sails were making their way up the Tenryū River; rain was likely approaching. It was said in this area that when sailboats went up, rain would fall. And that was exactly what happened. The sun slowly walked toward the Central Alps mountain range. The sun was still high.

Yet something like the relief one feels after completing a great task—a heart at ease and the weariness of hollow souls—seized the people.

The people from the embankment area who had gone downstream to search for bodies had not yet returned. If river boats ascended and rain fell—if the sleeping Tenryū awoke to summon clouds, bring down rain, and set riverbed stones rolling—the search for bodies would become not merely difficult but nearly impossible.

(October 1934 [Showa 9], *Kaizo* Volume 16, Issue 11 · January 1935 [Showa 10] *Kaizo* Volume 17, Issue 1)