Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

It was just past noon that day when Michita left his elder brother's empty house with his nephew Tatsunosuke.
He had just withdrawn from his elder brother's mountain office where he lay ill and arrived at K City Station, but having come to visit his brother due to an urgent telegram while traveling, he had only brought one or two changes of clothes. Anticipating the illness might drag on, he intended to have just a single suitcase of necessities sent from his Tokyo home and stay in this town for the time being. However, since his sister-in-law had also gone to tend to the patient, leaving only two maids at the empty house, he was considering finding lodgings elsewhere.
At his elder brother's house, the sister-in-law's brother—an executive at XX Company who had come from Osaka to visit—had also descended from the mountain yesterday and was now preparing to depart today as scheduled.

“It’s quite hot here as well.”
Michita had Tatsunosuke carry the basket containing his small personal items while he himself walked holding a leather bag and using a fan.
In the mountains, he had stayed for about five days in the room adjacent to the sickroom.
Michita’s sisters, cousins, nieces, and other relatives had come one after another from K City to visit the mountain, but finding the room stifling and fearing he would trouble the office staff, he had decided to come down to K City to catch his breath.

“Well, July was such a ridiculously busy month—it completely scrambled my brains—so I thought I’d take a little rest.”

“In that case, how about your sister’s house?”
“It’s quiet now.”

“Well...”
Michita’s niece’s house was spacious enough, and with blue mountains visible across the water, he didn’t think it a bad option. Yet the thought of imposing on his widowed niece, who lived quietly with her children, weighed heavily on him.

“Anyway, I’m starving.”

“Well, how about finding a cool place to take a bath and have a meal?”
“It’s a bit hot along the way, but there will be more patches of shade as we go.”

After passing through a town with many antique shops and the like, they came out to the riverbank.
At the river where Michita used to come swimming and fishing as a child, many children were still playing in the water.
There was also a man dangling a fishing line from the bank.
Michita recalled his own past ignorance.
On the cliff above, there was a back gate and walls running along, with the branches of garden trees from imposing estates stretching overhead all the way.
There had long been houses there that served as mistresses' residences for wealthy men from the port town.

“What became of that—Hikota?”

“Oh, he’s fallen into complete ruin.”
“I hear he’s now a tea ceremony master in Kyoto...”

Michita walked along the base of the cliff, listening to Tatsunosuke talk about the antiques that had been in the house.
The place to eat was at the foot of the mountain visible from that area, but it was a moderate distance for strolling.
Michita felt as though he kept encountering pitiful versions of his boyhood self everywhere he went, yet nowhere retained its old-fashioned tranquility quite like this place—lacking modern industry, it remained free of the chaotic vulgarity typical of developing cities.
Each time he returned, Michita would arrive at the restaurant he frequented; passing through its sprawling stone-paved entrance and following the garden’s stepping stones, there stood an aged room facing a timeworn garden.
Michita stood before the path and gazed at the desolate garden.
In this town, it wasn’t what one would call a remarkable garden, but to his parched mind, the old-fashioned arrangement of trees and stones appeared particularly nostalgic.

“It would benefit from a little care.”
As he said this, Tatsunosuke was removing his white tabi socks, their toes dust-covered; though he was a certain kind of artist who had trained in Tokyo, he shared the tea ceremony appreciation common among many in this town.
Antiques—particularly old ceramics—he possessed such discerning eyes that he could reliably identify their era and craftsmen no matter what was shown to him. Yet Michita, though roughly raised, had developed some appreciation for these Eastern aesthetics in his later years, occasionally even feeling that if he had the money, he might try creating a garden himself.

After ordering the meal and while Tatsunosuke was phoning what seemed to be an acquaintance of his, Michita went to the bathhouse.
He arrived where someone was refilling the water basin.

“It makes me think of last September,”
Michita said while soaking in the bathwater.

“Rippling... rippling...
That time was truly...”

Around that period last year, Michita’s mind had been as though hammered into fragments—which was why Tatsunosuke had dragged him to this house today under the pretext of consolation, arguing he couldn’t bear staying put anyway.
It had been the fourth day when Michita took a detour to visit family graves before arriving here.
As he nibbled at grass-colored beef jerky with an oversized toothpick—prompted by someone’s remark about the bath being ready—he entered the bathing chamber.
Then came a call from a relative; when Tatsunosuke went to answer it, they reported four hundred evacuees were arriving soon—Michita’s family might be among them.
Though doubting this, Michita felt an irrational certainty they would come and scrambled out of the water.
Who among them could have been fortunate enough to reach this far?
Even so—could he meet two or three survivors?—He rushed toward the station through spitting rain, his thoughts outpacing his steps.
Soaking in the bath now, Michita could still recall every face and figure from that day—evacuees filing one by one into the station’s relief shelter.

“How is his condition today?”

After returning to the room, Michita picked at the large salt-grilled ayu with his chopsticks while worrying about how his elder brother was doing now.

“Well, I’ll try calling later to check.”
So saying, Tatsunosuke settled solidly into a cross-legged position and drank his sake.

Then a woman appeared.
Ohiro was a woman Michita had known since childhood.
That house too—when he was a boy, his father would take him there regularly.
In Michita’s grandfather’s generation, there had been a marriage alliance with that house, an old merchant residence.
He didn’t know when they’d begun that business, but Ohiro’s mother—who still carried herself like a wealthy patroness—remained an elegant old woman with fastidious tastes in food.
Even in this town untouched by time’s currents, such a person stood out.
The petite Ohiro was now reckoned to be around thirty.

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
Ohiro sat down neatly there with her thin knees.

“You’re still as thin as ever.
Still showing through, I see.”
Michita spoke while looking at her tanned face.

“Well, since it’s not effective—when did you arrive?”
While handling the sake bottle，Ohiro inquired of Tatsunosuke．

“Because of Uncle’s illness．”

“Ah，it must be Matsuyama-san．”
“That large-framed man with the dignified face…I heard about it two or three days ago．”
“Ituki-san was saying they need him to hold on a bit longer．”

Ituki was the younger brother of the president of the company managed by Michita's elder brother.

Then, while discussing both their family's economic hardships and the mine connected to this life-or-death issue, they ate dishes brought out in succession.

Two

When they went to Ohiro’s house, Okinu—Ohiro’s sister whom they hadn’t seen in some time—was sitting beside a Kansai-style long brazier, her faintly pale face visible in the dim light. Within the northern gloom peculiar to such regions, where the cool waterfall-patterned noren had been rolled up, Ohiro’s figure could also be seen changing into a kimono.

“Please come in.”
Okinu welcomed the two, but unlike her mother, she possessed a far more delicate build and carried herself with refinement. Yet she shared the same inability to flatter customers—had she maintained her mother’s grand manner, ruin would have been inevitable. After much struggle, she had come to consider minor details too, but her temperament remained unchanged from her days as a young dancer.

Michita had never seen this girl dance, but he had known her since she was seven or eight. During autumn festivals when stalls would appear every year in the pleasure quarter, Michita had been taken by his father to watch from the second floor of the geisha registry office. On such occasions, Okinu’s mother would even show his father her newly tailored kimonos. Now in her mid-forties, she had quit her work as a dance instructor some time ago to tend to this place. Though her serene eyebrows—reminiscent of a stone Buddha’s—had grown more pronounced and her cheeks hollowed with age, her clear eyes and hair showed no trace of an old woman’s frailty. Her stature remained slender without being particularly tall, her figure still gracefully proportioned.

As Michita and the others were about to settle by the long brazier, she straightened the zabuton cushions in the room facing the garden at the far end of the inner chamber,

“That spot’s hot, I tell you.
Why don’t you come over here?” she suggested.

“This house has been around a long time.
You’ve managed to get it back, then.”

“Well, it’s not exactly that we took it back, but since my mother used this place for so long...”

The garden, the toilet with its straw curtain visible beyond the garden, and the second floor of the detached room above it—all remained just as they had been in the past.
Michita had heard that the house had once been taken over by others over ten years prior, but around that time, Ohiro’s younger sister had set up a separate establishment elsewhere, while Okinu—together with her mother—opened a cosmetics shop outside the pleasure quarter and taught dance to the children there.
Michita had visited there as well, but the parent and child, after leaving the pleasure quarter, seemed somehow forlorn.

“This house sure is an old one.”
Tatsunosuke sat facing Michita in the garden area as he spoke. Though aged, the interior remained in passable condition.
The eaves had once sagged here and there, but some maintenance appeared to have been done.

“The parts that have aged are nice, aren’t they?”

“It’s beyond saving now. It could use some money put into it, but it’s not mine to begin with.”

“Ohiro-san’s funds?”

“Well, in a manner of speaking.”

“Do you suppose there’d be any harm in me staying over there?”
Michita asked while gazing up at the detached room’s second floor. Yet this pleasure quarter—so fixated on maintaining appearances—had grown increasingly desolate over the years, and this house particularly seemed rather shabby.

“I’ve been meaning to find somewhere quiet and comfortable anyway. Since this place hardly ever gets visitors, it might actually do.”
Tatsunosuke added.

“Please come in. Even if it’s the detached room, the second floor is spacious enough—any spot will do.”

“If you’ve decided that way, why not? I’ll go retrieve the luggage then.”

“That would be acceptable, but where might we go if choosing a hot spring?”

“There’s Fukaya nearby—it’s been rather pleasant lately.”

“The stonemason’s place has a fine parlor too, though I should mention it’s comparatively inexpensive.”

"For the time being, there's an issue I'd rather not touch upon."
"Even though it's something I'll have to deal with eventually, I don't want to see anyone right now."
At that time, Michita had gone to the trouble of bringing his ailing body there for that purpose when the great earthquake struck the very next day—yet the marriage arrangement he had mediated for his niece became mired in mutual misunderstandings, so that when he became involved again, he found himself shouldering substantial financial responsibility.
Even were that resolved, as long as his sister's lax lifestyle and his incompetent nephew's ways remained uncorrected—along with his capricious niece's vanity-driven nature—there was no telling what troubles might arise.
Michita couldn't bear to reprimand his sister—seemingly fated to misfortune—and her children directly.
Moreover, the weak and incompetent always had their own plausible excuses and arguments; listening to them would have meant endless entanglement.

Tatsunosuke was well aware of the circumstances as well.
This past June, he had stayed at Michita’s house for about twenty days—partly to resolve that issue by going up to Tokyo—but Michita had resolved not to respond.
Now looking back, Michita himself had ended up being swayed by his sister; though there was no malice in that sister of excessive kindness, one could not deny there had been reckless ambition regarding the niece’s marriage.

“The things that bunch does are like riding on clouds—it’s absolutely perilous.”

“Since Fumie has been making do with her koto and flower arrangement lessons, they must have overestimated things from the start.”
“It seems they even said things like, ‘If only someone would go to Tokyo, money would flow endlessly.’”
“Here we have Uncle Matsuyama too, and they must have been boasting about how he’s been pulling out all the stops.”

“It does seem that way.”
“Of course Fumie’s at fault, but my sister has those tendencies too.”
“Moreover, it seems my sister also overestimated their circumstances.”
“I shouldn’t have trusted my sister on that point, but it did seem like an excellent proposition.”

“Has Miss Fumie settled matters, then?”
Okinu asked.

“So things are in disarray, you see.”

“He had such fine refinement, didn’t he?”
“I haven’t seen him lately, but he used to visit often—he has a friend who’s gone into business at the mines.”
“That marriage arrangement isn’t progressing well.”
“In that case, why don’t you meet and discuss it properly with them?”
“What sort of person is the prospective groom?”

"He's a medical student."
"It's unclear who's to blame, but to put it bluntly, it looks like Fumie tried to ensnare him."
"If she'd actually succeeded in catching him, that would be one thing—but since that part remains unclear, it's problematic."
"Though truth be told, I didn't press for clarity because of my own uncertainties."
When Michita considered this, he couldn't deny there was solemn justification in claims that full responsibility for this affair ultimately rested with him—at least when viewed through society's stern lens.

Michita was considering whether to go to the hot spring or settle in here when, before long, a young woman summoned by Tatsunosuke arrived, and they went up to the second floor to drink in the back parlor where he had visited two or three times previously.
Skilled young Tokiwazu performers and veteran geisha accomplished in their craft appeared there.
On the front second floor too, there was a party of guests, and through the reed screen could be seen geishas coming and going.
Okinu had also come there, and conversations about various matters were thriving.

By the time Michita began to feel somewhat fatigued, even this quiet pleasure quarter now had the sound of drums.

III

The sleeping comfort of the second floor of the detached room was peaceful.
When he awoke, the sound of the Echigo Lion Dance rehearsal from the house behind struck his ears with deep melancholy.

“Good morning, good morning”—a voice that resembled a human’s yet wasn’t quite human could be heard from beyond the garden in the neighboring direction. In the neighboring house, women’s lively chatter and laughter were bustling incessantly.

“Otsuru-san! Otsuru-san!”
That unpleasant voice, as if emanating from broken machinery, kept going on incessantly.

Michita initially thought there might be a madperson next door, but it appeared to be a myna bird. When he looked by his pillow, there stood a vividly colored two-panel screen depicting a maiko in the corner, while something like *Shunkin* hung in the small tokonoma. In the adjoining room too were staggered shelves with another small scroll displayed. A gentle breeze stirred the blue mosquito net; though the day promised more heat, being here felt like residing in a mountain hermitage. Okinu had remained unmarried all this time—her grown son in Osaka even had children now—while Ohiro, her charms long faded, had according to Tatsunosuke become someone's kept woman. Though they employed two geishas who showed dedication to their arts, none had shed their youthful awkwardness. As for Michita himself, his mustache had turned nearly snow-white. The era when his father would bring him here had likely passed entirely. He'd been startled the previous night upon learning Okinu's age—she was two years older than his own wife. Yet through her training in dance and tea ceremony, coupled with a traditionally refined bearing and graceful presence, she maintained an indefinable composure. True to Tatsunosuke's account, despite having four daughters—including Ohiro's sister now running her own household and Okinu's younger sister teaching in another province—their mother-daughter household had been so uniformly inept at business that they'd had to surrender their home to others.

“Well now, if money comes in, they do have it.”
Their mother, who had always sat casually before the long hibachi, had always been that way.

“There’ll be good times again.
Ain’t nothin’ but bad times forever.”
That too was her catchphrase.

In her youth, when samurai of good standing had their stipends converted to cash, a golden flood had indeed poured into this pleasure quarter as well—on the nearby mountain stood a splendid theater, teahouses sprang up at its base, and the sound of music and song never ceased.
In his boyhood, Michita used to see on his school commute how twenty teahouses lined both sides of that theater which had been brought down to the town—their eaves hung with rows of artificial cherry blossom displays beneath persimmon-colored noren, while audience members and porters carrying food bustled about incessantly.
The names of great actors—the likes of Nobushige, Danjuro, and Ebijuro—had been familiar to him in those days.
Money was lavished as if in a dream, and before they plunged into ruin, this town had known its own era of indulgence.
What Michita had seen was likely only its final days, but she had known that era.

When he went downstairs, Okinu was by the sink.
Wearing a white underrobe and white sash, her smooth white shins—like winter radishes—exposed halfway, she worked diligently yet quietly and neatly.

“Good morning.”
Michita called out.

“Good morning. I wonder if you managed to sleep at all.”

“I slept well.”

With those words, Michita went to the high sink, and she took down a copper basin from the shelf and began drawing water with a creak.
And then she set out toothpicks and powder there for him.
While using a toothpick, Michita rinsed his mouth with water that had a taste reminiscent of mountain streams.

“Did you only have one party last night?”

“Oh, just one party—they ended up leaving around four.”

“That’s no way to run a business.”

“It really won’t do,” Okinu said while stoking the blazing charcoal and cooking rice.
In a long corridor about one ken wide, the black floorboards gleamed sleekly.
There were cupboards and such there.

When he looked toward the entrance connected to the corridor, Ohiro was diligently mopping.
Michita went out to the tea room, sat down before the long hibachi, and began to smoke.

“Everyone’s working hard.”

“I have to work, or Big Sister will nag.”
Ohiro answered softly, but unlike Okinu—who was meticulous and cleanliness-obsessed—she went about the task briskly, as if finding it a nuisance.

In the shopfront area where wardrobes and vanity tables stood lined up, it appeared the women had returned late from their banquet assignments the previous night—two still lay in slovenly slumber, one with her ginkgo-leaf hairstyle utterly collapsed from the roots down, fleshy arms clutching a rumpled sleeping robe.

Okinu phoned the ryotei Michita had visited the previous night and ordered breakfast.

“Please bring rice too—one portion.”

No sooner had Michita gone upstairs to fetch something while putting on his underrobe than Okinu had already rolled up the bedding and was tidying up the clothes he had discarded.

“This place has its charm, but it’s rather dim during the day.”
Having said that, Michita broached the topic—suggesting that with just a few adjustments, it could become far more striking.

“I do think about such things, but it’s not mine to begin with.”

“Whose is it?”

“Once it changed hands, Kyō-chan’s husband bought it.”
“He says it’s a waste to put money into this place and wants to sell it off, but after all, it’s where Mother worked for so long.”

“So you’re renting it out for them then, Kinu-chan.”

“The one actually running things here is Ohiro-chan.”
“I’m just helping out temporarily.”
“I can’t keep doing this forever.”
“While I’m still able to work, I should go to Kobe and become someone’s nanny or something.”
Then she picked up the soiled underrobe,

“Can I send this out for laundry?”

“Yes. Let’s have you send it out.”
Michita, whose wrist—bandaged since leaving Tokyo—had begun to ache slightly from yesterday’s overindulgence in drink, was applying a medicine resembling iodine that he’d obtained from a renowned bone-setter in Shinshu.

“What’s O-Yoshi-san’s husband like?”

“A greengrocer wholesaler. He’s quite steadfast. He used to sell fruit at night stalls, but now he’s become a proper wholesaler through and through. He’s even joined a club and has started dabbling in antiques. When O-Yoshi was released from her contract, her mother—being the sort she is—didn’t ask for much in return. In her usual way of saying ‘That’s fine, isn’t it?’ But she’s a good person. She understands perfectly well.”

“Well, Yoshi-chan is fortunate then, isn’t she?”

“But the husband is physically frail.”

Michita, so as not to interfere with the cleaning, eventually descended the back stairs and came out to the tea room again.
Just as Ohiro had brought out a high-legged tray and was eating alone—with such meager fare that one wondered how she sustained herself, just a bite or two of pickled eggplant and such—she ate dejectedly.
The women of the shop had also gotten up and were cleaning.

“Does eating alone taste good?”

“I’m the type who never skips my three proper meals a day, no matter what happens.”
“I’ve even set it to three bowls each meal.”

Ohiro’s voice was clear and resonant with depth, belying her small, thin frame.
Moreover, he later realized that among the four sisters, this girl had been the most intelligent.

When Michita’s meal was brought in, Ohiro had gone out to the shop area and was absorbed in counting cards by herself in a corner.
Okinu lit tobacco in the hand warmer, burned sandalwood incense, and adjusted the zabuton cushion in the inner room facing the garden,

“Please come over here,” Okinu said, so Michita left his place by the long hibachi and went to sit there.

“Why don’t we call Tatsunosuke today and go enjoy ourselves in Tsurugi?”
Michita proposed.

“In Tsurugi, not only is the sweetfish delicious, but they also have dishes like char and goby.”

“And then further in there’s a place called Yoshinodani—a fairyland valley.”
“Since I went on a school trip there as a child, I’ve thought about going back once, but I always end up returning without going anywhere.”
“I haven’t even seen Yamashiro yet.”

And then, as they talked about selecting places to visit and transportation options and such，time slipped by．A mountain gale suddenly arose，occasionally lifting the blinds on the second-floor annex，but soon subsided．Okinu and her companions had often visited Kyoto-Osaka areas too，and knew all about famous sights，inns，and theaters．More recently，last year they had stayed at an acquaintance’s household in Osaka，where they were shown around various places by that family’s daughter-in-law’s relative—someone who had become an influential figure．

“Then shall I call Tatsunosuke-san?”
Okinu herself showed little enthusiasm, though not outright reluctance either; having said this, she placed the call, but Tatsunosuke seemed rather busy and disinclined to join.
Michita too felt somewhat ill at ease about going with only a group of women.

Apparently a call had been made at some point, for after last night’s drinking session, the summer whale-shaped rice cakes Tatsunosuke had mentioned were ordered and materialized before Michita.
It was a confection of grainy cold-sifted flour resembling a whale’s leathery hide.
As he seldom visited during summer, this proved novel to Michita.

“Try it and see if it’s any good.”

“This isn’t quite right.
“There sure are various sweets around here.”
Michita said as he picked up a piece.

As they continued their idle talk evening soon arrived.
Michita waited thinking they would go eat something once Tatsunosuke came and before long he arrived.
Then all three went out together.
Only Ohiro who was still doing her makeup came along a little late.

IV

Michita settled fully into position.
The second floor of the detached building was gloomy, but if he set up a desk beneath the window in the four-and-a-half-mat room at the back—though his nose might nearly graze the wooden panels of the neighboring house—it seemed he could work there quite adequately.

Okinu lit a fire in an elegant Seto-style brazier and kept water simmering in a traditional iron kettle, ready for tea at any time.

“Where on earth did you find a brazier like this?”
The mother who had come to see Michita went up to the second floor and, saying this, gazed at the brazier.

“We did have quite fine tea caddies and bowls at home, but the ones we stored away in the lower cupboard—before we knew it, all the guests had taken them…”
Okinu continued such talk while,

“As for scrolls and such—though I don’t really know about them—they say they’re quite fine.”
“I think it was probably a landscape.”
“And Tatsunosuke said he’d do the mounting for me, but he took them and now just acts like he doesn’t know a thing!”

“Might it be Buson?”

“I’ve forgotten what exactly, though.”
“I think I’ll have him bring them next time by saying that.”

Even so, among the drinking vessels, slightly aged items still remained—diamond-patterned sake bottles paired with cups, mismatched Nanking dishes heaped with eggplant-shaped dumplings.

Even though Okinu spoke that way in private, when face-to-face she could only manage to exchange light banter. When pressed even slightly, she would be left speechless, her eyes welling up with tears—such was her timidity. One evening after Michita and Tatsunosuke had called over three or four women and gone downstairs to drink tea prepared by Tatsunosuke, Mr. Mori—Ohiro’s patron, who visited nearly once daily—arrived and phoned to reserve seats for the play.

“Sensei, please include Ohiro as well.”
Mr. Mori had been saying to Michita.

Mori-san had been bereaved of his wife last year, and having recently parted with his eighteen-year-old eldest son as well, he had grown hesitant to show his face at theaters and such places.

Mori-san was also a tea practitioner who associated with wealthy individuals in Tokyo and tea ceremony masters in Kyoto, but having graduated from high school, he had none of the pretentious airs typical of such masters.

The play combining Ganjiro's troupe with Kōshirō had long been the talk of the town.
In the pleasure quarters particularly, rumors had circulated widely, and whenever women gathered, they would discuss it endlessly.
Among the nagauta musicians' roster, even questions like who might attend or not had become matters of concern.
The steep theater prices were equally notorious.

Though Michita himself felt no particular attraction, one evening while taking their habitual late-night stroll to cool off with Okinu and Tatsunosuke along the riverbank where moonlight slithered snake-like across the water's surface, they unexpectedly came upon that theater.
Okinu had fallen into her customary pose during such walks—hands clasped inside sleeves as if holding a dance position—her footsteps carrying that same supple softness characteristic of her movements.

“Shall we take a look?”
Michita, wondering what the theater he had never entered might be like, approached the entrance and peered inside at the bustling preparations—seating adjustments and large prop setups—but by then playbills and admission prices were already displayed. Of the four performances, aside from the prized *Echigo Lion Dance*, he realized the three remaining were all major acts. Intrigued by this lavish lineup, he ended up deciding to reserve a box for everyone.

By the time Mori-san made the call, the seats had generally already been reserved.
And since the box accommodated four people, as they deliberated over which companions to include, Okinu found herself in a somewhat awkward position.
If three women were to go, it would be inconsiderate to Tatsunosuke; yet if they invited Tatsunosuke, someone would have to withdraw.

“Kyou-chan should just go by herself.”
Okinu had said as much in private, but bound by social obligations, she couldn’t bring herself to state it plainly to their faces.

“It’s only natural for Tatsunosuke to step aside. After all, he’s seen fine things in Tokyo,” Michita said.

“That’s right—either one of them just needs to step aside.”
“Sis, did you say that to Kyou-chan?” Ohiro asked.

“Why on earth would I say such a thing? But Kyou-chan’s already set on going with us, I tell you.”

“So what’s wrong with that? Just tell Tatsunosuke so.”

“That’d be awkward too. He’s planning to come along as well, I tell you.”

From Okinu’s perspective, having Michita take everyone while leaving Tatsunosuke behind seemed to cast some unintended implication between them that pricked her conscience. Excluding Tatsunosuke—even without romantic overtones—would make Michita’s sisters suspect ulterior motives like greed in keeping him around, which Michita found distasteful. Even otherwise, Okinu and her sisters were neither liked nor regarded favorably by Michita’s eldest sister—Tatsunosuke’s mother. This stemmed from when Tatsunosuke had been involved with Oyoshi—Okinu’s immediate younger sister who now worked as an instructor in the neighboring pleasure quarter. The two had even had a child together. Oyoshi had once entered Tatsunosuke’s household but, unable to get along with his mother, eventually took up employment twice over.

Furthermore, as another reason, there was the fact that Tatsunosuke’s brother-in-law Yamane had until recently been romantically involved with Ohiro. While his marriage—a love match—had its happy aspects, Yamane would often take Ohiro to hot springs or linger at her house, irritating his mother-in-law.
Recently, Yamane had quit drinking.
And though he had broken things off with Ohiro, she would occasionally run into him at other teahouses.

Moreover, Tatsunosuke had long frequented this district like a local fixture and become particularly intimate with Okinu and her sisters, so they felt it unwise to offend him over theater arrangements.

To Michita, the play itself held little significance.
Who attended or withdrew mattered even less.
Yet Okinu alone must not be excluded from their party.
Without her, the performance would have been meaningless—tedious squandering of money.
While he truly had no present designs on pursuing her, no woman matched his fondness for Okinu.
Were circumstances to allow—were he to spend his remaining years secluded in this quiet town with her, a woman neither buoyant nor sullen, neither vivacious nor boorish, neither youthful nor aged, replacing folly and arrogance with neither shrewdness nor dullness—he could not help but envision the lonesome contentment of sharing life with such a companion.

V

On another afternoon too, the neighboring myna bird kept up its nonsensical chatter.

It would call out the stage names of the house geishas three or five times, then gradually lose coherence, carried away as it continued chattering in shrill, empty tones.

"It’s at it again."
Michita sat cross-legged at the edge of the lower room’s garden, quietly taking out several types of Ohiro’s puzzle rings from the closet and fiddling with them.
Among them were some of such ingenious design he had never seen before.
There were all sorts—like extracting star-shaped protrusions radiating in all directions like the spikes of konpeitō candy, crafted from iron, from a slightly distorted oval ring; or threading tiny fragments connected by string through a combination of small square rods made of ivory.
Ohiro liked such things.
She liked cards and flowers, but reading books was also one of her daily routines.

Michita often passed time playing flower cards with her and the house geishas, but Ohiro—who appeared delicate—rarely won despite her sharp mind. Her calculations were swift. Just as her voice held depth, so too did her intellect. Though not taciturn, she never voiced petty complaints or nagging remarks. Once, when they were evaluating geishas' skills as licensed Tokiwazu masters using certificates of permission, Okinu had shown them to Michita and Tatsunosuke.

"I see. So second- and third-rate establishments are doing things like this to rake in money out here in the countryside."
Michita took out the matcha bowl that the master had distributed from its box and stroked it.
Of course, this wasn’t limited to Tokiwazu.
Through art and dignity, this pleasure quarter had long been the townsmen’s place of leisure, but lately even the western quarters—which hadn’t been rivals—were taking equal care in selecting their masters to avoid being outdone.
With the town’s culture naturally shifting east to west, the splendid development seen in the western districts was unavoidable.

“This place only loses out by clinging to formalities.”
Okinu had been saying this, but she wasn’t entirely without hope.

“Well, if we relax the formalities, wouldn’t that make things even worse? Wouldn’t the east’s distinctive character end up completely lost?”
Tatsunosuke had been saying.

“But those with even a bit of talent all end up going over there, I tell you.”

“That’s right—lately there are quite a few beautiful girls in the western districts.”

According to Okinu’s explanation, Ohiro had once reached a peak in her dancing that even made Okinu herself raise her eyebrows in admiration, but due to various hardships, she had ultimately been unable to devote herself entirely to her artistic pursuits.

“People these days are truly fickle, I tell you.”
“Not just me—everyone in my family is too timid and hopeless.”
“We’re fated to never be able to put what we have to use.”
“Compared to us, people out there are downright brazen, I tell you.”
“Things that would make others anxious don’t faze someone like me at all, I tell you.”
Ohiro rarely spoke her mind.

“No matter how many times I see it, it never seems to make much of an impression.”

“If we could just make a splash, we wouldn’t be struggling like this now.”
“That’s just fine by me, I tell you.”
“Just look at how those who’ve mercilessly deceived men end up, I tell you.”
“They end up in such awful straits, I tell you.”

When Okinu gave several examples of such women, they became engrossed again in the recent rumor about a neighboring woman who had gone to Kyoto with a client and suddenly lost her mind.

Michita had been idling away his days with no particular purpose but came to grasp nearly everything: the differences in Okinu and Ohiro's personalities; the generational gap between them; how even though they now shared one household, they were fated to inevitably go their separate ways; and the circumstances suggesting Okinu now stood precisely at the crossroads of her life.
And standing upon the loneliest path of all was Okinu—this much was certain beyond doubt.

Michita sat listening to myna bird’s ceaseless chattering until endless loneliness finally enveloped him.
According to Okinu’s account，the myna bird had been brought from Manchuria or Korea by their neighbor’s master.

“It still fancies itself singing，” she said.
“Merely aping lessons.”

“I’ve ended up staying longer than I meant to.”
“No one seems to realize I’m still here though.”

“Why don’t you go out somewhere for a bit?”

“If I do that, they’ll come looking for me here again.”
“Just the other day, I was put on the spot when my elder brother asked about it.”
“My sister-in-law probably notices but pretends not to, but her brother is ridiculously dutiful—he keeps asking where I am, where I am.”

“There’s no need to hide things like that.”
“It’s not like you’re in some disreputable place, nor are you buying women.”
“This is a far more reassuring place to be than going off to some mountain area, I tell you.”

“I also want to observe my brother’s condition a while longer.”
“Just when I think today might be stable, by tomorrow morning it changes again—it would be troublesome if I had to return to Tokyo and come back.”

Around that time, the patient had stabilized enough that he’d been carried down from the mountain by many people and was lying in his own home’s tea room.
The elder brother, seeing Michita lean out from the train window after so long, gazed with eyes full of nostalgia.

Michita stayed by his side for a while that day as well, but compared to when he had been in the mountains, his consciousness had almost completely recovered.

"Where are you now?"
The elder brother asked Michita.

“Yeah, well, I’m just avoiding people for a bit.”
Michita answered with a laugh.

Michita understood his brother’s desire for him to stay there, but if they were to live under the same roof, he would have to remain constantly close by; moreover, with so many people coming and going, he found it unbearable to impose such inconvenience.
Moreover, just as it had been in the mountains, he thought it better to keep some distance rather than overstep by being excessively attentive regarding nursing care or meals.

After that, Michita continued visiting his brother accompanied by Tatsunosuke, who went to arrange flowers, but there were no notable changes in his brother’s condition.
At times, the elder brother would struggle to sit up, writhing in agony, propping himself on his emaciated knees and rocking his body back and forth as he endured the pain.

“You endure hardships no one else sees.”

When such words came from his stoic elder brother, Michita felt his own negligence weighing on his heart; he reproached himself—even though it wasn’t that far, why hadn’t he made more effort to visit every day?
Nevertheless, Michita, who had perhaps overworked himself, had intended to use this very month for a mental respite through travel; yet even as he had Tatsunosuke call him daily, he found himself reluctant to depart.

While they were having such conversation, Okinu arranged the delivered monthly sweets in a confectionery vessel and brought them before Michita.

“Shall I make some tea?”

“I suppose so.
For all our talk, we’re just eating sweets every day.”

“You’re only eating a little bit, aren’t you?
Lately you’ve been eating quite well despite that.”

“Tatsunosuke eats quite a lot too.”

“He’s like that with everything, I tell you. Every time he comes over, he rummages through the tea cupboard asking if there’s anything good.
He likes his drink too, doesn’t he?”
Okinu said with a sneer, her voice nasal out of habit.

“Does he still go out carousing even now?”

“It seems so.”
“He doesn’t come home much, I tell you.”
“He wasn’t one to spend money so freely before, you know.”

Michita thought this was her justification against the sisters-in-law’s complaints.

“But since he’s that sort of man, he’s known wherever he goes.”
“And he’s quite popular with the courtesans.”
“Though his manly charm has faded a bit now.”
“People who were handsome in their youth turn peculiar when they age, I tell you.”
“But you can’t just hide them away in some corner, I tell you.”
“After all, Madame Kocho sent him a note too, I tell you.”

“I too think Kocho embodies what a geisha should be.”

“She was born in Kanda, you know.”
“Quite generous with her favors, I tell you.”
“The sort who’d keep Ennyaku wrapped around her finger, then wire home for money from some hot spring inn.”
“That’s the mark of a true geisha, isn’t it?”
“And skilled at her craft, let me tell you.”
“That woman... right here in this house, she took one look at Mr. Tatsunosuke and sent for him straightaway.”

“Ah, so that’s why he can’t stay cooped up at home.”
“Does this still go on even now?”

“Well, perhaps...”
Okinu had an awkward smile.

“He’s the most straightforward among all the siblings. He’s well-regarded at my house too.”

“He even got perfume costing ten yen from his wife, I tell you.”

“He’s not using much of it.”
Michita gave a wry smile.

“Right, he might be leaning more toward blowing his own horn.”

“The one at home isn’t exactly averse to pleasing people either.”

“Since Sho-chan” – Okinu’s younger brother – “praised him, he must be decent enough.”
“But his wife must be having quite a time of it.”
“How old she is or…”

“She’s a bit younger than Kinu-chan.”
“The Year of the Snake.”

“They say Snake women are fond of men, but…”
Okinu said with a hint of reproach, then shifted her body toward the wall and lay down.

“What’s that there?”
Michita’s eyes settled on two rolls of fabric atop a disorderly box crammed full of something.

“This?
“He left this here for some reason, but...”
“What a fine piece this is, I tell you.”
Okinu sat up and pulled out the fabric as she said, “I was thinking of making just one bolt into a haori.
“I’ll have to go to Osaka eventually, I tell you.”
“Both are forty-yen matters, I tell you.”

It was a plain thing, its colors dulled and stripes rendered indistinguishable.

“You’d wear something this plain?”
“It’s too good for someone like me.”

“I’m not one for flashy things like others, I tell you. Besides, it’s nothing special—even as our main attraction, something like this wouldn’t stand out, so I think it’s fine.”

Michita had thought about buying her a bolt himself, but disliking how it might be perceived as carrying some intention, he deliberately kept silent.

“I really ought to do something in return, but I’ll leave that for later.”

“What thanks? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You’ve done plenty with the theater, I tell you.”
“And we had so many tanzaku written for us too.”

“If I had money, I could at least help a bit with capital, but I’m someone with no ties to it.”

Okinu was smiling.

“You’ve had two or three years yourself now, I tell you.”

“That may be true.”

“If I could just go to Osaka, I wouldn’t have to keep doing things like this, I tell you. But then Yoshi-chan will return from his travels and start talking about wanting us to work together on something…”
“And if we do go through with that, we’d have to spend some money and take on two promising girls ourselves…”
Okinu began speaking reflectively.

“Is Osaka really that much better?”

“That child’s got the sort of nature everyone dotes on, I tell you.”
“He’s trusted by his master, but what’s more, he’s very much liked by the grandmother.”
“The wife’s also from the master’s relatives—they say she comes from a wealthy shipowning family in Shikoku.”
“Sho-chan went around telling people I was some difficult woman, I tell you, but when they meet me and see I’m not like that, they treat me quite well.”
“Well that’s because he’s a sharp one—properly schooled and quick-witted, I tell you.”
“But Ken-chan’s started fooling around lately... This spring too, he came back looking all modern-style, I tell you.”
“Carrying around luggage fit for a European trip.”
“He hasn’t said a word to someone like me, I tell you.”
“Just goes around drinking everywhere, I tell you.”
“Still so young but already a heavy drinker—I got so worried that when there was some trouble recently, I told them to send about a thousand yen, but no word came back at all.”

“Is this a debt?”

“It’s not exactly what you’d call debt, but…”

Okinu smiled.

“So you intend to keep this place running after all, then?”

“I can’t know what lies ahead, but while Grandmother remains with us...”

“Shouldn’t Grandmother be Sho-chan’s responsibility to care for?”

“Why, it’s the opposite—Grandmother’s the one giving out money, I tell you.”
“When Sho-chan’s in trouble, it’s like, ‘Well then, I’ve got a bit of money here, I tell you—use that,’ or something like that.”

According to Okinu’s tone, her younger brother’s wife was constantly becoming a problem.
And it was Okinu who said that.
For his wife’s sake, her younger brother had come to think of Okinu-nee-san as a sister-in-law who was a bit too quick to find fault.

However, even here, Okinu was not someone who got along particularly well with Ohiro.
Ohiro had Mori-san.
In the next Okyo, there was a greengrocery wholesaler’s master.

"But if you visit occasionally, you’ll feel nostalgic for each other—but even in a house in Osaka—if you stay too long—the days won’t all stay interesting."

"So I must at least bring my own pocket money."
"Even if I take the children out—I don’t want to have to get pocket money from daughter-in-law every single time—and besides—when visiting temples—I don’t want to act all stingy."

“Even with some monthly support from Osaka, I couldn’t possibly manage here.”
“Even if I were to run a business, it’d have to be something respectable.”
“Someone like Kinu-chan could never handle this sort of business.”

“But when it comes to businesses for women, there’s nothing else, right?”

“Who’s to say?”

Okinu eventually got up to check the bath fire.

The bath was rarely heated.
Okinu, who was particular about cleanliness, intensely disliked it when others soiled the bathwater.
Moreover, because her heart was weak, drawing water was a major task.
That day, Tatsunosuke had drawn the water for her the night before.
Okinu boiled it with charcoal.

Michita eventually went to the bathhouse.
The lights were already on.

“How’s the temperature? It should be hot enough now.”
“There’s slightly less than usual—any more would take longer to boil.”
Okinu said this while peering beneath the kettle and bringing water in a bucket.

When he got out of the bath, Tatsunosuke—a regular—and Asai, a bank employee and old acquaintance of Michita’s, had arrived.

Six

Arranging the theater outing proved easier than anticipated.

As autumn had set in, Michita would sometimes go out for evening walks wearing a lined haori over his serge kimono, and he had taken to borrowing a guest’s padded robe, but that day was so warm that even in an unlined summer kimono, he found himself sweating.

Two nights prior, Oyoshi-san—living some distance away—had called to inquire about the theater's prospects and whether the venue would suit their needs.
Oyoshi resided at a prominent geisha house in the area called Kinbei-ro, a name Michita had heard frequently since arriving here.
This connection extended to Okinu as well: when her family had fallen into ruin, too ashamed to remain locally, she had worked there briefly as an instructor—hence why mentions of that establishment and its proprietor surfaced whenever such matters came up.

“They said they’d surely lend enough money to run a business and have it returned, but those people were so sharp that in the end, travelers ended up being fleeced.”
“Since going there myself, I’ve become quite the wicked one too, I tell you.”
Okinu had been saying such things.

But on Oyoshi's part, she seemed to have put aside a fair amount.

Okinu had been certain that the proprietor of Kinbei-ro would come to the theater with a large entourage, so when the phone rang, she rushed to answer it.

“Yoshizawa-san!”
When Okinu heard the caller’s voice, she said this with a laugh, speaking in an unusually buoyant tone she’d never used before.
Oyoshi also came out, and the conversation spanned three calls.

“Is Yoshizawa-san the old man?”

“No, the driver.
It seems business is bad everywhere—only Yoshizawa and the proprietress came.”

“But if two more people come on top of this, we can’t manage it.”
“I plan to tell Tatsunosuke tomorrow morning that I’ll have to decline too.”
“Those people will sort themselves out somehow.”

“You can’t just say something so carefree like that—it’ll cause trouble.”

There, with Ohiro also present, the discussion grew tangled again.
Though Michita hadn’t meant to speak sharply, when he noticed Okinu’s eyes glistening faintly—as if her heart raced—and her look of bewilderment, he was abruptly struck by tenderness, and that day resolved not to join in after all.
He had heard from Tatsunosuke that the entire household of his elder brother’s adopted heir’s wife would be visiting her parents’ home, so holding back seemed the wiser course.

“I’m not even sure if I can go myself.”
Okinu also said.

Unfortunately, she had been suffering from nasal and throat discomfort for two or three days, making her breathing appear labored. Complaining of an upset stomach, she had spent the entire day without eating anything while lying in the inner room, but after receiving an massage treatment the previous night—which had somewhat improved her condition—she emerged into the tearoom and began eating her meal as if suddenly remembering to do so.

When the day arrived, Okinu went to have her hair styled around noon. Upon returning, she uncharacteristically settled before Ohiro’s vanity mirror. But when Ohiro herself went to the bathhouse, Okinu—intending to fashion her hair into a modern style of her own design—meticulously worked on it with help from her attendant Kako. Yet appearing dissatisfied, she soon re-did it into another actress-style chignon instead. Ohiro was twelve or thirteen years younger than Okinu, but having thinner hair required more time for applying makeup. Michita often observed her under two candlelights, carefully arranging every strand at her temples without neglecting a single hair. In contrast, Okinu’s luxuriant locks showed no change from her twenties. Her hairline remained immaculate, and her clear, dark-dominant eyes held a soft limpidity like stars on a spring evening. The performer-style coiffure suited her somewhat elongated face well.

Before changing clothes, Okinu took out a lunchbox from the shelf and was repacking a few delicacies and sushi she had ordered since the night before, using her chopsticks. The mountain picnic lunchbox even came with a suction tube for sake, adorned with Kouki-style maki-e.

“Do you still take things like this along nowadays?”
Michita was gazing at the lunchbox with curiosity.

“It’s nothing too special, but...”

“This lunchbox...”
Michita was childishly twisting the other lunchbox.

“That’s the lunchbox I use when going to practice at the Enbujō.”

“But seeing plays this way must be quite enjoyable.”

“Here we have boxed meals and eel dishes and all sorts of things. But I suppose this is part of the fun too.” Okinu said this, then had her mother slice the large steamed abalone she’d received from somewhere recently. The elderly mother worked a rusty kitchen knife against a whetstone, scrubbing it vigorously.

“This is delicious. I kept it carefully,” Okinu said.

“That knife doesn’t look too reliable.”
Michita watched with mild amusement the elderly mother’s practiced motions, which suggested some familiarity with a chef’s work.

“Even if a knife’s rusty, it can still cut you, I tell you.”
The elderly mother said this and touched the blade to test it.

Before long, having entrusted the lunch preparations to her mother, Okinu began fastening a stiff, old-fashioned thick obi around a plain, darkish unlined kimono.

“You’re going with that plain style again?”
When Michita said this pointedly, Okinu blushed like a maiden.

Michita had called Tatsunosuke that morning and decided only the women would attend since there was no space available.
Though he had declined by suggesting they go together later at leisure after changing his mind due to Okinu’s insistence he ended up deciding to go after all changing into a kimono upstairs before coming back down.
O-Yoshi still hadn’t changed.
Yet when they went to check at the theater despite a “Full” sign being posted and people trailing out in droves there remained space for two or three people in a slightly elevated spot behind their reserved box seats—an area not normally considered part of the seating section.
When asked about this Okinu explained that while customers didn’t usually enter there they should accommodate us if we paid the venue fee.

“This’ll do. If there’s a spot like this, having two more people come wouldn’t be a problem. Save this spot here—I’ll call Tatsu. If it’s just this much, there was no need to worry so much, was there?”

“One or two people can easily be accommodated.”

“Since we’ve found such a good spot here, let’s call Tatsunosuke. Or should we send a car?”

However, Okinu was not forthcoming. She seemed to be considering the matter of when O-Yoshi and her companion would arrive. She soon left her seat but finally returned around the time the curtain rose.

“The phone here wasn’t up to handling urgent matters, so I made the call at Midorikan next door.”
Okinu said this and wiped the sweat that had beaded on the tip of her nose.

Tatsunosuke made it in time for the opening act.

Around the time *Kawauchiyama* ended and *Moritsuna Jin'ya* began, Okinu—who had been away from her seat for some time—finally returned with a calm expression.

“Since O-Yoshi-san was standing over there, I went to check,” she said. “They were kind enough to accommodate us with a spot just right at the front of the flat area.”

“I see,” said Michita. “Come to think of it, I haven’t seen O-Yoshi-san in a long time either. Where is she?”

Okinu pointed it out for him, but Michita’s untrained eyes couldn’t quite discern the location.

It was such a muggy day that you could practically shed your skin, and all the actors in their winter costumes were thoroughly drenched in sweat.

“Putting on something like Kanjinchō is impossible here, isn’t it? The stage is narrow too—skilled second- or third-rate actors from somewhere would probably be best here.”

“That may be the case.”

“Ganjiro sure jumps up a lot with a shout or something, doesn’t he?”

“What a strange man.
“I can’t stand that face.”

“He’s an entertaining actor, isn’t he?”

When they reached the middle of the crucial Echigo Lion Dance performance, even to Okinu’s eyes, Asataro and Chosaburo’s dancing began to look tedious.

When they stepped out to the riverside, a drop or two of rain struck their faces as a chilly wind blew.

When they returned home, Michita hurriedly removed his kimono and wiped his body with water, while Okinu, now in just a single undergarment, lit a candle and went down beneath the trapdoor to store the leftover rolled eggs and other perishables from the lunchbox in the basement.

“I’d forgotten about this.” After a while, Okinu came back up with salt-grilled ayu, sniffed the aroma, and said, “Why don’t you have a drink with this?”

It was something Master Mori had specially ordered from afar.

"How was the play?" the elderly mother asked.

"It was just so hot, you see."

"Who was dancing the Echigo Lion Dance?"

"Chosaburo partnered with Kaisha alright, but that part with the sparse daffodils—somehow it felt off."
"When was I—how old was I then? Wearing geta with a single tooth, walking across that wooden floor day after day, spreading out cloth to dry."
Okinu said this and poured sake into the flask with a glugging sound.

The pleasure quarters were utterly still everywhere.

At that moment, O-Yoshi arrived together with her companion—the mistress of the establishment, Okami.

Seven

One day, Michita came down to the lower sitting room and talked with Okinu in the tearoom and Ohiro, who was keeping accounts in the middle room.

The mistress of Kinpeirou had gone out somewhere, leaving only O-Yoshi behind, but she was working diligently with meticulous care.

“Hey, why don’t you check your own books too while you’re at it?”
Michita said teasingly.

“Understood,”
Ohiro replied.

“How much do we have?”
Okinu said, “Mr. Tatsunosuke will handle the food arrangements, and as for flower expenses—no trouble at all, I tell you.”

“That won’t do.”
“Accounts are accounts.”
“Since this has gotten quite lengthy, I think it’s about time we wrap things up.”

“Is your work already finished? You’ve been bustling about, but is that really all there is to it?”

“I suppose so.”

“Is there still something you want to eat?”

“I’m already sick of eating. No matter where you go, it’s always the same stuff. If you want to find a decent woman, all the good ones are likely locked down.”

“That’s how it usually goes, but these days that might not hold true.”

The theater had called twice already—Utako, who was supposed to handle the drum for some dance number, was running late. They’d rescheduled once already, but now they were in trouble if she didn’t hurry up.

“We’ve already sent someone to fetch her, so we’ll send her up as soon as she returns.”
“How unfortunate.”
Okinu replied.

Though they kept her on their roster, Utako wasn’t under full contract.
After idling through two or three days of half-hearted work assignments, she spent all her time holed up somewhere with insurance agents and such.

Okinu was muttering.

“Can this house really keep going like this?” Michita asked meddlesomely.

“Well, it seems there’s no prospect, does there? I said I didn’t want to, but everyone went ahead and made me do it anyway,” Ohiro said pointedly to Okinu.

Okinu remained silent.

Ohiro had been wanting to settle into the household of Master Mori, who had lost his wife, but every time he came over, Master Mori treated Ohiro as his wife.
Though Ohiro still carried lingering feelings for Yamane—Tatsunosuke’s brother-in-law—Okinu maintained that while the financial separation had been clean and Yamane himself an intriguing choice, the undignified manner of their parting meant that Ohiro detested continuing her trade so shamelessly, if only for appearances’ sake.
Okinu had considered that placing Ohiro into Master Mori’s household would require imposing significant conditions, but beyond that lay ruin—she would have to choose between maintaining this house alone or disbanding it entirely.

This morning too, Ohiro—who had risen unusually early—was airing her grievances at length to Oyoshi in the tea room.
The resonant voice reached even Michita’s dozing ears.
Okinu was also in bed, pretending to sleep as she listened.

Due to significant expenses at the back house, Michita had his bedding brought downstairs late last night and hung a mosquito net in the room adjacent to the sisters.
A chilly wind was blowing.
Okinu had Oyoshi help her and took out the stored shoji screens.

“But Sis wants to keep this place running by teaming up with Oyoshi-san, doesn’t she? We have to consider Sis’s position too, don’t we?”

“Sis should just go to Osaka. That’d be the easy life. Wouldn’t that beat keeping up this destitute household? Oyoshi-san’s got no mind for business anyway. Even if we consider her situation—Mr. Tatsunosuke’s child only came back for the military physical this year.” Ohiro pressed on. After finishing the ledger, she snapped the inkstone’s lid shut with a clack, went to the shop area, and started reading a novel.

At that moment came the sound of the entrance door opening, followed by what seemed to be the voice of Yamada's sister—the very person Michita had been avoiding until a day or two prior.

Michita had resigned himself to the fact that if she had come, then so be it, but according to the unexpected condition he had observed at his elder brother’s place yesterday—though his brother had always been excessively careless in demeanor since childhood—lately he had not been presenting a very favorable appearance, which was embarrassing in front of the sisters.

However, Okinu welcomed her with a kindly expression and seemed to be skillfully smoothing things over.

“Mrs. Yamada has come.”
Okinu came to Michita’s room and relayed the message.

“It can’t be helped. I’ll see her.”

His sister hesitated for some time before finally entering.
When he looked, Fumie was also with her.

Contrary to her mother, Fumie remained dressed in flamboyant attire, holding a child.
Michita had heard the child likely had one leg paralyzed due to spinal disease and had been deeply troubled by it; now, seeing the chubby-cheeked face of the child Fumie held, he felt even gloomier and remained unable to speak for some time.

“I apologize for what happened last time.”
“Where’s Fumi-chan now?”
Michita inquired.

“Using visiting Uncle Matsuyama’s sickbed as my reason, I came out here.”
Fumie answered in a hoarse voice while placating the whining child.

Though Fumie’s husband’s family lived in the countryside, while her husband Aoki lodged in town to attend school, Fumie was meant to be staying with Aoki’s parents.

“What about the child?”
“I hear the leg’s bad, isn’t it?”

“Huh? So…”

Then his sister immediately took over and, with growing excitement, began recounting the full progression of the child's illness up to that point. While surgery would likely have cured it, Aoki's parents had declared the operation too cruel to endure and chosen to leave matters to fate.

As his sister's manner grew increasingly sentimental, Michita felt a strange unease.

"On top of that, with them saying things don't add up or preparations are lacking—lately the elderly have been blaming me for everything."

“I’d made everything perfectly clear beforehand. If you’re saying otherwise, then my assumptions must have been mistaken too.”
“It was too good an offer to pass up, after all.”

“There’s no harm in that,” his sister replied.

“Fumie’s whole situation is built on shaky foundations—that’s the real problem.”
“If she truly wants to stand on her own feet, she should find something more stable.”
“Those tightfisted country folk won’t lift a finger to help.”
“The man needs to be self-reliant—property or not.”
“Aoki lacks any spine whatsoever.”
“If they were so desperate for this marriage, they should’ve offered better terms.”
“The way things stand, it’s like they exploited our family connections to snatch Fumie away.”

“Huh? He can’t say anything in front of his parents.”
“But once things have reached this point, neither side will find it agreeable.”
“With motives being impure on both ends, it’ll never work out.”

“Well, I wonder about that.”
The elder sister heaved a deep sigh.

“Fumie-san’s problem is that she won’t listen to others.”
“Make sure she consults everyone about everything.”
“Since your father’s gone, you need to get serious—stop putting on airs and taking it easy like before. You must change your ways and start carving out your own destiny.”
“This household may be in this line of work, but each of us struggles considerably with our own lives.”

“Well, that’s how it is.”
The elder sister nodded.

Michita designated how matters would be settled upon parting and who would handle the negotiations.

“It’s rather awkward if I’m involved. I inevitably end up having to say unpleasant things.”

“That’s right.”
“They’re putting on airs about knowing the law, I hear.”

“Still, if matters can resolve smoothly, it’s better to leave them settled as they are.”
“If that happens, we can manage the money later somehow—but for now, it’s a bit…”

“I hear Mr. Aoki has visited Uncle Matsuyama’s place twice now, saying he wants to speak with him—though I suppose it’s just to badmouth us in the end.”

Michita thought meeting him would be acceptable.
If they could just accept his account, he himself might become more deeply involved in this matter.

The two seemed somewhat relieved and eventually took their leave.

“Thank you for handling this,” Michita said to Okinu, who had come to clear the dishes.

“Your sister has aged considerably.”
“Fumie-san’s refinement has slipped somewhat.”

“They say they’d rather just have my sister come help at home, but she keeps half-doing things on her own and ends up making it harder.”

“That’s how it goes for everyone.”
“Things hardly ever work out how you want.”
“Even if Ohiro-san were to settle at Mori-san’s place, there’s still the mother-in-law to contend with—and with her build, she could never manage that grand household’s affairs.”

When dusk fell, Tatsunosuke arrived like clockwork.
Michita was somewhat hesitant, but since Okinu insisted on treating them with her recent *hanafuda* winnings, they soon went as a group of four to dine at the new rental hall at the mountain’s foot—a place recently adorned with commemorative hand towels.
To Okinu’s eyes, it was an establishment two generations out of style, run by a woman who had once been a geisha.

Michita found himself wanting to glance at such relics too.
Yet despite this—much like how Okinu would occasionally drop by his place casually—he also began envisioning the scenario she’d mentioned: if he were to rent a suitable house somewhere, she wouldn’t mind keeping watch over it.

VIII

The day of the major cleaning that Okinu had long been dreading arrived.
The young worker Michita had requested arrived and began working from the detached room where he was stationed, reaching the lower rooms by afternoon.
Okinu and the others were working in summer work jackets, with hand towels wrapped around their heads in the style of elder sisters.
“Let’s head to Kyō-chan’s place.”

The old grandmother said this and urged Michita along with her grandchild.

O-Kyō’s house was located just nearby in the direction of the samurai district.
This area was also where Michita had lived around the age of thirteen or fourteen; though the house from that time—once situated in a quiet riverside spot—had now become a villa for a certain restaurant, the ancient plum tree with a trunk so thick it would take three men to embrace remained unchanged from days of old, its branches sprawling beyond the earthen wall.

Kyō had visitors and was talking with them in the lower room. Leaving a pair of men’s geta at the entrance to ward off intruders was Kyō’s custom, and on that day too, a pair of Satsuma geta had been placed there. Though American timber had been used, the house was built to be comfortable.

An unfortunate old woman was there alone. She belonged to the main branch of Okinu’s family—a cousin of Okinu and her siblings’ mother—but having no other relatives, she had been fulfilling some role at Kyō’s place. Nostalgic upon seeing Michita for the first time in years, the old woman brought out photographs of her only child—a classmate of his who had died young—and showed them to Michita as he lay sprawled on the second floor, tracing back the old marital ties between his family and hers while repeatedly reminiscing about bygone days.

“The Wada household maintained a lineage of beauty, and that person too was said to have been beautiful.”
“Oshi was wed into a merchant family.”

In any case, Michita and the sisters born from the same mother as him had diverged from that lineage.

“But how old are you?”

“I’m seventy-four now.”
“I’m two years older than this old woman.”
“When I was little, I used to carry this person on my back all the time.”

Michita had never seen such a gaunt old woman before.

“Have you visited your wife’s grave?”

“Before I return eventually…”
Michita laughed.

“I’d like to visit the grave once too.”

Michita had also often been told this by the grandmother who was Okinu’s mother.

The grandmother clapped her own hands in rhythm while singing, making her four grandchildren perform *Harusame*.
The children held folding fans as they spun in their dance, every angle of their movements perfectly executed.

“Granny Okinu’s been training her students, and this little one here ended up learning it all just from watching…”
The grandmother laughed with languid amusement.

When they finished, they showed two more dances.
After receiving bananas as rewards, they eventually made their way downstairs.

"You could do some writing here too, don’t you think?"
The old grandmother said this and, while looking up at the mountain densely wooded before her eyes,
"The lush green of the mountains is such a lovely thing."

As they did so, they both lay down and drifted into a pleasant doze.

Tatsunosuke arrived when the sunlight visible on the mountain had already faded considerably.

“How’s the big cleanup going?”

“It should be sorted out soon, but a telegram just arrived from Tokyo—they say Rii-chan is ill.”
Tatsunosuke said with a tense expression and handed the telegram to Michita.

Michita thought Again? and felt his chest suddenly tighten.

The telegram contained about three messages.
“RITSUKOJIUBIYOUBIYOUMEIMITEIDAI GA KUHE NI UIN SHITA ATO FUMI”—such were the words.

Michita was terribly flustered but managed to keep himself together.

“When I come here, it’s strange how something always happens.”
Michita muttered, but a suspicion briefly occurred to him—that there had been some communication from Tokyo, and this telegram was a pretext to summon him back.
Since coming here, he had only once sent word to Tokyo.
Yet he himself knew full well that this suspicion had no basis.

“What time could it be now?”

“Four o’clock.”

The telegram that decisively urged his return soon arrived from Tatsunosuke’s house to Okinu’s, and Michita found himself suddenly hastening to depart.

When he went upstairs to prepare, Okinu followed and packed his luggage for him.

“A basket would be best for these things, don’t you think?”
Okinu deftly bundled up the air pillows, lap blankets, and other such items that were there.

Upon descending downstairs—it seemed Ohiro had notified him—Mori-san had already arrived and had a large amount of specially made lotus yokan delivered.

“Sensei, this is quite a fine thing.
“Ohiro, go ahead and cut a piece of this.”

Two or three days prior—whether as thanks for the play or something else, Michita didn’t know—he had been treated to a meal by the Master at a quiet rented hall alongside Tatsunosuke.
There, the Master had hosted coolness gatherings and insect-viewing gatherings. As he casually recounted stories—competing in artistic ingenuity with local tea practitioners, or that time he demonstrated his skills before a crowd of connoisseurs in Kyoto—he made Michita nod in agreement at how his approach diverged somewhat from mainstream tea masters.

“If something like this might suit your taste,”
Ohiro said and produced that familiar puzzle game.

After entrusting the luggage to Master Mori, Michita left the place with Tatsunosuke a little past six o’clock.

“I shan’t see you off—it wouldn’t do with everyone present,”
Okinu declined while wrapping several layers of sweets in a furoshiki cloth.

“I just can’t shake this feeling I’ve still forgotten something.”
As he rose to leave, Michita deliberately repeated himself.

When he went to his elder brother’s room, his sister greeted him warmly,

“Actually, I was thinking of asking you to come.”
“The nurse made a careless mistake—even though he had trusted her so much—and now he’s furious and refuses to take any medicine at all…”

The nurse was crying and apologizing by the side.

Michita eventually went to his elder brother’s bedside.
The elder brother was somewhat irritated, but after a brief conversation, he soon nodded in agreement.

“And then, I’ve also had some business come up, so I suddenly have to return for now.”
Michita began to speak.

“Thank you.”
“Well, I suppose I’ve no need to worry now.”
The elder brother said that and was more composed than Michita had expected.

Michita finally felt relieved and was able to leave the sickroom, but when he reached the next room, he suddenly heard his elder brother’s sobs, causing his legs to freeze involuntarily.

Then leaving his elder brother’s side took a little more time.
And while thinking of the loneliness of his childless elder brother’s sickbed, he left there together with Tatsunosuke.

A crowd had gathered at the station.
The two sisters and Fumie had come.
Mori-san and Ohiro were present, but even after boarding, Michita kept looking around, wondering if Okinu might still come.

Then before long, Okinu suddenly appeared there.
Everyone averted their eyes.
Okinu hesitated for a moment but eventually approached the window and,

“Here’s your lunchbox,” she said, reaching out to hand Michita the meal she had mentioned when standing up.

“And here’s soap and tooth powder.”

“Well, thank you…”
Michita received them and gave a slight bow.

The train departed.
No matter how much he worried, time refused to skip ahead. Michita resolved to manage some proper sleep until morning and began preparing for bed. But as it was still early evening, the porter seemed in no hurry to prepare his berth.

As Michita gradually settled down, an odd restlessness crept in.
Reflecting on his twenty-odd days of interactions with Okinu, she remained as much an enigma now as ever.