Pathway to Japanese Literature

She encountered her brother in town.
He was reading a newspaper on a moving train.
The large, red hand gripping the steering wheel stared piercingly at Tomoko.

“Did you find a job?”

While taking in his sister’s thoroughly exhausted appearance, he said that.
Tomoko silently nodded.
While battling gusts that made her skirt cling damply to her legs, she had wandered in circles all day.
Visits, contracts, rejections, reports—.

“What’s this time? You’d better not get canned again.”

“This one’s safe.”
“Why?”
“Because you’d be troubled if I came to borrow money too often?”

While folding the newspaper and putting it into his pocket, her brother grinned knowingly.
He lowered one leg from where they’d been crossed and briefly glanced back at the window.

Tomoko pulled at her trapped skirt and noticed the stains on her brother’s cuffs.
At this hour on Saturday, the line was relatively empty.

“Have you been reading the newspaper lately?”

“What kind of newspaper?”

“Bourgeois newspapers—some old woman went and kowtowed right in front of my automobile. Supposedly some wealthy retiree, but Christ it made me sick.”
“Right when we’re getting targeted over this labor dispute plan—gave them the perfect excuse to can us. Disadvantage piled on disadvantage—”

“The old woman—”
Tomoko made a strained noise in her throat. “How awful. She’s not going to die from that, is she?”

Her brother acted like he hadn’t heard.

“It’ll just be a fine, right?”

“Well, it’s still tied up—”

In the train, she couldn’t ask anything more about it.
Her brother scrubbed at his ear with the tip of his little finger until it turned red.
At the curve, he sharply raised his voice.—

“Have you heard from Mom?”

“Oh, sometimes.”

“Lately I can’t send her money—that’s how it is. Can’t you manage it on your end? In exchange, I’ll cover you if you get fired.”

Tomoko nodded while laughing.
After that, they occasionally bumped shoulders and were jostled in silence.
A man carrying a trunk stood blocking their path.

“Are you in a hurry today? Let’s get something to eat for once—oh well, next time then. Say hi to Wataru for me when you see him.”

With that, her brother descended toward the intersection.

—Mother, out of habit, sat flattened like a folded futon, perhaps staring with despondent eyes clouded by a fragile spirit—she was exhausted.

――Her pallid face loomed closer, her wrinkled, withered arm reaching out—then she was swallowed into the timid crush of mothers jostling together in the crowd, shrinking smaller than a poppy seed――.

"That’s precisely why…—"

"I must not let such idyllic melancholy cloud my brother’s fighting spirit—"

Yes, yes—she had wanted to mention the recent reports from a friend back home about “the prefecture’s first entry prohibition dispute—escalating into riots,” but… she thought.

But no matter what, Tomoko’s heart kept being drawn toward Wataru.
While tapping the train floor with her shoe heels like a child, her head alone was pulled ahead toward Wataru’s apartment.
...Spiraling up narrow stairs—the first floor’s dead end had a brown door with a Mazda gas-filled bulb poster stuck to it; on the second-floor landing window hung a cardboard sign: “Please close this window when it rains or when the wind is strong.”
Yet no matter when one went, there had never been a time when the window was half-fitted with glass... The fourth floor housed bachelor quarters—police officers, train conductors, teachers, geta clog repairmen, factory workers.
Socialists too.
——What face was he making?—— Standing in the dim hallway where toilet stench drifted, pressing her body flush against the door, knocking—then his shadow swayed in the transom window…….

She gazed tediously with nervous eyes at the town lights drifting past at a sluggish tempo.

“All they ever think about is eating, these poor people.”

“What time?”

“We too, right now—”

“That’s acceptable—alright, I’ll go buy rice and pickles.”

Tomoko placed the side dishes she had brought onto the tatami still wrapped in paper.
The floor was brand new with a thin coat of whitewash.
Grabbing silver coins and a large bowl，Wataru descended to the cafeteria.

Pulling out a new book from the bookshelf and flipping through its pages—right—she needed to get water boiling on gas.

Both ate voraciously，and when sipping hot water，they looked at each other’s faces and laughed.

“I dyed this myself．Before，it was all burnt and dirty-looking，right?—”

Like a little girl unable to contain her excitement, she pulled at her jacket and spilled the coffee she was sipping into the hollow of her skirt.

“I have work tonight.”

“No, tonight’s a rest day—but tomorrow’s an early start instead.”

Relieved even herself, from Tomoko’s mouth poured an endless stream of serious talk and foolish talk.
She would make eyes like a cat stalking a mouse, then narrow them like a lazy cat.
When called a gossipmonger, she puffed out her cheeks slightly and thrust out the finger still holding her cigarette.

“Modern boy.”

“Look, ash is falling—on your head?”
He briefly touched his pomade-stiffened head and said, “Don’t be silly. This is camouflage—we have to blend in with our surroundings as much as possible.”

“Oh, so that’s what you call streamlining fashion, is it?”

“Stop smoking—you’ve started again, haven’t you?”

“Anyway—”
Suddenly turning serious, she said, “The entry prohibition back home seems to have escalated terribly—how thrilling that police officers and the ward chief got clobbered with burning logs. They’re supposed to send a newspaper soon, but…”

“There seem to be quite impressive fighters over there—”

“Yes—I’ve been thinking maybe I should have them let me work over there too. Bowing my head all day—clatter clatter making those cards rattle... Such utterly meaningless work... I’m thoroughly sick of it.”

“If you’re serious about this work, there’s plenty you could do right here in Tokyo.”

Then he chuckled,

“If I go back to my hometown, I’ll end up having to fight even the sons there.”

“Sons?
“Because they’re landlords?”
“You’re mocking them—such petty things.”

“Even if they’re small, landlords are landlords.”

“Regardless of whether he was aware of it or not—is that it? Not that it matters, but landlord blood is such a strange thing—Yamamoto, you know, when he was alive back in the village…”

Tomoko looked back on the fact that she too had once lived through such times with a strange, almost doubtful feeling.

“In the end, I was just a doll-like girl dragged around by the landlord’s idle son—”

Yamamoto was a nihilist who wore peasant shirts and morning coats, married a poor man’s daughter, and scorned his father—a successful political operator—but having been raised in a landlord’s household,

“When I think about it now, it was rather idyllic—”

She had witnessed what fierce confrontations—sometimes even life-or-death struggles—tenant farmers would bring to the landlords’ homes in autumns of famine, poor harvests, or drought—and how in those moments, the landlords’ hearts would turn to stone, scissors, blades, shedding all human bonds of parent, child, or neighbor in a way that defied understanding.
She observed how even the most witless oafs could become prefectural assembly members or national legislators simply by being major landlords—and how, from this position, the institutional machinery would systematically reproduce the yoke upon tenant farmers and smallholders.

(If Father were to give you all these rice fields here, what would you do?)

(What a nuisance—I’d sell them off straightaway and go abroad or something)

……That was Yamamoto.

At the village outskirts stretched their own vast larch forest spanning wide terrain; the idle pair would often go lie there, where every single tree, tiny fungus, clod of earth, insect, and last fallen leaf might have been catering to their owner’s pride through subtle flattery.
In any case, she had been extremely fond of it. One time, while walking through such a place with Yamamoto, he suddenly stopped and shouted in a tremendous voice, “Who’s there?!”
“Damn it!”

Tomoko had never seen his face as excited as it was then.
When she silently looked where he pointed, there was the retreating figure of a bear-like man clutching a glinting hand-axe as he fled in panic.
Lumber thieves and landlords—thinking this, she felt an odd tickling sensation, a forlornness, a distance in blood.
It might have taken on a kind of expression.

(You’re looking down on me, aren’t you? Hey!)

Yamamoto had paled somewhat and said abruptly—

“……After all, it’s a story from seven or eight years ago.”
“Back then, farmers were just like the peasants in Shchedrin’s satirical tales—typical, you know? Good-natured yet ignorant and cunning, mere anecdotal figures—and I was just the landlord’s idle son dragging around some shabby-looking girl…”

Sometimes, while being teased by Wataru, she would talk at length about such things and finally add:

“I do have bright hopes about children—they’re bound to get better, after all.”

She collided with an unexpected, malicious reality.

Wataru’s complexion changed in an instant.

Having touched it with her fingertips—half-mischievously—Tomoko grabbed the bottle she had pulled out of his pocket and stood up hesitantly.

“This is solemn business, isn’t it.”

“I was going to say it.”

“Since when?”

“What—you’re leaving?”

“Yes,” she began, instead of stating her intention to leave,

“I’m not that mercenary—I’m not that kind of woman.”

Having said that, she sat down.

“When was the last time we all met? It’s only been about a week since then.”

“You’re truly awful.”

After crawling onto the futon, Tomoko narrowed her eyes childishly and reproached him.

“You pig.”
“Going to such a stupid place…”

“What’s wrong with going to a place like that?”

“My god,” Tomoko exclaimed in utter disbelief, narrowing her eyes even further, “you really don’t get it?”

“Then your brother doesn’t go to places like that—?”

“My brother’s different—he’s a worker, and at his age still unmarried—so in that sense he’s excusable. But intellectuals can’t be let off like that.”
“Both ideologically and practically, they must—and can—extricate themselves from capitalist corruption—”

“Right.”
“But mine’s different.”
“If she’d gone to such a place, this wouldn’t have happened… Maki Someko… Last month when she left home, she actually came straight to my place—carrying just one not-too-large basket—saying she’d finally left her husband. Since she suddenly seemed to have nowhere to stay, I told her your place. But—”

“I already know—she came to my place when I was out, right? And no matter how many times she begged the old woman downstairs, she wouldn’t let her in. I know all about that.”

Then she pressed her ear against the pillow and turned toward the white wall.

The only thing I ever loved was this person’s healthy body—and he casually shares it with other women, whether they’re hostesses or socialists; nothing new there.

But remember—this way of thinking is the most base, a swamp, tattered scraps.

But Tomoko turned around once more—

“Tell me how it feels to get sick.”

“Who even asks something like that? It’s a waste of time and money—you already know how troublesome it is. But that’s all there is to it.”

“What would you do if I stopped loving you?”

“Quit nagging. I won’t allow that. Nothing’s changed between us—once the illness clears up, there’ll be no issue.”

“Egoist—you’re already asleep.” After a moment, Tomoko shook his shoulder. “Shall I tell you what kind of woman I am? If I end up like those fools out there—visiting gynecologists, darkening my eye sockets, carrying insertion meds in my pockets, becoming someone who can’t even bear children… Well then, I don’t need romance. I’d rather spend my days clopping along on an ox or horse’s back. But pigs—pigs are where I draw the line. Sexual desire isn’t even important to me!”

“Miss Hysteric”—this he muttered only in his mind.

He fell into a deep sleep.
The room became filled with his breathing.

Occasionally, there were people clattering down the concrete corridor in clogs or sandals.
The purification system’s toilet groaned—ugh, ugh—and clattered as it overturned.

The apartment’s fourth floor—

"That’s right—this place is like a box."

Tomoko mocked her own emotions—spatially restricted and stifled.
When morning came, it would all be goodbye—absolutely.
Thrashing her sturdy calves against the bedding, she tossed and turned in the futon again and again.

It was dawn.
She got up and opened the window.

A single streetlight in the courtyard came on, and the children’s slide and shed-like roofs glistened wetly.
The dog that had been crouching tensely started barking.
Taking his raincoat down from the wall and draping it over her shoulder, she sat on the low window ledge.
She chewed on a cigarette and struck a match near her mouth.
She stretched her shins straight and crossed her legs.
Countless windows surrounding the wide courtyard quivered in the biting wind, and the ventilation system’s windwheel spun round and round.
A pot on the balcony had dried up and rolled over—the Western flower Tomoko had bought for him from a festival stall, that whatchamacallit.
The match simply wouldn’t catch, no matter how she tried.
She closed the window.
The sky was light blue with an appearance threatening rain.

When she lit up the room, he raised his head and looked up at Tomoko, who had let the raincoat slip off one shoulder.

“You’ve got considerable understanding when it comes to abstract matters, but turn into nothing but an emotional brat the moment it’s about yourself.”

With a look that said “Oh, is that all?” Tomoko gave a curt, cold nod.
She abandoned her intention to sleep right away and turned her back to him.

“Haven’t you been making noise this whole time, keeping me from sleeping? Opening windows, throwing matches around, kicking coffee cups—you’re acting like a child. If we’re going to compromise, let’s do it rationally.”

Leaning back in the chair, she pushed up her unruly hair; in this posture—elbows casually propped—she willed her own figure to appear infinitely resolute.
Yet the fact that he—a year her junior—had said “Such a child—” suddenly struck her as absurd; the bare shins she’d stretched out felt slightly cold, and before she could finish a single cigarette, she began to feel certain she’d catch a chill.
Moreover, the pose she struck—puffing smoke at the wall plastered with red posters—now struck her as decadent, sarcastic, utterly trivial.

When she awoke, Tomoko was alone.
The white wall glared harshly; the raincoat no longer hung there.
She hazily remembered the alarm clock ringing, a shadow shifting to block the bedside, and water boiling—all as if in a dream.
Wiping away white dust and bread crumbs from the edge of the sunlit desk, she spread out manuscript paper and grabbed a pen without even washing her face.

She started writing, then tore several sheets to shreds with sharp rips.

She stood by the window.

On the rooftop clothesline, a white cloth fluttered; in the open courtyard lay a puddle.
The construction site’s noise pressed insistently.
The deliveryman swung his arm and hurried into the apartment building.
Sunlight fell on children clustered in the courtyard while at the first-floor entrance, a young woman clapped her red-thonged geta against the stone pavement.

A coarse-grained bread lay on the desk—Wataru appeared to have scooped out only the center and eaten it.
Tomoko gnawed at it, drank tepid water, and went outside.

At the alley’s corner, the communal water supply leaned into the stagnant ditch weir.
The woman washing greens rose lightly to her feet.

A woman squatted in the mud doing laundry, sunlight flooding her entire back where a child’s bound limbs dangled limply like a tail. The thick buttocks of another woman narrowed the path with hostile bulk.

Tomoko nodded emptily to no one and slipped through. A sleeping child sweated against its mother’s greasy collar.

Deep in the row house, someone rattled open a storm shutter—a long-haired man craned his neck to stare. Beneath the broth-simmering udon stall’s boxy cart, two dogs squared off.

“Well, this is a rare sight!”

Toshi’s Mother was beaming,

“Is it about your brother?”
“He hasn’t been coming home at all lately—how about to your place?”

“Yesterday, I only briefly met him on the train. Is that so? And how about Toshi-chan?”

“That girl—thanks to your kindness and your brother’s help—she’s started working at the gasoline stand. Her health’s improving too, so of course she was delighted.”

Toshi’s Mother had perhaps suffered too much hardship—she was a somewhat sharp-tongued, hysterical woman—but today she put on a bright, cheerful smile. When pale, slender Toshi-chan first secured her position as a department store waitress, Toshi’s Mother had worn something of a happy expression—but things rarely went smoothly. At first, Toshi-chan forced herself into the too-small shoes provided in the cafeteria until vicious blisters formed on her soles, tormenting her endlessly: her mother scolded her relentlessly, and if she looked pained during shifts, the supervisor’s heavy glare would hound her… Soon the petite girl began wandering around Asakusa and Ueno instead. Provoked into her usual fury, Toshi’s Mother stormed into the department store’s personnel office shouting—and just when it seemed Toshi-chan had finally been transferred to sandal-wearing duties, she coughed up blood twice during work hours, forcing her mother to take action again over the matter. (She’d tried to get that girl to quit…) This time, when she laughed, no one paid any attention.

“The department store’s air was foul—that’s why it’s a good thing she became a gasoline girl…”

As she exited the alleyway—Brother? she thought—the man resembled him closely but was someone else. He swung his arm and walked off in long strides.

When she returned to the lodgings, the landlady—
“Your brother came by early this morning—”
Tomoko clicked her tongue with a tsk.

The desk was covered in a thick layer of dust.
A hometown newspaper concerning the labor dispute had arrived.

“The tenant farmers’ resolve was truly, genuinely grim—”

she read aloud from that passage.

“To obey this verdict would mean having our fields—which are our very life—seized, our tenant fees taken, and even being forced to pay legal costs until we’re practically buried alive. If we must die regardless, we’ll resist through death itself.”

“A clash between gangs backing the landlords and the dispute group—on the morning of XX day, as the dispute group attempted to storm the landlord’s residence carrying their resolution document, they skirmished with police officers on the road. Then someone began frantically ringing an alarm bell, prompting the fire brigade to mobilize—it nearly erupted into a full-blown incident, but—”

“Around 9 a.m. on XX day, while the dispute group was discussing countermeasures at their office, officers led by the police chief suddenly raided the premises. When they attempted to arrest several executives, officers and protesters became entangled in a scuffle; wielding burning firewood from the stove, the dispute group confronted the police—unleashing a massive brawl.”

“In this commotion, twelve individuals arrested at the scene were loaded onto sleds and transported approximately five ri to the police station; along the way, they loudly chanted labor songs and cheers, presenting a solemn spectacle. The police station was filled with these detainees, while the dispute group’s foot-long scalpels used as weapons and the bandaged figures of injured officers permeated the air with ghastliness.”

“The confrontation between both sides appears to be growing increasingly dire,

“Furthermore, radical fighters XX infiltrated,

Taking her eyes off the newspaper, Tomoko stared fixedly at the window.

"What am I——"

For the first time in ages, she found herself confronting such questions.
This had to stem either from utter exhaustion or because her relationship with Wataru no longer served to mutually inspire——

The tenant farmers' thick arms were pierced through by that "thirst for land."

And those fighters' desperate sharp eyes!

"What am I——"

A plaything... Just a woman... Stagnating... And worn ragged by it all...

Evening came, and again a dusty wind blew.

Tomoko turned off the lamp and left the room.
With her finger still stuck in the half-read book, she climbed up the flagstone slabs toward the nearby public cafeteria.
A sky covered in dust held a faint red glow, turbid like festering matter.

From the laundry’s open window came thick lukewarm steam that brushed against her face.
The tall Wataru lumbered into view, blocking the way.

“Hey.”

“Oh. Let’s head back—I was just going to the cafeteria.”

“Well, let’s walk.”

“It seems Mr. X was taken down this morning.”
“Spies had been stationed at the entrance; when someone else went to check around noon, it was still the same.”

“My place isn’t safe either.”
“There are two or three others who were taken down outside—can you keep this for me?”

Tomoko was handed something resembling a box of sweets wrapped in red paper.

“Oh, sure—have you eaten yet?”

“Not yet—but I can’t keep doing that—”

“So how far should we walk before saying goodbye?”

“Here’s fine—I’ve got to hurry.”

“Goodbye then.”
“Are you okay?”

“Hmph. Well then, I’m off.”

While fastening the front of his raincoat, he hurriedly dashed off.
Loudly clanging its crossing bells, the XX-bound train had just come to a stop.

Police officers swarmed the intersection, and a simultaneous inspection of automobiles began.

Tomoko descended the slope once more and returned to her rented room.

Several days later, the elder brother came.
Before even sitting down,
“What’s wrong? You look awfully down,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Oh. So that’s all—?”

“I’ve been feeling a bit down lately—having to do nothing but trivial work every day makes me feel like my head and hands are living separate lives.”

“Cheer up. Your head’s just racing ahead by itself—that won’t get you anywhere. Things’ll get better. What work you doing now?”

“Still organizing cards.”

“That’s still something. Anyway—let me rest some? Dead tired from days picketing.”
“Gotta print tonight and hit the streets early tomorrow with leaflets—wake me at nine.”

The elder brother finally removed his hat at that moment and flopped down onto the tatami.
Tomoko stood up and opened the closet.

"Ah, can you lend me a pillow?"

"I'll lay out the futon now—if it's until nine-thirty, you can still get plenty of sleep."

After a while, when Tomoko returned from shopping, her elder brother was sitting up on the futon.

“What’s wrong?”

“Hmm, I just went to the bathroom—think I’ve got a fever… My chest feels tight. Can you buy me some aspirin or something?”

“I mentioned soba because you like it, Elder Brother.”

“I see. Next, have them send an express letter as well.”

Tomoko ran to the post office and the pharmacy.

After taking the aspirin, Elder Brother fell into a deep sleep.
He seemed completely worn out from exhaustion.
His forehead was drenched, and his nose shone as if oiled.
He had kicked off the futon like a child and was sitting with his knees up; she thought she should have taken off his clothes.

Nine o'clock came, but she left him as he was without waking him.

She thrust her head under the lamp, propped her forehead with both hands, and immersed herself in reading a treatise on agricultural issues. Tomoko occasionally turned around and gazed at the elder brother’s sleeping face.

"This is so rare—it must have been years since I last saw my brother’s sleeping face in the same room."

Poor folks can’t survive unless their families scatter to work—my brother was sent into service right after finishing elementary school, then drifted from one job to another without returning home for years. Mother’s probably forgotten what her son’s sleeping face even looks like by now.

She might be thinking, “I don’t need anything—just kind words from my children,” but whenever I picture Mother, all that comes to mind is her sitting there flat as a folded futon, forever staring at the tatami seams. Maybe that’s because I haven’t gone back home myself in ages.

The landlady downstairs called out from beyond the sliding door,

“There’s a visitor, Mr. Hirai.”

In the light of the back entrance stood two unfamiliar men in Western clothes.

“I’m Takeda—we met at your brother’s place once,” one said briskly, stripping away Tomoko’s wariness.

“Ah.”
Tomoko bowed deeply. “My brother’s sleeping soundly.”

“We had an appointment to meet Mr. Hirai here around nine.”

“I’ll go wake him now—he took aspirin for his fever, so he’s sleeping drenched in sweat—”

“Then it’s better to leave him as he is.”

“After all, he hasn’t slept properly—just tell him we came by—we’ll return here in the morning.”

“Is it all right? Shall I go wake him up—”

The two men left as if tearing themselves away.

The elder brother was sleeping, leaning toward the wall, his sturdy arms pressing against his chest.
Tomoko read for about an hour, then slept hunched over the desk wearing only a haori.

Early in the morning, a car came to pick them up.

“Won’t you let me help with leaflet distribution too?”

“If you go getting yourself fired doing that, it’s Mom and me who’ll be in trouble—”

Inside the moving car, Tomoko felt refreshed.
The two men from last night were in the driver’s seat.

“Did Toshi-chan become a gas station attendant?”

“Ah, she’s working there now.”

They were let off in front of the building.

Elder Brother brusquely bent his neck and bowed courteously to the two in the driver’s seat; Tomoko walked leisurely toward the building’s revolving door.