Pathway to Japanese Literature

Wretchedness… To speak of desolation is to name what surpasses mere loneliness, what blends apprehension with resignation—this wasting thought that pierces through one’s very being must belong wholly to times such as these.

――Having just returned from two nights of sleeping rough at Yotsuya Mitsuke... After being drenched to the marrow by the third day’s afternoon downpour, I lay sprawled out—my body still clammy and damp even after changing clothes—face pressed tight against the meager paper lantern placed there as if by prior arrangement. In this state, a human differs from autumn insects only in lacking whiskers.

Clinging desperately to this single point of dim light—faint, flickering unsteadily on the verge of extinction... What passed for a lantern existed here alone, while every floor above and below, even the kitchen within, lay plunged in utter darkness.

At the very least, when electric lights are lit, humans grow indolent—one wonders why things ever came to such a pass—but here all was utterly dark. In truth, Tokyo in that moment had vanished from this world alongside the extinguishing of every flame.

The scorched plain that had become the lower city—nearly ninety percent of Kōjimachi burned by fires still smoldering at their edges—I saw this from beyond the embankment after fleeing my house. Black smoke beneath the waning moon resembled the accursed wings of some monstrous bird shrouding half the sky, while remaining flames' heads appeared like seven bleeding necks dripping gore.

……I remember……

No—it rather resembled a scarlet rooster’s comb, vividly crimson against the azure-white dawn light, locked in combat with those jet-black wings.

This was human resolve as night deepened.

When day turned to dusk, all mettle vanished.
They now lay shrouded beneath darkness’ wings—more dreadful than any bird—holding their breath in the lantern’s feeble glow.
With each sporadic lurch of those wings, the earth trembled repeatedly.

At every tremor threatening to burst forth, they nearly bolted outside—shoji screens and gates left perpetually half-open.
In that cramped three-tatami room with its confining frame, clinging to the lantern—my nose tip pressed against it—the town and roads beyond lay utterly dark like a gaping chasm.
One might say this darkness pierced through the abyssal night enveloping the entire city, stretching endlessly like a raging sea.

They had been likened to insects—ah, but now they more resembled shellfish hidden among crumbled walls, nestled in wave-worn crevices.
To walk waving one’s hand across this great capital now took audacity.

When I peeked out slightly from the hole—just the tip of my nose protruding—the neighboring family too had their lantern wrapped in sleeves like everyone else.
as if guarding souls—

The scattered lights visible near the square intersection's night watch resembled four or five lingering blooms on a withering crape myrtle, over which loomed the terrifying collapse of evening storm clouds.

At times from within this darkness, black figures would emerge—muffling their footsteps as they approached—and just as they seemed about to pass through the gate, faint blades would flash and vanish.

They went forth brandishing gleaming blades and advancing with unadorned spears.
These were roundly reprimanded, bundled up, and confiscated... That must have been how it went.

―Records must be handled with care.
―It is a fact that I saw gleaming blades passing back and forth in this area.
……However, the enemy was solely the darkness of twilight.

The wind whooshed through the dark night... First storm... What were once-cherished autumn voices now became the distant screams of myriad spirits crossing far-off Sumida River... The candle flickered deeper into gloom.

"Ah—" they gasped, startled by its near-extinguishing—their eyes half-opening in drowsy awareness as the women's faces turned deathly pale.

Exhausted, even with eyes wide open, their consciousness immediately began to fade again.
Their breath seemed drawn into the lantern.

*Rustle…*

In back alleys and main streets, fire-warning clappers creaked like stone grinding on stone; in the deathly silent kitchen, something rustled with ominous resonance.

*Rustle…*

Rats.

“Shoo…”

*Rustle…*

No—closer still, likely the corner of the next maid’s room.

*Rustle…*

“Shoo…”

Even those shooing voices—being but brown rice gruel and canned seaweed—lacked persistence, tenacity, or strength.

*Rustle…*

Damned creatures… Even when we rustled noisily to drive them off, they refused to flee—merely rustling about with insolent composure.

Growing concerned, I held up the lantern and entered the maid’s room with a “Shoo.” If it had been constant, one could have banished phantoms with light by switching on brilliant electric lamps to drive off vermin like hurled stones—but this lantern’s frailty was such that a breath from the ceiling might have extinguished it. Fearing something might lick at my feet, I stood poised on tiptoes—my nerves so frayed that I became utterly undone.

Even so, for a short while, they fell utterly silent and kept their noises hidden.

First, should they come swarming in resistance and defiance, even the neighborhood night watch would have had to grab bamboo brooms and fight—but in such times as these, it was best when the enemy fled of their own accord.

“Ah—an earthquake.”

Startled faintly, they darted back to the door frame,

“It’s alright, alright.”

They breathed a sigh of relief. Their heartbeats had yet to settle.

*Rustle…*

Two or three shaku away this time—like stepping stones in an overgrown garden, the still-wrapped bundles lay scattered about. They had invaded the inner parlor.—When I considered this, their usual ravaging across the ceiling seemed trivial by comparison.

The ancients have already said it—among the smallest yet most detestable things are flies and rats. Flies through folly. Rats through cunning. In harming things, rats surpass flies. In disturbing people, flies surpass rats... moreover, driving away flies proves harder than driving away rats.—Preventing rats proves more difficult than preventing tigers... or so it is said.

I agreed—but not entirely so. In grand mansions where hands cannot reach every corner—and consequently rats proliferate—yet in a small rented house, by minding wall holes and even patching shoji screens, rats that aren't supernatural won't easily invade.

Usually—being cautious—we let them ransack kitchen and storage but rarely permitted tatami trampling; yet through one violent tremor from the great earthquake, our entire home became riddled with holes and gaps—even my second floor now bore something immense: clumps of plaster dust and soot mixed with fusuma screen frames, as if shouldering a great burden beyond endurance.

"Do as you please.—Another earthquake… Can’t bother with rats anymore."

The next day before evening meal preparations began，the women wandered incessantly from kitchen through maid’s quarters searching.—Kuniko，who ordinarily took no part in culinary affairs，gradually progressed from tearoom to parlor，rifling through shelves and small cupboards，rattling drawers about.
Even when items were discarded，they refused to leave matters be；when asked what troubled them，they responded with “Something’s amiss，” adopting exaggeratedly solemn expressions.
“Strange…The Ogura patterned paper and hawk scroll aren’t family heirlooms.”
Even had theft occurred，I saw no cause for such uproar.
Yet upon proper inquiry—no，this surpassed mere paper or scrolls.—The crucial accompaniment for our evening meal was absent.

The wheel-shaped wheat gluten was missing.

Do you know of this item... dear readers?
...it’s certainly not something found in places where you would give a tip to the maid and dine.
Dry and crinkly, forming a whirl, with a hole through its center as the name implies—here bundled into a small bunch and tied… It resembled a tile-shaped rice cracker that had lost its crispness.
Soak it in water, wring it out firmly, stir it with soy sauce, and it’s ready to eat immediately.
……When we were going to elementary school, our lunchbox side dishes were often this.

“Where’s today’s side dish?”

“Wheel gluten.”

When my parents teased me like that, I would puff out my cheeks in a huff, slump dejectedly, and then start pouting.
Yet at school, when we spied on each other’s lunches, I would boast about our meager fare as though it were a triumph—“Snake-eye crests, I tell you! Kiyomasa!”—though of course, there was nothing commendable in this.

According to Professor Kōyō’s theory, “Goldfish gluten is old woman’s thigh meat.”
That was so.
Indeed, it did resemble that.
When this particular dish appeared among the side dishes of a cheap boarding house,

“It’s granny’s thigh meat again.”

“Do not fear.”

At this, my friend sighed. “Even now, goldfish gluten disgusts me... yet by around the fourth or fifth day after the earthquake, even this goldfish gluten had sold out at dry goods stores.”
“Izumi’s dried gourd stew? Or wheel gluten?” my friend sneered.
But it’s mild-tasting, harmless, above all economical—a gentleman’s food. I happen to like it.
As he said, it went without saying—far from it, we had neither shiitake mushrooms nor tofu skin.
When even goldfish gluten was unavailable—to say nothing of trifles—wheel gluten was all the more out of the question.

...Already on the afternoon of the second day—while seeing flames and smoke in three directions, the autumn heat proving more malicious than midsummer's blaze—from an evacuation site where nothing but a single mat lay spread over earth blanketed in swirling sand-dust, I pushed through and ducked under crowds like an army to venture out toward Yotsuya Street in search of provisions. Finding a simmered-food shop, I trampled over heaps of collapsed roof tiles and plaster debris to rush inside—but not a trace remained of the kombu tsukudani I had set my heart upon.
I found some dried shark and thought to buy it, but though the shop usually kept things clean, when I peered into the glass-lidded container, I recoiled.
The pitch-black boiled shark had become a seething mass of flies leaping and swirling like transformed heads taking flight.
Bluish-green glowing ones mingled with others that crackled like bursts of static.

Far from being able to eat it, I couldn't even lay a hand on it.

Though I never actually said "flies and maggots," in this situation... arguments arose from those gathered around our evacuation site that worrying about clean or dirty was a waste of effort, so I sent a servant instead. When they rushed back to that simmered preserve... even the few canned goods spotted earlier—those too had all sold out, leaving nothing.
First of all—the shops had already closed, leaving the entire town silent, yet from within came the clattering sounds of goods being packed away—and upon the locked doors, they say the shadows of flames were reflected alongside clouds darkening with dusk, appearing as though blood were being spilled.

To reiterate—this being the second day—by the afternoon of the third day, weakened utterly by the heavy rain and still anxious, we returned to our ruined house only to find that after tasting something reviving in a thin miso soup, there was nothing but canned nori and pickled plums.

It’s not that I had any right to complain about shortages… but as I said, there was no sign of dried gourd or tofu skin.
At Minamigaidō confectionery shop along Naka-roku Avenue—this place devoid of sugary dampness or salty traces, perfectly dry—amidst the disordered ceiling of boxed tools, following the paper wrapper’s threads that seemed to coil endlessly, we discovered the aforementioned wheel gluten stored there. Being acquainted with the landlady, my wife made a request and managed with some difficulty to have her yield a portion—which I then boiled with a touch of extravagance.
As both an appetizer and a side dish, this flavor remains truly unforgettable.

For on this day too, we had anticipated it as part of our evening meal.
...Truth be told, my empty stomach had taken quite a hit.

That—the rustle from last night—that was it.

“It’s rats—damn them.”

Even so, what remained after half-boiling was a jumbled wheel roughly the size of a one-kin tea canister—yet no matter where they searched, not a single fragment remained. In the end, they brought a step stool to peer into closet corners and rummage through old umbrellas piled beneath the eaves’ ceiling but found neither gaps nor even a trace of powder.

“It’s strange, isn’t it.”
“Strange.”
“If it were rats, that would be one thing…”

Making disgusted faces, the women found it utterly eerie. Though their lingering terror had left them somewhat overwrought, they muttered that unless these rats bordered on the supernatural, such complete disappearance defied explanation—leaving them faintly unsettled.

“I wonder if they aren’t up to something...”

Even if they had forgotten where they placed it—the manner of forgetting was too extreme—the women found themselves doubting even their own existence.
Moreover, they made dark faces as if possessed by some specter.

Seeing the utterly unhinged look in their eyes, I too felt lonely and uneasy.

Even in times of natural calamity, wheat gluten cannot sprout wings and fly.
Damn it—it must be the rats’ doing without a doubt.

The loathsomeness of the rats at this time was identical to that of those recent figures who—exasperatingly absurd, forcing bitter smiles—brazenly spread rumors and groundless talk to frighten women and children.…

...For instance, after the earthquake cut off the water supply, crowds from every household in this area formed to obtain water from the four or five remaining old Banchō wells—those so-called relics of former times... Soon households emerged that refused to let women draw water.
It was because they had spread rumors about poison.
That was when.
……to a certain house in the neighborhood……there were those who came from distant areas far removed from this vicinity to receive water.
They did not know the faces of those who had come.
“Given these anxious times, we are deeply sorry for your hardship, but even distributing water to just our neighborhood leaves us with insufficient supply.”
They refused those from the outer districts at that certain residence.—The next morning, when attempting to draw life-sustaining water, the well bucket came up filled with clumps of filthy animal fur floating atop... A calico cat’s corpse had been thrown in.
It was said to be an act of spiteful mischief by those who had been refused.

—It happened in the morning.…

That very evening, at the crossroads night watch, there was a young person who said such things to me and shuddered.
They were someone who had evacuated from Honjo, barely escaping the fire.

“In this neighborhood, they say three people died from drinking poisoned well water… What a terrible thing it’s become.”

"No—in truth, there might be infants soon to be born, but not a single soul appeared to have died."

"Nonsense—who told you that?"

"Just now... in the side alley... well, from a rickshaw puller—"

The very next day, the friend who had come from Hongo to check on me knew about it.

“They say people were poisoned by the well water.”
“…Well, our area’s also on high alert.”

The truth was that I myself had not even seen this so-called cat’s corpse.

The sixth year of Tenmei—a Hinoeuma year—curiously had its New Year’s Day also fall on Hinoeuma. That year witnessed a total eclipse of the sun.
From spring onward, rumors and baleful talk flourished vigorously; by the twelfth day of the tenth month, word suddenly spread that both water systems had been poisoned—the city’s turmoil defied description—people panicked over water as they would over fire.—This account appears in Kyōzan’s Spider’s Silk Scroll.... Though no Zhuge Wuhou or Huaiyin Hou themselves, the wisdom behind such rumors ever seems to dwell in realms like this.

However, it was so damn annoying.

A burly, close-cropped bald-pated man with hitched-up trousers clanged his iron staff and bellowed under the blazing sky: “Kōjimachi Rokuchōme’s burnin’ down! It just burst into flames now, yeah,” his ruddy grease-smeared face darting eyes about as he lumbered past with twisted shoulders.

He had just gone inside to sleep when everyone cried “Ah!” and rushed out.

“Do not rush—there is no need to hurry,” declared the neighborhood’s foremost elder—a Zen monk wearing layered indigo-and-white yukatas. “...I shall now inspect the fire’s origin.”

They said this lay Buddhist had long mastered Zen’s mysteries, but whether enlightened or deluded mattered little—when southern winds blew, nearby fires became intolerable. Baring his chest against the heat and hiking up his hem, he strode off briskly. Upon returning, he promptly covered his head against swirling dust—

“What’s all this? Oh ho! Indeed, it’s burning."
“The fire blazed up fiercely there, but it’s just a storehouse standing in the burnt plain."
“Even if you keep rushing about like that, there’s nothing left nearby that will burn anymore.”
“Ho ho!”
“Rest assured, rest assured.”

Nevertheless, everyone felt as though saved by this venerable elder, and all resented the former's violent remarks.—Now then, speaking of that Iron Staff Man—he belonged to the aforementioned Old Zen Monk's household… no, more precisely, he was in fact his son, which made this rather interesting.

On Bunsei 12, Third Month, 21st Day [March 21, 1829], from early morning, a fierce dry wind raged, scattering the fully bloomed cherry blossoms and sending petals and gravel alike flying through the air.
...At half-past the Hour of the Snake [around 10 AM], a fire broke out from a lumber warehouse on the Kanda Sakumachō Riverbank, burning an area spanning 11 ri, 32 chō, and a half while claiming thousands of lives—the burning of bridges, the burning of ships—all closely resembled this recent conflagration.
The pottery shop woman from Zaimokuchō, clutching an infant to her breast and pulling her six-year-old daughter by the hand, fled through the terrifying crowd; but upon reaching Ōkawabata, when she gasped in relief and came to her senses, she found that the child whose hand she had been pulling now remained as nothing but a single arm—the rest of her body torn away in the jostling throng.
The wife, shocked and sorrowful, in the depth of her grief, threw herself into the water while clutching both the infant and that single arm, it is said.
If there were tragic cases, there were also horrific ones such as when over thirty palace maids who had fled to a ship—burning from masthead down, their long-sleeved kimonos and hems ablaze—scrambled across the three-hundred-koku vessel amidst flames before scattering crimson upon the water, it is said.
There are countless others nearly identical to this one.
Among them, not a few appear exactly as they are.

As a side note regarding that great fire—in Kayabachō, there was a barber named Heigorō at a hairdressing parlor, whom everyone called (Tokohei).—This burned down.
Now, around that time, there was one Tokuhei of Ōshu who went about peddling ointment.

(Ōshu, Sendai, Iwanuma—Tokuhei's ointment,

For this ailment and that, it proved ineffective.

(For chapped skin and such, it worked well.))

So it was that Tokohei himself posted at the burned ruins—

(What am I to do? My livelihood—right at this moment—Tokohei’s place burned down like this.

Water! The firefighters couldn’t extinguish it.

(By around dawn, it had finally been extinguished.))

“You went there, Boss.”
While chewing government relief rice, one must contemplate the indomitable spirit of Edoites.

In this same fire, Reiganjima—though it pains one to even speak of it—ah, at the site of this Army Clothing Depot, corpses of men and women lay piled upon each other.
At the relief hut erected here, on nights of abyssal darkness, wailing cries of “waaah” and screams of “Help—” rose from the bowels of the earth, and phantoms manifested.

The unpartitioned interior of the small hut—though there was no cause for it—where people cowered erupted into a commotion as everyone prostrated themselves. Those with somewhat sound minds, even so, when they managed to catch a glimpse, saw a young woman with disheveled black hair—a pale figure. ……In the blink of an eye, she turned to shadow and vanished in a faint puff.

In the aftermath of that chaos, no small number of the valuables people had carried out went missing. In those popular storytelling tales that had recently become all the rage—of thief-takers tracking suspects, staking out locations, making identifications, and apprehending criminals in the name of official duty—the ghost... though they insisted on seeing her as a young woman, this was merely wishful thinking on their part. In reality, she was a woman in her sixties—her wig disheveled, a white cloth wrapped around her naked body. —On her back, she carried a single plank torn from a black fence. With that, if she merely turned her back in one swift motion, she would vanish into the dark night right where she stood.

While puffing on a cheap cigarette, I told this story to my night watch partner and Yaji's group keeping vigil through that same night.

Not even three days had yet passed…

“Oh my, things have gotten dire! ...How about going to Yanagihara’s burnt ruins? ...The ghosts appear before the night hawks do. ...A young woman in pure white.” “When a vigilante hero caught and saw it, it was an old woman.” “Wearing a wig and a black board...”

At twilight, during a chance encounter before the painted backdrop of a blackboard fence, he initiated a standing conversation; but upon rambling this far, when he saw my face, his complexion turned strange,

“Oh,”

With that, he stepped away from the blackboard fence and hid as if angered.

In truth, it was I who had spoken to this person.

However, such things lacked malice.

It was said that some prophet had declared that around what time in several days a tremor stronger than the first earthquake would come, and at that time a great tsunami would accompany it.
There was a shrine maiden of some unnamed shrine who, lowering her voice, flared her nostrils, and licked her eyebrows with a flick of her tongue as she recounted having dreamed that the surviving townhouses, remaining as fire, skated around one after another like skaters.
As winter's chill deepened daily, someone had conceived this vision of blazing houses skating...

The women and children turned pale each time.

Though barely two years old, when the infant threw a tantrum and refused to listen—and when the parents threatened that an earthquake would come—

“Mommy, nigh-nigh! No wanna!”

—the infant clung tightly, whimpering and shrinking into themselves.

In the neighborhood, I heard there was a boy of about six who, driven mad by terror, kept running round and round an eight-tatami two-room space—neither lengthwise nor crosswise—without cease.

What about the skating?
I inquired.

During the Zhengshi era of Wei, Zhou Nan of Zhongshan served as Magistrate of Xiangyi.
One day, when he exited his house, a large rat emerged from a gap in the stone wall of the gate and stood facing Zhou Nan.
It was said this creature wore a square cloth headdress and silk robes.
For a moment, its form resembled an acorn that had fallen to the tip of his shoe.
Yet its demeanor bore the bearing of an earthly immortal and the semblance of a prophet.
With small, cunning eyes, it glared sharply,

“O-O Zhou Nan! Thou shalt surely die on a certain month’s certain day.”

It said.

This was an audacious specter.

Now, this great man of Zhongshan—though it pains one to admit—possessed training quite unlike those who would leap up startled at a mere ceiling creak.

“Ah, so it is?”

With that, he feigned ignorance and maintained his composure.
...His response might seem somewhat tepid, yet therein lay his unhurried composure, unyielding to pressure.

The rat retreated to its burrow.

In the middle of that certain month, the rat appeared in Zhou Nan's chamber once more. It ceremoniously performed a formal bow,

"O-O Zhou Nan,
Thou shalt surely die on a certain day of this month."

it declared.

"Ah, so it is?"

The rat concealed itself behind a pillar. Then, seven days before the accursed date, it emerged with haughty bearing.

"O-O Zhou Nan!
Thou shalt surely perish within ten days."

"Ah, so it is?"

Exactly on the seventh morning,the rat hurriedly emerged.
"O-O Zhou Nan!
"Thou shalt surely die within this day."

“Ah, so it is?”

The rat approached with flustered haste, as though in a panic.

“O-O Zhou Nan! Thou shalt surely die at noon, in the hour of the horse.”

"Ah, so it is?"

On that day, as he sat composed alone in the same place with noon approaching, the rat darted in and out several times.

At last, it stood up, narrowed its eyes, and in a hoarse voice declared:
“Zhou Nan, thou shalt die.”
“Ah, so it is?”
“Zhou Nan! Zhou Nan! Thou shalt die now!”
“So it is,”
he said.
Yet he did not perish in the slightest.
“I’m done for... Can’t keep this up.”
No sooner had it spoken than the rat flipped over and dropped dead.
Simultaneously, the headcloth and silken robes vanished into scattering motes.
Zhou Nan, Magistrate of Xiangyi in Wei—having grasped some realization in that moment—stared intently and saw only an ordinary scrawny rat.
Zhou Nan lived long.
Thus it is told.

For dealing with rumor-flies and slander-rats—those self-styled prophets—Master Zhou Nan's method stood unparalleled.

To speak of omens after events had transpired was like sixth-day irises—belated yet containing resignation, a certain nostalgia, and compassion within them.
This held both pathos and the fragility inherent to human sentiment.

They say a great number of mullet ascended Nakagawa-suji, where the tide does not flow in... In Yokohama, I hear they could scoop sardines from town gutters... There was that old man from Tsukuda—his voice still youthful though well-advanced in years—who used to come calling "Crabs! Big crabs here!" and would tell how sardines were caught below Ryōgoku when I was a child. On the day of the earthquake, shivering, I found myself actually thinking—foolish as it was—"Ah, might sardines come to Ryōgoku now?"

When Mount Bandai erupted, submerging part of its mountainous form directly into the lake’s depths… On the eve of that cataclysm, behind a hot spring on the same peak, survivors witnessed a yukata hung quietly on a clothesline at midday—where only cicadas’ piercing cries permeated the air, with not a wisp of breeze—suddenly flip its hem and flutter briskly upward and downward.
How utterly terrifying.

I supposed there would be countless such accounts if one were to hear of them.
What began as fragmented memories would coalesce into later testimonies.

Now, at the center of our town stood a single large ginkgo tree and, alongside it, a towering poplar.
At first glance, their height and branch spread being nearly identical, I had thought they might be paired ginkgos.
—This poplar had startled us during that fearsome storm seven or eight years prior.
When dawn broke, it had suddenly vanished from sight.
Though disappeared above the rooftops, it had in truth snapped midway up its trunk.
It grows swiftly.
Now its crown once more reaches its former height, grown luxuriant again.
In the two or three years preceding that storm, countless starlings had flocked to both trees.
I remember someone who—when the birds fought over roosting branches, struggling until one fell stunned with a thud—revived it with water before releasing.

They came flocking magnificently.

Once before, when I had written something like "A single starling arriving in Shimbashi for the first time from the countryside," Professor Kōyō saw it and chuckled.
"You're wrong—starlings come in flocks, you see."
"A single one won't do."
Indeed, I realized they do come in flocks.

From the year of the storm, they had abruptly ceased coming.
They came flocking across the sky like waves this year, on the evening before that Great Earthquake.
When they swarmed onto the poplar tree in one great mass, the clamor that followed—chittering, chittering as hundreds of birds cried out at once—shot up to the treetops with a start, then swooped back down to the branches.
They jostled; they shook.
Just when the treetops had finally settled, they began chittering loudly once more and shot back up to the branches.
There was not a moment’s respite until dawn.

This year had been unusually sweltering.
The heat continued for several nights—an oppressive mugginess uncharacteristic of Tokyo, damp-laden and suffocating, making sleep impossible.
That night too had been sweltering.
Until around one o'clock, everyone had been out cooling off—what a commotion it was! Why would they carry on like that? Even if startled by crows or owls, there was no reason for such incessant racket.
If it was a fight over scarce roosts, some of them could have split off toward the ginkgo.—Indeed, they made their racket solely in the poplar tree.
……The ginkgo stood solemnly beneath the starry sky.

This was no exaggeration—everyone knew it.
They clamored so raucously without cease that sleep became impossible.

Morning was hushed.
But this time it was humans who raised their voices.
"Hey there, Ara mono-ya granny!... What in blazes was with those damned starlings last night—screeching and shrieking, flapping and crashing—such a ruckus, such an unholy racket!... We're worn out from daytime work and couldn't catch a wink!"
"Even if I hauled out that long clothes pole and swung it around trying to shoo them off—even lashing two poles together—it wouldn't reach one bit now would it?"
"The tree's too damn tall."
"Eh granny? Those blasted starlings are giving us pure hell ain't they!" came his loud shouts clear as day.
It was still before our breakfast.

When this subsided, after a brief interval, a storm arose that seemed ready to tear down both trees and roofs.
Because it was a squall, there were likely places throughout Tokyo where no rain fell.
Like an exhaled breath it ceased once—and just as we thought complete calm had settled—there came, faint as a quivering thread, that Great Earthquake.

“It was an omen, I tell ya—I’m damn sure it was a portent.”
"The racket those starlings made from the previous evening till dawn—I tell ya, old woman."
“Squawking and shrieking—it’d go on all night long, I tell ya.”
“You there—”
“...Hey, old woman—Ara mono-ya old woman—hey, old woman.”

It seemed pitiful. …To summon the Ara mono-ya old woman—whose single-story house stood near that poplar—from the crossroads guardhouse each and every time.—Here it became clear—it was the gardener boss.
Heavily drunk, wearing a headband and propped up by the detached handle of a hoe—a night watchman’s acquisition—

“Hey, old woman.—The Ara mono-ya old woman knows.”
“Those damn starlings—I don’t know how many times I rushed out trying to swipe at ’em with a laundry pole.”
“The tree’s too damn high—can’t reach ’em at all, can ya?”
“That’s right—damn right it is.”
“...Hey, old woman—Ara mono-ya old woman—hey, old woman.”

While dodging the swinging hoe handle—no, it wasn’t just the old woman; everyone knew—he wouldn’t listen even when told so, being drunk.
“Hey, old woman—what about that racket from the starlings?” he would bellow each night, as was his habit.

......The clamor grew deafening.
......Let us attempt some quiet.
Even without that commotion, I mustn't let myself grow agitated.
Ah, but when gloom takes hold, my spirit sinks.

Scuttle.

Rats again—you cunning rat prophets, you wretched vermin.

Now then, the wheel gluten's whereabouts were soon discovered.
It wasn't some demon's theft nor anything of that sort.
Amidst the earthquake chaos' clutter, the cloth-wrapped bundle—haphazardly piled among other things—had been tucked away in the far corner of the alcove and was later found.
Damn it all!
Once the water returns, once the electric lights come on, and once the tofu vendor arrives—then I'll regain my fortitude!

...Things with teeth marks—those I threw into the trash heap.

Scuttle.
Clatter-clatter.

Ah, there they went.
To their credit, measures had been taken to keep them off the tatami mats, but the rats multiplying from the ceiling spaces and kitchen were beyond ordinary.

In the neighborhood, a small child had built a miniature hill like a box garden as a plaything in their tiny yard.
...There, around two in the afternoon—though one could hardly call it broad daylight—emerging sluggishly from below the floorboards at the same hour each day as always... out came the prophet.
...The old gray rat with thinning fur briskly led out eight or nine young ones and, with the air of taking a Hibiya stroll, circled two or three times within a bucket's rim circumference before calmly retreating beneath the floorboards.

"It's so revolting we can't even handle it."

"They've been making fools of people ever since the earthquake, I tell you."

Thus spoke the parents.

“…They say even the wheel gluten… they brought it.
"...To the little master's garden."
“...Around the mountain, they pull it around... Mimicking cars, or maybe motorcycles, or trains—clatter-clatter, vroom...”

And so the seven-year-old child spoke again with innocent earnestness.

I, too, felt a vague sense of unease.

The swarming of flies went without saying.
If rats were swarming this rampantly, what was I to do about these tattered winter robes against the night cold?

I’d heard that what exterminated field rats were raccoon dogs. …They said that following Honjo and Azabu, this area was supposed to be their domain—but ah, not a trace remained.
No—more than anything, domestic cats in times like these had lately grown timid alongside humans, blurred into mere “cats” (neko), their essence diluted.

Such were the times!
The divine dispensation proved wondrous indeed.
For no matter how rumor-possessed those rats became, when they could no longer endure being chased about by motorcycles and such with reckless abandon—thudding across ceilings in pursuit, seizing and toppling them in gutters, pinning them down to deliver fatal bites—a champion emerged.

That champion was a weasel.

It was not even that old of a story.

In the days when the current Insen railway remained unoperational, there were tales of raccoon dogs suppressing locusts in the tea fields along the embankment—yet in Banchō’s vicinity, where snakes and weasels might reasonably be expected to dwell, none had ever been seen. …That they came to be frequently spotted running through gutters and slipping beneath floorboards began around July of last year—coinciding with the time when Banchō School completely burned down.
Those that had nested throughout those timeworn large structures were perhaps scattered by the fire or had fled the vicinity to escape the flames.

Weasels were not well-regarded creatures—they said twenty or thirty would stand upright like wolves upon each other’s shoulders to form pillars of fire; that chittering three times in succession brought fiery calamities; that blocking their path invited misfortune.
……The elders would often tell us such tales.
Conversely, one might think this had been perhaps the well-intentioned desperate measure of ancients who sought to protect them—by making them objects of taboo to be shunned and kept distant from human hands.
That creature—nimble-pawed, stroking a face like a torn shoji screen, that white-foreheaded dapper thing…

This concerns Yamaga Village in Ōno District, Echizen Province.
In spring, on the night of the Little New Year, all the young people left home to enjoy themselves.
Grandfather too went out drinking.
The old woman who had weathered life's trials stayed alone by the hearth. With a dim lamp, she spun thread on her whirring wheel, lost in memories of bygone days when snow whispered like hiragana in thatched huts. Through a tear in the storage room's shoji screen, something brown slipped in with the seeping wind.
A white-faced delinquent with yellowish fur.
Unmistakably a weasel.
At Kijiriza's matting where rice cakes lay stacked abundantly in koban-shaped piles, it grabbed one with both forepaws, flipped it deftly onto its head, gave a lithe twist of its body, and vanished through the original shoji hole.
No sooner had it disappeared than it reappeared, silently claimed another rice cake, and slipped away smoothly.
"Oh ho! You wicked creature... That's the wretchedness of beasts for you—enough of that now!"
"If you reach out and open that shoji screen, you'll turn back into a human quick enough," said the old woman as she watched this skillful cake-lifting with a knowing smirk, treating it like some peculiar nighttime diversion.

When the young people returned and told this story, they were supposed to laugh at the beast's cleverness—but who could have imagined? They burst into tears.
There was not a single rice cake left.

After some time had passed, beyond a small hill in the back mountain within a rocky hollow of the valley, those rice cakes lay stored in great heaps. The weasels were not solitary creatures. Having taken rice cakes from the hearthside, they would align their paws and arrange their heads in formation—processions numbering hundreds—said to have transported an entire mountain's worth in one concerted effort. A most dashing affair indeed.

...This firsthand account came from the earnest lips of a student who had lodged there two or three years while pursuing his studies. Yet I found it somewhat too artfully contrived.

Later, I heard this from the proprietor of Shunyodo: When Mr. Wada still attended school and dwelled at a certain boarding house in Hongō Yayoi-chō, on an early summer evening—neither contemplating Shinobazu's lotuses nor Sukiyachō's elegance—he sat propping his cheek against a downstairs window's narrow frame. Before him in the garden, a rooster clamorously crowed while beating its wings, fluttering up two or three feet with a *bata-bata* commotion. It would soar only to be dragged earthward as if by unseen tethers, crying stridently as it fell before ascending anew.

Like what storytellers describe of spears cursed by their handlers—when he suddenly looked, there appeared what seemed a red-banded snake, faintly crimson in the twilight—a serpent over six feet long that hid its tail in the cliffside shed while its sickle-shaped head advanced upon the rooster, leaving mere inches between them.

Mr. Wada did not fear snakes.

Since it was the student's room left unattended, [the staff] was right there.
No sooner had he grabbed the staff than—"Damn beast!"—he leapt from the window. And what do you know? Before he could strike or crush it, that serpent snapped into pieces, splitting into more than ten segments that writhed apart in squirming disarray.
At this, he was so startled that he apparently fell on his behind.

But it was not a snake.
It was the long column of weasels crawling while piggybacking that had become disordered.

The tale of Ōno was acknowledged with a nod, and their machinations could be discerned.

O those (Rinoki, Chitsukitebī)!
O my General Weasel.
Do not concern yourself needlessly with birds.
Having felled the venomous serpent, turn now to hunt rats.
Flies would prove unworthy of your mettle.
You are the falcon among beasts……

November 1923 (Taishō Year 12)