Pathway to Japanese Literature

I had finally fled all the way here—though in truth, it was with the feeling of screaming without voice—that suffocated cry trapped in one's throat.
But then—what would become of me now? What did I intend to do?—from my chair on the inn's second floor, gazing out at the gloom-hued lake surface, I sighed through countless daily rounds of self-interrogation.
At an elevation of 5,088 shaku above sea level—a realm of profound seclusion transcending worldly dust, where sacred springs gush forth and so on—thus began the Nikko Yunohana Onsen Guide; yet even as I idly spread open its pages and read, my state of mind grew no more attuned to that transcendent realm.
It was remarkable that I had managed to climb up here—but how would I ever get back down? My purse had already emptied itself during the journey.
There existed nowhere I might plead for ten yen.
Overwhelmed by desolation—Oh wife!
And so, summoning thoughts of my wife back home, I cried out silently within my breast time and again.
This memoir—I mean to address it chiefly to my wife—though this isn't because I've conceived any particular rationale for doing so. Yesterday—September ninth—in the Tochigi edition of a Tokyo newspaper, beneath the headline 'Living Corpse Captain and Wife,' I read abed an article stating how an elderly couple had absconded from home and attempted midnight suicide by drowning in Kanuma Town's Kurokawa River out of guilt for lives lost in a ship collision; yet it wrote how townsfolk denounced this as 'suicide theater.' But an elderly couple staging such theatrics?—could such a thing even be possible?
And then that phrase 'living corpse' dragged my associations ever deeper into shadow.

“Living corpse…?” I muttered under my breath.

The mass of cumulonimbus clouds boiling up to blanket the entire Shirane Mountain area drifted imperceptibly closer, pressing down upon us as if to crush everything beneath.
And the lake surface was death-like in its gloom.
My heart was weak.
And it hurt.
Neither person nor circumstance can be taken—O nostalgic, distant elderly wife of my hometown!
I felt as if I could truly cry at that moment.
The mountains, the lake surface, the trees, the white clouds, the pale green sky—yes, they were all too indifferent!

Today in Tokyo, there had been a publication commemorative gathering for a close friend’s collected works that I absolutely should have attended.
This was futile—that was futile.
Work too proved futile; everything ended in futility.
Thus abandoned by all friends and cast out from life itself—whether I become a living corpse or a dead corpse matters little—O foolish one screaming wretchedly while fleeing in circles!
I cannot bear to gaze upon my own miserable form.

A mountain of clouds pressed down upon the mountain range before one knew it.
The lake surface took on evening's hues.
I think I'll go for a short walk.
……

Shirane Mountain—the sea of clouds ablaze in sunset; when I think of my wife, my chest aches.

The autumn olive’s crimson—chew it, and sourness, astringency; even its seeds bear sorrow—Osei’s sorrow.

Past Yutaki Falls, along fifteen chō of lakeside path to where Senjogahara Plain could be viewed in its entirety below, I walked slowly while picking flowers along the way.
The entire plain was shrouded in a pale purple haze.
What a beautiful view this is.

From memories of eighteen or nineteen years ago, I stood for a while, forgetting the approaching dusk.

The lake's dark color conveyed a chilling shiver.

The maid attending to me was called Aiko.
She was said to be twenty but looked no older than seventeen or eighteen—an honest, gentle girl.
She took the flowers I had gathered to the front desk, wrote down their names one by one on scraps of paper, and brought them back for me.
——Autumn olive, large dogwood, bellflower root, sesame greens, ixeris, hatazao, great burnet, mountain angelica, thoroughwort, goldenrod, kauzorina, pearly everlasting——the only one I recognized was autumn olive.

Later than usual, I drank until around two o'clock.
There were hardly any guests staying.
So the maids took turns coming to visit me.
There were six of them—Nakako, Hanako, Masuko, Tsuruko, Hamako, Yukiko, and Aiko—but they felt less like maids and more like young girls, kind-hearted ones ranging from sixteen or seventeen to twenty years old.
How eagerly they seemed to await the day when November would arrive and they could descend to Nikko town.
And yet they behaved with innocent cheerfulness, as if they had never once doubted what sort of person I was.
That sometimes made me depressed.…

On the fourth—that’s right, K had coughed up blood on the fourth of last month too—I’d been out since morning scrambling for money.
I hadn’t settled my end-of-month lodging payment.
With nothing written for September’s magazines, my income had dried up completely.
I made rounds to two or three publishers, but scraped together only a pittance to send my landlord.
To make matters worse, after another vile tussle with Osei the night before, my mood sat rancid all day.
I called on K in Ushigome only to find him barely propped up in bed—conversation remained off limits.
His frail wife, who’d herself once spat blood, looked painfully gaunt.
Leaving their place, I boarded a train at Wakamatsu-cho steeped in gloom.
A month earlier when he’d hemorrhaged, his wife’s express letter brought me racing by car—still the bleeding wouldn’t cease.
Each cough brought up fresh clots.
For four or five days I’d barely kept food down myself.
Three years back when it happened to me—how terrified I must’ve been.

“Given his condition… what can be done?”
“Will he recover? I don’t know.”
“What a dreadful situation...”

And involuntarily, as if it were my own affair, I let out a dark sigh.

I entered Toriya in Kagurazaka for a late lunch and drank sake.
While nursing my drink, I read through the letter from my eldest son back home—which had been sitting in the entryway letter rack and which I'd stuffed in my pocket when leaving my lodgings—along with the picture postcard S had sent from Bessho Hot Springs in Shinshu.
The letter from my eldest son contained reproachful words questioning why I hadn't sent the money for school supplies in time for September's new term.
Though it had been on my mind, I ultimately failed to send it.

S had been touring Shinshu's hot springs with his lover for about ten days now.
Bessho Hot Springs was a place I too remembered—where I'd secluded myself for half a year six or seven years prior and written that novel about being jilted by a rural geisha.
"Standing on the highland, gazing at encircling mountains and drifting clouds—one cannot remain unmoved"—such words lay scrawled there.
These simple phrases set various thoughts swirling through me.
It was a feeling neither envy nor camaraderie nor pity could name.
What a single-minded man!
This brave, scorching love—I couldn't resist its grip on my heart.
Compared to their wholehearted passion, how unsightly and shameful stood my entanglement with Osei.
We were like two wretches smearing gutter filth upon each other.
No romance, no affection—and her three-month pregnancy?... I felt swallowed liquor surge bitter up my throat.
Wretched, accursed—the pair of us.
Wife—forgive me through scorn and mercy.
Yes—now even Osei viewed me with contempt, a true wastrel of a man.

"I want to go somewhere too.
I want to get away—get away somewhere.
And maybe I won't come back for a while.
......Even if I return to my lodging, what's waiting for me?
Just botched manuscripts and that Osei—with her tangled hair and fox-possessed eyes, putting on her insufferable airs of pregnancy—waiting around?
Ugh, I can't stand this. Can't stand any of it.
Sick of everything.
......Go away!
'Go away!' I repeated to myself, steeling my resolve."

"This stagnation, this decay—isn't my whole body filled with what might as well be ditch mud?"
"That this could be human life—I myself can't fathom it."
"Abandon this existence of late—if only for a day, an hour."
"Put distance between yourself and the foul stench we two generate."
"Otherwise you'll choke yourself to death on your own filth..."

Suddenly, eighteen years ago—when I was twenty, returning home during summer vacation, attempting to visit Nikko while heading from Yumoto over Konsei Pass toward the upper reaches of the Kinugawa River—having pushed myself too hard along the way, by the time I reached Senjogahara Plain, night had completely fallen. To make matters worse, I was caught in a downpour. On an unfamiliar path, finding myself utterly unable to proceed near the plain's center, I was rescued by a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old boy who came from behind leading an ox. At a lumberjack's hut beneath Mount Futarasan, they let me stay overnight—this memory of Senjogahara Plain suddenly surfaced in my mind.
"Yes, yes—that's the place."
"I should go see that plain again after all this time."
"That melancholy lake was good too..."
I had them summon a touring car from Toriya and immediately hurried to Ueno Station.

I wonder if that boy from those days has now become a father to several children and lives in peace? He and his brother—who must have been about twenty-four or twenty-five—shared cooking duties at that hut, transporting planks his brother had sawn by ox to Nikko town while serving as his brother's apprentice sawyer. That very day, their father had come from Nikko town carrying a two-shō cask of sake, but since his sons didn't drink, the old man sat there drinking alone by himself. My soaked hakama trousers were hung around the hearth in the dirt-floored area to dry, I was made to wear one of the son's padded kimonos, and with half-dried shiitake mushrooms and river fish simmered in a large pot as accompaniment, I heartily enjoyed heated sake on an empty stomach as their guest. The old man and I were laid out on a wooden floor spread with three straw mats and even given thin futons to sleep under, while his sons lay around the hearth in the dirt-floored area through the night. Roughly twenty years have passed since then—it remains an unforgettable, cherished travel memory. When I recall that night, even in my desolate heart, I feel those youthful days return—days warmed in life's motherly embrace.

This time too, I came through that plain in the rain, sharing a ride with four country women in a rickety horse-drawn carriage that jolted us along in the evening.
Although the direction seemed about right, there were two small cottages standing much closer to the road.
During my stay, I should try to visit them once—casually.

The 14th.
Fever: 8 degrees 3 bu.
Left scapular intercostal neuralgia unbearable.
Took aspirin and lay in bed groaning all day.
Last night's overexertion had taken its toll.
"Is everything merely the work of something called delusion?"
Despairing at times, envisioning hope at others—hatred, attachment, possessiveness, detachment—could it be that all of these were nothing but delusions viewed through the magnifying glass of my own self?
Just as those mountain trees and lake water remained indifferent to us, why couldn't I too become indifferent to society, people, my surroundings?
Was it an infatuation with life or a detachment from it—why couldn't I make this clear?
"The flavor of life found in uncertainty...?" Coming to these mountains, lying under a futon while pondering such things—realizing my own foolishness—I grew unbearably embarrassed with myself.

The sound of saws cutting lumber nearby, the trickle of water in the garden gutter, the cries of chickens and ducks—with roofers, carpenters, and paperhangers bustling about preparing for departure came the clanging of corrugated iron being hammered on rooftops and chiseling sounds—amidst all this daytime clamor, the mountain inn was by no means quiet. Yet in my feverish state, I drifted hazily into a state of complete stillness.

Yesterday had been unusually clear and warm, so my mood had improved somewhat.
Therefore, anxious about the inn's costs, I resolved to start writing something—anything—that afternoon.
I sent for a masseur.
There was one I'd called the day after arriving—a man nearing fifty with a trimmed mustache who claimed Nikko origins—but having learned his craft in middle age, he remained inexperienced, though last time he'd massaged with reasonable care.
I'd been reckless yesterday.
“Master’s body’s already been thoroughly worked over once,” he said, “so if I just give this spot a proper kneadin’ now...”
As he spoke these words, he ground haphazardly at my left shoulder blade, struck it forcefully, then wrapped a towel around my head in perfunctory fashion while scrubbing vigorously—“How’s that, Master? This here’s how you tighten things up with one hand!”
He proudly wrung the towel left and right one-handed in demonstration before declaring “A humble service,” bowing crisply once—those faintly unsettling eyes in his sallow face turning toward me.
He neither offered lower back treatment nor suggested I lie down.
Just as before, he still took the full seventy-sen fee from the front desk.
Feeling utterly drained, I muttered “Well then...” and placed a fifty-sen silver coin in his broad palm as before, then rang for the maid.
I lay trembling beneath my futon—having stubbornly endured his violent kneading—only for the pain that hot springs had soothed to flare up anew.
A fever ignited.
The masseur’s foul stench lingered in my nostrils; his grime-stained towel haunted my vision.
Regret and fatigue left my mind in complete disarray.

At lunchtime, Aiko-chan invited me, saying, “I hear there will be boat races at the Lord of the Waters festival—won’t you come?”

“Is everyone going?”

“Well, everyone from our inn will be going, and most people from elsewhere will probably go too. There’ll be raffles and other things as well.”

"Right. Well then, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to go take a look," I said.

Given that lately there had been days when even wearing just a padded kimono made him feel chilly during walks, today was an uncommonly fine day for this time of year. Around two o'clock, wearing the inn's padded kimono and a bird-hunting cap, dangling a hand towel like a carefree hot-spring guest, he clattered along in the inn's geta with their red cords and set off aimlessly.

Though consisting of relatively large buildings—six inns, about three shops, a fish farm branch office, an electric light company branch office, a carriage service office, a police box, two or three lumberjack huts, several narrow dim public bathhouses, and a small shrine to the hot spring deity—this alone formed the tiny settlement at the lake’s edge where the mountains came to an end.
From my inn to the lakeshore was not even 110 meters.
The booming of drums resounded incessantly as the inn maids, mistress, and women who looked like young mistresses—all adorned in their finest attire—each holding parasols of various colors, streamed out toward the lakeshore.
In the midst of this, men wearing happi coats with a red “Yū” dyed on their backs bustled about busily, and the festive mood was in full swing.
On a lakeside rock, an altar had been constructed bearing large red-and-white offerings arranged on unpainted wooden sanbō trays—a 1-shō bottle of ritual sake, a long-handled decanter with three matching cups, white purification streamers, and ceremonial lanterns. Beside these stood a stone that appeared to have been retrieved from the lake itself, ink characters reading "Water God Festival" freshly inscribed upon its surface.
On the rough-hewn, brand-new long logs of hemlock or fir erected along the shore, ropes had been stretched taut, upon which paper national flags fluttered with a peaceful air.
Beneath them, young men boomed the shrine’s massive drum with resounding thuds.
On the stone walls lining the path, prizes and raffle bags were piled up, and as a cheering band, two kerosene cans were loaded onto one of the boats.
1. Oar Boat Race.
2. Pole Boat Race.
3. Blindfolded Boat Race.
4. Boat Relay.
——The side events proceeded in this order.
The contestants were a motley assortment—fish farm guards, lumberjack-boatmen, innkeepers and managers, carriage drivers—ranging in age from sixteen or seventeen to fifty-six or fifty-seven.

“It’s really not starting, is it?”

“The main issue is there’s no priest to read the ritual prayers—that’s what all the fuss is about. After all, they only began holding this festival last year...” explained a fellow guest from our inn, seated beside me on the low stone wall built to prevent landslides along the roadside.

The inn’s eight maids—even including a young nursemaid girl—all clad in haori jackets yet displaying beautiful colors, sat lined up in a row on the stone wall of the shore right before us, holding lovely parasols in hands that showed off gemstone-studded rings. By several such groups from the inns, the area around the altar and the narrow roadside became filled. This, contrasted against the mountain’s deep green and the lake’s profound azure, gave the impression of an unexpected cluster of blossoms. And yet this did not evoke any air of refined musical gatherings; nor were they so overwhelmingly beautiful that they might be plucked by the rough men of the mountains—such was the impression these mountain girls gave. They made the country women in rickety carriages—which occasionally honked their horns while ascending from Chūzenji—the female-accompanied guests staying overnight, and Western couples out strolling from Chūzenji all widen their eyes in attention.

Eventually—perhaps he was a carpenter—when an elderly man read something aloud, raffle bags were distributed to the girls. First the organizers and contestants received ritual sake, after which that decanter and cups were used to pour sake for all the men who had come to watch. Then, without distinction between men, women, or children, two-inch red and white rice cakes were distributed to everyone present.

“They’ve really thought of everything,” we marveled.

Sashes, perfumed oils, combs for bound hair; tabi socks, white face powder, hand mirrors; sashes paired with fashionable envelopes and silk spools—these were generally the combinations one found.
Poor thing—the thirteen-year-old nursemaid girl in tube-sleeved kimono ended up with the most meager bag.

“What do you want? Is there something you want?”
I thought about going back to the inn to buy her something, but the girl didn’t respond.

And so, at last, the boat races began.
From the lakeshore to the base of Toyama—a mountain connected to Shirane Mountain—was perhaps over two hundred meters. Near that base, two buoys had been placed about a hundred meters apart horizontally, marking the course for a boat race between two teams of eight members each divided by lottery—Red versus White. But when the oar of T-san, Red Team’s twenty-two- or twenty-three-year-old carriage driver—a robust young man who had surged ahead at the start—snapped before reaching the buoy, they continued racing regardless. Despite the desperate efforts of a burly guardian of the lake with his bristling reddish beard, it proved futile, ending in Red Team’s crushing defeat.
And so, I watched the program advance with a rather indifferent, weary feeling.
The sound of drums, the clanging of tin cans, cheers, shouts, applause—all this shook the surrounding stillness.
The pole boat races and blindfolded boat races with participants wearing newspaper bags over their heads—these had the spectators clutching their sides in laughter.
But as I watched these noises and laughter and the athletes’ desperate rowing, my heart grew dark and heavy without my realizing it.
I gazed out at the pale gold sky, the mountains, the lake, and the gathered crowd as if seeing them anew, and felt a deep loneliness.
And yet, I remained until the very end of the boat relay.
The people from the inn had all returned, complete darkness had fallen, the electric lights inside the festival lanterns were lit, and yet the Mid-Autumn Moon of the old lunar calendar’s fifteenth night had yet to rise.

“I wonder if someone I know will come?”
“I really do feel that way…”
Even while knowing such a thing was impossible, I found myself unable to stop peering at the faces in the carriage from Chūzenji from the moment I sat down there.

After drinking sake and regaining some vigor, I was invited by the maids and, layering two padded kimonos, set out onto the lake past ten o'clock.
The boatman was called Yoshisan.
A quiet young man of twenty-four or twenty-five whose main occupation was lumberjacking.
He had once gone trout fishing, and we had become acquainted.
He was a boatman of considerable skill.
In the pole boat race, he took first place.

Aiko, Hamako, Masuko, Nakako, and myself—the four of us.
The maids went out divided into two groups.
The girls raised their voices in unison and sang a chorus.
After mooring the boat above Yutaki, Yoshisan played harmonica, and I listened to the girls’ chorus.
In the sky above hung the faintly white Mid-Autumn full moon.—When I return to my homeland, you are no longer the you of old—or—By day we journey, by night we dance—where will we end up in the end?—such phrases drifted into my ears.

"Ah, right—the latter song's lyrics were from The Living Corpse..." I suddenly realized.

The boisterous sounds of daytime athletes drinking and singing carried across the lake surface that glowed faintly white and still like stagnant water.
I too wanted to raise my voice and sing, but nothing would come out.

Night still and water cold—fish do not bite;
The full boat returns empty, bearing moonlight—
I murmured such half-remembered fragments.

"What meaning?... No! Maidens of Sukiyama, may you stay pure and beautiful forever. And my art?... I couldn't help sighing."

Last night too, I drank until late. Aiko sat properly and, without showing any displeasure, poured drinks for me. Since coming here, I had been drinking nearly one shō of alcohol every night. She continued to attend to me with the same demeanor she had when I first arrived. For the first time in nearly a year, I had managed to escape—if only briefly—from the squabbles with Osei. Last night, she wrote down three or four impromptu verses on the manuscript paper atop my desk and showed them to me. Was she something of a literary girl? I felt a flicker of interest. I wrote something resembling a nursery rhyme. Certainly—the aged bear of Shirane Mountain / Listlessly hibernates in its snowy den—it was something along those lines.

“There have never been such things as thieves entering Yumoto since ancient times, they say.
“That’s why none of the houses here bother locking their doors.
“Even when leaving—whether bedding or tools—everyone just leaves everything as it is.”

“Even in summer when there are many guests?”

“That’s right.”

“What if I were to slip away quietly like this?
Before I even reached Nikko, I’d probably get caught.
Even if I hid in the mountains behind us, I doubt I could last two days.
No matter what, I’d have no choice but to head for Nikko.
A few hours later when they noticed, the clerk would rush by bicycle to Chūzenji—send a telegram… or call Nikko—I’d likely get caught around there, wouldn’t I?
Even if I managed to board a train and reach Tokyo, nothing would come of it.
Novice thieves probably end up like that.
After all—it’s hard to escape from this well-fortified place.
What do you think, Aiko-chan—if I really ran away, would you have them chase me?”

Out of uncharacteristic childishness—a sort of cinematic curiosity—I tested these words.

"I don't know about such things..." she said with a nasal, stifled laugh that showed no trace of doubt.

"Why aren't you working? It's been nearly ten days now. Didn't you come here to work?"

"I meant to when I came, but I can't seem to manage it."

"Why do you suppose that is?"

“I’m still not used to this place yet.
And I’ve been running a fever…”

“What kind of fever?”

“Aiko-san’s fever... That’s a joke—I have chronic neuralgia.
And here too…”
With a laugh, I tapped my chest through my robe.

“So it’s your lungs?”

“It’s a lie,” I said, but her face darkened.

In this way, I had stayed up late again last night.
But at four this morning, I awoke in utter darkness and couldn’t fall back asleep.
I drained the water from the bedside pitcher, then went to fetch more of that ice-cold mountain water from the washroom.
Dawn had broken, but a mist-like drizzle hung heavy over the lake’s surface, the gray sky pressing down as mountains smoldered in haze.
It felt less lonely than painful.
I opened my umbrella and headed for Tade no Yu—the isolated bathhouse two or three chō away at the mountain’s base.
The paper with last night’s verses had vanished from the desk.
With this thought weighing on me, I walked the narrow path beside the reed-choked marsh, layered robes doing little against the lingering chill.

The bathtub was a little over three square meters in size, its upper portion crudely partitioned with planks merely for form’s sake.
It seemed no one had entered yet; sulfur floated unpleasantly across the entire surface.
I gazed at it for a while with faltering resolve, then resolutely removed my padded robe, used a scrap of wood from the washing area to stir the water, and endured the slightly too-hot temperature to enter—but ultimately couldn’t bring myself to wash my face.
Keeping my body perfectly still, I gazed at the surface of the water when I noticed something swirling about a foot below. After two or three failed attempts to scoop it up, I finally managed to retrieve what turned out to be a tangled clump of hair—perhaps twenty strands in all—from a woman’s head.
It had become slimy with bathtub scum and sulfur.
I impulsively discarded them into the drain gutter of the washing area, but two or three strands immediately tangled between my fingers and wouldn’t come free.
I had to pluck them out one by one with the fingertips of my left hand.
I wiped my body there and went outside, but I felt a rising nausea in my chest.
A wicked woman’s delusion—that’s what it felt like.

After all, young beautiful women probably wouldn't visit such a splendid bathhouse—it must be some country crone's hair—though now that I think of it, perhaps even one of those old women...
The faces of those four rural matrons—who had ridden together from Chūzenji while trading lewd jokes with the carriage driver—rose vividly in my mind until I stifled my breath against the foul miasma of sulfur and marsh gas hanging thick in the air.

In the afternoon, the rain began pouring down in earnest, and a northwest wind blew fiercely.
Because I closed the wooden storm shutters, the room became completely dark.
I crawled into the futon.
After all, it was a room not quite at the very end—though close to it—of a forty-eight-ken-long corridor just one ken wide stretching from the entrance, so nothing could be heard but the raging storm and the sound of water running through the garden’s bamboo channel.
I took aspirin, pulled the futon over my head, and just as I began to drift into a drowse, the storm shutters would suddenly clatter as if reminded, startling me awake each time.
Each time, my nerves trembled from fear.
Thoughts of my wife and children, of Osei, surfaced and vanished in my drowsy, feverish mind.

"I wonder what's become of S and the others," I thought. "Have they returned to Tokyo already? Or might they still be staying in Bessho?" Suddenly memories of S surfaced with nostalgic intensity.

How joyfully they must be conversing on such a rainy day! With a heart-constricting ache, I found myself yearning to go to Bessho myself—to visit them.

What might they have discussed while overlooking all of Shiodaira as twilight deepened reluctantly into dusk? Leaning against Kannon-sama's stone fence—that precinct said to bestow matchmaking blessings even upon someone like me—gazing at Mount Asama's straight-rising white smoke? On rainy evenings, could they have amused themselves counting ascending and descending trains and automobiles while contemplating Ueda's hazy lights three ri away?

Love said to be stronger than death, love that discards age and expediency—S, who found his reason for living there, could indeed be called happy.
I mentally tallied several such examples of love.
And this wretched existence of mine—the shattered, irreparable sake bottle of our lives—it was now nothing more than a clod of earth.

The sound of Aiko-chan bringing in the meal tray startled me awake.
I was drenched in sweat.
I had been dreaming of my hometown house—my father still alive there, with my wife and children and a crowd of people gathered.
Had I been grinding my teeth again? The dream of one or two lower teeth pattering down as they crumbled away lingered clearly and eerily in my mind.

“I had some sort of frightening dream,” I said, holding out my sake cup, but

“Is that so?” she replied composedly.

And with the second sake decanter, she was replaced by Nakako-chan—another girl of twenty.

A fair-skinned girl with plump cheeks, a well-fleshed figure, eyes full of charm, and an air of good nature.
Were I young and taking a bride, I would likely choose this girl.
She said that with farm work at home soon growing busy, she would have to return before everyone else—and seemed forlorn about it.

“Even if I go back, it’s just so dull, you know. I do all sorts of farm work as I am, you know. I’ll go to the rice fields and vegetable fields, then do whatever needs doing, you know. While I’m here I get to dress up all proper-like, but when I go back home I look just like a beggar—still, I’ll do whatever needs doing, you know.”

With a rustic accent and affected posture, she spoke while maintaining a constant smile in her eyes.

“You should get married soon—that’d be best.”

“Even if I marry, I’ll still end up a farmer, won’t I? It’s just so dull…”

“Then why not go to Tokyo? Find some decent place to work as a servant?”

“Even if I work as a servant, it’ll still be dull, won’t it? When I return, I’ll still be a farmer, won’t I?”

“Well then, isn’t being a farmer perfectly fine? Farmers are truly the best...”

I said this, but something suddenly occurred to me. Once, when I asked her if she would come again next year, she and another girl had said they didn’t know about next year. After all, once the autumn harvest was completed, she must have already been set to marry into what they called a farmer’s household. Was it from both the joyful anticipation and the torment of abandoning her maidenhood that this girl’s eyes burned so beautifully?—I thought this to myself, pausing my cup-holding hand to look at her face anew. My marriage years, my wife—what had we been repaid in these fifteen years since? Had nothing but the bitter dregs of existence been left there? Even though my wife’s hair had begun turning quite white, I still had not established a household. And by doing so, I continued compounding my instinctual failings. Without ever knowing either the sorrows or joys of family life, I could no longer do anything about this self of mine that had become utterly disillusioned with what they called domesticity. As a wife in general terms, she must have been quite wretched, but as a mother of three daughters, she should have been able to find considerable satisfaction and pride in her life. I had nothing. And the fact that I lived apart from them against my will—that this had become a ceaseless, multilayered psychological burden—darkened the very foundation of my life, rendering it tragic. And yet, I wanted to curse this relationship with Osei. My mistakes might remain mistakes, but this relationship of ours—devoid of love or enlightenment—I could not continue any longer. There had been several opportunities for an amicable separation, but she stubbornly rejected them and clung to our life together—then came the cruel irony of her pregnancy.—But Osei, here I sat alone in this inn's overflowing bathwater, being served drinks by young maids beneath bright electric lights, lying on bedding while listening to the storm outside as I drank warm sake. What were you doing alone in that four-and-a-half-mat room at this hour? When I thought of it, you too were a pitiful woman. But had I not had a wife and children, I don’t think I could have maintained such a cold-hearted attitude as I had until now—and of course, I believed we could have loved each other. Even if it had been careless, I didn’t think the motive behind our relationship had been so impure. You had sympathized with my inability to work, my string of misfortunes, my illness—you had devoted yourself to me almost selflessly. That, I hadn’t forgotten either. Moreover, being separated like this allowed me to fully contemplate your difficult position.

Since you abandoned even your parents and siblings to run away from home, now that you're told to meekly return because I have a wife and children—for me to dismiss your feelings outright as a woman's delusion makes me far more cowardly and self-serving than anything. But I don't have S's level of courage. Moreover, my current state of mind is too honed to an edge. I want nothing—absolutely nothing. I don't want my wife and children, nor do I want you or the child in your womb. To put it bluntly, I don't even want myself. I seem to have finally begun to buckle under life's weight. Everything I write keeps turning out worthless, one piece after another. Where do I anchor life's hope and joy? But will my life now steadily improve, and my writing get better...? But that "now"—that "now" is warped timber. How could this ever have been something to believe in? Being dragged along by that present moment, forced to accumulate futile efforts endlessly—I am beginning to grow weary of it.

But Osei, keep your spirits up.
Human affairs—if you consider them—can be thought of as all tragedies, or perhaps neither tragedies nor comedies nor anything at all.
No matter how great a calamity or misfortune, once passed, are they not like smoke?
Well, what's done is done—but take care of the child in your womb.

The sake was barrels of Kikumasa; the food proved more abundant than I had imagined.
I still intended to stay here for the time being, come what may.

——The 18th, clear weather. At around 10:10 AM, two considerable strong tremors occurred.
Everyone in the house rushed out.—

Two or three days before S was to depart for Shinshu, he visited my lodging after a long absence.
It had truly been ages.
Until around March or April he would drop by occasionally, but then S abruptly ceased appearing altogether.
I too had become entangled in worsening troubles with Osei—shameful incidents followed one after another—and in my near-stupefied state ended up never visiting S either.
S and I had been close friends for nearly fifteen years, but since we shared no connections in the pleasure quarters whatsoever, I remained utterly ignorant of that aspect of his life.
That S—that upright, steadfast S—had carried on such an ardent romance for months until reaching this desperate state where they'd abandon everything for each other was beyond my comprehension.
When another friend first told me this some ten days prior, the story proved so unexpected I nearly laughed aloud.

“These days, S would begrudge even the cost of a cup of coffee,” the friend said.

“When it’s every night—that adds up."
“Since he never misses a single night—and she refuses all other clients—even at twenty yen per night, that must be crushing for S.”
“They fell madly in love with each other, you see.”
“Though I suppose his home life wasn’t exactly satisfying...” added the friend, wearing a sympathetic smile.

“Hmm... So even S has gotten himself into such a situation! I had no idea at all. Actually, the other day at H Publishing—we happened to meet after ages—there I was listening to S demand his manuscript fee in this terribly agitated way, and I thought it strange—he wasn’t the sort to act like that over money—wondering what was wrong with him... I actually felt rather antagonistic toward his behavior then. But who would’ve imagined things had come to this?” As I recalled S’s irritated demeanor from that time, I couldn’t help but feel remorse over my own antagonism.

"But it's a path everyone must walk at least once. And no matter what we do now, we'll be fine. He won't break. S will pull through just fine—if he can shatter that rigid shell he's been trapped in, his art might become something freer, more unconstrained. In that sense, this whole affair could actually be good for him."

"Yeah... I suppose it's bound to come for everyone sooner or later..."

“Yeah… Sooner or later… Well, at any rate, it’s something that comes to everyone once.” “Well, even S has finally been caught up in it…” The two of them inadvertently exchanged glances and couldn’t help but smile wryly.

"Even so, S is fortunate."
"It might be the peak now, but at any rate, since you're mutually in love, S must feel satisfied."
"Compared to that, this poverty-stricken fate of mine—it's beyond comparison," I inadvertently let slip.

"…………?"
The friend glanced briefly at my face but did not respond.
……

Was that the first time I had heard about S?

Over about ten years of family life, S had maintained his roles as father of three children, as husband, and as a working member of society without showing even a hint of collapse.
Rather than a writer’s life, he had maintained the steady lifestyle of an upright intellectual class.
It was a lifestyle both materially and spiritually cautious—so lacking in adventurous spirit that it could even be perceived as somewhat timid.
He himself had even gone so far as to refer to himself as “self-righteousness.”
He had been as steadfast as if ten years were a single day—a faithful supporter of his family.
Yet starting about two years prior, I began to occasionally hear him let slip a nihilistic, negative tone—disinterest in family life, rejection of the present, doubt toward existence itself.
He was not the sort of man to often voice his own complaints.
Precisely because of that, there were times when I strongly felt within my chest the shadow of something latent and anguished within him.

"But S is stubborn—while all of us friends have lived lives riddled with collapse, S alone seemed to be holding steady..." This was what I had been thinking to myself as I considered him—how over the past year or two he had grown markedly depressed and nervous.
And even when I heard rumors that S had begun carousing with this or that friend around the time before the earthquake—"Is that so? Could it really be true?"—I had only listened to such talk with a faint smile.
All of this had transpired during the four or five months since we'd last met.

“S has grown quite haggard lately.”
“After all, it’s every single night—and he’s apparently seen partway home by the woman around dawn—a mutual frenzy that could easily lead to a lovers’ suicide.”
“No matter how you look at it, S’s become a completely different man!”
Everyone who had met S recently said such things.

Indeed, it wasn’t merely a matter of thinking so—I was struck by S’s haggard appearance that evening.
His once fair complexion had lost its luster, and his cheeks appeared noticeably gaunt and hollowed.
Even the bluish shadow of his thickly shaven beard evoked melancholy.
Even a man like S could be reduced to this state by something called love!
……I sighed inwardly.
Precisely because she was no amateur but a woman who cost money, I couldn’t help but feel how pitifully vulnerable S’s pure-hearted devotion appeared.

"The other night, I finally confessed everything to my wife."
"Out of a painful sense of obligation toward this impossible relationship, I tearfully laid everything bare—but a wife’s beyond comprehension. Whether she sympathizes with her husband’s weeping confession or not, all she does is sit there listening in silence."
"She ought to say something—anything—but she just stays mute... That’s not how it should work."
"And ever since then, even when I stagger home at three, she’s always awake—folding my discarded clothes or whatnot—then goes downstairs… That sort of thing never once happened before."
S said these things too.

“Depending on circumstances, I might destroy my family at any time.”
“When I think of the children, they’re pitiful.”
“Whenever I think of them—it makes me cry…”

I could clearly see tears welling up in the corners of S's eyes.
I had no words to comfort him.

"Now now, you mustn't dwell on things so desperately."
"I understand your feelings perfectly, but you really mustn't think so recklessly."
"I'm sure a path to resolution will open up in time."
"As long as there's honesty between both parties, I believe you can be saved no matter what situation arises."
"Though in a case like mine with Osei... such things are doomed from the start..."

Osei had secluded herself since last night in the three-tatami mat room downstairs assigned to her and was not present at the scene.

"So I've considered all sorts of things, but in the end, the best solution I can think of is for me to contract serious tuberculosis now—get admitted to Nanko-in or somewhere—become a body that can't meet her no matter how much we want to... Really, that's the only method I can come up with."
"If I don't, I can't go even a single night without seeing her... Ah, I want to get tuberculosis too... I envy those with tuberculosis!"
He exclaimed like this.

I had been drinking, but couldn't muster the courage to look at his face immediately. My eyes involuntarily strayed to the dark shrubbery in the neighboring house's garden beyond the window. I blinked several times.

"But what if he still couldn't bear being apart from her even after getting tuberculosis...?"
The thought suddenly crossed my mind, but giving it voice felt too painfully intimate.

What a notion! This from S, who was less a mere disliker of tuberculosis and more its terrified patient! Among our circle of friends, there was hardly anyone who hadn't experienced at least a bout of pneumonia, but S alone—through his excessively cautious and methodical daily life—had managed to avoid it. Precisely because of that, he had been hypersensitive to this illness beyond what was reasonable.

"After all, even among them, there must be struggles borne in secret."
"A man with wife and children—gradually entering middle age while losing interest in the very notion of home—how tragic his love appears..."

This sense of S's predicament—unable to advance or retreat, wishing to escape through tuberculosis—I felt I could comprehend.
Coincidentally, on this day too, a special delivery letter had come from K's wife.
I was about to place some of my current pocket money into an envelope and dispatch it via messenger.

“How about it—won’t you chip in a little too?” I said to S.

“Well… just a tiny bit, but…”

S willingly gave five yen.
And around nine o'clock, he returned there.
It was a sweltering evening.
S, consumed by the purgatorial flames of carnal desire; K, with three or four ice packs on his chest and head, coughing up foul, blood-tinged sputum each time he hacked; and myself with Osei—I paused my cup for a moment and directed my gaze at the dark garden shrubbery.

"My recent life seems beyond redemption."
"Compared to anyone else's, I'm the most stagnant."
"Is there no way to cleanse myself? No way to incinerate it all?"
I thought this and heaved a deep sigh.
That night, S had left me with a vital impulse.
……

On a night of fierce thunderstorms when the electric lights had failed, by the light of an old-fashioned paper lamp and a candle placed at the desk’s corner, I read once more the postcard from K’s wife that had arrived that afternoon.
"So it really has come to this…" I sighed helplessly as that same foreboding I’d felt when first visiting him resurged—He’s beyond saving now, truly beyond help.
You must exercise utmost caution these five or six days.
His terrible delirium and groaning leave me feeling dread beyond words.
With none yet arrived from his hometown either, I worry endlessly about what to do.
I implore you to return quickly as well.
"The patient must feel such loneliness of heart…"—Such were the hastily scrawled, despairing phrases.
It bore the date of the 27th.

Four or five days prior, a young friend from Tokyo—A-kun—had brought me the accumulated letters from my lodgings along with my missing razor and strop, nail clippers, and a message from Osei; he stayed two nights before departing.
Among these was a postcard from my wife dated the 11th, written in a tone suggesting, "I don't know if I'll manage to leave bed this month, but since things have stabilized somewhat, rest assured—" while paradoxically expressing concern about my health and urging me to take care.
At that time—having not yet come to these mountains nor informed anyone of my whereabouts—she must have assumed I still lay feverish in my Tokyo lodgings, hence addressing the postcard there.
Reading this, I felt momentary relief and scribbled a brief get-well note on a lakeside postcard for her.
This became today's despairing reply—my wife's postcard.
And for my part, all that remained was to exhale a feeble sigh at my present helplessness—no better stratagems existed.

“Has someone fallen ill?”
“Does that mean you’ll be going back?”
Nakako-chan—who had been serving drinks in Aiko-chan’s stead these past two or three days—asked.

“But I can’t possibly return without finishing some work first...”
“Though this is troubling... It does seem rather dire.”

“So it’s your friend then?”
“Is that postcard from his wife?”

“Yeah.
“Seems they’re waiting for me over there—ought to head back right away, but there’s nothing to be done about it.
And my nerves are shot to hell, see? That’s why I came here—to get away from all that mess. Can’t work neither—this damn neurasthenia’s got me good.”

“I see.”
“And is the patient still young?”

“Not exactly what you’d call young—he’s two years older than me, about forty.”
“The wife is still twenty-seven, so she’s young.”

“I see. And what illness is it?”

“Tuberculosis after all.”
Having said this, I fell silent.

By candlelight, I wrote a postcard urging Osei to visit K immediately so I could catch the first morning carriage to Chūzenji.
A group of about fifty or sixty reservist soldiers, who braved the thunderstorm and crossed the mountains from Ashio, arrived late around ten o'clock and made a great commotion in the lower guest room until past midnight.
Moreover, my sleep was disturbed, and thoughts of K and his wife surfaced intermittently in my half-dreaming state.

The day A-kun came was also rainy.
Wearing a serge summer haori, he arrived shivering in the evening carriage.
Thick frost had already fallen twice, and each day revealed more vivid colors spreading across the mountains.
It felt like mid-November in Tokyo.
On his departure day—unusually clear—I decided to see him off. Together we visited those familiar lumberjack hut ruins in Senjogahara Plain, drank tea at the Three Pines teahouse midway across the moorland, then parted ways.
A round trip of one ri plus ten-some chō.
Though dwarf bamboo and kugo grass clearly marked where the lumberjacks' hut once stood, the old man at that teahouse said only this much was certain—those brothers no longer lived in Nikko Town—their whereabouts unknown. "Then what," I wondered, "could have become of them too..."
Bathing in near-noon sunlight, even while marveling at that silver-barked oak grove—trees too massive to embrace twice around—some faint disillusionment still stirred within me as I climbed the slope whistling a lonely tune.

The lake, which had been closed to fishing for two or three days now, mirrored the mountains inverted—their forms dappled in yellows, reds and whites, and gradations of green—with crystalline clarity.

Yet even this lake's pride would soon—within a mere month—be sealed away by ice and snow, forced to endure the long winter as a lake of death.

At the base of the opposite shore, laborers were engaged in constructing a road that would circle the lake.
The sound of them felling trees and demolishing earthworks partially muddied the tranquil air of the lakeshore.
It had been designated as a planned national park area.
And in a year or two, automobiles would pass through and streetcars would run through, forever robbing this lake of its melancholy atmosphere.
And furthermore, it would likely no longer be a place that welcomed us kindly again...

Even on that day's walk—a round trip of just over two and a half ri, merely that much—I had strained my feet and grown so fatigued I developed a fever.

"What a weakling!"
An old pot that can't even hold a casting—no one would take it as scrap metal...
I mocked myself.

The hot springs’ efficacy too proved no match for this cold spell of unrelenting rain. For days I lay groaning in bed, racked by asthma attacks and neuralgia. Rising near dusk, I would drink myself into stupor until past eleven, only to startle awake around three—as if the unshuttered darkness beyond had come threatening—before dawn. My circumstances, T’s circumstances—yes, among our “sorrowful comrades,” he might well rank among the most wretched.

In two or three more days, it would have been a month.
The mountains, the lake, the hot springs, the girls—everything around me had vanished from my sphere of interest.
After all, every one of them too—my family, my wife and children, Osei, my sorrowful comrades—were ultimately no different; they were nothing but entities that instilled gloom and anguish.
Intoxicate me more powerfully than alcohol, O wife!
That initial charm which made me call out such things and even resemble a poet—where had it vanished!
Like foam, enthusiasm had vanished.
But alcohol’s mad intoxication and pain’s self-anesthetic—I was a complete addict to these two.
Through these alternating anesthetics of night and day, there was no doubt my days were being prolonged one by one.
But even I was not unaware that the damage to my nervous system had likely progressed more severely than expected.
Barely four hours of sleep through alcohol’s power.
Mental haziness, a dull headache, tinnitus, and then the muscles on one side of the occipital region either stiffening or swelling—the facial muscles too—resulting in a stiffening, itchy-irritating, strange, unpleasant sensation.
That was the symptom that manifested immediately the day after I did even the slightest thinking or writing.
Of course, even I didn’t clearly understand its cause.
But in any case, that this sluggish writing—now pressured by inn charges and even with my wholehearted desire to visit K as soon as possible—averaged no more than a page or a page and a half per day—how utterly pathetic this must have been.

"In the end, K will have his life taken by lung disease—but what about me?"
At this rate, no matter what I did, it would end in a mad death—that’s where things were headed.
But madness—I couldn’t bear that.
"Going mad, unable to even die properly, making my wife and children grieve for years... Anything but madness." After thrashing about in bed until exhaustion took over—in this hazy self-anesthetized state—I muttered these words.
It seemed my inescapable fate.

Whether it be K, or fellow comrades like × and ××, or even myself—we would likely all fail to cross the pass of forty, continuing to battle even within the unconscious demons nesting inside each of us, only to be ultimately defeated. Brightness, struggle, social life, harmonious family—for years we had sought these while all sinking in the opposite direction alike, with the result being lung disease or madness. I had seen too much of such sorrowful comrades. That was indeed our unavoidable fate. Neither one's own will nor external coercion held any effect beyond a certain degree. I had continued a secluded life in a dark room at the mountain-top temple within Kencho-ji for nearly five years up until last year's earthquake. "Go to Tokyo. Step out into the bright world. If you stay in a place like this, won't your mood just keep darkening?" a certain friend from that time had advised me. "It's no use." "I can't do that." "Inside me, all sorts of things have been wounded and weakened." "That's why I can't possibly endure such a bright, intense world." "Even if you told someone with normal nerves and body to stay in a place like this for a month, they couldn't endure it—it's the same reasoning," I had answered.

No one willingly chooses a dark path, but we find ourselves conquered by the constant threat of demons within us before we know it…

From my lonely wife—When I read these words written after the text of the letter returned from Tokyo, I too felt lonely and sorrowful, as if realizing it anew.
This account—originally meant for my wife, intended to be written in an apologetic tone regarding all circumstances with Osei—had somehow strayed from its initial purpose and turned into a peculiar thing resembling a novel. This fact, in various ways, made me feel profoundly lonely.
But in any case, I had to convert this into money and leave the mountain as soon as possible.
Since July, the distance between my wife and me had grown even greater.
Having taken Osei to my late father’s third memorial service and introduced her had been a mistake.
This time, through this account, I had intended to seek my wife’s understanding—yet again, it had ended in failure.
After all, there was nothing to do but wait for nature’s time.

(From your lonely husband)……

The short story titled "Deceive," about thirty pages long and published in this month's issue of a certain women's magazine, finally became K’s final work.

October 3rd was unusually clear, so I went for a walk around the new path encircling the lake in the afternoon and returned exhausted—there on the desk lay a telegram from K’s wife.

(Gozen Sanji Nishisu) All things have come to an end.
It was a telegram from 6:50 a.m.
Considering the time of death, there was likely no one present besides his wife—there could be no doubt about that.

"Even so... Couldn't he have managed one or two more deceptions to keep surviving..."
To him—my sole drinking companion through it all—I offered a silent toast within my heart.

(Kimurasanshisu, Setoshi Banjisewasu, Askuni yori oji kuru Yoshi, Hen) The telegram Osei had sent at five in the afternoon was delivered around ten o'clock the following morning.
(カヘレヌバンジハカラヘ) I could do nothing but send this reply.

"Deceive" chronicled an incident from two or three years earlier when K—utterly destitute—had sent a false telegram claiming sudden illness to his only blood relative, a sister married into another family in their hometown. This coincided with her recent miscarriage, compelling their uncle from the main household to rush over by limited express train from Bingo Tadakaimachi. K and his wife went together to Tokyo Station to meet him—an episode he'd recorded with unflinching honesty.
"I'm nine-tenths done for—here, see proof," the uncle had said while producing from his bag a yellowish-brown formal kimono with family crests, haori jacket, and hakama trousers—phrases preserved verbatim.
This same uncle was due to reappear now, making that single story "Deceive" read like nothing less than an apology addressed directly to him.

I was made to read *Deceive* in manuscript form, but even from that, one could see how he had been secretly battling illness and suffering for years.
And now, as if realizing it anew, I feel ashamed of my own obtuseness for having blamed his insufficient efforts over all these years.

Thanks to the editor’s goodwill,*Deceive* had been quickly converted into cash but was deemed too drab for publication in a women’s magazine—at their request for something more showy—and while writing its replacement piece during this process，he had coughed up blood exactly one month prior on September 4th at 2 p.m.
One week prior to that，on the 28th，he had come to my lodgings，and the two of us drank together late into the night.

“Stay strong.”
"Isn't your wife pitiable?"
“Given their goodwill—Deceive can still be placed elsewhere—so hurry up and write the replacement for them.”
"The deadline must be around the fifth......"

“I’ll do it.
“I’ll do it with all I’ve got!
“I’ve really been working my hardest lately, you know.
“It’s not like what you’re talking about.
“If you think I’m lying, then ask my wife!”
He declared with uncharacteristic defiance, glaring as he spoke.
That evening marked our final drink together.

I learned through a newspaper advertisement that *Deceive* would be published in the October issue.
And the fact that his final work had been placed not in the creative works section but in what they called the hobby section spoke more powerfully than anything else about K’s life as an unfortunate writer.
And I hardly knew anyone who could neither deceive himself nor others as much as the author of *Deceive*.

(キムラサンアスヨル八ジタツ) It was a telegram Osei had sent that afternoon of the eighth. At that very hour, I stood upon the massive rough-hewn bridge spanning the new path above Yutaki Falls where the lake waters poured out, having walked twelve or thirteen chō along the dark lakeside road. Below at the inn, some two hundred students in a tour group were raising a great clamor at what must have been their post-dinner tea gathering. I found myself unable to endure drinking alone any longer. The roar of the falls—forty-five jō in height and several jō across—set my legs trembling where I stood on the bridge. Behind me stretched the lake's surface, dark as death itself. I pressed my palms together in silent prayer. "K, forgive me!..." Now he would depart forever from that cruel city—protected by wife and uncle, seen off by two or three friends at the train window, reduced to an urn of ashes. And he was no longer the man who had screamed aloud. Though I too had climbed screaming all this way—unable even now to bid farewell to my friend of fifteen years—I could claim no happiness either. He was never one to care about fame or obscurity, even at death's door. When I first visited after his hemorrhage, I felt I'd grasped something of his resolve—to die unknown in some wretched alley... All this too was inevitable. This too suffices—a moonless night at Yamadō Hall, heaven's stars scattering down in disarray... Yes, K! With all my heart I believe in your spirit's glory.