Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

I had almost never gone to see motion pictures. If I were to trace back my hazy memories, it must have been around Meiji 30. At the Nishikikan rental hall that stood in Kanda Nishikichō, I had seen footage depicting San Francisco's cityscape. The very term "motion pictures" likely originated around that time. Now, over forty years later, "motion pictures" seemed to have fallen out of use and been replaced by other terms, but since what I first heard felt more natural on my tongue, I still employed that antiquated word here.

After the Earthquake Disaster, one of the young writers who came to visit my home forcibly took me to Akasaka Tameike’s motion picture shack, saying I was falling behind the times. He claimed it was something highly praised at the time, but since what I saw turned out to be an adaptation of Maupassant's short story, there was no need to watch the motion picture. Just read the original. I had once remarked that doing so was far more interesting.

However, motion pictures were something that people of all ages enjoyed watching and made part of their daily conversations, so at least I wanted to be able to understand what people were talking about, and thus whenever I passed by a motion picture shack, I made an effort to direct my gaze toward the paintings on the billboards and their titles. By glancing at the billboards, I could imagine the general outline of the adaptations without even seeing the motion pictures and could also grasp what kinds of scenes were being favored.

The place where one could glance at the most motion picture billboards at once was Asakusa Park. If one came there, they could take in all varieties at a single glance and naturally compare their merits and demerits. Whenever I headed out toward Shitaya-Asakusa, I never failed to recall this and would enter the park, trailing my cane along the pond’s edge. It was a day when the evening breeze was gradually losing its chill. Having examined the signs at each and every shop entrance, I emerged from the edge of the park into Senzokucho. To the right lay Kototoi Bridge, to the left Iriya-cho—pondering which direction to take as I walked along, a man around forty wearing old Western clothes suddenly emerged from the side,

“Patron, allow me to introduce you.” “How about it?” he said. “No, thank you,” I said, quickening my pace slightly, “It’s the perfect chance, you know.” “It’s sensationalistic, you know.” “Patron,” he said, following after me.

“I don’t need it. I’m going to Yoshihara.” “I’m going to Yoshihara.” Whether one calls him a pimp or Casanova I cannot say, but to drive away this suspicious solicitor, I blurted out that I was going to Yoshihara—and through this offhand remark, the direction of my aimless stroll became unexpectedly determined. As I walked along, I remembered that there was a used bookstore I knew of in the backstreets beneath the embankment.

The used bookstore was located in a dim back alley that stretched from where Sanya Canal’s flow met an underground culvert toward the base of Daimon-mae Nihon Tsutsumi Bridge. The back alleys formed a single-sided street along Sanya Canal’s waters, where the opposite bank was confined to the rear facades of houses standing atop stone embankments, while this side showed slightly wider shopfronts of wholesalers dealing in clay pipes, roof tiles, river soil, and lumber interspersed among dwellings; but as the canal narrowed, these gradually yielded to shabby small houses, and at night only the lights of bridges spanning the canal—Shōhōji Bridge, Sanya Bridge, Chihō Bridge, Kamiarai Bridge—faintly lit the path. When both canals and bridges ended, foot traffic too ceased entirely. In this area, the houses that kept their lights burning relatively late into the night were likely limited to that used bookstore and a tobacco-selling sundries shop.

I do not know the name of the used bookstore, but I am familiar with most of the items piled in the shop. If there were Bungei Kurabu from its inaugural issue or old Yamato Shimbun’s kōdan supplements among them, I would have to consider them unexpected finds. However, when I went out of my way to visit this shop, it was not for old books but rather for the character of the proprietor who sold them and the atmospheric charm of the backstreets beyond the pleasure quarters. The proprietor was a small-statured old man with a cleanly shaven head. He was, of course, over sixty years old. From his facial features, demeanor, and manner of speech to the very way he wore his kimono—preserving Tokyo’s Shitamachi-born customs unaltered—to my eyes, this appeared more precious and nostalgic than any rare antiquarian book. Until around the time of the Earthquake Disaster, if one went backstage at theaters or vaudeville halls, one could still encounter one or two such elders from Edo’s downtown Shitamachi—like Tomejii from Otowaya’s male staff or Ichizō who served at Takanashiya—but now they have all passed to the other world.

The bookseller was always sitting properly by the partitioning shoji screen whenever I opened the glass door at his shopfront, his rounded back slightly angled outward as he peered at something through glasses that had slipped to the tip of his nose. The time of my visits was usually fixed around seven or eight in the evening, yet each time I came, I found the old man's seated position and posture nearly identical to previous occasions. At the sound of the door opening, still hunched over his reading, he turned only his head toward me with a swift motion and said "Oh, please come in," removing his glasses before half-rising to tap the dust from the zabuton cushion. With a crawling posture, he spread it out anew while offering his polite greeting. Both his words and demeanor remained unchanged in their formulaic pattern.

“As always, I’m afraid there’s nothing worthy of your attention.” “Nothing worth showing you.” “Ah yes—the Hōdan Magazine was indeed here.” “Though they aren’t a complete set.” “That must be Tamenaga Shunsui’s magazine.” “Ah.” “Well then, since the first issue is included, I can show it to you.” “Now where did I put it?” he said, pulling out five or six bound volumes from among the old books stacked against the wall and brushing the dust off with both hands before offering them to me, which I accepted. “Officially registered in Meiji 12, I see.” “Reading magazines from this era makes me feel as though life itself stretches longer.” “I’ve been wanting to acquire a full set of *Robun Shinpō* if one exists...”

“They do come out from time to time, but they’re mostly scattered and incomplete, I’m afraid.” “Patron, do you happen to have Kagetsu Shinshi in your possession?”

“I have it.” At the sound of the glass door opening, I turned with the bookseller to look, and there stood another man also past sixty. A gaunt, bald-headed man with sunken cheeks was unloading a soiled striped furoshiki bundle onto the old books displayed at the shopfront, “I’ve come to thoroughly detest automobiles. “Today I nearly got myself killed.” “Things that are convenient, cheap, and without fault—such things are rarely found.” “Even so, you. “Weren’t you injured?”

“Thanks to the amulet cracking, I was unharmed.” “It was a bus heading forward and a circular taxi that collided—just remembering it makes me shudder.” “Truth is, I went to Hatogaya’s market today and bought something peculiar.” “Old things are good, eh?” “There’s no immediate use for it, but when I see it, I can’t help wanting to indulge.” The bald-headed man untied the furoshiki bundle and produced what appeared to be a woman’s small-patterned unlined kimono and an open-sided underrobe. The komon pattern used mouse-gray Obama chirimen silk, and though the yuzen-dyed open-sided sleeves were somewhat unusual, both pieces seemed to date from around the Meiji Restoration rather than being genuinely ancient artifacts.

However, thinking that it might unexpectedly work well for mounting ukiyo-e originals, lining the recently fashionable handboxes, or even for the covers of kusa-zōshi storybooks, I—on an impulsive whim—purchased a single open-sided underrobe along with settling the bill for the old magazines, then stepped outside cradling the paper-wrapped bundle that the bald-headed bookseller had prepared, containing both the underrobe and bound volumes of Hōdan Magazine.

Intending to board the shuttle bus running along Nihon Tsutsumi, I stood for a while at the Daimon-mae stop, but being hailed by roving circular taxis grew tiresome, so I turned back into the alley I had come from and walked on, selecting dim side streets untraversed by trams or circular taxis until suddenly, through a gap in the trees, I emerged where the lights of Kototoi Bridge came into view. Since I had heard Kawabata Park was dangerous, I didn't go all the way to the riverbank; instead, I walked along a brightly lit path and sat down on its chained railing.

In truth, having bought bread and canned goods along the way here and wrapped them in a furoshiki beforehand, I attempted to repackage the old magazines and used clothing into a single bundle; but not only was the furoshiki slightly too small, hard objects and soft items simply would not wrap together properly. In the end, deciding it would be easier to carry if I stored only the canned goods in my coat’s hidden pocket and bundled the remaining items together, I spread the furoshiki flat on the grass and was adjusting the arrangement when suddenly, from behind the trees, came a voice—“Hey, what are you doing?”—and with the clang of a saber, an officer appeared, reaching out his simian arm to seize my shoulder.

I did not respond and, after quietly adjusting the furoshiki’s knot and standing up—as if even that brief pause was too much to wait—the officer jabbed my elbow from behind and barked, “You—move it.” When I promptly exited the park’s path to Kototoi Bridge’s edge, the police officer took me to the police box on the opposite side of the wide road and, handing me over to the officer on duty, hurried off again as if pressed for time. The police officer at the police box remained standing in the entrance and launched into his interrogation: “Where have you come from at this hour?”

“I came from over there.” “What do you mean by ‘over there’?” “From the direction of the canal.” “Where is this canal you speak of?” “It’s a river called Sanya Canal at the foot of Matsuchiyama Mountain.” “What’s your name?” When I answered, “Masashi Oe,” the officer pulled out his notebook, so I added, “The ‘Masashi’ is written with the radical for enclosure containing the character for king.” “It’s the character found in the Analects that says ‘to rectify the world once.’” The officer glared at me as if to say “Shut up,” reached out to abruptly unfasten my coat buttons, and turned the lining inside out to inspect it,

“There’s no mark.” He then tried to inspect the jacket lining.

“What sort of mark do you mean?” I said, setting down the furoshiki bundle and opening my jacket and underrobe at the chest all at once to show him. “Address?” “Azabu Ward, Otansumachi 1-chome, 6-banchi.”

“Occupation?” “I don’t do anything.” “Unemployed? Age?” “I was born in the Year of the Hare.” “How old?” “The Year of the Hare in Meiji 12.” I considered staying silent then, but fearing further trouble, said: “Fifty-eight.” “You look awfully young.” “Heh heh heh.” “What was your name again?” “I just told you.” “Masashi Oe.” “How many are in your family?” “Three,” I answered. In truth, I was single; but from past experience up until then, telling the truth would only make me seem increasingly suspicious—which was why I had answered three.

“When you say three, that’s your wife and who else?” The officer seemed inclined to interpret this favorably. “Hmph... something like that.” “How old is your wife?” I was momentarily at a loss, but recalling a woman I had been involved with until four or five years prior, said, “Thirty-one. Born July 14th, Meiji 39, Year of the Fire Horse…” I thought that if asked for her name, I would give one from my own novel, but the officer said nothing and pressed down on the hidden pockets of my coat and jacket. “What is this?”

“A pipe and glasses.”

“Hmm. “And this?” “Canned goods.” “This here’s a purse.” “Show it to me.” “There’s money in it.” “How much is in there?” “Well… there might be around twenty or thirty yen.” The officer pulled out the purse but didn’t inspect its contents, placing it on the stand beneath the telephone, and said, “What’s that bundle.” “Come over here and unwrap it to show me.” When I unwrapped the furoshiki bundle, the paper-wrapped bread and old magazines were unproblematic at first, but no sooner had one sleeve of a glossy, sleeveless underrobe slipped limply down than the officer’s attitude and tone abruptly transformed,

“Hey, you’ve got some strange things here.” “Oh, ha ha ha ha,” I laughed. “This here’s a woman’s underrobe.” The officer pinched up the underrobe with his fingertips, held it up to the lamplight, glared back at me, and said, “Where did you get this?” “I brought it from a secondhand store.” “Why did you bring it?” “I paid for it.”

“Where is that?”

“In front of Yoshiwara’s main gate.” “How much did you pay for it?” “Three yen and seventy sen.” The officer threw the underrobe onto the stand and silently stared at my face, so I lost the courage to mock him as I had initially done, thinking he would likely take me to the police station and throw me into a holding cell; as I too kept watching the officer’s demeanor, he still remained silent and began inspecting my wallet. In the wallet lay a creased and torn provisional fire insurance certificate that had been forgotten inside, along with a household register extract, a seal registration certificate, and a registered seal that had been needed for some occasion; the officer quietly spread out each sheet one by one, then took the registered seal and held its engraved characters up to the lamplight to examine them. As this was taking quite some time, I shifted my gaze toward the road while remaining standing at the entrance.

The road split in front of the police box into two slanting branches—one heading toward Minami-Senju, the other toward Shirahige Bridge—while intersecting with the main street behind Asakusa Park that crossed Kototoi Bridge; despite nighttime traffic remaining quite heavy, not a single passerby stopped to view my interrogation with suspicion. At the shirt shop on the opposite corner, a woman who seemed to be the wife and a shop boy looked this way yet showed no sign of suspicion, slowly beginning to close up for the day.

“You there. “That’s enough—put it away.” “It’s not like I particularly need it or anything…” While muttering, I put away the wallet and retied the furoshiki bundle as it had been. “Is there anything else?” “No.” “Thanks for your trouble.” I lit a match for my gold-tipped Westminster cigarette, as if to silently insist on at least savoring its fragrance, blew smoke into the police box, and walked off toward Kototoi Bridge as my feet carried me. When I later reflected on it, had I not had the household register extract and seal registration certificate, I surely would have been thrown into a holding cell that night.

Secondhand clothes were truly unsettling things. The secondhand underrobe had failed to wreak its havoc.

Two

He conceived a plan for a novel titled "Disappearance." If I could complete it，I had some confidence that this novel—even by my own estimation—would not be such a poorly written work. The important character in the novel was named Junpei Taneda. In his fifties，he was an English teacher at a private middle school.

Three or four years after being bereaved of his first beloved wife, Taneda took Mitsuko for his second wife. Mitsuko had been employed as a lady’s maid in the household of a certain well-known politician but was deceived by the master and became pregnant. The main household had their steward, a certain Endo, manage the subsequent arrangements. The conditions stipulated that should Mitsuko deliver safely, they would send fifty yen monthly as child support for twenty years. In exchange, regarding the child’s family registration, the main household would have no involvement whatsoever. Furthermore, it was agreed that should Mitsuko marry elsewhere, they would provide her with an appropriate dowry.

Mitsuko was taken into the steward Endo’s household, gave birth to a son, and within sixty days of the birth—again through Endo’s mediation—became the second wife of one Junpei Taneda, an English teacher at a middle school. At the time, Mitsuko was nineteen, and Taneda was thirty years old. After losing his first beloved wife, Junpei Taneda saw no hope for the future in his meager salary and had become a listless shadow of a man as he approached middle age; yet persuaded by his old friend Endo, he wavered at the prospect of the money from Mitsuko and her child and remarried. At that time, as the child had just been born and the family registration procedures had not yet been completed, Endo transferred the family registrations of Mitsuko and her child together into the Taneda household. Thus, when later examining the family register, it appeared that the Taneda couple had long been in a common-law relationship and only undertook formal marriage registration procedures after the birth of their first son.

Two years passed and a daughter was born, followed by another son. Officially recorded as the eldest son but in reality Mitsuko’s stepchild, when Tamen reached adulthood, the education funds that had been sent for years from his secret father to Mitsuko’s care ceased. It was not merely that the agreed term had ended. This was because his biological father had died of illness some years prior, and his wife had also subsequently passed away. As the eldest daughter Yoshiko and youngest child Tameaki grew older, living expenses increased year by year, and Taneda had to take on teaching at two or three night schools.

The eldest son Tamen became a sportsman and went abroad while still enrolled at a private university. Her younger sister Yoshiko became a leading motion picture actress as soon as she graduated from girls' school. Mitsuko possessed a charmingly round face at the time of her marriage but eventually became an obese old woman obsessed with Nichiren Buddhism and was appointed as a committee member of a believers' group. Taneda's household became a place that at times resembled his sect's meeting hall, at others served as actresses' playground, and even functioned adequately as sports practice field. The commotion left not even rats appearing in the kitchen.

Taneda was by nature a timid and socially averse man who grew increasingly unable to endure household commotion as he aged. Everything the wife and children liked proved invariably distasteful to Taneda. He strove to avoid dwelling on family matters altogether. To regard his own wife and children with cold detachment became this weak-willed father’s sole form of retaliation.

In the spring of his fifty-first year, Taneda was dismissed from his teaching position. On the day he received his retirement allowance, Taneda did not return home and vanished without a trace. Prior to this, Taneda had encountered a woman named Sumiko—who had once worked as a maid in his household—by chance on a streetcar, learned she was employed at a café in Asakusa Komagata-cho, and visited her once or twice to buy rounds of beer. It was the night he had pocketed the retirement allowance money. Taneda went for the first time to the apartment where waitress Sumiko rented a room, explained his circumstances, and had her let him stay the night…….

＊　　　　　　　　＊　　　　　　　　＊

As for how to bring the story to its conclusion from this point onward, I have yet to settle on a definitive plan. The family files a missing person report. Taneda gets arrested by detectives and lectured. The indulgences taken up in middle age have long been likened to seventh-hour downpours; thus one could effortlessly render Taneda’s final days as wretched as desired. I continue contemplating various paths for Taneda’s moral descent and his shifting emotions at each turn. The sensation when seized by detectives and dragged away; the bewilderment and disgrace when handed over to wife and children. What must it feel like to inhabit such circumstances? Returning from purchasing women’s secondhand clothes in Sanya’s back alleys, I was apprehended by a police officer and subjected to rigorous identity verification at a roadside police box. This experience provides ideal material for depicting Taneda’s psychology.

When creating a novel, what most arouses my interest is the selection of settings where the characters’ lives and events unfold, and their depiction. I had often fallen into the error of placing excessive emphasis on the depiction of settings over the characters’ personalities.

I decided to have Teacher Taneda go into hiding in either Honjo, Fukagawa, or the outskirts of Asakusa—these being parts of Tokyo that had been celebrated scenic spots since antiquity but had completely lost their former appearance after new towns were built following the earthquake disaster—so I might depict their current state. Otherwise, I resolved to place him in the back alleys of former county districts adjacent to those areas. Though through periodic strolls I had believed myself broadly familiar with conditions in areas like Sunamachi, Kameido, Komatsugawa, and Terajimacho, when I actually tried putting brush to paper, I suddenly felt my observations lacked thoroughness. Once—around Meiji 35 or 36 (1902–1903)—I had written a novel centering on courtesans from Fukagawa’s Suzaki pleasure quarter, but a friend who read it at the time remarked: “It’s gross negligence not to depict the typhoons and storm surges of August and September when portraying life in Suzaki. That clocktower at Kōshirō you frequented so assiduously wasn’t blown down just once or twice either.” He continued: “To render background descriptions precisely, you must attend to seasons and weather—like Lafcadio Hearn’s masterpieces Chita or Youma.”

It was a certain evening in late June. The rainy season had not yet lifted, but the sky had been clear since morning; given the time of year with its long days, even after finishing supper, twilight showed no sign of approaching. The moment I set down my chopsticks, I immediately left through the gate, intending to head wherever my feet might take me—be it distant Senju or Kameido—and first took the streetcar to Kaminarimon, where by fortunate timing I encountered a jitney bus bound for Terajima Tamanoi.

Having crossed Azuma Bridge, turned left onto a broad road to cross Genmori Bridge, passed straight before Akiba Shrine, and gone a short distance further, the car came to a halt at a railroad crossing. At both sides of the railroad crossing, countless jitney cabs and bicycles waited before the barrier for a freight train to slowly pass through, but pedestrians were surprisingly few, with numerous groups of poor children playing in clusters. When I got down and looked, the wide roads running from Shirahige Bridge toward Kameido crisscrossed in a cross formation. With vacant lots overgrown with grass here and there and rows of low houses, all the roads looked indistinguishable from one another, and I felt an inexplicable sense of desolation as to where they might lead.

I thought that if I were to set the place where Teacher Taneda abandoned his family and went into hiding in these backstreets here—since Tamanoi’s entertainment district lay conveniently close—it would work well for devising the story’s conclusion; considering this, I walked about a block and turned into a narrow side street. The path was so narrow that bicycles with parcels tucked under their arms could scarcely pass one another, twisting every five or six steps. On both sides stood rows of relatively tidy rented houses with small gates, while men and women in Western clothes—likely returning from work—walked past one or two at a time. Even when looking at playing dogs, their collars had license tags attached and they weren’t particularly filthy. Suddenly I emerged beside Tobu Railway Tamanoi Station.

On both sides of the railway tracks stood vast villa-like structures densely overgrown with trees. From Azuma Bridge all the way here, there had not been a single place where old trees formed such a dense grove. All appeared long unmaintained; creeping vines weighed down the bamboo stalks until they bent low, while evening glories blooming along the ditch-side hedge struck me with such elegance that they halted my steps. When we hear that the area around Shirahige was once Terajima Village, we immediately recall the villa of the fifth Kikugorō—yet today, upon chancing to see such a garden remaining here, one cannot help but be reminded of the literary grace of bygone eras.

Along the railway tracks, a wide grassland marked with signs for land sale or rental extended to the edge of an embankment where an iron bridge spanned. On the remnants of tracks where Keisei trams had run until around last year, the remains of the dismantled Tamanoi Station atop crumbling stone steps lay buried in weeds, presenting from this vantage point an air reminiscent of castle ruins.

I pushed through the summer grass and climbed up the embankment to look. Below my eyes stretched an unobstructed view: the path I had just walked, vacant lots, and the newly built town lay low and visible, but beyond the embankment stood corrugated iron-roofed crude dwellings jumbled together without order or end, from whose midst rose a bathhouse chimney bearing atop it a crescent moon of the seventh or eighth day. While faint traces of evening glow still lingered in one part of the sky, the moon had already taken on a night-like brilliance, and from between the corrugated iron roofs began to emerge both neon signs' glow and radios' reverberations.

I remained seated on the stone until darkness gathered at my feet, but as lights began to flicker in the windows below the embankment—revealing in full view the squalid interiors of the second floors—I traced the footprints left among the grass and descended the slope. To my surprise, I found myself already halfway along a bustling side street that cut diagonally through Tamanoi’s entertainment district. Between jumbled rows of shops, alley entrances bore lit signs reading “Through Here,” “Safe Passage,” “Shortcut to Keisei Bus,” “Otome Street,” or “Nishikihon-dori.”

After walking around that area for some time, I found myself at a tobacco shop by an alley entrance where a mailbox stood, buying cigarettes while waiting for change from a five-yen note. Suddenly, a man in a white work coat shouted, “It’s going to rain!” and dashed into the shadow of a curtain that appeared to belong to an oden shop across the way. Next came a woman in an apron and passersby scurrying out in commotion. No sooner had the area seemed about to grow tense than a sudden gust swept down with the sound of collapsing reed screens, sending scraps of paper and dust scurrying phantom-like along the road. Before long, a sharp flash of lightning split the sky, and with the slow rumble of thunder following close behind, large raindrops began falling sporadically. The evening weather that had been so clear had transformed unawares.

Due to a long-standing habit, I rarely left the gate without an umbrella. Though clear-skied, being in the rainy season meant I naturally carried only an umbrella and furoshiki that day; thus unperturbed, I quietly began walking while observing the sky and townscape beneath my opened shelter—when suddenly from behind came a woman thrusting her snow-white neck under the canopy, exclaiming, “Patron, let me share it that far!” Her large flattened shimada—evident from its oily scent of recent styling—bore silver threads cut to generous lengths. I recalled passing a women’s hairdresser’s shop earlier with its glass door left agape.

As the raging wind and rain caused the silver threads adorning her freshly styled shimada to become pitifully disheveled, I extended my umbrella and said, “I’m in Western clothes, so I don’t mind.”

In truth, under the bright lamplight from the row of shops, even I felt somewhat self-conscious about sharing an umbrella. “Well, if you insist. Right here,” said the woman, taking hold of the umbrella handle and boldly hiking up the hem of her yukata with one hand.

III

A bolt of lightning flashed sharply again, and as thunder rumbled deeply, the woman theatrically cried “Oh!”, took my hand as I tried to walk a step behind, and urged, “Hurry up.” “You,” she said in an overly familiar tone. “Just go on ahead.” “I’ll follow you.” When we entered the alley, the woman—each time she turned a corner, glancing back at me to ensure I wouldn’t lose my way—eventually crossed a small bridge spanning a ditch and came to a stop before a row of houses all fitted with reed-screen sunshades.

"Oh, you... You're completely soaked!" she said, closing her umbrella and wiping the raindrops from my coat with her palm before tending to her own.

“Is this your place?” “I’ll wipe you down, so do come in.” “I’m in Western clothes, so it’s fine.” “But I told you I’d wipe you down.” “I want to return the favor too, you know.” “What kind of thanks?” “So, do come in already.”

The rumble of thunder had grown somewhat distant, but the rain instead began pouring down even more fiercely, as if pelting pebbles. Even under the sunshade hung from the eaves, the ferocity of the splashing spray leaping up left me no time to protest before I ducked inside. A coarse Osaka-style lattice partition had been erected, from which hung a curtain of ribbons adorned with bells. While I sat on the upper frame beneath it removing my shoes, the woman wiped my feet with a rag and—without letting down her hitched hem—twisted on the lower sitting room’s electric light, “There’s no one here, so come on up.”

“Are you alone?” “Yes.” “Until last night, there was another person here.” “They moved to another place.” “Are you the master here?” “No.” “The master is at another house.” “There’s a vaudeville theater called Tamanoi Hall, you know.” “There’s a residence behind it, you know.” “He comes every night at twelve to check the ledger.” “Well, that’s easygoing of him.” I sat down beside the long charcoal brazier as urged and observed the woman preparing tea with one knee raised. The age must have been twenty-four or twenty-five. The features were quite attractive. The round face with a straight nose was powdered white, but the hairline of the freshly styled shimada had not yet receded. The darkness within eyes showed no cloudiness; even when observing the color of lips and gums, the health did not appear to have been significantly compromised.

“Is the water around here from a well or the tap?” I casually inquired before drinking the tea. If she answered that it was well water, I was prepared to pretend to drink it and set it aside.

I feared contagious diseases like typhus more than venereal ones. As for my person—one who had become a mental wreck long before physical decline—a slow-progressing ailment such as venereal disease scarcely troubled me in this late stage of life. "I'll just wash my face." "The water supply is right there," said the woman in an exceedingly casual tone.

“Hmm.” “Later is fine.”

“Take off your coat.” “You’re really quite soaked through.”

“It’s coming down hard.” “I dislike the lightning more than Thunder itself.” “In this downpour，I can’t even get to the bathhouse.” “You...” “It’s still fine for now.” “I’ll just wash my face and do my makeup.”

The woman twisted her mouth, wiping oil from her hairline with kaishi paper as she stood before the washbasin affixed to the wall outside the partition. Through the curtain of ribbons, her figure could be seen removing both undergarments and bending down to wash her face. Her skin was much whiter than her face, and from the shape of her breasts, she did not appear to have borne a child. “Somehow I feel like I’ve become a patron. As I do this, There’s a chest of drawers, a tea shelf…”

“Go ahead and look inside.” “There should be sweet potatoes or something.” “It’s remarkably tidy here.” “Impressive.” “Even inside the brazier.” “I always make sure to clean properly every morning.” “I may live in a place like this, but I’m quite skilled at keeping house.”

“Will you be staying long?”

“Just a little over a year…”

“This isn’t your first time in this area, is it? Were you a geisha or something?” Whether she hadn’t heard my words over the sound of poured water or was feigning deafness, the woman gave no reply. Still clad only in undergarments, she sat before the mirror stand, tidied her sideburns with a hairpin, and began applying white powder from her shoulders upward. “Where were you working? This much at least can’t be hidden.” “That’s right… but not in Tokyo.” “The current Tokyo area?”

“No. “Much farther away….” “Then, Manchuria….” “I was in Utsunomiya. “All the kimonos are from that time too.” “This should do nicely.” As she stood and changed into the hem-patterned unlined garment hanging on the eboshi-dake rack, the sight of her tying the red Benkei-striped datejime sash prominently at the front—balanced with the silver threads of her slightly oversized tsubushi shimada hairstyle—appeared to my eyes remarkably like a Meiji-era courtesan. The woman adjusted her collar and sat beside me, taking a tray from the tea table,

“For auspicious reasons, please just give the celebratory offering,” she said, holding out a lit cigarette.

I was not entirely unfamiliar with the ways of amusement in this district, “Fifty sen, right?” “And the transportation fee?” “Yes. That’s according to the usual rules,” she said with a laugh, neither withdrawing her outstretched palm nor ceasing to hold it out. “Then let’s set it for one hour.” “I’m sorry.” “Truly.” “In exchange,” I said, taking her outstretched hand, pulling her close, and whispering in her ear. “I don’t know anything about that!” The woman glared back, wide-eyed, then struck my shoulder with a muttered “Idiot.”

Those familiar with Tamenaga Shunsui’s novels will recognize how the author intersperses self-justifying passages throughout his narratives. When depicting a maiden in first love forgetting her bashfulness to cling to her beloved, readers must refrain from judging her wanton based solely on such conduct and speech. Even women raised in sheltered environments may reveal a sensuality surpassing that of geisha when confessing their hearts. Moreover, when portraying an experienced courtesan chancing upon a childhood acquaintance, one finds appended notes explaining that even worldly merchants might act as bashfully as maidens in such situations—a phenomenon well understood by those versed in these matters—and that this stems not from any lapse in the author’s observational skills, thus requiring appropriate interpretation.

Following Shunsui’s example, I append this explanatory note here. Readers may find it peculiar that this woman I first encountered by the roadside treated me with such undue familiarity. Yet this is merely an unembellished record of an actual encounter—no artifice whatsoever informs it. Some may scoff at how thunderous rain precipitated events, dismissing this as yet another of the author’s stock devices—but anticipating such criticism is precisely why I refrain from contriving alternative incidents. That this evening shower should have orchestrated proceedings with such conventional precision struck me as rather delightful; indeed, my very purpose in taking up the brush was to commit this scene to paper exactly as tradition dictated.

It was said there were roughly seven or eight hundred women in this entertainment quarter, but among them, those who wore their hair in Shimada or marumage styles accounted for perhaps one in ten. Most adopted either waitress-style Japanese attire or Western dress favored by dancers. That the woman from the house where I had taken shelter from the rain belonged to this small minority of old-fashioned practitioners somehow seemed appropriate to a trite narrative device; I could not bring myself to distort the factual description.

The rain showed no sign of letting up.

When we first entered the house, the rain fell so heavily that we had to raise our voices slightly to be heard, but now both the wind lashing against the doorway and the reverberations of thunder had ceased, leaving only the rain drumming on the galvanized iron roof and the dripping of rainwater. In the alleyway, both human voices and footsteps had long been absent, when suddenly—

"Oh dear, this is terrible!" "Kii-chan." "There's a loach swimming around here!" A high-pitched voice called out, followed by the clatter of geta. The woman suddenly stood up and peered through the ribbons toward the earthen floor area. "The house is fine. If the ditch overflows, the water comes flowing all the way here."

“It seems to have let up a bit.” “If it rains at dusk, even clearing up won’t make things right.” “So please make yourself comfortable.” “I’ll finish eating the meal now.”

The woman took out from the tea shelf a small plate heaped with takuan pickles, an ochazuke bowl, and an aluminum pot; she lifted the lid slightly to sniff the aroma before placing it on the long hibachi—upon closer inspection, it contained simmered sweet potatoes. “I’d forgotten.” “I have something good,” I said, recalling that I had bought Asakusa nori while waiting to transfer trains at Kyōbashi and producing it. “A souvenir for your wife.” “I’m all alone.” “I have to buy my own food.”

“With a woman at your apartment? Hohohoho.” “Then I shouldn’t be loitering here at this hour. Rain or thunder, I’ll head back regardless.” “I suppose not,” said the woman with an expression of perfect agreement, removing the lid from the pot that was just beginning to warm. “Will you join me?” “I’ve already eaten.”

“Then please face that way.” “Do you cook your own meals?” “They bring it over from the residential area for me at noon and midnight.” “Shall I make fresh tea? The water’s gone lukewarm.” “Oh! “Pardon my forwardness.” “Hey.” “You.” “Eating while talking makes the meal enjoyable, doesn’t it?” “I detest solitary meals.” “Truly now. “So you really live alone.” “How pitiful.”

“You can figure that out for yourself, can’t you?”

“It’s fine, I’ll look for it.” The woman had about two bowls of tea over rice. In an oddly animated manner, she clinked her chopsticks against the bowl to rinse them, hastily stowed plates and small dishes into the tea cabinet with apparent urgency, all while working her jaw to suppress a takuan pickle-induced burp rising in her throat.

Outside, along with the sound of footsteps, a voice calling out "Hey there, hey there!" became audible.

“It seems to have let up. I’ll come by again before long.”

“Do come by again, won’t you?” “I’m here during the day too.” The woman saw me putting on my coat and circled behind me to fold back my collar while pressing her cheek against my shoulder through my clothes. “You will come again.”

“What sort of house is this? Here of all places...” “I’ll give you my card now.” While putting on his shoes, he saw her take from beneath the small window a business card cut in the shape of a shamisen plectrum. It read: Terajima-chō 7-chōme 61-banchi (Part 2), Ando Masakata Yukiko.

“Goodbye.” “Go straight home.”

IV

A passage from the novel *Disappearance*

Leaning against what seemed to be the middle section of Azuma Bridge’s railing, Junpei Taneda alternated between watching the Matsuya clock and watching for approaching figures. He was waiting for Sumiko, the waitress, who would close up the shop and then deliberately take a roundabout route to meet him. The bridge no longer carried streetcars or buses; yet over the past two or three days of sudden heat, people could be seen cooling themselves in shirtsleeves, while women who appeared to be waitresses—clutching bundles—continued hurrying back and forth without cease. Taneda planned to visit Sumiko’s apartment that night and then leisurely decide his future course; once he arrived there, he neither considered what would become of the woman nor possessed the mental space to do so. That he had sacrificed his entire life for his family over twenty years up to this day filled him with such bitter resentment that his anger became uncontainable.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.” Sumiko came hurrying over at a trot sooner than expected.

“I always cross Komagata Bridge.” “But I’m with Ms. Kaneshiro.” “That girl never stops talking.” “Looks like the streetcars have stopped running.” “It’s only about three stops if we walk.” “Let’s take a taxi from here.” “If there’s a vacant room.” “If not, you can stay at my place tonight.” “Is that all right? Are you sure?” “What’s the problem?” “Didn’t you see that story in the paper?” “About people getting caught in apartments...”

“It depends where.” “Absolutely.” “My place is pretty free and easy.” “The neighbors across the way are all waitresses or mistresses.” “The neighbor seems to have all sorts of people coming over.” Before they had even finished crossing the bridge, they secured a roving taxi that agreed to take them to Akiba Shrine for thirty sen.

“It’s completely changed now. Where does the streetcar go all the way to?” “Mukōjima Terminal.” “In front of Akiba Shrine.” “If you take the bus, it goes straight to Tamanoi.” “Tamanoi—was it this way?”

“You know it?” “I went just once to see the sights. Five or six years back.” “It’s bustling. Every night they put up stalls, and there are shows in the empty lot too.”

“I see.”

As Taneda gazed at both sides of the passing road, the car arrived before Akiba Shrine. Sumiko reached for the door handle while saying, "Here is fine." She handed over the fare with a "Here you go," then instructed, "Let's turn there—there's a police box over that way." When they turned along the shrine's stone wall, one side became a dead-end alley where the pleasure district's lights continued. In a corner of the abruptly dark vacant lot, a sign reading "Azuma Apartments" illuminated the front of a square cement building. Sumiko slid open the door and entered, storing her sandals in the geta box marked with her room number; Taneda likewise picked up his footwear and,

“I’ll take them upstairs—because they’ll be noticeable,” said Sumiko, making the man wear her slippers while she carried her geta in hand and led the way up the front staircase.

The outer walls and windows appeared Western-style, but the interior was Japanese construction with slender pillars; at the corner of the hallway beyond the creaking staircase lay a kitchen where a woman in nothing but a chemise, bobbed hair disheveled, was boiling water in a kettle. "Good evening," Sumiko said with a light greeting and unlocked the second door from the right end with a key.

In a stained six-tatami-mat room, one wall held a closet, another stood a chest of drawers by its side, while yukata robes and boiled nightwear hung along the remaining walls. Sumiko opened the window, spread a cushion beneath it where underskirts and tabi socks hung down, and said, “It’s cool here.”

“Being alone like this is truly carefree. Marriage just becomes utterly foolish then.” “At home, they’re always telling me to come back.” “But it’s no good anymore.” “If only I had awakened a bit sooner.” “It’s too late now,” said Taneda, gazing at the sky through the window where underskirts were drying, then added as if remembering, “Could you check if there’s a vacant room?” Sumiko, apparently intending to make tea, took the kettle, went out into the hallway where she exchanged some words with other women, then promptly returned and,

“The room at the far end is available,” she said. “But the office lady isn’t here tonight.” “Then we can’t rent it,” he replied. “Not tonight.” “Wouldn’t a night or two here be fine? If you don’t mind.” “I don’t mind,” Taneda said, eyes widening. “But what about you?” “Me? I’ll sleep here. Or go to Kimi’s place next door—if her boyfriend hasn’t come.”

“Doesn’t anyone come to your place?” “Yeah.” “For now.” “So I don’t mind.” “But tempting you, Teacher, would be wrong, wouldn’t it?” Taneda kept making a peculiar expression that seemed caught between wanting to laugh and feeling pathetic, saying nothing. “After all, you have a proper wife and daughter…” “Oh, such things.” “Even if it’s a late start, I’m entering a new phase of life.” “Are you going to separate?”

“Hmm.” “Separation.” “Rather, divorce.”

“But that won’t work.” “Not so easily.”

“So I’ve been thinking.” “I don’t care if it’s rough methods or anything.” “I’ll have to disappear for a time.” “By doing so, I think an opening for the breakup will emerge.”

“Ms. Sumiko.” “If the vacant room matter isn’t settled, causing trouble won’t make amends, so I’ll just stay somewhere tonight.” “Let’s go see Tamanoi then.”

“Teacher.” “I have something I want to discuss too, you know.” “There’s this matter that’s been troubling me—I keep wondering what to do.” “Won’t you stay up tonight and talk with me?”

“These days, dawn breaks soon enough, you know.”

“When I drove to Yokohama the other day, it was already light on the way back.” “If I were to hear your life story from the very beginning—even just up to when you came to my house as a maid—it would be quite an ordeal.” “And then from when you became a waitress onward—there’s still more ahead.”

“One night might not be enough, you know.”

“Really… Ha ha ha ha.” From somewhere on the second floor that had been temporarily quiet, voices of a man and a woman began to be heard. In the kitchen area, the sound of water resumed. Sumiko, apparently serious about talking through the night, carefully untied only her obi sash and folded it neatly, placed her tabi socks atop it and stored them in the closet, then wiped down the tea table’s surface and began preparing tea while,

“What do you think is the reason I ended up like this, Teacher?” “Well, I still think it’s longing for the city—isn’t that it?”

“That’s certainly part of it, but more than anything, I hated my father’s line of work.” “What was it?” “You know—things like boss or yakuza.” Sumiko lowered her voice. “Anyway... yakuza.”

Five

When the rainy season ended and midsummer arrived—perhaps because the neighboring houses all threw open their shutters at once—sounds that had gone unheard in other seasons suddenly became conspicuous. Among all the noises, what tormented me most was the radio from the neighboring house, separated only by a single plank fence. I would wait for the evening to cool slightly and attempt to sit at my desk under the lamp, but sharp, crackling noises would surge forth precisely then, never subsiding until after nine o'clock. Among these noises, what plagued me most severely were political speeches in Kyushu dialect, naniwa-bushi ballads, and recitations resembling student theater performances blended with Western music. Apparently not content with just radios, there were also houses that blared popular songs on phonographs regardless of the hour, day or night. To escape the radio clamor, every summer I made it my habit to leave home at six o'clock—hastily finishing my evening meal, sometimes even eating out—taking six o'clock as my signal. Leaving home didn't mean the radio became inaudible. Though an even more intense din emanated from roadside houses and shops, blending with the racket of streetcars and automobiles into general urban noise, compared to sitting solitary in my study, I found walking far less bothersome and considerably more comfortable.

The draft of "Disappearance" was hindered by the radio as soon as the rainy season ended, and over ten days had already passed since its discontinuation. It seemed my creative inspiration had all but withered away in that state. This summer too, just like last year and the year before that, I left home daily while sunlight still lingered—yet in truth, there remained no destination to reach, no path worth walking. In the days when the venerable Kamiyo Shūhaō still lived, those nightly cool-seeking strolls through Ginza—which grew more intriguing with each passing evening—had been an unmissable ritual. But now that he too had departed this world, I found myself grown utterly weary of even the street’s nocturnal hues. To this was added an incident that made one inadvertently avoid Ginza-dori thereafter—a matter concerning a rickshaw driver who allegedly frequented Shinbashi geisha houses before the earthquake disaster. Now transformed into a ruffian with a murderous-looking face and disheveled appearance, he loitered around Owari-chō district, accosting former patrons he recognized with brazen demands for money.

My initial act of giving a fifty-sen silver coin at the corner of Kurozawa Store had unfortunately set a bad precedent; when denied alms, he would raise such a clamor that to avoid drawing a crowd, I found myself compelled to hand over another fifty sen. Thinking I couldn’t be the only one being pestered by this man for drinking money, one evening I tricked him into following me to the Yotsuji police box, but the officer on duty had long been acquainted with him and showed no inclination to intervene out of sheer annoyance. At the Izumocho… or rather 7-chome police box, I once saw him chatting and laughing with an officer. In the officer’s eyes, this man’s background might be better known than my own.

I redirected my strolls to the eastern bank of the Sumida River, resolving to seek respite by visiting a woman named Oyuki who dwelled in a house along the canal. After four or five days of traversing the same route, even the lengthy path from Azabu gradually ceased to feel burdensome compared to initial journeys. The transfers between Kyōbashi and Kaminarimon stations too—once habituated—no longer proved particularly troublesome, as my body began executing them ahead of conscious thought. Having discerned that crowded passenger hours and train schedules differed daily, I found that by simply avoiding these, I could leisurely read while undertaking the extended commute.

My reading aboard streetcars had been entirely abandoned since around the ninth year of Taisho when I began using reading glasses, but upon starting my commutes to Kaminarimon, I resolved to take up this practice again. However, as I had no habit of handling newspapers, magazines, or new books, on my first outing I simply took along Yoda Gakkai’s *Inkstone Twenty-Four Views*, whatever came to hand. The long embankment wound and twisted. Passing Mimeguri Shrine, the path curved slightly until arriving at Chōmei-ji Temple. One bend became where cherry trees clustered most thickly. During the Kan'ei era, Lord Tokugawa Daiyū had conducted falconry here when seized by abdominal pain. He drank from the temple well and recovered before proclaiming: "This is the water of longevity." Thus was the well named and the temple received its appellation. Later came Bashō the lay priest’s celebrated verse praising snow that resonated through generations. Ah, how fitting that this peerless lord’s name resounded through history! Yet Bashō remained but a commoner in plain robes—this account being similarly recorded for posterity.

Truly, what endures is the legacy one leaves behind. This was because I thought the writings of past Confucian scholars might lend some fascination to the scenery before my eyes.

By about the third day, I had to buy groceries during my walk. On that occasion, I also purchased gifts for the woman. This mere four or five visits produced a dual effect.

Seeing that I not only always bought nothing but canned goods but also wore shirts and jackets with missing buttons, the woman became all the more convinced I was a bachelor living in an apartment. If one were single, it would stand to reason that nightly outings like this wouldn’t arouse suspicion. There’d be no reason to suspect he couldn’t stay home because of the radio, and since he didn’t attend plays or motion pictures, there was no time wasted idly. With nowhere to go, there was no cause to think him someone who came here either. This matter resolved itself naturally without explanation, but given the nature of the place, I cautiously inquired whether suspicions might arise about my funds’ origins. Then the woman, appearing wholly unconcerned with anything beyond his paying that night’s fee,

“Even in a place like this, those who spend do spend quite a lot. There was a customer who stayed for a full month straight.” “Huh,” I exclaimed in surprise, “You don’t have to report it to the police? In a place like Yoshiwara, don’t they report it right away?” “Even in this area, some houses might report it.”

“What kind of customer stayed for a whole month? A thief?” “He was a clothier. Finally the shop’s patron came and took him away.” “That’s skipping out on payments, then.” “Most likely.”

“I’m fine. What about you?” I said, but the woman merely wore an expression of indifference and didn’t ask anything in return. However, regarding my profession, I came to realize that she had long since formed her own assumptions.

On the second-floor sliding doors were pasted ukiyo-e beauty prints, each about the size of a quartered hanshi sheet. Among them were works such as Utamaro’s *Abalone Gathering* and Toyokuni’s *Bathing Beauty*—prints I had previously seen reproduced as illustrations in the magazine *Kono Hana*. There were also those from Hokusai’s three-volume book *Fukutoku Wagōjin* from which the male figures had been removed, leaving only the females, so I provided a detailed explanation of this work. Then again, while Yukiko ascended to the second floor with her customer, I was writing something in my notebook in the single downstairs room; having glimpsed this, she seemed convinced I was a man engaged in secret publishing work, and requested that next time I come, I bring along one such book.

At home there remained remnants of what I had collected twenty or thirty years prior, so when asked, I brought three or four volumes all at once. By now, not only had my occupation been tacitly determined without a word being spoken, but the source of my ill-gotten gains too seemed to have become clear on its own. Then the woman's attitude softened even more, until she ceased treating me as a customer altogether.

That women who dwell in the shadows never respond to men skulking through society's margins with either fear or aversion, but invariably awaken within themselves feelings of intimacy and tender pity, requires no profound explanation given the multitude of historical precedents. The geisha of Kamogawa saved patriots pursued by shogunate officers, and the serving women of Kan'eki Station did not hesitate to provide travel funds to outlaw gamblers who breached checkpoints. Tosca gave food to a fleeing impoverished scholar, and Michitose never regretted offering her true feelings of love to a ruffian.

At this point, my sole concern was to avoid encountering literary scholars and newspaper reporters in the vicinity of this town or aboard Tobu Railway trains. As for other people, there was absolutely no hindrance no matter where I might meet them or be followed by them. I had been written off by strict moralists since my youth. Since even the children of my relatives no longer came near my house, there was ultimately nothing to hold me back now. The only ones to fear were the practitioners of the pen. Over a decade ago, when cafés began proliferating along Ginza’s main thoroughfare, every newspaper imaginable launched written attacks against me simply because I indulged in drink there. In April 1929, a magazine called Bungei Shunju attacked me as someone who "must not be allowed to exist" in society. Judging from their use of phrases like "virgin abduction" in that article, they likely intended to frame me as a criminal offender. If they were to detect my nightly crossings of the Sumida River to seek pleasure in the east, it would have been impossible to gauge what further schemes they might devise. This was truly to be feared.

Not only the nightly boarding and alighting from trains, but even after entering this district, the bustling main street with night stalls went without saying. Even in the narrow paths of back alleys—when crowds gathered—I had to walk while keeping an eye on all sides. This state of mind had to serve as an indispensable experiment for depicting the circumstances in which Junpei Taneda, protagonist of *Disappearance*, endured life on society’s margins.

VI

The house I stealthily frequented by the canal in Terajima-chō 7-chōme, number 60-something, I had already ascertained. This address lay tucked into the northwestern corner of this entertainment district, far from its prime location. Were one to liken this to Kitazato, Kyōmachi 1-chōme might be described as lying on the outskirts near Nishigishi.

Since this was a story I had just heard, perhaps I should adopt the manner of a casual passerby and recount the evolution of this entertainment district. Around Taisho 7 or 8 (1918–1919), when the precincts behind Asakusa Kannon Temple were narrowed and a wide road opened, all establishments like archery parlors and licensed sake houses that had long stood densely packed in that area were ordered removed, relocating haphazardly to both sides of what is still called Taisho Avenue today, where Keisei buses run. Subsequently, those driven out from areas near Denbōin’s side paths and behind Egawa Tamanojō’s residence arrived in an unbroken stream, until Taisho Avenue became lined nearly wall-to-wall with sake shops. As pedestrians began having their sleeves tugged and hats snatched even in broad daylight, the police intensified crackdowns, forcing these establishments to retreat from main streets frequented by vehicles into back alleys. In Asakusa’s old quarters, those businesses that had been located in alleys stretching from behind Ryōunkaku to Senzoku-chō north of the park had exhausted every strategy to remain, but even this effort was interrupted by the Taisho 12 earthquake disaster, causing them all to temporarily flee en masse to this area. After urban reconstruction, some formed a geisha house association called Nishimiban and changed professions, but the prosperity of this land grew increasingly vibrant, eventually reaching a state that could be described as semi-permanent as seen today. Initially, the only transportation link to the city ran via Shirahige Bridge, so until around last year when Keisei tram service was discontinued, the area near its station remained the most bustling.

However, around the time of the Urban Reconstruction Festival's implementation in spring of Showa 5 [1930], a straight road was opened from Azumabashi to Terajima-chō. City streetcars extended their service to Akiba Shrine's front, while municipal buses further prolonged their routes to establish a depot at Terajima-chō 7-chōme's outskirts. Simultaneously, Tobu Railway Company established Tamanoi Station southwest of the entertainment district, and with trains now transporting people from Kaminarimon for six sen until midnight, the town's layout underwent a complete transformation between its front and back areas. The alleys that had once been the most labyrinthine became the easiest to traverse, while what was formerly considered the district's central hub now found itself relegated to the periphery. Yet despite this, institutions like banks, post offices, bathhouses, vaudeville theaters, motion picture halls, and Tamanoi Inari Shrine remained unchanged along Taisho Avenue. The newly dubbed "Vulgar Boulevard" or "Reform Road" displayed only a convergence of entaku taxis and the bustle of night stalls—devoid of police boxes or public toilets. Even in such a remote newly developed town as this, the vicissitudes of prosperity and decline accompanying the times were unavoidable. How much more so in the span of a human life?

The house by the canal where I had suddenly felt at ease—the house where the woman called Yukiko lived—stood in a corner of this district that still evoked the bustling heyday of the Taisho pioneering period. To someone like me, left behind by the times, it seemed to hold some profound connection. The house lay deep within an alley branching from Taisho Avenue—past Fushimi Inari Shrine with its soiled banners, following the ditch further inward—so that even the din of radios and gramophones from the main thoroughfare faded beneath the footsteps of onlookers, scarcely audible. On summer nights, there could be no place better suited than this to escape the clamor of radios.

In this entertainment district, according to association regulations, from four o'clock in the afternoon when the women take their seats by the windows, gramophones and radios are prohibited, and they even forbid the playing of shamisens. On evenings when rain fell in hushed whispers and night deepened, the occasional street calls would dwindle away, letting the swarms of mosquitoes humming inside and outside the house command the air—a desolation so quintessentially evocative of back alleys in the city's frayed margins. Yet this was not the squalid lanes of modern Showa, but rather that bleak melancholy of bygone eras one discerns in Tsuruya Nanboku's kabuki plays.

The sight of Yukiko always wearing her hair in either a Shimada or marumage style, the filth of the ditch, and the hum of mosquitoes all sharply stimulated my senses, vividly recreating phantom visions of a past that had vanished thirty or forty years prior. I wished to express my gratitude as openly as possible to the purveyor of these ephemeral yet uncanny visions. Yuki-san was an even more skillful silent artist in summoning the past than actors performing Tsuruya Nanboku’s kabuki plays or a certain Tsuruga narrating *Rancho*.

I would gaze fixedly at Yuki-san as she cradled the rice tub to serve portions, then noisily shoveled down her ochazuke with a rustling sound—all under dim electric light amidst the ceaseless drone of ditch mosquitoes—and in those moments, the forms of women I’d grown intimately familiar with in my youth would rise vividly before me, along with the very layouts of their dwellings. It was not only my own. Even the women connected to my friends began to surface in memory. In those days, terms like 'boyfriend' for men and 'girlfriend' for women, or phrases such as 'love nest' to describe a couple’s modest abode, had not yet been coined. A woman one was intimate with wasn’t addressed as “kimi” or “anta”—simply “omae” sufficed. There were husbands who called their wives "Okaa" and wives who addressed their husbands as "Chan."

Even today, if one crosses east over the Sumida River, the droning chorus of mosquitoes in the ditch still sings of desolation in these backwater towns, unchanged from thirty years past—yet Tokyo’s language has transformed utterly within this last decade. Having tidied that space—hangs the mosquito net Already sweltering without it—the cotton net Throughout the house—autumn’s western sun at ditch’s edge In this humble abode—even the fan broken—autumn heat persists Mending and mending holes in the net—September From within the wastebasket too—emerging mosquitoes buzz

A wall counting remaining mosquitoes—watermarks from rain. This mosquito net too—perhaps turned to wine—autumn’s end.

This was an old verse I had composed that I suddenly recalled one night upon seeing a mosquito net hung in the tearoom of Yukiko’s house. Half were verses I composed when periodically visiting my deceased friend Aa Aa-kun, who had been living clandestinely with a lover forbidden by his parents in a rowhouse behind Fukagawa Chōkeiji Temple—this would have been around Meiji 43 or 44. That night Yukiko-san suddenly developed a toothache and crawled out from under the mosquito net while explaining she had just retreated to bed by the window moments earlier, but finding no place to sit, settled down beside me on the raised threshold.

“You’re later than usual, aren’t you?” “You shouldn’t keep someone waiting so long.” Her manner of speech and general demeanor, ever since people had presumed my profession to be something requiring social discretion, showed a tendency to overstep familiar boundaries and verge on outright licentiousness. “That was my fault.” “A bad tooth?”

“It came on suddenly.” “My head nearly spun off.” “See how swollen it is?” She turned her profile toward me. “You’ll watch the place, won’t you? I’m going to the dentist now—back in a flash.” “Near here?” “Just before the inspection station.” “Then by the public market.” “You.” She narrowed her eyes. “Must’ve walked every alley to know that so well.” “Philanderer.” “Cruel woman.” “No need to be so harsh.” “This humble vessel hasn’t earned its stripes yet.”

“Then I’ll leave it to you. If they keep me waiting too long, I’ll come back.” “So you kept me waiting and left me out in the cold... Is that how it is? There’s nothing to be done about it.”

As the woman’s manner of speech grew increasingly coarse, I found myself adjusting my tone to match hers. This was not a means to conceal one’s status. Regardless of place or person, when interacting with modern people, I made it a practice to use the same language as my interlocutor, much like one would speak a foreign tongue when abroad. "If someone opposite says 'my country' using 'ora,' then I too will use 'ora' instead of 'watakushi.'" Though this digression strayed somewhat from our tale, I found that while learning colloquial speech came easily when interacting with modern people, exchanging written correspondence proved rather challenging. Particularly when composing replies to women’s letters—changing “watashi” to “atashi,” shortening “keredomo” to “kedo,” and appending “-sei” to everything like “necessity” or “gravity”—unlike when playfully mimicking such speech in half-jest, the act of committing this to paper inevitably stirred an unbearable sense of revulsion. What one longs for is, in all things, an irretrievable past—and indeed that very day, among the items I was airing out, I discovered old letters from a woman who had been a courtesan at Yanagibashi before being kept in the Mukōjima Koume no Sato quarter. In an era when letters necessarily had to employ the classical epistolary style (*sōrōbun*), women of that time, upon drawing an inkstone near and taking up a brush—even if they lacked knowledge of characters—seem to have naturally recalled the cadence of "*sōrō beku sōrō*." I disregarded people’s ridicule and recorded this here.

I humbly pen this missive. I have been remiss in corresponding since then and can offer no justification—I humbly beg your forgiveness. Regarding personal matters, as my previous residence has become truly cramped, I humbly inform you that I have relocated to this middle-right district. Though I find myself utterly incapable of voicing this matter, as there exists a trifling affair I wish to humbly convey once granted an audience, I earnestly entreat you to arrange your affairs and deign to visit at your earliest convenience—I shall await your arrival with utmost anticipation. I earnestly entreat you to grace me with your presence at the earliest opportunity; prior matters shall be attended to during our audience. From ◯◯

Beneath Takeya’s ferry landing exists a bathhouse known as Miyakoyu. I humbly entreat you to make inquiry at the greengrocer’s. As the weather proves most agreeable, I would humbly propose that at your convenience you might invite Mr. Aa Aa as well to accompany me on an excursion to Horikiri—how does this prospect appear to your consideration even before being apprised of it? I make this inquiry with utmost deference. However, there exists no necessity for your gracious reply.

The textual substitutions of “hikiutsuri” as “shikiutsuri” and “hiru mae” as “shiru mae” constituted phonetic errors stemming from Tokyo’s Shitamachi dialect. Takeya Ferry was now abolished along with Makurabashi Ferry, leaving no trace of either. Where should I seek the remnants of my youth to mourn them?

VII

After Yukiko had left, I sat by the hem of the partially lowered old mosquito net, swatting mosquitoes alone while occasionally tending to the charcoal fire buried in the long brazier and the boiling water. No matter how sweltering the evening, in this district it was customary to bring tea from below as a signal when a customer had arrived upstairs, so no household had ever let their fire or hot water go out.

“Hey. Hey.” A low voice called and rapped on the window. I thought this was likely one of her regular customers and peered out to see whether I should emerge or not, when the man outside inserted his hand through the window frame, unhooked the latch, opened the door, and entered inside. Clad in a pale yukata with a soft sash tied about his waist, he had a rustic round face sporting a mustache and appeared to be around fifty. In his hand, he held something wrapped in a furoshiki cloth. From his appearance and features, I immediately surmised he must be Yukiko’s patron, and without waiting for him to speak first—

“Yuki-san said she’s going to the doctor for some reason—I just met her outside.”

The man who appeared to be her patron seemed to already know about the situation. “She’ll be back soon. Wait here,” he said without showing any suspicion toward my presence, then unwrapped the furoshiki bundle, took out a small aluminum pot, and placed it inside the tea cabinet. Seeing that he had brought side dishes for a late-night meal, there could be no doubt he was her patron. “Yuki-san is always bustling about—how commendable.” I thought I had to say some compliment instead of a greeting, and so I said that.

“What is it? Well...” The patron, also seemingly at a loss for how to respond, uttered something meaningless to this effect before occupying himself solely with adjusting the brazier’s fire and checking the water’s temperature. He wouldn’t even look me in the face. Since he turned his face aside as if deliberately avoiding conversation, I too remained silent. The meeting between the proprietor of such establishments and their patrons was an exceedingly awkward affair for both parties. The relationship between proprietors and customers in brothels, teahouses, geisha houses, and similar establishments was much the same; whenever these two parties engaged in conversation, it was invariably centered around some woman and marked by an extremely awkward disturbance—indeed, such dialogue likely held no necessity whatsoever unless such circumstances arose.

The mosquito-repellent incense that Yukiko always burned at the shop entrance appeared not to have been lit even once tonight, and as the swarming mosquitoes not only stung their faces but tried to fly into their mouths, even the proprietor—who should have been accustomed to the locale—after sitting for a while could no longer endure it; he twisted the handle of the electric fan placed by the threshold of the inner partition, but it seemed broken and would not turn. When they finally found fragments of mosquito-repellent incense in the brazier’s drawer, the two inadvertently exchanged relieved glances, so I seized this opportunity—

“The mosquitoes are dreadful everywhere this year. The heat’s been exceptional too, hasn’t it?” he said.

“Is that so.” “This place was originally reclaimed land—they never properly built up the ground,” the proprietor reluctantly began. “Even so, the roads have improved, haven’t they?” “Above all, they’ve become much more convenient.”

“In exchange, the regulations have grown stricter on every matter.”

“Right.” “Two or three years back, they’d take your hat right off you if you passed through.” “As for that, even those of us here were in a real bind.” “Even if you had business, you couldn’t pass through, you see.” “Even if they told the women that, they couldn’t monitor every single instance, so they had no choice but to start imposing fines.” “If they’re caught going outside the shop to solicit customers, it’s a forty-two-yen fine.” “And then they made it a violation of the rules to send out solicitors around the park as well.”

“Is that also a fine?”

“Right.” “How much is that?”

When I was trying to indirectly inquire about local conditions, a man’s voice called “Ando-san,” and someone slipped a piece of paper through the window before leaving. At the same moment Yukiko returned, picked up that paper, and placed it on the brazier’s edge; peeking at it, I saw it was a mimeographed circular about the search for a robbery suspect. Yukiko paid no attention to such things. “Father,” she said without so much as glancing at them, “they say I have to get it pulled tomorrow.” “This tooth,” she said, turning her open mouth toward the proprietor.

“Well then, seems you won’t be needing anything to eat tonight,” the proprietor began to rise, but I deliberately took out money and handed it to Yukiko, then went ahead alone up to the second floor. The second floor had a three-tatami-mat room with a window where a tea table was placed, followed by only two rooms—a six-tatami-mat space and another of about four and a half tatami mats. The house appeared to have originally been a single structure partitioned into two units—front and back—with the lower level containing only a living room and neither kitchen nor rear entrance, while the second floor’s four-and-a-half-tatami-mat room beyond the staircase landing had walls consisting merely of paper-covered thin boards, through which every noise and conversation from the neighboring unit could be heard with startling clarity. I would often press my ear against the wall and laugh.

“At it again, are you?” “And in this heat too.”

Yukiko, having come upstairs, immediately went to the three-tatami-mat room with a window, pushed aside the faded patterned curtain, and said, “Come over here. The breeze is nice.” “Oh, they’re lit up again.” “It’s gotten somewhat cooler than earlier. Indeed, a nice breeze.” Immediately below the window was blocked by a reed sunshade, but across the ditch I could surprisingly see far into the distance—the second floors of houses lined opposite, women’s faces seated at windows, figures coming and going, and scenes throughout the entire alleyway. The sky above the roofs hung heavily like lead, stars invisible, while neon signs along the main street tinged even the midair pale red—all of which made the sweltering night feel even more oppressive. Yukiko took a zabuton, placed it on the windowsill, and sat down on it. After gazing at the sky for a while, she suddenly grasped my hand. “Hey, you,” she said. “If I pay off my debts... would you make me your wife?”

“It’s just as I expected.” “There’s no helping it.” “So you mean I’m not qualified?” “If I couldn’t feed you properly， then I wouldn’t be qualified either.” Yukiko said nothing， humming along with a violin melody drifting from the alley’s end—so when I， without conscious intent， tried meeting her gaze， she abruptly stood up as if evading， stretched one hand gripping a pillar， and thrust half her body outward like leaning into darkness.

“It’s already been ten years…” I sat down before the tea table and lit a hand-rolled cigarette.

“You.” “How old are you, really?” Looking up at Yukiko’s face as she turned toward me and saw that she was pulling her cheek into its usual one-sided dimple, I found myself feeling inexplicably reassured,

“I’ll be sixty soon.” “Papa.” “Sixty?” “You’re still holding up well.” Yukiko studied my face intently. “You,” she said. “You’re not even forty yet. “Thirty-seven or eight, I wonder.”

“I’m the child of a mistress, so my real age isn’t known.”

“You look young for forty. “Your hair doesn’t show it at all.”

“I was born in Meiji 31, you know.” “Forty, then.”

“How old do I look?” “You look twenty-one or twenty-two, but I’d say around forty.” “You. “That silver tongue of yours won’t do.” “I’m twenty-six.”

“Yuki-chan, you said you used to be a geisha in Utsunomiya, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” “Why did you come here? You knew this area well.” “I was in Tokyo for a time.” “Was there something you needed money for?” “Well, not exactly... The patron died of illness, and then there was also a bit…” “It must have been a shock when you weren’t used to it. The way things work here differs from geisha houses.” “Not really. I knew what this entailed from the start. Geishas keep losing money on expenses—their debts never clear. And besides... if you’re going to lower yourself into this life, better pay makes it all worthwhile in the end.”

“To have thought that far through is truly admirable. Did you come up with that all on your own?” “When I was a geisha, there was someone I knew from the teahouse who worked in this district—that’s how I heard about it.” “Even so, that’s impressive. Once the new year arrives, you’ll earn your own keep and save whatever you can, won’t you.” “They say my age suits this line of work.” “But I don’t know where I’m headed.” “Don’t you think?” Because my face was being stared at so intently, I once again felt a strangely uneasy sensation. Though I dismissed the possibility, this peculiar sensation akin to something lodged between my back teeth made me want to turn my face toward the empty sky this time.

At the edge of the sky where neon signs from the main street were reflected, lightning had been flashing intermittently since earlier when suddenly a sharp light pierced one’s eyes. Yet no thunderclap followed, and with the wind abruptly dying down, it seemed as though the evening’s swelter had come surging back with renewed force.

“It looks like an evening shower’s coming.” “You.” “The hairdresser left… It’s been three months now, you know.” To my ears, this drawn-out “It’s been three months now, you know,” with its lingering “you know,” sounded as though imbued with boundless sentiment—as if reminiscing about some distant past. Had she simply stated “It’s been three months” or “Yes, three months now,” it might have sounded like ordinary conversation—but her drawn-out “you know” seemed less an exclamation than a subtle prompt for my response, so I swallowed even the tentative “I see…” and answered only with my eyes.

While Yukiko—being one who entertained countless men entering the alleyway nightly—continued to remember the day we first met, I found it inconceivable that such a thing could be possible. To think back to that first day must be seen as her doing so to fondly recall that time in her heart. However, I had never dreamed that the women of this district—though they themselves perceived my age as around forty—could harbor feelings of affection or any similarly tender emotions toward an old man like myself.

That I came visiting so frequently every night was due to various reasons, as I had already described several times before. On-site research for "Disappearance". Flight from the radio's clamor. An aversion to the capital's pivotal districts like Ginza and Marunouchi. There were other reasons too, but none were matters one could speak of to a woman. I had simply been using Yukiko's house as a resting spot during my nightly walks, though maintaining this arrangement required convenient lies uttered offhand. While never intending deliberate deception, I neglected to correct her initial misapprehension—indeed, indulged in words and deeds that deepened the misunderstanding on a whim—thereby obscuring my true station. This particular culpability might prove inescapable.

I may well say that not only in this Tokyo but even in the West, I had known almost no society beyond the quarters of prostitution. I had no desire to recount its origins here, nor was there any need to do so. Should some tipsy enthusiast wish to know what manner of person I might be, let them read the dialogue *Hirusugi* that I wrote in middle age. Were they to peruse even such inferior writings as my essay *A Mistress’s Abode* or the novel *Unattained Dreams*, they would grasp more than half my meaning without further explanation. That said, their prose being crude and tediously verbose—troublesome to read in full—I shall here excerpt a passage from *Unattained Dreams*: "The reason he maintained the vigor to frequent the demimonde day after day lay precisely in his full understanding that it was an unjust and shadowed quarter. For had society praised libertines as it did loyal retainers and filial sons, he would not have sought such acclaim even at the cost of relinquishing his estate. Righteous indignation toward the hypocritical vanity of lawful wives and the fraudulent activities of so-called upright society proved the sole force that drove him to seek refuge in what had been known from the first as an unjust and shadowed realm. In essence, he took greater delight in discovering remnants of exquisite embroidery upon a cast-off rag than in finding the myriad stains that mar walls proclaimed spotless. Just as bird and rodent droppings litter even palaces of justice, so too within vice's valley might one gather abundant flowers of human compassion and fragrant fruits born of tears."

The reader of these words will at least infer this much: that I neither deeply feared nor found ugly the women living amid the stench of open ditches and the hum of mosquitoes—indeed, that I rather felt a sense of familiarity with them even before laying eyes on them. I thought it better to conceal my current status if I were to become close with them—or at least avoid being kept at a respectful distance by them. For them to think of me as someone of a status who need not come to such a place was exceedingly painful. I wanted to avoid at all costs being misunderstood as looking down on their unfortunate lives from above as though watching a play. For that, there was no alternative but to conceal my status.

There already existed concrete instances of being told I wasn’t the sort to frequent such places. One night, near the end of Kaisei-dori by the municipal bus garage, I was stopped by a police officer and subjected to questioning. I found it equally disagreeable both to proclaim myself a literary scholar or professional writer and to have others perceive me as such; therefore, in response to the officer’s questioning, I answered as usual that I was an idle vagrant with no occupation. When the officer proceeded to strip off my jacket and inspect my belongings, the precautionary measures I had prepared for encountering suspicious interrogations during my nightly walks—my personal seal, seal registration certificate, and family register extract—were all contained within my satchel. Moreover, since there were payments due the following morning to carpenters, gardeners, and used bookstores, three or four hundred yen in cash had been placed in the wallet. The officer appeared surprised, suddenly began calling me a wealthy man, and declared, “This isn’t a place for someone like you—a proper gentleman.” “Go on home now—if there’s been some mistake, come back properly another time,” he said, and upon seeing me still dawdling, raised his hand to hail an En-Taxi, even going out of his way to open the door for me.

I had no choice but to board the automobile and take the road called the Ring Line from Kaisei-dori. In other words, I had circled around the outer perimeter of the labyrinth and alighted near the alley entrance to Fushimi Inari. Ever since then, I bought a map to study the routes and made sure not to pass in front of police boxes late at night.

Now that Yuki-san had brought up the day of our first meeting in such a reminiscent tone, I found myself at a loss for words and, wanting to hide at least my face within the cigarette smoke, took out another cigarette. Yukiko stared fixedly at me with her large, dark eyes,

“You.” “It’s a perfect likeness.” “That night when I saw your back... I was so startled...” “I see.” “Feigned resemblances to others—that’s a common enough thing.” I did my utmost to conceal the sentiment that it was, well, rather pleasing. “And—to whom...” “Do you resemble the dead patron?”

“No. “Back when I first became a geisha…” “If we couldn’t be together… I thought I’d die.” “When someone flies into a passion, anyone might feel that way for a moment…” “You too… “Someone like you wouldn’t feel that way, would you?” “Calm, aren’t you?” “But people aren’t always what they seem, you know.” “I’m not one to be so easily underestimated.” Yukiko formed a smile with one dimple and said nothing. The single dimple—naturally carved deep into the right corner of her mouth where the lower lip protruded slightly—typically lent Yukiko’s features a girlish innocence, but on that night alone, it appeared ineffably lonely, like a smile forcibly formed. I, to divert attention from the situation,

“Did your tooth start hurting again?” “No. I just had an injection earlier, so it’s fine now.”

At that very moment when the conversation lapsed once more, fortunately, what seemed to be a regular customer came knocking at the shop door. Yukiko suddenly stood up, leaned halfway out the window, and peered down through the slats of the blinds,

“Oh, Mr. Take.” “Please do come up.”

After she hurried down, I followed suit and descended as well. Concealing myself in the toilet for a time, I waited until the customer had gone upstairs before slipping out without a sound.

VIII

The evening shower that had seemed imminent showed no sign of arriving. Fearing the sweltering heat of the communal room where embers still smoldered and the swarms of mosquitoes, I had gone out for a time. But as it still seemed too early to return home, I slipped through the alley along the ditch and emerged onto the main side street there—also spanned by a plank bridge. With festival vendors lining both sides, the road—already too narrow for automobiles—became even more constricted, forcing pedestrians to jostle through the crowd as they walked. To the right of the plank bridge was immediately a crossroads with a horse meat shop at the corner. Across the intersection stood a stone monument engraved "Sōtō Sect Tōshōji Temple," the torii gate of Tamanoi Inari Shrine, and a public telephone. From Yukiko's stories, I recalled that this Inari shrine held its festival days on both the second and twentieth of each month; how festival nights brought liveliness only to the outer streets while alleyways saw fewer customers, leading the window women to call it Poverty Inari. Mingling with the crowd, I went to see the shrine I had never yet visited.

Up until now I had neglected to write of this, but once both mind and body had grown accustomed to nightly visits to this lively district, I began making it a practice—emulating those who strolled through the night stalls hereabouts—to alter my attire before setting out. This was no particular trouble. Unfastening the collar button of my striped white shirt with fold-over collars and omitting the necktie; carrying my suit jacket rather than wearing it; going hatless; leaving my hair disheveled as if never combed; changing into trousers worn through at knees and seat. Going shoeless; seeking out old geta with heels worn down to the base; restricting myself strictly to Bat cigarettes; et cetera et cetera. Hence no difficulty whatsoever. In essence, I need only shed my study clothes or reception attire, change into yard-work garments, and slip into the maid’s cast-off geta.

By wearing old trousers and old geta, digging out an old hand towel to tie around my head in the most disheveled manner, even were I to go as far south as Sunamachi or north from Senju to Kasai-Kanamachi, no passerby would turn to look at my face. Since I appeared like any resident out shopping, I could freely venture into alleys and side streets without concern. This unsightly attire embodied the sentiment of “Dwelling in ground-floor tenements—how cool the second floor!” and proved most suited to Tokyo’s climate during seasons of fierce heat. Adopting this disheveled look akin to a dazed rickshaw puller meant I could spit wherever I pleased—whether on streets or inside streetcars—and discard cigarette butts, match ends, paper scraps, banana peels without compunction. At any park I chose—whether sprawling starfish-style across benches and lawns to snore or bellowing naniwabushi ballads—all became permissible; through this attire one harmonized not merely with the climate but with Tokyo’s very architecture, feeling precisely like a denizen of this reborn metropolis.

As for the curious custom of women venturing outdoors clad in but a single undergarment they call appa-pa, I shall refrain from discussing it here, deferring instead to the treatise on the matter found in my friend Mr. Sato Yosai’s collected essays. With old geta—unaccustomed to being worn barefoot—clapped onto my feet, I walked through the crowd toward the Inari shrine at the far end of the alley across the way, taking care not to trip over objects or have my feet stepped on by others, lest I injure myself. Here too the night stalls continued, and the somewhat wider vacant lot beside the shrine had been transformed by a nurseryman’s rows of potted roses, lilies, summer chrysanthemums, and others into an unseasonal flowerbed. Seeing the names of contributors to Tōshōji Temple’s main hall construction funds arrayed like a plank fence in one corner of the vacant lot, I surmised that unless this temple had burned down, it might have been relocated from elsewhere like Tamanoi Inari Shrine.

I purchased a pot of everlasting summer flowers, exited through a different alley, and emerged onto the Taisho Road I had come from. A short distance ahead, there was a police box on the right. Tonight, dressed similarly to the people around here and even holding a flowerpot, I thought I’d be safe enough, but deeming avoidance wiser than persistence, I turned back and veered onto a street corner where a sake shop and a fruit store stood. The alleyways behind the row of shops lining one side of this road were what they called the Labyrinth of Part One. The canal that cut through Part Two—where Yukiko’s house stood—suddenly emerged at the edge of Part One’s roadside, flowed past the bathhouse Nakajima-yu with its noren curtain hung low, and vanished into the pitch-dark tenements beyond the licensed district. I could not help but succumb to a sentimental mood unbefitting an old man, imagining that even this canal—now appearing filthier than the Iron-Oxide Canal that once encircled the Northern Pleasure Quarters—must have been a clear stream in Terajima Town’s pastoral days, where dragonflies alighted upon water plants’ blossoms. The festival street stalls were not set up on this street. When I came before the Chinese restaurant Kyushu-tei with its neon sign glowing high above, the lights of automobiles running along Kaisei Road became visible, and the sound of phonographs could be heard.

The flowerpot being rather heavy, I did not go toward Kaisei Road but turned right at Kyushu-tei's crossroads and entered this street—the most bustling and narrowest thoroughfare where to the right lay hidden Parts One and Two of the Labyrinth, and to the left one block of Part Three, with kimono shops, women's Western clothing stores, and Western-style restaurants all present. A postbox also stood. It was surely around this postbox that Yukiko, caught in an evening shower on her way back from the hairdresser, had dashed under my umbrella.

In the depths of my heart, the unease I had felt when Yukiko half-jokingly revealed a fragment of her emotions still lingered... I knew almost nothing of Yukiko's history. She claimed to have been a geisha somewhere, but since she seemed unfamiliar with Nagauta or Kiyomoto ballads, I couldn't be sure of that either. Though without concrete basis, my initial impression that she resembled a woman from a moderately respectable house in Yoshiwara or Suzaki might ironically have been accurate after all.

Her speech bore no trace of regional dialect, yet the refinement of her features and clarity of her complexion proved she was no native of Tokyo or its environs, leading me to conclude she must have been born to those who migrated to the capital from distant provinces. Her nature was cheerful, and she did not deeply lament her present circumstances. Rather, she appeared to possess both the vitality and intellect to consider using experience gained from these circumstances as capital to somehow establish her way of life. That her feelings toward men had not yet become entirely jaded was evident from how she listened without suspicion even to the improvised remarks that fell from my lips. The mere fact that Yukiko compelled me to think this way already rendered her—when compared to the long-serving café waitresses of Ginza or Ueno's grand establishments—someone who could be called both honest and pure. One might even say she still retained an earnest quality about her.

In comparing the café waitresses around Ginza with the women of the windows, I felt that the latter were still more worthy of affection and that one could still speak of human emotions with them; as for the street scenes, when I compared both, I found that the latter caused far less discomfort by neither vaunting superficial beauty in a shallow manner nor being mere facades. The roadside was lined with food stalls in the same manner, but here there were no drunkards roaming in scattered groups, nor were there the bloody brawls commonplace elsewhere. Though decently attired in Western clothing, middle-aged men with ill-favored countenances—their professions impossible to discern—walked boldly cutting through the air with their shoulders, swinging canes, singing songs, and berating passing women: a sight unseen in any town beyond Ginza. Yet once one donned old geta and old trousers and came to this outskirts district, even on the most crowded nights, there was less danger than walking through Ginza’s back alleys, and the nuisance of constantly yielding the path here and there was also diminished.

The bustling alley with its postbox reached its lively peak around the kimono shops, but beyond that point grew increasingly desolate, marked by rice dealers, greengrocers, and fish cake shops becoming conspicuous. When I finally arrived where the lumberyard's timber stacks leaned against walls, my well-trodden steps—without awaiting conscious direction—turned immediately toward the alley mouth between the bicycle parking shed and hardware store. Within this alley, the stained banner of Fushimi Inari could immediately be seen, yet the sightseers seemed not to notice, as the comings and goings of people were remarkably fewer compared to other alley entrances. Taking advantage of this, I always slipped in through this alley entrance, and while regarding the fig tree growing behind the main street houses and the grapevines entwined around the fence along the ditch as incongruous scenery, I made a habit of peering into Yukiko's window.

It appeared there were still customers on the second floor—lamplight casting shadows on the curtains, the lower window left open. As the radio out front had just fallen silent, I quietly placed the festival flowerpot inside through the window and that night made straight for Shirahige Bridge. A Keisei bus bound for Asakusa approached from behind, but since I didn't know exactly where the stop was, I kept walking while looking for it until before long I saw the bridge's lights glimmering ahead.

＊　　　　　　　　＊　　　　　　　　＊

I had yet to complete even a single chapter of the novel Disappearance that I began drafting at summer's start. Reflecting on Yukiko's remark tonight—"March is coming"—the day I first put brush to paper had been earlier still. The draft's final passage concluded with Junpei Taneda leading Sumiko, the café waitress who shared his rented room, to Shirahige Bridge on a sweltering night—there to cool themselves while discussing their uncertain futures. Thus I did not turn along the embankment but crossed straight over the bridge and leaned against its railing.

When first establishing the framework for *Disappearance*, I had decided that Sumiko - a twenty-four-year-old café waitress - and Taneda, then fifty-one, would casually enter into an affair; but as my writing progressed, I began to feel this arrangement somehow unnatural, and so along with the intense summer heat, I accordingly suspended my work. Yet now, as I leaned against the bridge railing listening to the bon dance music and singing voices drifting from the downstream park while recalling Yukiko’s tone and demeanor when she had leaned against the second-floor window earlier and said “March is coming,” the affair between Sumiko and Taneda did not feel unnatural in the least. There was no need to dismantle it as mere dramatization created by the author for their convenience. I began to feel that changing the initial plan midway might rather bring about unfavorable results.

When I hired a taxi from Kaminarimon and returned home, after washing my face and fixing my hair as usual, I immediately burned incense in the incense burner by the inkstone. And I reread the final section of the discontinued draft. “What's that over there? A factory?” “A gas company or something, I suppose. They say that area used to have beautiful scenery long ago. I read it in a novel.” “Shall we walk over and see? It's not that late yet.” “If you cross over there, there's a police box right away, you know.”

“I see.” “Let’s go back then.” “It’s exactly as if we’re hiding from the world after doing something wrong.” “You.” “Don’t speak so loud… please.”

“……” “There’s no telling who might be listening…” “You’re right. But living concealed from society—this being my first experience of it—somehow leaves me with an indescribable, unforgettable feeling.” “There’s that song about retreating from the world, isn’t there? …living deep in the mountains.” “Sumi. Since last night I’ve suddenly felt somehow younger. Even just last night alone felt vibrantly alive.”

"It's all about one's state of mind." "Don't go getting pessimistic." "You're absolutely right." "But no matter what, I'm not young anymore." "I'll likely be discarded soon." "There you go again." "There's no need to even think about such things." "I'm about to turn thirty myself." "Besides, I've already done what I needed to do—from now on I want to try getting serious about earning properly." "So you're truly planning to open an oden shop?"

“Tomorrow morning Teru-chan is coming, so I intend to hand over just the deposit.” “That’s why please leave your money untouched for now. Alright?” “As we talked about last night, that’s the best way.” “But if that’s the case…” “No.” “That’s the best way.” “If you have savings put aside, it’ll give us security later on, so I plan to put out all the money I have for a lump payment and buy up all the rights and everything else.” “Whichever way we do it, that method brings more benefit.”

“Is Teru-chan reliable? After all, this involves money.” “There’s no need to worry. That girl has funds—her backer is none other than the Patron of Tamanoi Palace.” “What exactly is that?” “He owns multiple shops and houses in Tamanoi. Already around seventy, but still vigorous. That… He used to be a customer who occasionally visited the café.” “Hmm.” “They told me too—if I’m going to run something, I might as well manage one of his establishments rather than an oden shop. Teru-chan has spoken to the Patron about both the shop and location, saying she’ll introduce a good one. But back then I was completely alone—no one to consult with, and it wasn’t like I could handle it myself—so I thought something manageable alone would be better, like an oden shop or a stand.”

“I see. So that’s why you chose that location.” “Teru-chan has her mother lend money.” “She’s quite the entrepreneur.”

“She may be shrewd, but she doesn’t go around deceiving people.”

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

IX

Though September neared its midpoint, not only did the lingering summer heat show no signs of retreating—it seemed to have grown even fiercer than during August itself. Days followed one upon another where winds battering the bamboo blinds would occasionally produce properly autumnal resonances, yet these same gusts would invariably die away completely each evening, leaving nights that sweltered increasingly as darkness deepened—as though one stood in a Kansai town—with the damp heat persisting relentlessly through countless such days.

Between preparing drafts and airing out my library, I found myself unexpectedly busy and did not venture outside for about three days.

The lingering summer afternoons spent airing out my library and the windless early winter days burning fallen leaves in the garden—these remained the greatest pleasures of my solitary existence. For airing books created opportunities to gaze upon volumes long bundled away on high shelves, letting me recollect when I first pored over them and recognize shifts in both eras and my own tastes. For burning fallen leaves held its joy in how it made one forget—if only briefly—their existence within the urban world. Having completed just the airing of old books at last, I slipped into my usual torn trousers and old wooden clogs the moment dinner ended that day and stepped outside—the lamp on the gatepost already glowed. Despite the lingering heat of evening calm, days had grown astonishingly short.

Though it had been merely three days, upon stepping outside I felt as though I had neglected some long-overdue destination without reason, and in an effort to shorten even part of the journey time, I boarded the subway from Kyobashi's tram transfer station. Although I had been accustomed to carousing since youth, that visiting women now filled me with such restless agitation was something I could truthfully say I hadn't experienced in thirty years—this was no exaggeration. From Kaminarimon I took a taxi again and soon arrived at the usual alley entrance. The usual Fushimi Inari. When I glanced up, all four or five of the utterly soiled votive banners had been renewed, the red ones vanished entirely, leaving only white ones now. By the usual canal edge were the usual fig tree and grapevines, yet their foliage had thinned somewhat, and even in this heat—even in this alley forsaken by the world—autumn quietly announced its deepening presence night after night.

Yukiko’s face, visible in the usual window, tonight no longer bore her usual collapsed shimada knot but had changed to what they call a peony chignon—as if she had carefully arranged a ginkgo-leaf twist—so as I approached, peering from this side and suspecting I might have mistaken her identity, Yukiko impatiently slid open the door. “You,” she called out sharply, then suddenly softened her tone: “I was worried. But still… well, it’s good you’re here.”

At first unable to grasp her meaning, I sat down at the entrance without removing my clogs. “It was in the newspaper. Since it seemed a bit different, I thought it probably wasn’t you, but I was terribly worried.”

"I see." Having finally grasped her meaning, I too abruptly lowered my voice. "I wouldn't make such a clumsy mistake." "I'm always being careful." "What on earth happened? "When I see your face there's clearly nothing wrong, but when the one who should come doesn't come, it feels strangely lonesome somehow." "But Yukiko-chan must still be busy as ever." "The heat makes things predictable." "No matter how busy I might get." "This year's heat truly won't let up," I remarked—at which moment Yukiko pressed her palm against my forehead to crush a settled mosquito while whispering, "Keep quiet now."

The mosquitoes inside the house seemed to have multiplied beyond their previous numbers, their stinging needles appearing to have grown both sharper and thicker. Yukiko wiped the blood from my forehead and her own hand with a folded paper, then showed me the stained sheet while whispering “Hush now—look at this,” before crumpling it into her palm. “If these mosquitoes vanished, it’d be year’s end.” “True enough. They might’ve lingered through last year’s Tori-no-Machi festival.” “Still using tanbo measurements here?” I asked, then catching myself in anachronism: “Do folks still take Yoshiwara’s back ways these days?”

“Yes,” Yukiko replied while noticing the jingling bell sound, then stood and went to the window. “Kan-chan.” “It’s here.” “What are you dawdling around for?” “Two ice shiratama… and while you’re at it, buy some mosquito coils.” “Good kid.” Remaining seated by the window, she was both teased by passing gawkers and teased them back in turn. In between these interactions, separated by the Osaka-style lattice partition, she would also initiate conversation with me. The ice vendor arrived with the specially ordered items, apologizing for having kept us waiting.

“You.” “You’ll eat shiratama, won’t you?” “Today I’m treating you.” “You remember that well.” “That’s not…” “Of course I remember.” “There’s substance to it, isn’t there?” “So stop philandering all over the place already.” “Do you think if I don’t come here, I go to some other house?” “You’re impossible.” “Men are mostly like that.” “The shiratama are sticking in my throat.” “Let’s just get along while we eat.” “I don’t know,” Yukiko retorted, deliberately clattering her spoon as she broke apart the mound of ice.

A gawker peering through the window called out, “Hey sis, thanks for the treat!” “I’ll give you one. Open wide.” “Cyanide? I’d rather keep my guts where they are.” “Broke as you are, listening turns my stomach.” “The hell you say? Ditch-mosquito whore,” he threw over his shoulder while walking off, but she refused to back down. “Heh! Trash-pit lout.”

“Ha ha ha ha,” laughed another gawker coming from behind as he passed by.

Yukiko kept putting spoonfuls of ice into her mouth while gazing outside, unconsciously singing out “Hey there, hey there, siiir” in a lilting tone. Whenever someone stopped to peer through the window, she’d switch to a honeyed voice: “Just one person? Come on up then. We’re still open for business.” She’d try calling out “C’mon now, sir,” while for others, adopting an exaggeratedly earnest tone: “Yes, it’s quite all right. You may come up first—if you find me disagreeable afterward, you’re free to leave.” Even when these exchanges ended with them departing without ascending, Yukiko showed no trace of disappointment, occasionally scooping leftover shiratama dumplings from the melted ice to munch away at or taking drags from her cigarette as if suddenly remembering them.

When I previously described Yukiko's character, I noted she was a cheerful woman and remarked she did not particularly lament her circumstances. This derived from nothing other than my observations—sitting in a corner of the tearoom, swatting mosquitoes as quietly as possible with a tattered fan while peering through gaps in the bamboo blind at Yukiko seated by the storefront—and the inferences I subsequently drew. This conjecture may have been extremely superficial. I may have glimpsed only one aspect of her character.

However, there was one thing I could state with certainty regarding my observations: regardless of Yukiko's inherent nature, between those passing outside the window and Yukiko within existed a single thread that bound them in mutual harmony. If my perception of Yukiko as a cheerful woman who did not particularly lament her circumstances proved mistaken, I would contend that such error stemmed precisely from this harmony. Outside lay the masses—that is to say, society itself—while within sat an individual. Between these two entities stood nothing in marked opposition. What accounted for this? Yukiko remained young still—this because she had not yet lost touch with common human sentiments. While seated at the window, Yukiko deemed herself lowly yet harbored another personality deep within her heart. For those passing outside would cast off their masks and abandon all pretense of dignity upon entering this alley.

I have immersed myself in the world of rouge and powder since my youth and have yet to realize its wrongness. At times, constrained by circumstances, I would take them into my home as they wished and have them handle domestic duties, but all such attempts ended in failure. For once they changed their circumstances and came to regard themselves as no longer base, they would either transform into lazy women beyond instruction or else become uncontrollable shrews—such was the reason.

Yukiko had gradually come to harbor the intention of transforming her circumstances through my influence. She stood poised to become either an indolent woman or a shrew. The one who could prevent Yukiko's later years from descending into indolence or shrewishness, who could make her truly content as a householder, needed to be not someone like myself—steeped only in failed experiences—but rather a person who still possessed many years ahead. Yet even were I to explain this now, Yukiko could never comprehend it. She perceived only one facet of my dual nature. To expose some unguessed aspect of Yukiko herself and reveal its impropriety would have been simple enough. That I continued hesitating despite this knowledge stemmed from an inability to act against my conscience—not from self-preservation, but from dread that when Yukiko came to recognize this misunderstanding herself, she might fall into profound disappointment and sorrow.

Yukiko was the Muse who, in my wearied heart, had inadvertently evoked nostalgic illusions of a bygone era. The manuscript that had long lain upon my desk would surely have been torn up and discarded had Yukiko’s heart not been inclined toward me—or at least had I not felt it to be so. Yukiko was the mysterious encourager who enabled an old writer—abandoned by the present age—to complete what may well prove to be his final manuscript. Every time I see her face, I find myself wanting to express my heartfelt gratitude. Judging by the outcome, I would have deceived her—a woman lacking worldly experience—exploiting not only her body but also her genuine affections. In my heart, I want to apologize for this unforgivable sin, yet I grieve over the circumstances that make doing so impossible.

That night, Yukiko's words at the storefront window made my aching heart ache all the more acutely. To avoid this now, nothing surpassed never seeing her face again. If done now, I might yet spare Yukiko's breast such profound sorrow and disappointment. She still hadn't met an opportunity to disclose either her true name or origins, neither having yet been asked. This sense that tonight marked the critical moment for a tacit farewell—that crossing this threshold would force me to behold irreparable grief—grew inexplicably fiercer as night deepened.

This feeling of being pursued by something resembled how the wind, having suddenly risen just then, flowed from the main street into the alleyway, colliding here and there before entering through a small window into the house’s interior to sway the cord of the bamboo blind with its attached bells. With that sound, the feeling seemed to deepen further still. That sound differed from when wind chime sellers passed outside lattice windows; it was surely something that could never be heard beyond this secluded space. Even as summer gave way to autumn, it was precisely because the unrelenting nightly heat had gone entirely unnoticed until now that this resonance made him keenly aware how autumn nights too had begun deepening into truly long, profound affairs. Perhaps it was his imagination, but the footsteps of passersby grew sharper in the stillness, and he could even hear a woman sneezing at one of those windows.

Yukiko stood up from the window, came to the tearoom, and while lighting a cigarette as if remembering something, "You. Can't you come early tomorrow?"

“Can’t you come early tomorrow?” she said. “Early, you say? Evening?” “Even earlier.” “Because tomorrow’s Tuesday—my examination day.” “Since I’ll close up at eleven, why don’t we go to Asakusa together?” “As long as we’re back by around four.”

I thought it would be all right to go. I felt like going to subtly share a farewell cup, but I also feared being seen by journalists and literati and facing another written denunciation, "There's a situation with Asakusa Park that could be problematic." "Is there something you need to buy?" "I want to buy a watch, and it's almost time for lined kimonos."

“We’ve been going on about how hot it is, yet here we are with the equinox week nearly upon us.” “How much does a lined kimono cost?” “Will you wear it at the shop?” “Yes.” “It will cost at least thirty yen no matter what.” “If it’s that much, I have it here.” “Go by yourself and have it made,” he said, producing his wallet. “You.” “You mean it.” “Does it unsettle you?” “Don’t worry about it now.” I stared intently at Yukiko’s face—her eyes wide with unexpected joy—so as not to forget it for a long time, took out the banknotes from my wallet and placed them on the tea tray.

As the sound of knocking came accompanied by the landlord’s voice, Yukiko started to say something but fell silent instead, hiding the banknotes within her obi sash. I abruptly stood up and went out, passing the landlord as we crossed paths.

When I reached Fushimi Inari's frontage, the wind—unlike in the alley's depths—came rushing straight from the main thoroughfare and abruptly tousled my hair. Accustomed to always wearing a hat except when coming here, I reflexively raised a hand against the gust only to realize no hat existed, involuntarily forming a wry smile. Votive banners strained until their poles nearly snapped; alongside an oden stall's bamboo blind at the alley mouth, they fluttered like torn fragments about to take flight. At the canal's bend, fig leaves and grapevines rustled dryly in the abandoned house's shadowed darkness, making a sound as if already withered. Emerging onto the main street, I found the suddenly expansive sky above revealing not just the Milky Way's outline but every star's piercing clarity—precisely when this evoked ineffable loneliness, a train's roar behind houses and a foghorn's cry, frayed by gales, deepened solitude further. When taking my return path toward Shirahige Bridge, I'd habitually veer into side lanes—whether near Sumida Post Office or Mukōjima Theater's movie shack—then wind through crooked back alleys until emerging behind Shirahige Shrine. From August's end through September's start, nights after sudden showers sometimes brought cloudless skies with bright moons that lit paths and recalled vanished vistas—so often I'd unknowingly walk clear to Kototoi Hill. But tonight held no moon. As the river wind piercing through turned abruptly chill, I no sooner reached Jizōzaka Station than huddled between waiting shed's plank walls and the Jizō statue to block the wind.

X

After four or five days had passed—despite having resolved not to go again after that night and even leaving behind the money for her autumn lined kimono—I found myself inexplicably drawn to visit once more. What had become of Yukiko? Though I knew perfectly well she remained seated by the window as always, an unbearable urge to glimpse her face took hold. Without letting Yukiko notice, I would go and quietly observe just her face and condition. Telling myself the neighbor’s radio would have ceased by the time I circled that area and returned—laying blame upon the radio—I crossed the Sumida River once again and walked eastward.

Before entering the alleyway, I bought a hunting cap to conceal my face. Waiting until five or six passersby had gathered, I hid myself in their shadow and peered across the canal toward Yukiko's house. There she sat by the window as always, having re-tied her newly styled chignon back into its original simple knot. When I looked, the right window under the same eaves, which had been tightly closed until now, was open tonight, and within the lamplight, a face with a round chignon moved. A new kept woman—or rather, someone they called Demashi-san in these parts—had arrived. Though difficult to discern clearly from afar, she appeared older than Yukiko and her features were none too comely. I blended into the flow of people and turned down a different alley.

That night, perhaps because—as usual after sunset—the wind suddenly died down and it became sweltering, the crowds in the alleyways thronged as densely as on a summer night, the corners so congested one had to turn sideways to pass; unable to endure the streaming sweat and suffocating air, I sought an exit and emerged onto the broad avenue where automobiles streaked past. And I walked along the sidewalk where no night stalls stood lined up, intending to return straight home, then paused at the seventh-chome stop and wiped the sweat from my brow. Since it was merely one or two blocks from the garage, an empty municipal bus pulled up as if welcoming me. I was about to step off the pavement when suddenly seized by some inexplicable reluctance, and as I began wandering aimlessly again, soon found myself at the Sixth Block tram stop—marked by a postbox—before the sake shop's curved corner. Here five or six people waited for the streetcar. I let three or four streetcars pass by idly at this stop too, and simply stared vacantly at the main thoroughfare lined with white poplars and the expansive vacant lot bordering the side street's edge.

In this vacant lot from summer through autumn until just recently, there had first been equestrian shows, then monkey theaters, followed by ghost exhibition tents—each night noisily blaring phonographs—but now it had returned to its original state, with only the dim lamplight around reflecting on puddle surfaces. I would visit Yukiko again anyway and part ways by saying something about taking a trip. Rather than sneaking off like a weasel—since I wouldn't be coming regardless—Yukiko probably wouldn't hold lasting resentment. If possible, I wanted to confess the true circumstances. I wanted to take walks but had nowhere left to go. All those I wished to visit had died before me. The districts of refined music and poetry had become arenas where musicians and dancers competed for fame, no longer places where elders sipped tea and reminisced. I had unwittingly learned how to steal moments of respite in this fleeting world within a corner of the Labyrinth. With that intent—though aware I might be a nuisance—I wanted to explain clearly, however belatedly, that when I occasionally came to visit, she should receive me kindly... I entered the alleyway again and approached Yukiko's window.

“Well then, please come up,” Yukiko said, her demeanor and tone indicating she’d received the expected visitor. But rather than ushering me into the downstairs tea room as usual, she led the way up the ladder. Sensing the situation, I asked: “Is the master here?” “Yes. “The mistress is with him...” “The new people have arrived, then?” “The cooks came too.” “I see. “It’s suddenly become lively, hasn’t it?” “After being alone so long, all these people make such a racket.” Then abruptly remembering, she added: “Thank you for last time.”

“Did you find a good one?” “Yes. It should be ready around tomorrow.” “I bought an undergarment sash too.” “This one’s already worn through, you see.” “I’ll go down later and bring it up.”

Yukiko went downstairs and brought tea. They were sitting by the window engaged in idle chatter for some time, but the master and mistress showed no sign of returning. The call bell attached to the base of the central ladder rang. It was the signal that a regular customer had arrived. The state of the house had become entirely different from when Yukiko had been alone, making it impossible to stay long; Yukiko also seemed conscious of the master’s presence, so I left through the central entrance without voicing what I had meant to say—all within less than half an hour.

When four or five days had passed, the season entered Equinox Week. The aspect of the sky abruptly changed; as dark clouds driven by a southern wind raced low across the heavens, pelting rain would pour down like striking gravel only to cease abruptly. There were times when it continued falling throughout the night without respite. The cockscombs in my garden fell from their roots. The bush clover flowers were shaken off along with their leaves, while the red stems of the autumn begonias—already bearing fruit—were stripped of their large leaves and faded to a pitiful hue. The garden, ravaged by wet leaves and dead branches, was mourned only by surviving minmin cicadas and crickets lamenting during each break in the rain. Year after year, each time I see the garden ravaged by autumn winds and rains, I recall an ancient poem titled "Autumn Window, Wind and Rain Evening" from *Dream of the Red Chamber*.

Autumn flowers desolate, autumn grasses yellow.

A bright autumn lamp; an autumn night grows long. Having savored autumn through the window, autumn remains inexhaustible. How can one endure wind and rain compounding desolation? How swiftly come the autumn winds and rains to hasten desolation. Startling autumn windows; green autumn dreams shattered.

………………………

And so, year after year in the same manner, though fully aware of its impossibility, I found myself tormented by this desire to somehow render it into skillful translation. After Equinox Week passed amidst wind and rain, when the weather cleared completely, the September moon waned, and soon came that year’s Harvest Moon Night. The previous night too had shown a fine moon once late hours deepened, but on the very night of the Harvest Moon, from early on I saw an even clearer, cloudless bright moon.

It was that night that I learned Yukiko had fallen ill and been hospitalized. Since I had only heard about it from the caretaker at the window, there was no way for me to know what exactly her illness was.

When October came, the cold arrived earlier than usual. Even on the night of the Harvest Moon, signs had already been hung in the shops along the front street of Tamanoi Inari Shrine: "Everyone, the time has come to replace your shoji paper. Service: Premium paste provided with purchase." Hadn't signs bearing such text already been hung? It was no longer the season for dragging old clogs on bare feet and walking at night without a hat. The neighbor's radio, blocked by closed storm shutters, no longer tormented me so severely, so even at home I could finally grow accustomed to lamplight again.

＊　　　　　　　　＊　　　　　　　　＊

Bokutō Kidan should lay down its brush here. However, if one wished to append here a conventional novelistic conclusion, it would suffice to write an episode where I—after six months or a year—unexpectedly encounter Yukiko, now out of the trade, in some chance location. Furthermore, if one wished to render this chance encounter even more sentimental, it would suffice to create a scene where we pass each other in cars or train windows, seeing each other’s faces yet unable to exchange the words we long to share. The scene of passing each other on a ferry along the Tonegawa River in autumn, with maple leaves and silver grass flowers rustling in the wind, would be particularly exquisite.

Yukiko and I ended up never learning each other’s real names or addresses. Only in the back alleys of Bokutō, at a house by the mosquito-whining canal’s edge, did we grow intimate. Once we parted, ours would become a relationship with neither chance nor means to meet again in this lifetime. Though we called it a light romantic dalliance, the emotions of parting—known from the start to hold no hope of reunion—would risk exaggeration if one attempted to articulate them, yet leave sentiments inadequately expressed if dismissed lightly. The final section of Pierre Loti’s celebrated *Madame Chrysanthème* had thoroughly captured such sentiments, possessing the power to draw silent tears from its readers. Even if I were to attempt to add novelistic flourishes to this account of Bokutō Kidan, it would merely result in inviting derision for inadequately imitating Loti’s brushwork.

I had anticipated from early on, without any particular reason, that Yukiko would not remain long at the house by the canal selling her charms at such low rates. In my youth, I was once told such a story by an old man thoroughly versed in pleasure quarter affairs. There had never been a woman he fancied so much. If one didn't settle matters quickly, he explained, one would develop this nagging fear that another patron might ransom her away—and sure enough, that woman would either die of illness or suddenly be ransomed by some odious man and taken off to distant parts. It was said that groundless forebodings have a curious way of proving true.

Yukiko possessed a beauty and intellect unbecoming of a woman from that district. She stood as a crane among hens. Yet given how past and present eras differed, even should she fall ill, there would likely be no such thing as death claiming her. Bound by social obligation, she would likely not tie herself for life to some unforeseen person...

Gazing at the lamplight reflected in the oppressive sky before the storm’s arrival—beyond the contiguous roofs of densely packed, squalid houses—Yukiko and I leaned against the pitch-dark second-floor window, holding each other’s sweaty hands, exchanging words of enigmatic meaning without particular aim, when suddenly a flash of lightning illuminated her profile. That image still remains vividly before my eyes, undiminished and indelible. Since my twenties I had indulged in love’s games, but to think that in this old age I should find myself compelled to speak of such delusions— To mock the person of destiny—was this not also excessive? On the back of the manuscript there still remained several lines of blank space. Following where my brush leads, I shall write something—whether poetry or prose, its nature unclear—to console the sorrow of this night.

My blood, from lingering mosquitoes biting my brow. On the pocket tissue, You wiped and discarded in the garden’s corner. A single cockscomb stem stands. As the nightly frost grows colder, Not even awaiting the evening wind, Unaware of the fate that it must collapse and perish, Brocade-like leaves withering yet How poignantly beautiful its form grows more vivid even as it withers.

An ailing butterfly exists, With wounded wings faltering, The cockscomb that doubts it is a reblooming flower In the shade of leaves destined to collapse and perish. Even lingering dreams Late autumn too hurried to form, The garden corner where dusk approaches. Having parted from you, my solitary self, A single cockscomb stem destined to collapse and perish - How fares this heart standing side by side?

Manuscript completed on the thirtieth day of the tenth month of the Fire Rat Year.

Author's Postscript

Having compiled an account of the pleasure quarter in Mukōjima Terajima-chō, I named this work *Bokutō Kidan*. The character '濹' was improvised by Hayashi Jussai to denote the Sumida River; his poetry collection contains works titled *Fishing Songs on the Bokujō*. This dated from the Bunka era. At the time of the shogunate's collapse, when Narushima Ryūhoku vacated his bestowed residence in Shitaya Izumibashi-dōri and made his villa in Mukōjima Suzaki Village his home, the character 濹 began appearing frequently in his literary works. Thereafter the character came to be widely used again among literati and scholars, but following Ryūhoku's death, it gradually became an unfamiliar character, fading from common use without anyone quite noticing when.

It seemed that Ogyū Sorai had referred to the Sumida River as Seikō. During the Tenmei era, there had also been a poet who called the Sumida embankment Katsuhara. In the early Meiji years when poetry and prose reached their zenith of popularity, Ono Kozan had deemed the characters for Mukōjima inelegant and devised the three-character name Mukōshū based on their phonetic qualities, but this too was soon forgotten. In present-day Mukōjima's pleasure quarter, there existed a brothel called Yumekashō. Whether this was meant to inherit Ono Kozan's poetic elegance remained unclear to this day.

The narrow, sloping terrain spanning from Terajima-cho 5-chome to 6-7 chome lay four or five chō east of Shirahige Bridge. Being situated northeast of the Sumida Embankment, it struck me as somewhat too distant to merit the designation Bokujō. Thus I resolved to call it Bokutō. When first completing the manuscript of *Bokutō Kidan*, I had initially titled it *Tales of Tamanoi* after the local place name. But upon later reflection, I deliberately adopted the character '濹'—now fallen into disuse in modern times—to affect an air of studied refinement.

As for matters such as novelistic themes, I had lost Inoue Aaako over ten years prior, and since hearing of Shinji Shūyō Okina’s death last spring, there had been no one left to consult for opinions, nor anyone with whom to exchange witty banter about such things. Had Shūyō Okina still been alive when I completed *Bokutō Kidan*, I would have rushed straight to his Sendagi-chō residence upon finishing the manuscript and entreated him to read it. This was because Shūyō Okina had been thoroughly versed in the affairs of that labyrinth far earlier than I, taking particular pleasure in recounting them to others. When conversation at gatherings touched upon that district, Okina would first borrow a fountain pen from those nearby, empty out a bat case, draw on its reverse side a map of roads leading from the city proper to the labyrinth, then mark alleyway entrances and exits—explaining where they branched toward certain areas and converged with others as clearly as tracing lines on one’s palm.

Around that time, I would meet Okina almost every night at the crossroads of Ginza Owarichō. Okina did not use cafés or coffee shops to meet people. Only after the person he was waiting for had arrived, and when it came time to talk, would he finally sit down on a chair in an eatery. Until that moment arrived, he would stand at a corner of the thoroughfare, measuring time as he waited for the person he was meant to meet; yet even when contrary to expectation he wasted hours in vain, the old scholar never grew angry nor grieved. The old scholar’s standing on the street corner was not solely to await the arrival of those he had arranged to meet. Rather, it was because he took pleasure in utilizing this opportunity to observe the street scenes. In the notebook that the old scholar had often shown me during his lifetime, under entries for certain years, months, and days, were notations such as: at a certain location observed between such-and-such hours, approximately how many women passed by, of whom how many wore Western attire. How many café waitress-like figures walking together with patron-like figures. There were entries noting such things as the number of beggars and street performers; these were jottings made with pencil while he stood waiting at street corners or beneath trees in front of cafés.

One particularly sweltering night during that year’s lingering summer heat, as I was walking through a side street before Tamanoi Inari Shrine, a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old street performer with delicate features—who had emerged from behind what appeared to be an oden shop’s curtain, clutching a shamisen—familiarly called out, “Uncle.” “Uncle, do you come around here too?” At first I had completely forgotten her, but from the street performer girl’s smile revealing prominent front teeth, I suddenly recalled how four or five years earlier, in Ginza’s backstreets, I had conversed with this girl alongside Shūyō Okina.

When returning home from Ginza to Komagome, Okina would always wait for the last streetcar at either the Owarichō crossing or in front of Matsuya in Ginza 3-chōme; during these waits, he conversed with flower sellers, fortune-tellers, street performers, and others standing at the same stop. Even after boarding the streetcar, he continued talking as long as his conversation partner did not withdraw; thus he had long been acquainted with this street performer girl. At the time when I occasionally saw the street performer girl in Ginza's backstreets, she still wore shoulder padding and carried no shamisen, instead gripping yotsutake clappers in both hands. Her hair was styled in a parted peach shape, and she wore a black-collared kimono with long sleeves and a red under-collar. With her red obi fastened and black-lacquered geta sandals bearing red straps, her appearance could be taken for that of either a female gidayū apprentice or an apprentice courtesan from some rundown pleasure quarter. From her slender, precocious face to the delicate build of her neck and shoulders, her physique too was typical of those often seen among such people. That her upbringing and disposition seemed to follow the standard pattern was likely something requiring no inquiry.

“I’ve gone and become a proper lady now.” “Just like a geisha.” “Hohohoho, how funny,” she said, adjusting the flat hairpin at the base of her shimada knot. “What’s strange about that? “You’re Ginza-trained yourself.” “But I’m not going back there anymore.”

“Do you like it better here?” “Even here, no matter where you go, there’s nothing good.” “But in Ginza, when there’s no work you can’t even walk home, so there’s just no help for it.” “You used to go back to Yanagishima back then, didn’t you?” “Ah, I’ve moved to Ukechi now.” “Are you hungry?” “No, it’s still early in the evening, you see.”

In Ginza there had been times when I'd given her streetcar fare, so that night I gave her a gratuity of fifty sen and parted ways. About a month later, I encountered her again by the roadside, but as the night dew grew increasingly chill against the skin, my visits to this town for strolls gradually became infrequent. Yet since they say this town thrives most when the night breeze pierces through one's very being, that girl must walk these streets late into the night every evening without fail these days.

＊　　　　　　　　＊　　　　　　　　＊

When I compared the time when Shūyō Okina and I first glimpsed that girl during Ginza's late hours with our chance meeting this year on a Terajima-chō roadside, five years had already swiftly elapsed. The societal transformations during this interval—unlike the visible changes in this girl who once resembled a half-apprentice courtesan, now with the shoulder tucks removed from her kimono and her peach-split hairstyle transformed into a padded shimada knot—could not be viewed through the same lens. That the girl who once chanted sekkyō narratives while clapping yotsutake clappers had become a young woman playing shamisen and singing popular ballads resembled how mosquito larvae grow into adults, fry mature into juvenile fish, and those juveniles develop into mullet—this was natural evolution. That someone who once discussed Marx came to uphold Zhu Xi’s philosophy constituted not evolution but a metamorphosis into something wholly other. The former became void; the latter abruptly materialized. It was as though an entirely different creature—no crab at all—had come to inhabit the hermit crab’s shell.

We Tokyo commoners had learned of the upheaval that arose in Manchuria's plains during the previous year, between the fifth and sixth years of Showa. That autumn, having heard of sparrow battles continuing for three days beneath the gingko tree in Shokonsha Shrine's precincts, I went with Kōjimachi's womenfolk to witness them on the final morning. Two summers before that, rumors spread of a giant toad appearing in Akasaka Mitsuke's moat after midnight crowds dispersed, wailing mournfully—one newspaper even advertised a three hundred yen reward for its capture. Though rainy nights consequently drew larger gatherings, no claimant ever emerged, and before long the tale dissolved like smoke.

On an afternoon when the year I witnessed the sparrow battles was already drawing swiftly to its close, I walked along the seaside of Kasai Village and lost my way. After nightfall, using the lights as my guide, I finally ascertained the location of Funabori Bridge. Having transferred streetcars two or three times, I came from the Suzaki tram terminus to the Nihonbashi crossing. When I alighted from the tram that had passed through Fukagawa’s darkened streets beside Shirokiya Department Store, the brilliance of electric lights, year-end crowds, and military songs blaring from radios coalesced into a single mass, striking my eyes—which had wandered all day until nightfall along shores of withered reeds devoid of human traces—with a sudden and uncanny impression. Once again waiting for a connecting streetcar, I stood before Shirokiya’s storefront, where the shop window—adorned with a backdrop of yellow wasteland dotted with rising flames and lined with several woolen-clad soldier figurines—startled my eyes anew. I immediately shifted my gaze to the crowds jostling on the street, but it seemed no different from what one sees every year-end, with no one particularly stopping to gaze at the field camp diorama.

It was around April of the following year when willow saplings were planted along Ginza-dori, red-lacquered snow-viewing lanterns were lined along both sidewalks amid artificial flowers, transforming Ginza's streets into a spectacle resembling a provincial theater town's marketplace scene. I saw the vermilion-lacquered bonbori lanterns erected in Ginza and observed the railings of Akasaka Tameike's beef restaurant painted crimson, realizing how profoundly urbanites' tastes had deteriorated. The righteous uprising in Kasumigaseki that shook society occurred in the month following the Willow Festival. As I happened to be walking along Ginza-dori that evening, I witnessed how among the special editions reporting this event, Yomiuri Shimbun's extra appeared first, with Asahi Shimbun following close behind. The fine weather coinciding with a Sunday evening drew massive crowds to Ginza-dori, yet even when seeing the extras pasted on utility poles, the throngs showed no particular expression—indeed, not a soul engaged in conversation about them—while street vendors ceaselessly attached propellers to military toys and fired water pistols wildly about.

It was from around that time that Shūyō Okina began appearing unfailingly every night before Mitsukoshi in Owarichō, wearing an old hat and Nikko geta. The cafés that had proliferated indiscriminately throughout Ginza-dori’s front and back streets reached their peak of prosperity and descended into their most licentious state—when viewed in retrospect from today—during the period spanning from the summer of Showa 7 into the following year. At every café, they had two or three waitresses stand at the entrance to beckon in passersby. The women working in the back-alley bars would always go out in pairs, walking along the main streets to pull at the sleeves of strolling passersby or entice them with their eyes. There were also questionable women who would stop under the pretense of looking at store displays, and if they spotted a man alone, would call out to him, sidle up, and suggest going for tea together. Even department stores began hiring a large number of women besides salesgirls around this year, dressing them in beachwear and exposing their bare skin to public view. There was no corner in the back alleys where one did not see young girls selling toys called Yōyō. I saw how these young women, obeying their employers’ orders, felt no shame in exposing their faces and figures either at shopfronts or on the streets—some even appearing rather proud—and came to feel as though the display parlors of licensed brothels had been revived. And I came to feel that there exists a certain unchanging method for employing women, no matter the era.

The subway had already been excavated as far as the northern end of Kyōbashi, and along Ginza-dori, the sound of machines driving iron rods into the ground reverberated ceaselessly day and night, while laborers napped beneath shop eaves without concern for their surroundings. The case of a Tsukishima Elementary School teacher who would appear as a waitress at a Ginza 1-chome backstreet café called Ravsan by night, dabbling in prostitution on the side until her arrest, enlivened the pages of the newspapers. It was indeed the winter of this year, Showa 7.

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It was likely around the tenth year of Taisho that I first struck up my acquaintance with Shūyō Okina. We had already been crossing paths whenever we visited used book markets, and thus our conversations began naturally without deliberate initiation. Yet even afterward, our encounters remained confined to bookstore fronts, our discussions revolving exclusively around antiquarian books. When we chanced upon each other along Ginza-dori in the summer of Showa 7, I felt as though I had discovered an improbable figure in an improbable place—so much so that we parted ways that night after nothing more than a brief exchange while standing.

From around the 23rd year of Showa until just that time, I had completely distanced myself from Ginza, but due to my worsening insomnia with each passing year, the need to buy groceries convenient for self-catering, and the effort to avoid hearing my neighbor’s radio throughout summer—for these reasons I began venturing to Ginza again. Yet fearing denunciation in newspapers and magazines, I would skulk through back alleys to evade notice, and whenever I saw a man with disheveled hair approaching from the opposite direction—carrying a leather briefcase or clutching newspapers and magazines—I would turn down side streets or hide behind utility poles.

Shūyō Okina always wore white tabi socks and Nikko geta. At first glance of his appearance, one could immediately tell he was not of the modern era. Therefore, without my needing to explain why I detested modern literary men, Okina had already thoroughly discerned this. He also knew the circumstances that kept me from visiting main-street cafés. That night when he guided me to Manchatei—a nearly deserted café in a West Ginza back alley—and proposed we make it our regular meeting place for the time being, this too stemmed from his understanding of my situation.

Even during the most sweltering season, no matter how parched I might be, I never drank anything cold except freshwater with ice. I avoided cold water as much as possible and drank hot tea or coffee regardless of whether it was summer or winter. As for things such as ice cream, I had never once tasted them since returning to Japan, so if there were anyone among those walking through Ginza who did not know of Ginza's ice cream, that person would likely have been none other than myself. Okina had guided me to Manchatei precisely because of this.

Along Ginza-dori’s cafés, there were hardly any establishments that made hot tea and coffee when summer came. Among Western restaurants, there were even some that did not make hot coffee. The flavor of black tea and coffee lay half in their aroma; if cooled with ice, this aroma vanished completely. Yet modern Tokyoites would not drink it unless it was cooled and devoid of aroma. To an old-fashioned person such as myself, this seemed an exceedingly peculiar custom. This peculiar custom had not yet spread widely among the general populace even at the beginning of the Taisho era.

Both black tea and coffee were brought by Westerners, and even today, Westerners do not drink them cooled. From this, it becomes evident that the inherent nature of black tea and coffee lies in warmth. To now cool this in accordance with Japanese custom damages its original characteristics—a practice akin to localizing the names of places and characters when translating foreign novels and plays into Japanese. I have a tendency to lament anything that damages the inherent nature of things; thus, just as I wish to appreciate foreign literature as foreign works, so too do I dislike food and drink that have been adapted by Japanese hands.

Manchatei was a café opened by a man from Kyushu who had worked for many years in South American colonies to sell coffee, and even in summer, it served hot coffee. However, its owner passed away around the same time as Shūyō Okina, and the shop too was closed, existing no more. When I went to Manchatei with Shūyō Okina, fearing both the stifling heat inside the narrow shop and the swarms of flies, I would sit on chairs set out under the trees before the shopfront and remain there until midnight when the lights went out. Knowing that even if I returned home and lay down I would be unable to sleep, I would not refuse to go wherever invited should there remain somewhere to go past midnight. While sitting facing me beneath the trees, Okina would count patrons entering and exiting the bars adjacent to Manchatei—Rheingold, Saizeriya across the way, Scall, Odessa—and jot their numbers in his notebook. He struck up conversations with taxi drivers and street performers alike. When this grew tiresome, he would venture to main streets for errands or wander back alleys, later reporting his findings to me—tales of ruffians performing Shinto rites in some lane, or suspicious women tugging sleeves along the opposite riverbank, or former café waitresses turned proprietresses elsewhere. The street performer girl who later called out to me in a Terajima-cho alley must have first made my acquaintance under these very trees.

Through Okina’s accounts, I came to grasp how completely Ginza had transformed in the mere three or four years since I last saw it. Of the shops that had lined the main street before the earthquake, those continuing their original trade in their original locations could be counted on one’s fingers; now they had all been entrusted to managers from Kansai or Kyushu. That signs for pork stew and Kansai cuisine now hung everywhere in back alleys, with food stalls proliferating at every corner of side streets, was hardly surprising. The swelling numbers of rural migrants and growing ranks of those dining out were made evident by every eatery’s thriving business. People from the provinces did not know Tokyo’s customs. Having become convinced that everything they first observed in station restaurants and department store cafeterias constituted Tokyo practice, many would come to a shop bearing a sweet red bean soup sign to ask for Chinese noodles, or enter a soba restaurant to order tempura only to be refused—leaving them perplexed. The practice of displaying food models with prices in restaurant windows had arisen as an unavoidable measure, said to have followed Osaka’s example.

When the streetlights came on and phonographs began resounding, groups of four or five tipsy men formed, linking arms around shoulders and embracing waists as they shambled through every main street and back alley of Ginza. This too was a scene newly witnessed since Showa's advent, unseen in the post-earthquake years when cafés first proliferated. While I refrain from detailing the causes behind this unseemly brazenness, any examination of concrete instances must acknowledge how in Showa 2's early days, Mita students and alumni first formed squads after baseball games to descend upon Ginza-dori. Emboldened by drink, they trampled night market wares and stormed cafés, damaging not only interiors but buildings themselves until clashing with police officers tasked with control. Twice yearly since then has this violence repeated itself down to the present day. I have yet to hear of a single parent or guardian so incensed as to withdraw their child from school over it. Society at large seems to sanction student rampages as acceptable behavior. I myself once briefly held a teaching post at Mita during the Meiji-Taisho transition under constrained circumstances—my early resignation proved fortunate indeed. During that time, an administrator urged me to strive lest Mita's literary efforts fall behind Inamon's, prompting me at times to frown upon such fatuity. They equated literature and art with baseball matches.

By my inherent disposition, I have never had the desire to form cliques or gather in groups to accomplish things through borrowed authority. Rather, I consider this cowardice and reject it. As for matters of state governance, I avoid them entirely as beyond discussion. When I observe those who frequent artistic circles forming societies and factions to elevate their allies while suppressing dissenters, I deem this both cowardly and vulgar. To cite one instance, I refer to how members of Bungeishunju-sha—bearing resentment that their faction's works went unperformed on Tsukiji Little Theatre's stage—condemned Osanai Kaoru's interpretation of dramatic literature as erroneous.

When wild geese traverse the skies, they form ranks to protect themselves, but when nightingales emerge from secluded valleys to alight upon tall trees, they form neither flocks nor ranks. And yet do wild geese not still fail to escape hunters' gunfire? Forming associations cannot necessarily be called a means of self-preservation. Among women who trade in charm, some find safety through solidarity while others maintain solitary shadows with quiet resignation. The café waitresses' groups turn Ginza's brightly lit main streets into fortresses, organizing associations called Red Group and White Group to greedily collect patrons' fees. Independent street prostitutes carry cloth-wrapped bundles and sometimes umbrellas, blending into night market crowds to furtively tug at passersby's sleeves. Though these two differ markedly in outward appearance, once pursued by police officers, the peril reaching them likely makes no distinction.

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In the autumn of Showa 11 (1936), on my way to Terajima-cho, I came upon crowds of people forming a throng along the roadside near Asakusabashi hoping to catch sight of the flower-decorated tram. I noticed the tram ticket in my hand was larger than usual, marked as commemorating Tokyo’s municipal tram’s twenty-fifth anniversary. Whenever some occasion arises, these flower-decorated trams are paraded out through Tokyo’s streets. Five years prior, when Shūyō Okina and I had frequented Manchatei in Nishi-Ginza late into the night, autumn may have already passed the equinox. From a waiter there, I heard that a flower-decorated tram had just passed through Ginza. I had later heard reports from someone who saw it that that night’s tram celebrated the incorporation of Tokyo Prefecture’s towns into the city proper. Earlier still, when the lingering summer heat had not yet abated, I had likewise heard from an eyewitness about a public dance festival called the Tokyo Ondo being held in Hibiya Park.

The Tokyo Ondo was said to have been held to celebrate the incorporation of outlying districts into Tokyo City and its subsequent expansion, but in truth, it amounted to nothing more than an advertisement for the department store at Hibiya Corner—one could not obtain admission tickets unless purchasing matching yukata from that store. Be that as it may, there had never been a single instance where young men and women were permitted to hold dances in parks within Tokyo City. Even local rural Bon dances had indeed sometimes been prohibited by order of the prefectural governor around the late Meiji era. In Tokyo since the Edo period, only in the mansion districts of Yamanote were servants from the countryside permitted to perform Bon dances; however, ordinary townspeople devoted themselves fervently to festivals of their tutelary deities and maintained no custom of dancing during Bon.

I had heard how before the earthquake, when dance events were held nightly at the Imperial Hotel, patriotic activists brandishing Japanese swords would storm the premises—leading to their subsequent cancellation—and so I secretly wondered if some commotion might arise at the Tokyo Ondo festival publicly held in Hibiya Park too, but nothing occurred, and the ondo dance concluded after a week of public display. “Well, that’s rather unexpected,” I said, turning to Shūyō Okina. Okina, his mouth with its sparse beard holding a smile,

“It must be because ondo and dance are different things.”

“But since men and women are dancing together in such large numbers, isn’t it essentially the same thing?” “That may be so, but in ondo neither men nor women wear Western clothes.” “It must be permissible because they’re wearing yukata.” “It must be permissible because they don’t expose their bodies.”

“I see, but considering bodily exposure, isn’t the yukata more precarious? In women’s Western clothing, the chest may be exposed but everything below the waist remains secure. With yukata, it’s precisely the opposite.” “Ah, Professor—when you dissect it so logically like that, there’s simply no countering you. During the earthquake years, night patrolmen would stop women in Western clothes passing by. When one supposedly said something that rankled them, they stripped off her Western garments—whether they actually conducted a body search became this huge scandal. Those patrolmen wore Western clothes themselves! For them to claim women’s Western attire irritated them—that defies all logic.”

“Now that you mention it, women’s Western clothing was still quite rare around the time of the earthquake.” “Nowadays, when I look at the passersby like this, half of them have taken to wearing Western clothes.” “Even the waitresses at Café Tiger seem to have increasingly worn Western clothes in summer these past two or three years.” “If we enter an age of martial rule, what will become of women’s Western attire?” “If dances are deemed acceptable when performed in yukata under that logic, then Western dress might fall out of fashion.” “Yet even if modern women abandoned Western clothing, I doubt they’d regain proficiency in wearing Japanese garments.” “Once something collapses into disorder, it never truly recovers its former state.” “This holds true whether we speak of theater or performing arts.” “Does it not apply equally to writing?” “If people dismantle things as they please, even attempts at restoration prove futile.”

“Even in genbun itchi vernacular style, only Mr. Ōgai’s works can be properly recited aloud.” Shūyō Okina removed his glasses, closed both eyes, and intoned a passage from the latter part of Izawa Ranken’s biography: “I lament the absence of scholarly cultivation. “I do not lament the absence of common sense. “This world cannot endure such multitudes richly endowed with common sense.”

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While engaged in such conversations, the night would deepen with unexpected swiftness, and the sound of Hattori's clock tower striking twelve would strike our ears with a peculiar freshness during those times.

The old man with his penchant for historical verification would begin recounting how the bell from Kobayashi Clock Shop—which had stood in Hachikan-cho until before the earthquake—had been counted among the Shinbashi Eight Views during the early Meiji period whenever he heard the tolling bells. Around Meiji 44–45, I would wait nightly on the second floor of a brothel for the woman’s return while listening intently to that great clock’s toll—memories that now come back to me. The topic of Miki Aika’s *The Geisha Almanac* and similar matters would often come up between the two of us.

By this time of night, entaku taxis would gather on the road before Manchatei, lying in wait for waitresses and drunk patrons returning home. Among the bars in this vicinity whose names I recall were Odessa, Scull, and Saiserya across from Manchatei; on this side stood Moulin Rouge, Silver Slipper, Rheingold, and others. There were also establishments named Lupin, Suriisista, and Shiramuren in the back alleys between Manchatei and Shiroto-ya. They might still exist even now.

At the signal of Hattori’s bell, those bars and cafés would all turn off their front lights at once, so the streets suddenly grew dim; though the gathered one-yen taxis took on passengers, they could only honk their horns in vain amid such crowding that movement became impossible, until drivers began fighting. No sooner would a police officer come into view than every last taxi would vanish, only to return after a short while and fill the entire area once more with the stench of gasoline. Shūyō Okina would always pass through the back alleys, emerge from the side streets at Owari-chō’s Four Corners, and stand by the roadside with the café waitresses who had already formed a crowd waiting for the red streetcars. Whenever he spotted an acquaintance among them, he would call out in a loud voice without any regard for their inconvenience. Through his nightly observations, Okina knew well which train lines had the most café waitresses boarding and which outlying areas were their most frequent destinations. Proudly immersed in such talk, he would often miss boarding the red streetcar—yet even on such occasions, Okina showed no sign of dismay, instead seeming to welcome it. “Professor, would you care to take a short walk?” “Let me walk you that far,” he said.

As I reflected on Okina’s unfortunate life, it struck me as bearing a striking resemblance to his attitude of remaining unflustered even when missing the red streetcar he had been waiting for right before his eyes. Okina had graduated from his hometown’s normal school, come to Tokyo in middle age, and worked at the Navy Ministry Documents Section, Keio University Library, Ishindo Publishing’s editorial department among others; however, he had not remained long in any of these positions. In his later years, he had devoted himself solely to printing and publishing, but even this mostly ended in failure. Yet Okina showed no signs of deep sorrow; instead, he turned his uneventful life to his advantage by observing the customs of the townspeople after the earthquake and amusing himself thereby. Those who associated with Okina, observing his leisurely demeanor, had assumed he possessed assets in his hometown. Yet when he suddenly passed away in the spring of Showa 10, they discovered that aside from old books, armor, and bonsai, there was not a single sen saved in his household.

That year Ginza's main street was mid-subway construction. As night stalls began packing up, terrifying noises would arise and laborers' frightful figures first appear, so even when our strolls carried us as far as Owari-chō's corner, they would immediately shift to back alleys and naturally guide us toward Shibaguchi. When we crossed either Tsuchibashi or Naniwabashi and passed under the government railway overpass, on the dark wall surfaces were pasted various papers strung together with unsettling phrases such as "Release the Blood Pledge Corps." Beneath them beggars always slept. When we exited from under the railway overpass, along one side of the sidewalk stretched numerous street stalls displaying signs like "Throne of Nutrition," their square tanks filled with swimming eels as they sold fishing hooks—continuing nearly to Sakura-Hongōchō's Four Corners—where crowds of café waitresses returning from work and men who appeared to be local pleasure-seekers gathered.

When turning into the back alley, there was an alley facing the station’s ticket gate, its both sides lined with sushi shops and small eateries. Among them was one shop I knew. The house marked “Yakitori Kinbee” on its noren curtain had a proprietress who was none other than a certain renowned courtesan from across the way—one who had lived there over twenty years prior when I lodged at a geisha house in Sōshirō-chō. Kinbee had indeed opened around spring of that year, but having prospered year after year, it now stood with its interior rebuilt beyond recognition.

This alley had continued to line its eaves with teahouses and geisha houses even after the earthquake, but from around the time cafés began proliferating along Ginza-dori, eateries gradually increased in number and kept their lights on until around two in the morning to cater to those boarding government railway trains past midnight and men and women returning from cafés. Because there were many sushi shops, some also called it Sushiya Yokocho.

When I observed Tokyoites drinking late into the night, I had to consider when this new custom began. Except near the Yoshiwara pleasure district, pre-earthquake Tokyo's town centers had no eateries keeping lights on past midnight beyond soba shops. Shūyō Okina answered my inquiry by attributing modern people's late-night dining habits to two developments—the government railway extending operations past 1 AM and streetcars with citywide fare boards reducing rates from fifty to thirty sen. Removing his glasses as usual while blinking those narrow eyes, he added: "Certain moralists would lament greatly if they saw this." "I don't drink and detest fishy smells, so it matters little to me—but to reform modern customs, we should restore Meiji-era transportation inconveniences." "Alternatively, simply hike entaku taxi fares steeply after midnight." "But entaku cabs actually grow cheaper past midnight—down to half daytime rates."

“However, matters in today’s world cannot be governed by past morals or such things. If one considers everything to be but a single phenomenon of the vigorous expansion of vital energies, then even assassination or adultery—no matter what occurs—would hardly warrant so much as a furrowed brow. By ‘vigorous expansion of vital energies,’ I mean the passion for pursuing desires. The popularity of sports, the popularity of dance, the popularity of travel and mountain climbing, the popularity of horse racing and other forms of gambling—all are phenomena of these energies’ vigorous expansion. This phenomenon possesses distinctly modern characteristics. It is that mindset where each individual makes others think—and wants to believe themselves—that they are superior to others. It is the desire to feel superior. I, who grew up in the Meiji era, do not possess this mindset. Even if there were any such feelings, they would be exceedingly rare. This is the difference between modern people who grew up in the Taisho era and us.”

Standing by the roadside where entaku taxis were blaring their horns, unable to continue our lengthy discussion, Okina and I happened to see three or four café waitresses accompanied by a man who seemed to be their customer enter the sushi shop across the street, and so we followed right behind them through the noren curtain. How fiercely modern people competed for superiority in every place and situation could be seen directly even in a back-alley sushi shop. As soon as they saw that the shop was crowded, their eyes instantly sharpened; upon spotting vacant seats, they pushed through the throng and charged forward. When ordering items, they raised their voices to outdo others, pounded on tables, struck the floor with canes, and called for waiters. Among them were those who could not even wait for that—they stood up to peek into the kitchen and directly ordered the chef. When setting out on Sunday excursions to seize vacant seats on trains, they did not hesitate to push women and children off the platform—it was precisely these people. It was these people who would have performed the feat of first spear on the battlefield. Even in trains with few passengers, these people sat with their legs spread wide like samurai dolls, trying to take up as much space as they could.

They required training for everything they did. Unlike those of us who had walked to school, they had been thoroughly trained since their elementary days to jostle onto packed trains and vie to be first in navigating staircases of crowded department stores and movie theaters. To make names for themselves, they willingly volunteered to represent entire classes and never hesitated to send letters to current ministers and high-ranking officials. They interpreted that since children were innocent, they could do anything without fear of reproach. Such children would grow up seeking to obtain degrees before others, secure employment before others, and amass wealth before others. This effort constituted their entire lives; there existed nothing beyond it.

The entaku taxi driver too was one of these modern people. Thus when faced with the disappearance of the last trains and needing to take an entaku taxi home, I could not help feeling a vague terror. I had to seek out drivers who seemed devoid of that modern competitive urge. Even when unnecessary, I had to find those who showed no eagerness to overtake vehicles ahead. Should I neglect this precaution, my name would surely appear in tomorrow’s papers as another traffic casualty.

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I awoke earlier than usual to voices and broom sounds beyond my window. Reaching from bed to push aside the curtain near my pillow, morning light pierced through chinquapin branches shrouding the eaves, deepening the color of lingering persimmons on the tree by the fence. The broom noises and voices came from my house's maid and the neighbor's maid conversing over the fence while sweeping their respective gardens' fallen leaves. The dry leaves' rustling sounded nearer than usual because both gardens' accumulated foliage was being swept simultaneously from either side.

Every year, upon waking in winter when I hear this familiar sound of sweeping fallen leaves, I find myself recalling anew—just as I do each year—the verse by Kan Ryūwan: "Old sorrows like leaves swept yet unending; within the rustling sound, autumn departs once more." That morning as well, while silently reciting this verse in my nightclothes, I rose and leaned against the window; from the treetop of the cliffside hackberry whose yellowed leaves had mostly scattered came the sharp cry of a shrike, and on the yellow stone lotus flowers blooming in the garden corner rested a red dragonfly. Countless red dragonflies, their transparent wings glittering, were flying high even into the clear, azure sky.

The November weather, which had been prone to cloudiness, settled completely under the rain and wind of two or three days prior, ushering in at last the fine season of koharu—as Dongpo once said, “The finest scenery of the year—do take note, my friend.” Until now, the insect cries that had lingered like a strand or two of thread had completely vanished. Every sound that reached my ears had changed from yesterday’s, and when I realized this year’s autumn had passed away without a trace, even the stifling nights of lingering summer heat spent dreaming and the moonlit evenings spent gazing at cool vistas now felt like things from a distant past... Yet the scenes witnessed year after year remained unchanged. As for the unchanging scenes witnessed year after year, the sentiments felt in one’s heart likewise remained unchanged. Like flowers that scattered, like leaves that fell, those people who had been close to me had departed this world one by one. I too knew that the time when I should follow after those people was already not far off. Under today’s clear skies, I would go sweep the graves of those people. The fallen leaves must have been burying completely the graves of those people, just as they did my garden.

November 1936 (Showa 11), Year of the Fire Rat (Hinoe Ne). Manuscript completed.