Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

It was when I had not yet reached twenty years of age.
Driven by the indiscretion of youth, I once left home on a whim and wandered aimlessly from journey to journey.
By late October when autumn had deepened and leaves turned distinctly yellow—after crossing mountain paths over two days to reach an old port town facing the sea at the province's edge—I had completely exhausted my meager travel funds.
Though I'd reached the town, I lacked even the lodging fee for that night.
No—I couldn't afford lunch either.
Having walked through the previous night, I'd procured steamed potatoes for one sen at the town entrance that morning—this was how I'd endured until noon.
A rice ball would have sufficed—how I craved even a grain of rice for lunch—but my frog-mouthed purse now held only a single two-sen copper coin.

I made my way to the coastal street there. From the sea stretched a narrow inlet where cargo boats and barges huddled tightly bow to bow. Stevedores chanted a lively rhythm in unison as they hauled what looked like rice sacks from ships into the riverside warehouse. The autumn day was clear and bright yet faintly shadowed, with laborers vacantly crouching along the riverbank as if sunning their shells. Like me, they were likely fretting over their midday meal. Shipworms scuttled between gaps in the stone walls.

Food stalls stood under the eaves of the riverside warehouse.
They sold Osaka-style pressed sushi using ingredients like chikuwa fish cakes and short-necked clams.
For four pieces a sen, I ate six pieces and received five rin in change from my two-sen copper coin - a transaction that made little practical difference.
Though five or six pieces of such fare could never fill the emptiness that had gripped me since morning, they nonetheless revived me slightly. Now strengthened just enough to think clearly, I began pondering what to do next.

From here to my hometown was nearly two hundred ri. To return, I had no travel expenses; to stay, I had no lodging. If left with no choice, I would have had to beg my way home along the roads—yet even reduced to this state, I still couldn't bring myself to stand at people's gates and plead for three rin or five rin in alms. I didn't know whether it was my appearance or something else, but I still felt ashamed. So I asked the stall owner for the name of the busiest shop in town, went there, and pleaded with them to hire me—even as an errand boy or manservant. Of course, they refused. I pleaded persistently, explaining my dire circumstances in every way I could, but being a traveler with no one to vouch for me, I was flatly refused. With the cold gazes of clerks and errand boys staring suspiciously at my back, I left red-faced. I tried another shop, but it ended the same way. This land had been a port since ancient times, and drifters and transients from other provinces constantly flowed in. Since those who went around begging for help with pleas like mine were not uncommon here, the locals wouldn't take them seriously over such trifling matters.

While utterly at a loss, I nevertheless wandered aimlessly through the town. At a promontory facing the sea beyond the town's outskirts stood the renowned Hachiman Shrine. I climbed its high stone steps and faced the famous view from that vantage. The sight from beneath the sheer cliff—gazing across the narrow strait to the verdant land beyond—was indeed not without merit. Yet more than that scenery, what drew me was watching a domestic mail ship anchored offshore sound its shrill whistle and gradually recede into the distance, trailing faint smoke. Ah—were I aboard that vessel, I thought, by day after tomorrow I'd be treading my homeland's soil—and tears fell helplessly. The wind rising from the sea bit through my clothes.

In such circumstances, humans become oddly self-conscious; lingering too long in one place made me uneasy, as if inviting suspicion.
And so, I wandered around viewing temples, shrines, and notable buildings I didn’t even want to see, until eventually my legs grew weary.
Moreover, having barely staved off my hunger with six pieces of Osaka-style sushi, I now had only five rin left to my name for whatever I might eat next.
Aimlessly wandering about would only make my stomach emptier—that didn’t seem wise either.
Therefore, I made my way to a rather bustling street in the town’s center and searched for somewhere to crouch or sit without drawing suspicion when my eyes caught sight of the exchange hall.
Rice and miscellaneous grain prices were being actively traded.
The spacious exchange hall was packed with a jostling crowd, and with every cry of market prices, the floor erupted in commotion.
There were also men with faces so grim they looked ready to hang themselves, leaning listlessly against cold walls.
I joined those people and set about considering where to sleep that night.
The frenzied crowd inside the hall did not so much as notice my presence.

Before long, closing time arrived.
At the signal of the clanging bell, even the fervent crowd began trudging out in a sluggish stream.
Then two men who appeared to be custodians wearing happi coats began cleaning from one end with watering cans and brooms.
The pale-faced man who had been beside me vanished without a trace.
The deserted expanse of the exchange hall's window panes glittered with the red evening sun, but where its light failed to reach had already grown dim.

I left there aimlessly once more. As I wandered, store lights began flickering on here and there. My stomach grew emptier by the moment. As was my habit, I wandered aimlessly until before I knew it, I reached the outskirts of town. The rows of houses dwindled into sparse clusters, every gate already shut tight against the night. A low rumble sounded in the distance—at first I paid it no mind, but soon recognized it as the sea's voice. I left the town behind and traced a dark path alone toward the inlet's edge. When I imagined carrying this exhausted body to the water's brink—how easily some chance moment might make me stagger toward death—terror suddenly seized me and my legs locked rigid.

I stood listlessly by the dark roadside, tears welling in my eyes alone, when suddenly from beyond the deserted path came the sound of rickshaw wheels and the light of a lantern appeared.
When I saw it approaching, an elderly rickshaw puller was hauling an empty vehicle.
Out of sheer loneliness, I abruptly called out.
The man halted in surprise.

“May I ask—what exactly is this place called? Is it still part of some town?”

"Well now, you see, this here's already what they call such-and-such village—just a village really."

"Such-and-such village—what might there be in such-and-such village? Is there somewhere, um... where I could find lodging?"
I found myself listening to the words that had slipped from my mouth.

“To get lodging—you mean an inn?” said the rickshaw puller, studying my appearance in the lantern’s glow. “If it’s a cheap lodging house you’re after, there’s one right nearby… See that alley I just turned from? Go back there, take a turn and walk a bit—you’ll find two places called Yamamoto-ya and Sanshu-ya.”
“If you go this way, the first one you’ll reach is Yamamoto-ya, and since they say Yamamoto-ya gets a better class of customers, you should head that way.”

Having said this, the rickshaw puller proceeded to leave just like that.
I kept watching until the lantern’s glow had vanished from sight and the rickshaw’s creaks could no longer be heard, when sudden loneliness overwhelmed me.
I hurried into the alley he had directed me to, where sure enough came into view an eaves lantern labeled “Yamamoto-ya.”

A narrow, filthy alley paved with shells—a row of houses that could be called a slum.
At Yamamoto-ya’s gate burned a lantern without its chimney, where a man who looked to be a street peddler in his mid-thirties had set down his basket and was sprinkling water over leftover vegetables.
I took him for a lodger at first, but later learned he was this house’s master.

“I’d like to ask if I could stay...” I said from the entrance.

Then Oe-san—a slender woman in her thirties with sharp eyes and an unfriendly face—came to stand by the threshold, first scrutinizing me thoroughly.
Keeping her hands tucked in her sleeves,

“Come up,” she said curtly, jerking her chin.

Where her chin had motioned hung a rung ladder, allowing immediate access to the second floor from the raised entryway—or rather, directly from the earthen floor.
As I hesitated in the dirt-floored area littered with old straw sandals and overturned clogs, Oe-san reappeared,

“Come up.”

“Yes,” I answered and hastily kicked off my clogs to reach for the rung ladder when—

“Ah, take your sandals up with you.
“Leave them there and they’ll go missing—this house won’t answer for it.”

As instructed, I climbed the rickety rung ladder, clinging to it with one hand while clutching my dirt-caked weather-worn sandals.

II

The second floor consisted of two rooms each roughly six tatami mats in size. From the central pillar where the partition had been removed hung a single lamp made from an oil-pot tin with a five-centimeter wick, its soot-blackened chimney leaving the light dimly glowing.
The windows were closed, and with the ladder entrance being the only place where air could circulate, the lamp’s oily smoke, human odors, and a strangely tepid, foul stuffiness wafted heavily through the space.
In the dimly lit two rooms, nearly ten people appeared to be sleeping wrapped in ragged futons.
Those not yet asleep raised their heads and peered suspiciously at me, the newcomer.
Since I didn’t know my way around, I stood blankly at the ladder entrance when the man sleeping at my feet—

“Hey, hey. You think there’s any fool who dangles muddy sandals over someone’s head? There’s space over by that wall. There—go to that spot past what looks like a camel’s back,” he snapped.

The “camel’s back” turned out to be a sleeping area against the wall where what seemed to be a married couple lay—a thinning-haired head and one with hair combed tightly upward peeking out from a single futon. I went to that side and stood there vacantly when the combed-up head began stirring restlessly,

“You, there were one or two futons over by the ladder entrance,” she informed me.

So I went back to the ladder entrance again, fetched the thin straw-mat-like tattered futon that had been folded up there, spread out two of them as mattress and cover, and then lay down without even undoing my obi.
The pillow was a grease-stained wooden one—unsettling and headache-inducing.
I wrapped the hand towel I had on me around it for support.
The futon was damp with grime and reeked indescribably.
But while that remained bearable, what proved utterly intolerable came when the bedding grew slightly warm—fleas or lice swarming everywhere, biting relentlessly across my body.
Seeing me twitching uncontrollably, the woman with the combed-up hair beside me offered another piece of advice.

“You, who in the world sleeps in their clothes in a place like this?”
“Even if it’s just a loincloth—if you keep it on your skin, you’ll get bitten and won’t sleep a wink. You’ve got to be stark naked…”

Sure enough, when I heeded her words and looked carefully, every single person lay naked wrapped in futons, their bare skin visible between the wooden pillows.
I untied my obi and took off my kimono.
The itching became considerably less severe and more bearable.
Instead, in the late autumn chill, I slept with my limbs curled up like a shrimp.

The surroundings were filled with nothing but snores and teeth-grinding sounds—everyone slept in disheveled exhaustion from the day’s labors. The night in those forsaken outskirts lay hushed, not a single cart passing through. Only the sea’s roar sounded more terrible than it had at dusk. As my body settled, emotions surged through me until tears spilled shamelessly down my cheeks. Yet what stabbed deepest through it all was tonight’s lodging fee. Truth be told, I’d thrown myself here without forethought—come dawn, payment would crush me. By now I’d sold everything but a lined kimono, shirt, and heko sash—truly nothing left but what I wore. All that remained in my pocket was one five-rin coin. When morning came and she learned I lacked payment—Oe-san’s cold face haunted me already.

Before long, the octagonal clock downstairs struck nine.
About thirty minutes after that, there was a commotion outside as someone returned,

“You’ve already come back from work? That’s early tonight.” came the Landlady’s voice.

Then, a man came energetically climbing up the rung ladder while answering something in response.
From within my futon, I could see that it was too dim to make out his face, but what stood out was a tall young man wearing a short-skirted kimono with a white heko obi tied broadly around his waist.
In his hand dangled a painted horseback lantern, and though something seemed to be written on it, the extinguished flame made it impossible to discern.
The man looked around the area for a while, then clicked his tongue and—

“Old lady, my futon ain’t here!” he bellowed from the ladder entrance.

“Ah right, I forgot—we’ve got one more tonight,” came the Landlady’s voice, and soon she climbed up carrying a futon.

The man received the futon, unceremoniously pushed through the cramped spaces between bedding areas, deftly untied his obi and removed his kimono until he wore nothing but a belly band, then slipped smoothly into his own sleeping space.
And there in his bedding he jingled the coins in his belly band,

“Old lady, hey—leaving it here.”
“Tonight’s,” he said, making copper coins clink by the pillow.

I was startled.

Then, as expected, after receiving it, the Landlady came to my bedside this time, peering through the dim lamplight.

“You hadn’t paid the lodging fee yet.”
“The lodging fee is six sen.”
“And enter it in the lodging ledger,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.

Since I could no longer keep up the pretense of sleeping, I had no choice but to answer and lift my face.
And taking the lodging ledger and writing set that the Landlady held out, I first entered that,

“Um… about the lodging fee—would tomorrow morning be possible?”

“Tomorrow morning—you don’t have it tonight?”

“If it’s tomorrow morning, I can manage…” I offered a temporary excuse, trailing off.

“Even if it’s tomorrow, you’ll just go out and blow it anyway—that’s no good for me. I’ll take something as collateral tonight.”

“When you say collateral—I’ve got nothing but what I’m wearing…”

“Those weather clogs you brought up—they’re paulownia wood. The thongs are leather, aren’t they.”

“They’re leather, I suppose.”

“Show me.”

When I took out the weather clogs that had been placed near the wall at the foot of my bedding and showed them to her, the Landlady touched the thongs and—

“Well, I’ll hold onto these then. When you go out tomorrow morning, I’ll lend you some footwear from the house.”

The Landlady went downstairs still holding the clogs. Even for something as trivial as six sen for lodging, I never imagined that my weather clogs would prove useful, but with that settled, I let out a sigh of relief and soon fell asleep.

III

The next morning when I awoke, everyone around had already left, but there remained one other person wrapped in a tattered futon in the room across from me - the man with the white heko-obi who had returned late last night. The hunger I'd carried since yesterday grew unbearable upon waking, leaving me without strength to rise. Lying motionless on my back, devoid of energy even for thought, only my eyelids kept fluttering.

My unfocused gaze revealed surroundings filthier than I'd imagined overnight. The exposed attic space lacked any proper ceiling, its beams blackened by soot and dangling what might have been insect nests or ash clumps ready to drop. Walls papered with old newspapers had browned from smoke. Sunlight entered solely through the latticed south window facing the street; all others remained shuttered with nailed boards. Though uncertain of the tatami's condition, I saw frayed borderless rush mats covering every inch of floor, their splits clumsily mended with fabric scraps. By the ladder entrance lay piled ragged bedding and wooden pillows - repulsive to touch in daylight's harsh glare. Suddenly conscious of my own futon's grime, I compelled myself upright.

As instructed, I stacked my futon and wooden pillow next to the ladder entrance, then took my hand towel intending to wash my face. When I reached the top of the ladder, the rich aroma of warm miso soup wafted up from below and struck my nostrils.
As soon as I caught that aroma, my hunger grew unbearable, and my head began to swim dizzily.
Outside was a blindingly bright, fine day, but on the eaves of the shaded town beyond, a thin white frost lay scattered—an autumn morning that made your body tense with cold.

When I stepped down onto one rung of the ladder, a woman holding a coal shovel with embers came up from below at that exact moment. She appeared to be twenty-seven or twenty-eight—a petite middle-aged woman with a sallow complexion, her hair done up in a comb-wrapped style. She was the wife of the couple who had slept beside me the previous night. Upon seeing my face, she greeted me cheerfully with “Good morning,” then peeked into the neighboring room’s bedding area at the top of the ladder and said, “Still asleep. Senuraiya, it’s already nine o’clock.”

“Nine or ten—I ain’t got no debt to time,” he said from under the covers.

Then, the woman tilted her head, stuck out her tongue with a quick flick, and looked at my face.
I couldn't grasp what it meant.
Whenever we crossed paths, she was a woman who smelled of dried squid.

When I went down to the lower floor, in that single room visible through the open gate facing the street, three or four people were eating around a large stone-paved platform resembling an altar. Each kept a small rice bowl at hand, having miso soup served individually by the Landlady. The Landlady stood working briskly before the earthen-floored hearth, her kimono hem tucked up high around her hips. Noticing me descend with my hand towel dangling, she immediately said, “The well’s outside,” and lent me the old sandals from her feet. She operated with few words and mechanical efficiency.

By the well beside the lodging house—its charred clay cylinder half encroaching onto the street—I drew water from the pole-drawn bucket into a tin basin left there, then washed my face while pondering how to secure breakfast. If I tried to endure this hunger until noon, I would collapse and be unable to move. I considered pleading with the Landlady to give me even the burnt scraps from the pot’s bottom, but in the end, I was too ashamed to do it. Begging for food is truly a sorrowful thing.

“Hey you—when you’re done with that basin, lend it here.” When I turned at the voice behind me, Senuraiya stood there.

Wearing his usual wide white tightly-woven cotton heko obi with a hand towel draped over his shoulder, he spat out a glob of red-tinged spit from tooth powder,

“Where are you from?” he asked.

I answered this and that and, in doing so, hinted at my current predicament, whereupon the man nodded,

“So even if you left today, you’d have nowhere to go, would you?”

“Well, that’s exactly how it is.”
“Since I don’t know a single soul around here, I haven’t the slightest idea where to go or what to do.”

“That’s a real pickle,” he said, furrowing his thick brows as he scrutinized my face. “Well, how ’bout you eat my grub for now?”
“In the meantime, we’ll figure out some way to get you back home,” he said.

A Buddha in hell.
Involuntarily, tears welled up as I thanked him.
Through this connection, I lived under this man’s care for over a month in this cheap lodging house.
Each time I expressed gratitude,

“Oh, it’s nothing—when you’re on the road, we look out for each other.”
“The lot here at this lodging house are all down-and-out—not worth mentioning—but among us itinerants, that’s just how it goes.”
“When trouble comes, we help each other—that’s the way of those who wander from journey to journey.” He always said this like a worn refrain.

IV

None of the fellow lodgers called each other by name.
They went by nicknames based on their trades—Mannenya for the fountain pen seller, Hawaii for the one always talking about Hawaii.
Before I knew it, I'd become accustomed to being called 'Student' without anyone particular starting it.
Then there was the man supporting me—they called him Senuraiya.
His method was called Senurai fortune-telling: he'd print manuals for divining fortunes with six-mon coins onto small booklets made from six sheets of Suruga hanshi paper cut in half and bound together, then sell each copy for three sen in the town's bustling districts.
It was said that with a good spiel to draw crowds, they sold decently well. Every evening he'd light that painted horse-riding lantern of his and head out, returning by around ten clutching at least fifty or sixty sen—on good days, nearly a whole yen.

Unlike the other lodgers engaged in backbreaking labor like construction work or rickshaw pulling, he earned good money without breaking a sweat and, despite his youth, was said to be the top earner among them.
The lodgers singled out this man as their enemy and schemed to make him spend money at every opportunity.
But Senuraiya, though young in years, was a man who had navigated the harsh realities of itinerant life—he would not fall for their tricks so easily.
However, this man’s weakness was his fondness for gambling—he would not take the bait in other matters, but if lured with gambling, he would inevitably bite.
He would take the bait and always lose.
Unable to bear watching any longer,

“Gambling’s all well and good, but those guys might be colluding to pull something, so playing here isn’t to your advantage,” I tried to caution him.

“Nah, I ain’t gonna do it anymore,” he said with a bitter laugh. “It’s ridiculous.”
“Better to give you some pocket money with the cash those bastards take from me.”
“No matter how they sweet-talk me, I won’t bite,” he’d declare in the moment, yet come morning they’d coaxed him into playing again—and once he did, they’d inevitably strip him clean.

If he won, that was exactly why he couldn't quit gambling—but what was the point when they just kept stripping him bare?
I couldn't help feeling suspicious.
Yet according to Senuraiya's own words,

“Gambling’s just fun—whether I win or lose don’t matter one bit,” he said.

Then, mocking the lodger couple’s circumstances,

“Those guys are itinerants too, but they don’t even gamble once—too scared to mingle with others, they just keep grinding away in some corner without a moment’s rest, and still nothing ever sticks to ’em.”
“With that half-bald head of his and still rotting in a cheap lodging house at his age—fate’s made sure he’ll spend his whole damn life wandering till he drops dead on the road.”
“Look—if you’re bound to end up dead on some journey anyway, ain’t it smarter to go through it all with some laughs?”
“Pitiful, ain’t it? We’re all out on the same damn journey, but those fools can’t taste the freedom of us self-indulgent drifters.”

That couple made fountain pens and peddled them around.
Though called fountain pens, they were in reality nothing more than toys meant to deceive children.
They took thinly stretched copper and formed it into tubes about six centimeters long—narrowing each tip and fitting them with wooden stoppers at the base.
From that stopper, a thread-like brass wire was inserted and fixed all the way to the tube’s tip; if you filled the tube with ink and tried writing characters or anything else, the ink would flow out thinly without breaking due to the brass wire’s arrangement—that was all there was to it.
The husband, his crown thinning, was rolling copper strips into molds.
Then, Mannenya’s Wife heated a small soldering iron and applied solder to the tube’s seam with a sizzle.
Setting up a small worktable between them, the couple would finish their morning’s labor by noon, then head out together in the afternoon to sell their wares.

“So how about it, Mr. Mannenya—turning a profit?”

When a fellow lodger addressed him,

“Oh, it’s nothing.
“Poverty’s a full-time job, heh heh,” he said with an ingratiating chuckle.

“Smooth talker.”
“You hate socializing, don’t drink, and get all the female company you need from the landlady—if that doesn’t let you save up, something’s wrong with you,” Senuraiya sneered.

“Now, now—you’re joking.”
“At my age—well past my prime—there’s no fight left in me. However much I earn, it barely keeps our mouths fed, heh heh heh.”
“Compared to that, you’re something else, brother—just two-three hours come evening and you come back with your money belt clinking full. That’s a skill worth envying, eh old woman?”
“Hey—quit using so much solder. Thinner... thinner…” he muttered, turning back to his work.

Then came the day when it happened.
The hydrochloric acid used for priming the solder had run out, so Mannenya went to town to buy more at the apothecary—yet within barely thirty minutes, he returned deathly pale.

“The medicine?” his wife asked.

“This ain’t the time for that—somethin’ terrible’s happened,” he said before huddling with her in urgent whispers.

Then he made his wife purchase straw sandals, wolfed down an early lunch, and left somewhere after packing light.

At that time, Senuraiya had also gone out for leisure; all the other lodgers were daytime workers, and apart from the Mannenya couple, I was alone on the second floor.
I helped Senuraiya with his work every day.
At this time too, I was printing the fortune-telling manuals carved onto a woodblock onto Suruga hanshi paper, but after Mannenya had gone out, his wife sank into solitude and kept sighing as she pondered something.

“Student,” she suddenly called out to me. “Do you know about banks?”

Being asked such an abrupt, irrelevant question out of nowhere, I found myself momentarily at a loss for how to respond.

“About the bank matter—what do you mean?”

“If they suspend payments, what happens to the people who deposited their money?”

“Well… I don’t really know either, but I suppose they won’t return the deposits until things are sorted out.”

“If they suspend payments—or rather, that bank might as well have collapsed, don’t you think?”

“That’s not how it works.”
“A payment suspension means they set a fixed number of days—if they straighten things out within that time, they’ll reopen like normal. Has some bank you know suspended payments?”

“Oh—they said *our* bank suspended payments. Earlier, when my husband went to the pharmacy, he overheard the staff talking about it after reading the newspaper.”
“Since we’d also deposited a small amount there, my husband got worried and went out to check… But I suppose it’s already hopeless.”
“Where exactly is this place located?”
“It’s in some town called such-and-such—a good fifty miles from here.”

Then she took hold of me and talked about various things, half-complaining. The couple had once been proper farmers, but eight or nine years earlier a flood had swept away both their house and fields. From then on they'd wandered from place to place, scraping by through petty trade while depositing their earnings bit by bit in a bank—all with the plan that once the sum reached a certain amount, they'd return home to buy farmland and become farmers again.

"After eight or nine long years of scraping by, we've still only saved half of what we first aimed for."
"If the bank collapses now with this happening, there'll be no way for us to stay afloat."
"I've already had more than enough of this life as it is—if I must keep enduring year after year like this, never eating what I want... it'll truly cut my life short."
"There's no reason we have to suffer through all this just to become farmers again, is there?" she pleaded earnestly.

I was overwhelmed by helplessness and couldn’t offer any comfort.

That night, when Mannenya was absent, the fellow lodgers grew suspicious and questioned his wife, but she merely said he’d gone off to the countryside and offered no further details.
Yet people teased that her once amiable demeanor had sunk into utter despondency—leaving her barely able to speak—all due to loneliness over her husband’s absence.
Senuraiya joined in the teasing.
Since I too pitied the wife, when I explained the situation solely to Senuraiya,

“I see—didn’t know that. That Mannenya—his scrawny head’s gone even balder now, ha ha ha!” He laughed heartily. “From how you put it, sounds like the old woman ain’t got the patience left to wait around for him.”
“Course not. Once you’ve been an itinerant seven or eight years, that traveler’s spirit never leaves your bones. Ain’t no way they’re crawling back to being dirt farmers now.”

Five

According to his wife, Mannenya had left intending to be away no more than five days—yet six days passed, then seven, with no return.
The money her husband had left behind dwindled to nothing, leaving the wife utterly drained.
The lodgers found it strange too and urged her to send a letter, but talk of a hometown meant nothing without a fixed address—they couldn’t even guess where he might be.
Downstairs granted leniency for two or three nights’ rent, but meals had to be scraped together three times daily by her own hand.
Some suggested she craft their fountain pens and peddle them alone, but those pens defied solitary creation.
Other tasks might be managed through imitation, but winding the tubes and threading needles into stoppers demanded breathsynchronized precision—skills only her husband’s seasoned hands possessed.

In the daytime after everyone had gone out, only Senuraiya and I remained on the second floor to encounter Mannenya’s wife. Though she belonged to another man, we couldn’t abandon her to starvation—Senuraiya and I ended up sharing our own food with her.

Even when the lodgers waited at night for Senuraiya’s return and pressed him to join their usual games, he no longer agreed as readily as before. Sometimes he’d start participating only to stop abruptly midway through.

“What’s this? Stingy.”
“If you’re gonna quit halfway through, you shouldn’t’ve joined in the first place.”
“You’ve gotten awfully tightfisted lately.” When they disparaged him with this,

“It ain’t like that,” Senuraiya said, fiddling with his bellyband. “But if I go payin’ out every last bit now, I’ll be stuck tomorrow.”

“Heh, slapping another man’s wife and laying down bets on gambling—ain’t no way you can keep up with all that.”

“What did you say?”

“Oh, nothing—just saying you’re such a kind soul.”

Incidents like this occurred now and then.
The fellow lodgers began to suspect something between Senuraiya and Mannenya’s wife.

Of course, the wife’s behavior was as much open to suspicion as it invited it.
Perhaps it was her way of showing gratitude for being fed, but whenever it came to Senuraiya’s affairs, she attended to him with unwavering diligence—from laundering his loincloths to tidying his futon.
And when the fellow lodgers were absent, her behavior grew so intimate that even to my eyes it seemed strange.
While the man likely had no such intentions, I too thought that the woman was indeed making advances.

One evening, Senuraiya returned home, having been caught in the rain.
Then, the wife hurriedly stood up and went,

“You must’ve had a terrible time getting soaked, haven’t you? Wait a moment—my husband has a change of clothes you can wear instead. I’ll fetch them for you now.”

“Ahem!” someone coughed from within a futon.

“Quit foolin’ around!” another jeered.

Senuraiya’s expression darkened.

“Landlady, spare me your damn charity. I ain’t got secrets worth sniffing out—this meddlin’ turns my stomach.”

“But with all you’ve done for me, I only meant to show gratitude.”

“There’s no need for that.”
“Just get the hell over there and stay put.”

Having been told off so bluntly, the wife retreated to her futon, utterly stunned.
They snickered quietly.

Senuraiya took off his soaked clothes, hung them on a nail, and lay down beside me. Somewhere in a corner came hushed voices murmuring about us two. Clicking his tongue in irritation, Senuraiya kept tossing restlessly—until suddenly he barked, "Goddammit! This shit's pissing me off—alright!" and jerked upright. Then in a booming voice,

“Hey, if you’re all awake, listen up.”
“I’m sick of you digging into my innocent guts! Fine—if that’s how it is, I’ll let things go exactly how you expect! To mark it, I’ll buy a round!”
“Given how things are tonight, it’ll rain tomorrow anyway. Once day breaks, let’s all drink together—got it?”

“Fine, fine—if you’d figured that out sooner, there’d be no complaints.”
“In that case, tomorrow we’ll drink to celebrate.”
“I’d rather turn a profit’n drink.”
“Whatever’s fine—long as we can drink, that’s good enough.”

They all shouted approving remarks in unison.

The next day was a chilly one with soaking autumn rain falling.
The dimly lit second floor was damp through and through—the tatami mats, the walls—but there was nothing eerie about it.
A peddler selling anchovies called out as they passed through the town.
On days like this, the itinerant workers would usually be unable to go out for work, reduce their three meals to two, and lie listlessly wrapped in tattered futons—but today was different.
From the moment they woke up that morning, it was all about drinking—some went to buy liquor, others prepared side dishes, and among them was Mannenya’s wife, bustling about with twice the vigor of anyone else.
Senuraiya wore an expressionless face as he watched everyone’s activities.

The group gathered around the usual large dining table downstairs and began drinking around ten o'clock. And so they continued drinking until evening when the lamps were lit. I remained alone on the second floor, wrapped in a tattered futon and listening to the commotion downstairs. While they sang and cheered boisterously at first, things eventually escalated into a brawl among them. The Landlady shrieked in a piercing voice to restrain them. Worried Senuraiya might be caught up in it, I peered stealthily from the staircase entrance—but by then he was already gone from their midst. The wife’s figure too had vanished.

The fight had ended, and the drunkards finally retreated to the second floor around eight in the evening, all of them collapsing like mud and falling asleep right away.
Senuraiya and the wife seemed to have returned about two hours later, but by then I was half-asleep and didn’t remember clearly.

VI

However, on the evening two days later, Mannenya wandered back.
I was downstairs eating a late dinner when Mannenya returned, looking utterly exhausted. He plopped down on the threshold and didn’t even have the strength left to untie his straw sandals.

“Landlady, I’ve just returned,” he gasped for breath. “Sorry to trouble you, but could you call the old woman down here?”

Just then, the lodgers who had returned from work—some eating dinner, others washing their feet before eating—gathered around him, four or five in total, all silently smirking.

“You’ve made a big fuss over nothing, haven’t you? What was supposed to be four or five days has turned into ten already,” the Landlady said.

“Well… you see… I ran into some unexpected trouble, so I ended up taking more days than planned…” he replied, his head drooping limply.

Seeing his utterly wilted state, I concluded that the bank must have failed.

“Well, that’s neither here nor there… More importantly, Mr. Mannenya, you’d do better not to stay at this house anymore.”
“I mean no ill will—why not go over to Sanshuya instead?” When the Landlady made this abrupt suggestion, Mr. Mannenya looked up with bewilderment.

“Why won’t you have me stay anymore?”

“That’s not exactly why… but—hey, you all,” the Landlady said to those around her.

“That’s right—that’s better for you,” someone said.

In this way, Mannenya took the Landlady’s endlessly noncommittal words to mean she absolutely did not want to let him stay.
At this, he finally bristled with irritation, declaring that if that was how it stood, he didn’t need their lodging—he would neatly settle the deficit from the account the old woman had racked up eating and sleeping during his absence and leave immediately.

“It’s not like I’m expecting to collect payment from you… so there’s no call for that either.”
“This is a lodging house—whether it’s me or anyone else running it, we won’t let even a single night’s shortfall slide.”

“Hey, Landlady. How long you gonna keep spouting that roundabout nonsense? Just listening to it makes my blood boil,” a lodger cut in from the side. “Mr. Mannenya, even if you don’t fret about it, the Landlady’s accounts get settled proper day by day.”

“A man doesn’t let his woman go hungry,” said another. “If you’re away, some younger guy’ll handle everything for her—meals to bedtime—so you can skip town without a care,” a different lodger jeered.

Mannenya’s complexion changed.
His body shook violently.
He tried to say something, but his mouth seemed unable to form words.

At that very moment, as ill luck would have it, Mannenya’s wife and Senuraiya—who had gone out somewhere for amusement—returned in high spirits, both with flushed faces.
At the dim hour when lamps were lit, Mannenya’s wife entered the earthen-floored area without suspicion and came face to face with Mannenya; she gasped and tried to flee.
And then, suddenly, the husband grabbed the hair at her nape.
The woman let out a scream.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”
Senuraiya grabbed Mannenya’s dominant arm from the side with a forceful grip.

“You! You bastard!”

“What would I have done if it were me?”
“Women are living creatures—why didn’t you make sure she wasn’t in trouble that day?”
“Feed ’em and we’re the masters now! Lay one finger on her and I ain’t gonna stand for it!”

“That’s right, that’s right! Beat the hell out of that clueless bastard!” Senuraiya egged them on from the sidelines.

Those who had been on the second floor also came down.
A crowd swarmed around and forced him to release the woman’s topknot, but when he resisted, they finally ganged up on Mannenya and beat him mercilessly.
Then someone brought down Mannenya’s luggage from the second floor and expelled him out front along with it.

“What a clueless oaf you are! You don’t even stop to think about your own boneheadedness before blaming the woman—since when is that how things work?!” was their unanimous verdict.

I had watched everything unfold from start to finish, and it left me with an uncanny feeling.

Seven

Though his wife had been taken from him, Mannenya took lodgings at Sanshuya, just a stone's throw away. Someone spotted him resuming his peddling business from the very next day. When passing Yamamoto-ya, they say he would glare up resentfully at the second floor. I watched with pity as he returned alone from town—the familiar Chigusa-patterned furoshiki strapped to his back, the shirogane cloth bundle his wife should have carried now clutched in one hand, his thinning hair exposed to the autumn sunset. As a result, the wife stayed indoors whenever possible, truly frightened. Senuraiya wore an awkward expression, sunk deep in thought.

Then, a couple of days later one morning, Senuraiya—midway through his meal—suddenly seemed struck by an idea. Uncharacteristically drinking morning sake, he returned to the second floor and pulled the futon over himself to sleep again.
Mannenya’s wife had gone to town on Senuraiya’s errand to buy Suruga paper, and with no one to talk to and nothing else to do, I thought I might as well head down to the beach.
Then, at my show of movement, Senuraiya—who until now had lain still as if asleep—

“You going out somewhere?” he asked, lifting his head.

When I looked, somehow—as if he’d been crying—the rims of his eyes were red.
The alcohol seemed to have worn off, leaving his face pale.

“Oh, it’s fine if I don’t go out.”

“Well, just keep me company for a bit then.”
“I just feel so damn lonely,” he said, uttering something uncharacteristic.

“Is something wrong?” I asked suspiciously.

“Ah, it’s nothing—just got lost thinking about things and ended up feeling strange,” he replied with a bitter smile.

“How old are you again?”

“Nineteen.”

“So next year you’ll be twenty.”
“By that age, I was already roaming from journey to journey.”
“You’ve still got a home and parents back in your hometown, eh?”
“Then get yourself back there quick.”
“No use rotting forever in this hole—I’ll scrape up enough for your travel expenses.”

So abrupt was this that I struggled to grasp his meaning.

"I'll have you know, even I had both parents till twelve or thirteen. Now I've got no parents to speak of, no home, no birthplace—nothing at all. Just a lone stray dog of a man. When you think on it, it's a lonely state of affairs."
"Call it a house—was just some ramshackle place, couple rooms dim as dusk, my old man and ma huddled there in their rags... But come autumn, on long nights like this one, we'd pass the time peeling roasted chestnuts and swapping harmless jokes—those were nights worth having, eh."
"When I think back on those days now—like I'm half-remembering some past life—leaves me feeling all twisted up inside, like I can't get a proper grip on anything. No damn backbone at all," he laughed bleakly.

Senuraiya closed his eyes just like that and kept his face pressed motionlessly into the pillow.
The daytime at the cheap lodging house was quiet, with no sound coming from Okami-san downstairs.

“Ah, the sound of waves,” he said after a while, lifting his head. “I thought it was the wind at first. What’s coming next—one of those roaring gusts that sweeps right up to your feet, I reckon. Then before long, white flakes’ll come fluttering down. For wanderers like us, snow’s the cruelest trial. Tell me—drifting endlessly from journey to journey like I do... how far must one drift before finding rest? There’s that song about birds vanishing into nowhere—that’s our fate through and through. In the end, we all turn to dirt in some forgotten corner. Fine enough, I suppose—die on the road and you’re no different from stray dogs. Can’t tell your corpse from theirs, so no bones remain—not that leaving any behind would matter. Then it’s like I’d disappear clean from this wretched world—no shadow, no form left. Makes me sick, how damn sudden it all is... No, worse than sudden—it’s just... achingly lonely.”

“Then why not stop wandering and establish a household? If you settle down properly, you’ll naturally have children and grandchildren—so even after you die, there’ll still be something of you left, won’t there?”

Thinking that Senuraiya was no longer single now, that he had acquired someone resembling a wife, and that he must therefore have wanted a household, I said those words to him. Then he shook his head solemnly,

“You just don’t understand this feeling,” he said with apparent irritation, but I couldn’t grasp those words either.

Eight

The following morning, after waiting for all the other lodgers to leave, Senuraiya turned to me,

“Hey, you—through some strange twist of fate we’ve grown close like this, but I’ve decided to cross over to Mukōji today. This means we’ll finally have to part ways.”
“As long as we’re both alive, there’s no saying we won’t meet again—so take care of yourself, alright? Now, I’ve got about one ryō and some change here… Out of that, I’ll give you fifty sen.” As he spoke, he rummaged through his money belt.

I was utterly shocked by how abrupt it was.

“Is it true?”

“It’s true. Truth is, I never meant to stay this long in a place like this. But I grew close to you, and before I knew it, I’d lingered here too damn long. So I figured I’d at least leave you with something for your journey. But this town’s too small—I worked it over too hard for too long. People stopped coming around. Last night, I didn’t even make half what I’d expected.”

“So here’s the thing—if you can tough it out here for two or three days with this fifty sen, I’ll make sure to send you some travel money from Mukōji without fail, alright?”

“With that in mind, even when I’m gone, don’t go running off somewhere else right away—got it?”

As for others’ words—I cannot say—but I never doubted what this man said.

I expressed my thanks, wanted to linger over farewells, and had various things I wished to say, but Mannenya’s Wife, who was beside us, wouldn’t allow it.

“Is it true? It’s all so sudden—I feel like I’m being strung along myself,” she said.
“Well then—if you’re really leaving—what time today?”

“Right now,” Senuraiya said with a bitter face.

“Here—I’ll leave fifty sen for you too.
Truth is, I’d love to give more,” she continued,
“but like I said—business has dried up.
So please bear with this.”

I too, listening nearby, thought it was a joke at first.
Mannenya’s Wife had initially treated it as a jest, but Senuraiya remained utterly serious.

“So you’re just going to use me as your temporary comfort and toss me aside?” Mannenya’s Wife finally confronted him in a tear-choked voice.

“Did I use you as some temporary comfort or not? I ain’t even thought about that shit, so I don’t know myself. Take it however the hell you want. Yesterday’s yesterday, today’s today.”
“No matter what you say, I ain’t the type to put down roots here. Once I’ve set my mind to something, today I’ve gotta cross that damn sea no matter what.”
“I’ll follow you anywhere.”

“Don’t go jokin’ around like that.”
“I ain’t the kind to put down roots—just drift from journey to journey without end. How the hell could I stand being saddled with someone like you?”
“What’s the problem? You’ve got the fortune of being born a woman—there’ll always be someone to feed you.”
“If you ain’t got the heart for that, you can always crawl back to that original Mannenya of yours.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“How could I possibly show my face and go back to my husband now?”

“Now, don’t go saying that.”
“I ain’t made no marital promise with you or nothin’. It’s just—you had nobody to feed you and I’m a bachelor, that’s all there is to it. There’s no hidden meaning or anything else, so why can’t you cut it clean like a proper traveler?”
“I’m a freewheeling bachelor through and through who just wants to wander, so I’m beggin’ you—don’t stand in my way.”
“As for you—instead of clinging to someone like me who’s bound to die a lifelong itinerant, you’d be better off in the long run going back to your original husband—that patient man.”
“If ya just decide to go back, that guy’ll take you in anytime—that much I can guarantee.”
“I ain’t tellin’ you wrong—so don’t go against it, alright?”

“I don’t care! After suffering such humiliation, I can’t face anyone anymore—I’ll just die!” With that, Mannenya’s Wife collapsed into tears.

＊ ＊ ＊

I saw Senuraiya off and went as far as the boat landing at the town inlet.
From there, he was to board the small steamer bound for Mukōji.
It was a day of soft western winds—though the sea remained hidden from view here, waiting passengers murmured about waves further out.
The sky hung patchy with clouds, sunlight flaring bright only to retreat into shadow again.
Even at noon, mist clung faintly to the water’s edge while across the riverbank, roofs and walls stood stark against the haze.
However one reckoned it, autumn had reached its end; the sky verged on winter’s aspect.
I drew my lined kimono’s collar tight.

“Hey, you—wait two or three days. I’ll send it without fail,” Senuraiya vowed even in the very act of boarding the steamer.

The steamer departed.
As I watched Senuraiya’s figure standing on the deck grow gradually more distant, I recalled the lyrics of the song he had quoted in our conversation that morning,
“Where will I meet my end—it’s true, just like birds vanishing into nowhere!” I thought.
But when even the shadow of that small steamer had vanished from sight and I noticed my helpless figure left alone on the riverbank edge, I was suddenly overcome with an indescribably lonely melancholy.
And so, I felt a deep longing for my hometown.

＊ ＊ ＊

Mannenya’s Wife had been utterly despondent, but when the fifty sen received from Senuraiya ran out, she soon stumbled back to her husband at Sanshuuya.
And so, the reconciled Mannenya couple shouldered their respective shares of the white and chigusa-colored furoshiki bundles and went off somewhere.

Senuraiya had promised me two or three days when he left, but on the seventh day—delayed—he sent two yen via an umbrella repairman who had come over from Mukōji. Due to Mukōji being unexpectedly desolate, Senuraiya had gone to some town fifteen *ri* ahead, and it was said that he had entrusted it from there. I departed for my hometown the following day.