Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Ogawa Mimei

A monk appeared in the village, as if from nowhere. He wore a faded brown robe and straw sandals. He chimed a small Buddhist gong, held a black-lacquered bowl in one hand, stood at each door, chanted sutras, and walked while begging for alms. The monk was a calm-looking man in his fifties. He chanted sutras in a quiet tone. Even as he chanted sutras with downcast eyes, he appeared to be deeply pondering something. His eyebrows were white and long. On his head, he wore a hat colored through repeated exposure to rain and wind. Even as brief autumn days drew to a close, he would not leave until he had stood at each door and been greeted by the household members. A dragonfly with wings grown frail would alight on a reddened persimmon leaf only to rise again, then descend once more to perch. The sound of the Buddhist gong resounded calmly through the windless, quiet midday. Niji and the monk stood still and chanted sutras.

Those who saw the monk would say, “The monk has come to the village again.” From inside houses came voices occasionally urging, “Pass through.” At such times, the monk would quietly depart from before that dwelling. Other moments brought children’s shouts of “We won’t come out!” Then too the monk would silently withdraw from their threshold. Sometimes a youth’s voice would snap like a whip: “Be gone!” Even then, with unshaken calmness, he turned away from their door. Upon leaving one home he would approach the next, chanting sutras in that same measured tone. The Buddhist gong’s sound pulsed languidly through the air. His long white brows hovered above closed eyes that seemed to ponder what prayers each household required. In fallow fields where crimson-withered pumpkin vines sprawled, thin autumn light sometimes fell upon stubbornly clinging blades of dead grass.

At one time, there were people who had moved to this village from distant towns, and among these individuals were those prone to illness and others who had gone mad. When autumn reached its end, cold winds would blow. The northwestern wind stripped all leaves from the village groves, leaving the settlement growing somehow desolate. The thatched roofs, which until now had been hidden by lush fields and tree branches, suddenly stood exposed as both fields and forest turned bare - gray rooftops appeared, and figures of people drying belongings or working before their homes could be seen.

The weak sunlight, filtered through clouds, had just begun to faintly brighten those landscapes when—suddenly the wind shifted, and rain came sweeping in. By evening, the sky darkened, and sleet mixed with rain-snow began to fall. On the ridges of the fields it accumulated white, and upon the withered grass too it turned white. The wind grew increasingly stronger, and the houses hurriedly closed their doors. At this moment, one couldn’t help but wonder where the Monk would disappear to. The next day, the outside was white. The sky looked uneasy, clouds churned turbulently—it became clear this was now the first day of snow’s arrival. Around noon, once again as if from nowhere, the Monk entered the village. He stood at the corner of a tenement, chimed the Buddhist gong, remained planted in the sleet-laden muddy path, and continued chanting sutras with closed eyes as always.

From inside the house came the wife’s voice, “Here, I’ll give you some,” she said, followed by the clattering sound of coins falling into the black-lacquered alms bowl. Before long, the wife’s figure disappeared into the house.

Outside, a cold, fierce wind blew as black clouds surged from the northwest. The monk stood calmly, chanting sutras indefinitely, but eventually left the front of that house.

In this manner, day after day, the monk roamed through the village. Just when it seemed his visits had continued for ten days, he would vanish somewhere and stop coming altogether. No one in the village could say when exactly he had ceased appearing. They supposed he must be making rounds elsewhere and would not return here. There were times when he came again after a year had passed. There were also times when two or three years elapsed before his return. None could perceive that the monk had aged. Whenever seen, he appeared exactly as when first visiting this village years prior. Not only that—none noticed any meaningful alteration in his physical form either. Sometimes he entered the village as autumn turned to winter. Sometimes at spring's first stirrings. His comings were never fixed.

Then, one year, such a rumor arose in the village.

"That monk doesn't age." "When that monk comes, someone in this village always dies—one after another." "When someone dies, that monk comes…"

No one had believed this rumor.

At the beginning of spring, the monk entered the village as if from nowhere. At that time, this rumor resurfaced again. From this rumor, some villagers would give coins to the monk each time he came. Others would close their doors and pretend to be out when the monk came. After about ten days, the monk disappeared from this village to somewhere.

The villagers said to one another.

“The monk has stopped coming.” “He didn’t come yesterday either.” “The day before yesterday either.” “Exactly five days now since he last came.”

It was around this time that the villagers first began to take notice of the Monk’s arrivals and departures.

Within ten days of the Monk’s departure, an incident occurred in the village. It was that the young male madman and his mother who lived at the edge of the village had died simultaneously. These two had been eking out their days with a meager stipend from the relevant office. The villagers too took pity on the mother and gave her goods. In former times, they had been samurai receiving stipends from their lord, but later, while eking out a meager existence through government bonds, the madman’s father died, and his son went mad at age fifteen, remaining in that state to this day. Before they knew it, the government bonds had been completely exhausted. It was said that the mother had relatives in town, but there was no one who came to care for her. The madman would sometimes break out of his cage and escape. His hair hung down over a face darkened by grime until its original skin tone became unrecognizable; wearing shoulder-torn garments bound with a rope belt and barefoot, he wandered aimlessly while muttering something under his breath, startling children playing outside.

It was a day at the end of autumn, before the snow had begun to fall. A group of children were playing under a large walnut tree near the temple graveyard. As they played a game of demon tag—led by a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old with eight- or nine-year-olds at the youngest—from beyond, "Hey! You know English? I'll teach you!" came a shout as someone came shambling over. Looking up, they saw a figure approaching with long hair hanging over his shoulders, clinking a thin cane in hand and sweeping sharp eyes around—it was none other than the madman known to all in the village. The children—who knew through witnessing and hearsay how he had countless times brought out blades, how he had tried to stab his own mother, how she had fled outside—raised their voices and scrambled to flee first. Among them were those who lagged behind, crying and screaming.

When this matter spread through the village，four or five people，taking pity on the mother，set out to search for the madman. That night，they reportedly restrained him in the temple grove，repaired the cage again，and placed him back inside.

When the western sunset stained crimson the branches of the walnut tree standing by the temple graveside, the children who witnessed this scene inevitably recalled the madman and conversed among themselves. When the villagers discovered the tragic deaths of this madman and his mother, they found her - having stabbed her own child through the throat with a dagger before collapsing upon his corpse in suicide. Outside raged a blizzard. Somber light seeped through door cracks, mournfully illuminating this fireless dwelling. Not a single proper tool remained. They saw lamp wicks she'd crafted until death's moment scattered about the blackened, scarred board.

The blood had a blue color. The white of those lamp wicks, like a color drained of all hue, left the hearts of those who saw them in blank dismay.

A certain villager remarked. They had seen her during that great blizzard two days prior—the madman’s mother hurrying back from town without even raising an umbrella. The geta with loosened thongs were buried in snow; her fingers red and frozen; her white hair—drained of vitality like dried blood—looking pitiable as it was blown by the wind.

The villagers wondered why the mother had killed her child and committed suicide. Had she thought to avoid burdening others further? Had they been unable to endure hunger and cold? Among them was one who said this. She had been a daughter raised in a samurai household long ago. She must have had at least this much resolve, they remarked.

The words spoken by that person made those present recall a bygone era of blossoms. Once, when this old woman had been twenty, eighteen or nineteen... it conjured visions of what might have been. But that too was fleeting. Now before their eyes lay a corpse in a state too gruesome to behold. The garments were thin unlined kimonos, their torn shoulders mended over and over.

Another person offered a slightly different interpretation. That was, she didn't know when she herself would grow old and die. After she died, who would there be to care for this madman? Rather than that, she stated it was done from the thought that by killing him with her own hands and immediately following after him in death, they would remain parent and child even after dying.

For some reason, this statement made all those present tear up. The villagers respectfully buried the two corpses.

One summer, the Monk appeared in the village, arriving from nowhere in particular. By now, whenever this Monk came, there was not a soul in the village who didn’t harbor the suspicion that someone would die. No one remained untouched by the rumor someone had once spread. “That monk has come again,” the people murmured, gazing at him with uneasy eyes. The children formed a group and trailed after the monk. They kept two or three paces between themselves as they whispered to one another.

“When that monk comes, people die, they say.” A girl of about seven said,

“We should just throw stones at that bald-headed monk,” said the nursemaid carrying a baby on her back.

In this way, the villagers sought to drive away the monk, with some going door to door throughout every house in the village to spread warnings. He comes into this village because people give him things. If given nothing, he won't enter this village. They went around declaring that one must never give him anything. There were households that superstitiously revered the monk, but deeming it foolish to give alms only to earn resentment from others, they pretended not to notice when he came. The Monk stood before the house as was his custom and chanted sutras in a tranquil voice. The Buddhist gong resonated slowly. Peering through cracks in doors, one saw his eyes still closed as if deep in prayer—those thick white eyebrows imparting an unshakable sense that he was no ordinary monk.

Even if they pretended not to notice, the Monk did not leave the front of this house. The superstitious woman, her heart leaping, said in an extremely small voice, “Please move along.” Her face burned crimson, her heart pounding. Somehow, the woman felt unsettled.

This extremely small utterance seemed to have entered the Monk's ears with perfect clarity. The Monk quietly left the front of this house. At this time, the villagers gave nothing to the Monk. However, the Monk walked through this village every day. The Monk stood in front of every house without exception, chanted sutras as was his custom, and struck his Buddhist gong. No one gave alms, but the Monk walked through the village daily to beg as his duty. When this continued for ten days, the Monk drifted away and vanished without a trace.

The villagers all thought the Monk had stopped coming, yet there was not a single one who didn't feel uneasy about what would follow for some time.

“Finally, the Monk had stopped coming,” one person said with a feeling as though a heavy stone had been lifted from their chest.

“For some time, we’ll be uneasy,” said another, sensing an immovable force within the rumor. “In this civilized age, such things don’t exist,” they insisted, trying to persuade themselves that civilization made nothing fearsome—striving to veil their own minds with those two characters: “civilization.”

The conversation among these three people,

“We’ll know once some time passes,” they concluded with finality. They debated who had first started such rumors. But the origin of this rumor was never determined.

After the Monk left, before five days had passed, a misfortune occurred in this village.

The villagers exchanged glances as if realizing it only now.

The dead man was fifty-five years old. He had long worked as a railway crossing guard. Telegraph poles from the northern coast ran unevenly southward. When he surveyed the lonesome path through wild fields along rails reflecting dull metallic light, his edema-swollen body—clad in a faded navy suit—shuffled forward, limp hands swaying unconsciously with each step. When the monster roared, shaking the earth across the quiet expanse, sleeping grasses, trees, and houses awoke. Some who leaned from yellow windows might have noticed this man who had raised a white flag before the crossing guard's hut—others perhaps passed by in silence. Some spat as they passed. Among them was a pitiable old man. There must have been those who wondered what manner of life he led as they went by.

The man was of a taciturn nature. He had long suffered from paralysis, and his left hand and ear did not function well. When at home, he would take a potted plant bearing red berries—though he did not know what kind of tree it was—out into the sunny spot and water it. There were those who saw this man watering the tree bearing red berries even on the day before his death.

On a gloomy, overcast morning, the man went out fishing to the nearby river. The blue water rose up to his feet. As he kept staring at it, his eyes began to blur dizzily. He thought this was the river, but suddenly felt as relaxed as if sitting on tatami mats; collapsing right there, he swallowed water, thrashed about, and died. When the villagers went to retrieve the man, they found him drowned in the shade of thick grass, his limbs drawn up and curled into a ball. His face was pale, and a short beard grew on his chin. In both his living days and in death, there was no marked difference in his pallid complexion.

From then on, it had become certain that every time this monk came to the village, someone would die.

The months and years passed like flowing water. That too has now become a tale from the past.

This village too had undergone many transformations. After the fields were devastated by a great flood in a certain year, many left the village to relocate elsewhere. Some moved to towns, others went to different villages.

Now only three houses remained in this village. This village was a small settlement blocked on one side by a river and far removed from the main road—a dark, desolate, gloomy place. Ancient giant cedars thrived densely around the village. In a field that had grown slightly brighter, mulberry trees spread across every inch with large black palm-like leaves that shone in the sun.

Of the three houses, two stood lined up within this mulberry field. One house stood in a dark forest. In the two houses lived poor people. While others had left for towns or moved elsewhere, we—claiming we lacked the means—still remained in this village. The house in the forest had been this village's wealthy family since ancient times. The house was old and large, and within its estate grounds grew ancient trees hundreds of years old. No matter what happened, the people of this house never once left their mansion.

The interior of the large house, not having too many windows, was filled with moisture. Without allowing sunlight to penetrate, branches intertwined to block out the sky. White trunks intersecting with red ones stood starkly upright, catching the eye. Those who frequented this house claimed to have seen a large snake coiled around a branch, targeting sparrows. Moreover, before entering the house deep in this forest, they said they walked beneath the trees and saw various unfamiliar insects. When they entered the house and spoke to its residents, they said the residents' faces looked pale and eerie. They also said that in this house, illness had never ceased through the generations.

In this house lived a daughter who had reached thirty-two without being wedded off. Since childhood, she had never been permitted beyond this dark house's confines. Her world consisted solely of wind sounds through forest trees and silent rainfall observed through windows. On rare occasions when clouds parted, faint glimpses of blue sky might filter through the dense woodland. At dusk each day, unseen birds would converge in these woods to cry out. Those avian calls formed her sole auditory diversion. Throughout her life confined within ancestral walls, she knew no objects bearing vivid hues—no brilliant greens nor vibrant crimsons nor piercing blues—save for tarnished brass kettles used in daily chores and antique mirrors patinated with blue corrosion among other timeworn household implements passed down generations.

Though possessing wealth aplenty, the house's interior remained steeped in gloom. The single shamisen that had existed since ancient times was often heard being played by her mother until the daughter's childhood, but one year during the rainy season, after its body skin had sagged unevenly and lost its sound, it was hidden away somewhere. Of course, this was likely because there had been no place nearby to restretch it. From then on, the house remained perpetually silent, not even a laugh escaping its confines. Above all, when playing that shamisen, her mother's singing voice still lingered in the daughter's ears. She had no reason to remember that song, for she had not fully understood it back then. Yet the melody itself—so plaintive, so resentful, so gloomily indescribable—left an unforgettable impression. Mother, still young with jet-black hair and a pale complexion, turned her face slightly sideways as she cradled the shamisen, singing while gazing toward the garden. Bluish leaves floated hazily in the evening air.

When the daughter was eighteen or nineteen, she would often sink into deep reverie. During those days, she grew wistful for the color red. At times she would recall the shamisen melodies from her childhood, imagining in her ears that plaintive singing voice—so full of unresolved resentment—clinging stubbornly to memory. "Where could that shamisen have gone?" she wondered as she searched. Yet ultimately she never found it. There were evenings when hearing twilight birds gather in the forest, seeing fragments of blue sky between branches, or watching moonlight filter through cedars would stir in her a longing to behold the sea. Sometimes she even fancied someone might be waiting for her beyond those trees.

Now there were only white and black upon her person—no red, no blue, no purple. She no longer peered from the black house's windows to watch the forest swaying in wind-woven stripes across the void, nor lost herself in daydreams as before. One might have thought her heart had turned to cold stone, so little did she care for her appearance now. Her pallid face framed hair that had loosened at the roots and fallen about her shoulders. She wore none of the reds or purples considered feminine. Though she still sometimes leaned from windows to gaze at evening skies, this never stirred any longing that might flush her cheeks. She only laughed coldly—a bleak, hollow laughter that seemed to mock both world and humankind.

The daughter's mother had now become a white-haired old woman. The elderly mother said to those who frequented the house.

“My daughter is ill, so please don’t raise your voices or laugh.” Upon hearing this, one might have thought that perhaps this woman truly was sick. The forest towering blackly into the sky concealed this house. It looked as though it were protecting this house. Rarely were there any people who came and went to this house. Apart from the small birds in the forest, no one knew how those people inside the house managed to exist.

Of the two houses standing side by side, one normally kept its door closed, and the wife did not go out to the fields. Her husband was a traveling merchant who journeyed along the coast to neighboring countries and was seldom home. Those who traveled through mountainous countries had to follow along the sea. In places facing the sea, there were villages; there were towns. Entering those towns and villages where sea winds blew, they conducted business while smelling the stench of fish and the briny scent of shorelines. In some towns, white flags fluttered against the backdrop of the blue sea. They traveled from village to village and town to town, interacting with sun-bronzed men and women who worked naked, until eventually crossing the border into the neighboring country. Thus, while her husband was away, the wife would go out to the fields and cultivate vegetables. Anyone who passed by this small house with sagging eaves always saw its door closed. There were no particular visitors either. In midsummer, the sunflowers that bloomed in vivid yellow grew tall; no sooner had they opened eastward as the morning sun faintly tinged the eastern sky than when the sun gradually rose and turned southward, these large yellow blossoms began tracking its path, revealing their thick central stamens. By the time the sun approached noon, the flowers made their green leaves glisten in its light, reflecting a silvery sheen as if damp with perspiration, their heads drooping limply toward the sun. The blazing sun swayed as it moved across the slack expanse of sky. Throughout the long midday, the house where flowers bloomed remained closed. Eventually, as the sun dipped toward the mulberry fields, the horizon staining crimson like blood and crimson rays reflecting off the forest towering blackly in the distance, portions of the sunflowers fell into shadow—yet the flowers still stood rooted earthward, stubbornly straining to glimpse the sun that had plunged into the abyss.

The summer sky of the northern country cleared into a deep navy blue soon after dusk. The stars' light—identical to what had shone a thousand or two thousand years prior—tonight streamed anew, vivid and damp, over blades of grass and thatched houses as though illuminating this world for the first time.

In the remaining house—where insects chirped and walls crumbled—lived an elderly couple. The old man was senile; the old woman’s hair had turned pure white. Their only son was apprenticed at a town clock shop and sent a small amount of money every month to support them. They relied on this to send up a thin wisp of smoke. The elderly couple planted a small number of vegetables around their house. They weren’t harvesting enough to sell—they simply took what they grew to sustain themselves. When early autumn winds blew and chili peppers turned red, even at midday insects chirped in the shade of fallen dead branches. The sky hung clear and blue like water, where wild geese could be seen flying north.

When they woke in the morning and went to check by the remaining red chili peppers, it appeared frost had fallen during the night—the few green leaves that had emerged were frozen white.

When the pale sunlight struck the faded reddish, weathered walls, it evoked memories of the village's rise and fall.

Every year, medicine peddlers from other countries would come to this village. Back when this small village had not yet been ravaged by floods, when multiple houses still stood in these mulberry fields, before its people began migrating to towns and elsewhere—when a considerable number of households still remained—those medicine peddlers came every summer. They never passed through even the smallest village in all of Japan without stopping. When they left a yellow medicine bag at some house this year, the next year they would unfailingly revisit that house to replace the old one with a new. As they departed, they would turn back toward the household member,

“I’ll return next year,” they would say. When that medicine peddler came to the house the following year, there were times when the old woman who had received him the previous year had died the past autumn and was no longer there. However, that medicine peddler—for some reason—had not visited this village for over two or three years now. Other merchants who used to enter this village every year without fail—cocoon buyers and various peddlers—had also ceased to come. At the same time those others ceased to come, the monk who had once visited every year also stopped appearing. The elderly couple who had long lived in the village still remembered that monk. Dressed in faded robes, his hat pulled low over his eyes, they could never forget the figure who would stand before each house—chanting sutras, striking his Buddhist gong, walking his alms-begging rounds.

Moreover, They had not forgotten how there had been a rumor that "when that monk enters the village, someone will surely die."

The wind blew, the rain fell and turned to snow; years ended, and ten-odd years passed until this village reached its present state. Since the paralyzed railway crossing guard had drowned, there had been many changes in this village; since then, the monk would only rarely enter to make his alms rounds, but once people dwindled and the village declined, he ceased coming altogether. As he had not come for many years by then, it had finally become a tale of the past. It was thought that perhaps the monk had met a violent death somewhere. And so, it was unthinkable that this monk would ever enter this village again.

However, suddenly in the tenth year, this monk came begging for alms. Among them, the elderly couple's eyes rolled white with shock. They grieved, wondering if the time had come when they themselves must die.

The two spent that night talking like this. “Now those living in this village are just the people in the dark forest house, us, and the neighbor’s wife’s household.” “It makes no sense for the monk to come begging here when there’s only these three houses left.” “But could today’s monk be the same one from before?” said the old woman.

The already senile old man was lucid only at this moment. And he declared.

“It’s the monk who came ten years ago.” “The very same monk.”

The night was dark, pressing close against the eaves of the hut. It seemed to cock its ear, eavesdropping on what was happening inside the house.

“If he were the Monk from back then, he should have aged much more,” said the old woman. The old man had not changed at all. From his stature and demeanor, he declared that [the Monk] remained exactly as he had been at that time.

The old woman grieved and narrated the following in a low voice. "I’m certain it won’t be us who die this time—it must be that young lady from the house in the forest." "When I saw her briefly the other day, she had a deathly pale face." "I thought she had the countenance of a corpse." "Her lacquer-black hair hung over her face, her eyes sunken, her limbs emaciated—when I saw that figure, I shuddered." "I thought I didn't have much longer." "I’m certain that when the monk appeared, he came to take his daughter away."

It was a quiet, dark night.

Facing the white-haired old woman sat a toothless, bald-headed old man. The dim lamp uneasily illuminated the interior of the house.

A scattered pattering struck the window. Yet the old woman continued speaking without notice. "I found even that terrible epidemic more dreadful than the great flood of years past. "Why does no one ever settle long in this village? "If only our boy would come of age soon—we'd move to town straightaway once he opens his shop."

“Oh, it’s started to rain,” said the old man, cocking his ear. “In the evening, the western sky was terribly dark. Since it’s a quiet evening, it might rain.”

said the old woman.

For a while, the grandfather and grandmother sat facing each other in silence, but the sound of rain falling steadily outside became audible.

“Why does the monk only come to this village?” said the grandmother in a tone that could no longer contain her suspicion. “What, he’ll keep coming until every last person in this village dies out.”

With that, the grandfather said, keeping his eyes closed and looking downward.

The monk walked through this village begging alms for two or three days, then vanished somewhere unnoticed.

The elderly couple, each time they looked toward the dark forest, would say to each other that before long a coffin would emerge from that forest.

The wife, left alone to keep house, directed her thoughts northward toward where she could hear the sea's roar and worried about her husband’s well-being. The soil had turned pale and parched, and most leaves had fallen from the trees. The mulberry leaves remaining in the fields blackened and withered. The world remained utterly silent throughout the day—deathly quiet.

“The snow draws near.”

And the grandfather went out to the doorway and said while tidying up.

The sky was filled with nothing but white, motionless clouds.

The forest, the houses, the fields—all lay silent as if shrouded from head to toe in burial garments, a dreary sight.

On this deathly quiet day when all sound seemed dead, news came to the elderly couple. —that their son working as an apprentice at the town clock shop had died of a sudden illness.