Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

The temple buildings of Tōkōin were visible from the steam-powered railcar window on the mountainside.
Amidst the blue grove, the black-glazed roof tiles and white shining walls, bathed in the western sun, were of such vivid hues that they seemed on the verge of bursting into flames.

The long stone steps appeared white like a waterfall cascading down to the temple’s very base, visible through the thick clusters of foliage.

“That must be Tōkōin Temple, right?”

O-hikaru, who had been grimacing at the foul odor of the steam-powered railcar she was riding for the first time and covering her nose with a striped silk handkerchief, finally spoke up now, revealing her small, neatly shaped nose with its sharply defined bridge.

Koiike gazed only out the window, seemingly unaware of the kerosene soot scattering from the engine, appearing wholly intent on avoiding being seen by fellow passengers.

“It’s not this dirty.”

Twitching the slightly large mole near her mouth, O-hikaru wiped Koiike’s summer Inverness sleeve with her handkerchief.

“Unbearable. Let’s take the train back. Even waiting two or three hours would be better than riding this absurd contraption.”

Koiike seemed to notice for the first time, briskly wiping the black soot clinging from his shoulder to his knees with a spotless white handkerchief before brushing it off the top of O-hikaru’s handbag resting across from him.

“That’s why I told you we should’ve waited longer. You brought this on yourself by being so impatient.”

Taking up the Chiyoda handbag—its base woven like a basket and its upper section embroidered with white ivy patterns on mouse-gray shioze silk—O-hikaru gazed absently at it, her eyes moistening, and murmured as if to herself.

“If someone we know sees us, it’d be troublesome—but since we fled this way, we’re mostly safe… Fleeing fast is winning.”
“We couldn’t afford to be picky about transportation.”

Having said this, Koiike pushed up the glass window with all his strength.

The steam-powered railcar advanced with an unpleasant rumble through rice fields where early crops had already yellowed, running parallel to gentle mountain ranges that lay stretched long in the distance—thought to be about ten *chō* away—across the landscape.

“From here onward, the steam-powered railcar doesn’t go any further.”
“‘Those proceeding further shall board the next train,’” the conductor announced in a sing-song tone. At this, Koiike and O-hikaru simultaneously jerked their heads up and surveyed the carriage. Beyond themselves, they saw only an old woman bent double beneath a large furoshiki-wrapped bundle fumbling about, while crowds of people were already filing out through the ticket gates in droves.

“Where in the world are you going…?” O-hikaru called out, hurriedly following Koiike as he rushed out of the carriage, trotting after him.

“I’m from Tokyo, you know—I don’t know these remote country roads… You’ll have to guide us.”

After passing through a station no larger than a slightly expanded festival stall, Koiike seemed to finally settle into composure. He struck a match and leisurely lit a hand-rolled cigarette.
Blue smoke swayed gently before vanishing into the clear early autumn air.

“I don’t know either… this place…”

O-hikaru snapped open her white bat umbrella embroidered with amber like a lotus flower blooming, then hurriedly pulled her feet inward as they threatened to lag behind while walking.

Passing through a one-sided town lined with teahouse-like shops displaying cheap sweets and hardware stores that had added modest textile goods to their wares, the two reached a cross-shaped junction on a country path barely wide enough for carts. There, they stopped and exchanged looks, wondering which way to go. Groups of five or eight children returning from elementary school approached in clusters, stared curiously at the two figures, then ran off with puzzled expressions.

Even if they tried to go straight ahead, there was only a single path stretching endlessly northward—they couldn't bring themselves to walk aimlessly like that.
When they looked to the right, there seemed to be something atop the mountain, but on a day when merely walking seemed enough to bring on sweat, O-hikaru first shook her head at the thought of climbing a slope.

“Let’s go there and see,” declared Koiike with grandiose finality, then briskly set off to the left.

Ahead, a dense forest came into view, and a towering ginkgo tree stood out prominently in height.
A red-painted torii gate also came into view.
They walked toward it.
O-hikaru lagged more than ten ken behind, growing increasingly withdrawn.

He plucked a single stalk of softly ripened rice ears from the rice field, and when he chewed the still-green husk, a sweet white liquid clung to the tip of his tongue.
Koiike crushed three, four, five husks in this manner, then swung the rice ear around as he stood by the roadside, waiting for O-hikaru, who had fallen behind, to approach.

“Ah, I’m exhausted… Lately I hardly walk at all, so even a little stroll tires me out right away.”

Holding her bat umbrella aloft, O-hikaru breathed heavily through her shoulders. Her pale gray ro-chirimen silk haori was taken off and held in her hand.

“Young lady of a respectable house… or perhaps madam… or mother… whatever you are—you’d need to ride a palanquin or you’ll tire yourself out,” Koiike sneered with a cold laugh.

“You still have that habit of chewing rice stalks, don’t you.”
“If you live in Tokyo, there probably aren’t any rice stalks there.”
“…In spring you’d pluck wheat ears, in autumn rice ears.”
“It’s always the same.”

Without responding to Koiike’s icy words, O-hikaru spoke in a somber tone while reminiscing fondly about the past.

II

When they parted, O-hikaru was thirteen in spring, and Koiike was twenty-two.

Koiike, now thirty-three this year, counted on his fingers to find O-hikaru had turned twenty-four.

As Koiike strolled along a wheat-field path, O-hikaru would follow behind, demanding the flute he had fashioned from plucked wheat stalks. Even when she put it to her small lips and tried to blow, it would not sound as it did when he played it—so she would keep snatching away each new wheat-stalk flute he was making. Or there was that autumn when the two walked along rice-field paths: Koiike would pluck the heavily drooping ripe stalks, chew the husks and spit out white juice, which O-hikaru mimicked by plucking her own—only to be caught and scolded by a farmer. These and countless other memories drifted back to Koiike.

Such things had continued for three years—from when O-hikaru was ten and Koiike nineteen until O-hikaru turned thirteen and Koiike twenty-two.

In a certain rural town, the young daughter of a geisha house and the son of a doctor who had newly opened his practice there became close quickly because their homes were next to each other.
The young girl came to the doctor’s son to learn basic lessons from elementary school primers.

“That Dr. Koiike’s son doting on Miyako House’s O-hikaru-chan—he must’ve had some other purpose.”
“There’s no point coddling some piss-stinking brat like that.”

The town’s respectable women went on saying such things within earshot of the two.

The first connection between O-hikaru and Koiike was formed from such circumstances.—

Speaking of fate—if that indeed was fate—Koiike found himself repeatedly recalling events from fifteen years prior.

Groups of five or eight elementary school children were returning home in clusters.
From within those clusters, he would spot the lovely O-hikaru and invite her into his home.
That had become Koiike’s daily work.

Unable to resist, Koiike turned to look behind him, wondering where the groups of elementary school children they had seen at the crossroads on the wild path had gone—those they had encountered shortly after disembarking from the steam railcar.

Among those groups of children, there was not a single one who resembled the O-hikaru of old.

Thinking this, Koiike—as if jolted awake from a dream—looked at O-hikaru walking beside him with bowed head and faltering steps.

The stench of hair oil, perfume, and the middle-aged woman’s odor—like strong liquor—unbearably assaulted his nostrils.

There, fifteen years had passed.—

III

“It’s still quite hot.”
“I could use some ice.”

When they passed under the red-lacquered torii and stood beneath the great ginkgo tree, Koiike said this while peering at the nape of O-hikaru’s neck.

“It’s not even hot yet—still the old August after all.”
“...they call them August crickets, you see.”

Leaning against the thick ginkgo trunk and letting out a breath, O-hikaru said.
And then,

“There was a big ginkgo tree at Atago Shrine too, you remember.”
"...When we burned that wasp nest, it caused quite a commotion," she said, gazing at Koiike with nostalgic eyes.

“I remember—it was terrifying then. …I thought things would turn out badly.”

When Koiike took O-hikaru—dressed in her everyday kimono with a red collar smudged white from powder, looking like a young trainee geisha—to Atago Shrine, they found a wasp nest inside the hollow of a great ginkgo. After discussing it, they tried burning the nest with lit straw, but flames instantly spread through the withered hollow, roaring into fierce blaze. The terror of that moment—when villagers came running with firefighting tools and waving fireman’s standards—surged through Koiike’s chest as vividly as if it had happened yesterday.

“The wasps fled through the black smoke with their young in their mouths, didn’t they,” Koiike said, gazing up at this unnamed shrine’s great ginkgo tree as though it were Atago Shrine’s own.

“The ginkgo at Atago Shrine was bigger than this one, you see.”
“Even after being burned like that, it never withered, you see.”
“…It bore an abundance of fruit again this year.”
“But you see—if you put your hand into that hole—what we burned back then has turned to charcoal. It’ll blacken your hands… Ah, this ginkgo’s female—it hasn’t borne any fruit.”

O-hikaru also looked up at the great ginkgo tree of the unnamed shrine in the same manner as Koiike and spoke. Two bush warblers flew from the ginkgo branch to a cedar tree and let out a whistle-like cry. Without it being clear who moved first, the two left the ginkgo tree’s side and walked along the path paved with white sand—mounded as if heaped—toward the shrine. After crossing a short drum-shaped stone bridge, they came upon a water ablution pavilion where new hand towels boldly dyed with the characters "Offering" fluttered in the gentle breeze.

Here and there, holes where banners and lanterns had likely been erected remained raw-looking, and bits of rope lay scattered about—all suggesting the festival had taken place not long ago.

As the village men and women, dressed in finery, gathered in crowds at this shrine’s precincts—some standing before Sakura Sōgorō’s peep-show mechanism, others debating whether to enter the freak-show booth with its dog-headed, snake-bodied displays, still others wandering around viewing food stalls and trinket shops—Koiike unfolded the scene in his mind like a painting. Before he knew it, his imagination had leapt to the reality of fifteen years prior, and he found himself reminiscing about Atago Shrine’s festival.

Atago Shrine’s festival had a flower dance.
One year at the festival, when the town’s young men alone couldn’t provide enough dancers, even Koiike—an outsider—was recruited and assigned the role of a *naginata* wielder.

Wearing a white ritual robe with hakama fastened at the thighs, draped with five-colored sashes, and bound with a white headband, swinging his naginata while performing the ritual opening dance posed no particular challenge for Koiike—two or three days of practice proved sufficient.

Koiike’s metropolitan-bred figure stood out luminously among the four-person naginata-wielding groups.
The crisp precision of his movements and the striking symmetry of his features so captivated the townspeople that they even kindled a mixture of envy and resentment.

From the town’s geisha and young women, Koiike drew as much popularity as the traveling actor Ichikawa Koizaburō had once received.

On that festival day, among the town’s young girls dressed as shrine maidens, rumors of O-hikaru—whose every detail from hairstyle and facial features to kimono patterns and bearing exuded metropolitan elegance, eclipsing even the mayor’s daughter who had spent lavishly on preparations—spread through the town more widely than peep-show mechanisms or rokurokubi freak shows.

The townspeople clustered around and watched as Koiike—clad in white robes and gripping a naginata—and O-hikaru—her cool eyes and nose emerging from her mother’s painstaking makeup, crimson lips pressed tight—walked home together.

“A man from the East with a Kyoto woman, eh?” came whispers from the crowd.

They had to select pure girls who had not yet known defilement and appoint them as shrine maidens.
Someone had claimed that O-hikaru, at around twelve years old, already showed signs of monthly impurity, and when others chimed in agreement—“Now that you mention it, that does seem likely”—the matter escalated until they resolved to sever all ties with the Miyako household should divine wrath strike them for parading a defiled girl before the altar. Yet fortune prevailed: no plagues spread from autumn through winter, the surrounding harvests flourished, and the town prospered—so the gods let it pass. All that remained was the townspeople whispering about O-hikaru’s precocity.

After recalling these past events, Koiike called out to O-hikaru, who had moved away from him and was washing her hands alone at the water ablution pavilion.

“What day was Atago Shrine’s festival again?” he asked.

“The sixth of next month, you see,” said O-hikaru, who seemed to have been lost in various recollections since earlier, tracing memories of past festival days.

“This year, they’re arguing in town about whether to hold the flower dance or not, you see.…”

Having put back on the ro-chirimen haori she had removed earlier, she displayed a harmonious palette: a navy-ground kosode with madder-red daimyo stripes, a salt-satin maruobi dominated by white, and a long underkimono of tomo-zome ro-chirimen. Her slender, sloping-shouldered figure—like a celestial maiden descending to Tagonoura in feathered robes, illuminating all around—now brightened this nameless desolate sacred grove as she drew near Koiike with peacock-like steps and spoke once more.

“You probably can’t appear as a shrine maiden anymore,” Koiike laughed.

“Since I was thirteen, I haven’t appeared even once, you see.”
“...I haven’t appeared even once since parting with you, you see.”
“...When I was twelve, I attended the festival with you—that was my last time doing so, you see.”

As if declaring she couldn’t endure the nostalgia for those days, O-hikaru’s fine-skinned face twitched while she drew close to Koiike.

“Defiled, defiled—so was what everyone said back then actually true after all?”

When Koiike suddenly said this in an abrupt tone, O-hikaru’s face flushed crimson as if brushed with rouge.

IV

Eventually, the two walked side by side up to the worship hall and peered inside through the fox-shaped lattice.

The doors of the main sanctuary with their lobster-shaped locks came into view ahead, and from the dim interior, a mirror about eight sun in size reflected the outside light.
The door fittings also shone yellow, and two sake bottles rested quietly on the eight-legged stand before them.

In the transom of the worship hall, Thirty-Six Immortal Poets painted in the Tosa style hung neatly in a row, while at the center of the wooden floor sat a single round straw mat that, though aged, remained undamaged.
In the profound silence, where not even a single ant could be found among living creatures, there lingered remnants of the festival here and there, and a human scent seemed to drift through the air.

“Atago Shrine’s is better—it’s the largest, you see,” said O-hikaru, gazing at what might be called a small room with a bamboo curtain hanging to the side.

“There’s no point staring at these things,” said Koiike as he descended the sand-strewn steps, examining each votive plaque hung beneath the eaves while moving toward the back.

“You faithless one… Coming all this way and still aren’t even going to pray.”

With moist eyes fixed on Koiike’s retreating figure, O-hikaru spoke these words, then drew from her obi a small wallet with a red lining that glimmered like heat haze. She wrapped one white-glinting item in paper, tossed it into the offerings box, and clasped her slender hands—adorned with a gemstone ring—together in prayer for a while.

“What did you say when you prayed… What did you ask the gods for?”
“…Did you bring up something difficult?”
“...What did you say when you prayed? Try saying it again out loud.…”

Smiling, Koiike pressed his face so close to O-hikaru—who had drawn near—that from a distance, it might have looked like they were kissing, and said:

“Come on, try guessing what I said in my prayer.”

Her face slightly flushed, O-hikaru smirked and, just as Koiike had done, looked around at the votive plaques.

The largest votive plaque depicted Kenshin—his eyes as round as plates—attempting to strike Shingen’s red-faced demon-like head adorned with Suwa Hōshō’s helmet, his raised sword longer than a horse, while Shingen’s war fan looked frail and thin, inscribed with “Peace Under Heaven.” Others showed armored warriors trying to write on poem cards beneath blooming cherry trees; a naked man bathing in well-water as golden ritual streamers descended from clouds; modern-style soldiers in ill-fitting helmets crawling through smoke with military flags; and a formally rendered white horse. Old and new votive plaques of every kind—stained with dust or spattered with sparrow droppings—lined the area.

Among those votive plaques, O-hikaru stared intently at a woman’s long black hair—appearing to have been cut from the roots—still glossy with oil, reverently wrapped in white paper and placed on a tray where “Great Wish Fulfilled: Woman of the Tiger Year” was written at the edge, the hair securely tied to the tray with red thread to keep them from separating as it hung down.

“Woman of the Tiger Year… Weren’t you born in a Tiger Year too?”

Koiike also unexpectedly noticed the woman’s black hair and tried saying such a thing.

“I don’t know… Such things, you see.”

Saying this as if angry, O-hikaru made a disgusted face.

“What’s the point of doing something like this?” Koiike poked the woman’s black hair with the tip of his thinly rolled, bagged umbrella.

“Don’t do such things, you see.”
“Still the same old Mr. Rascal, aren’t you.”
“Well… Let’s go.”

Casting a final glance at the woman’s black hair, O-hikaru briskly headed toward the rear of the shrine building.

Maple trees that would turn crimson in two months’ time and camellias that would bear splendid flowers come spring stood in orderly rows across what might be called a sacred garden, its ground strewn with riverbed-like pebbles.

"The front has layer upon layer of torii gates and doors, but the back’s just a single plank, you see... No matter which shrine I visit, I always think that."

When they circled around to the main sanctuary’s rear, O-hikaru remarked this while tilting her head back to gaze at the gable.

“That’s right—if you’ve got something to ask the gods, they’ll hear you better if you say it from behind rather than praying from the front. Offerings work better from back here too.”

Koiike, who had been reading the musical notations around the baseboards, laughed and said this.

There being a thick cedar tree that had been felled and beautifully stripped of its bark, the two sat down side by side upon it.

V

“In my lifetime, I’d never imagined coming to a place like this.”

“I’d never imagined it either… There’s no reason or anything to be here, so…”

Walking along the country path back toward the station, Koiike and O-hikaru were exchanging such words.

“Where are we going?”
“We’ve just been wandering around places like this—there’s no point.”

“I’ll follow you wherever you go.”
“…Take me wherever you go.”

“If it’s where you wish to go, I’ll follow you anywhere.”
“I too…”

Continuing to exchange endless words, the two of them naturally turned their steps toward the station.
At the station—perhaps the earlier one had returned—the steam-powered railcar was again billowing ominously black smoke, looking as though it would start moving any moment.

A woman wearing a handwoven striped unlined kimono fastened with a cotton shu chin obi, her absurdly high-rooted marumage hairstyle adorned with a red hand-karakami cloth, revealed thick black legs from between the kick pleats of her Tomosuri muslin underrobe as she overtook the two from behind and dashed into the station.

“Are we also going to ride that one, I wonder.”

Laughing as she watched the retreating figure of the person who had dashed into the station, O-hikaru said this.

“No—I can’t stand that.”
“We’ll wait until nightfall and take the regular train,” said Koiike, heading into a teahouse at the side.

The teahouse’s young wife—who had spread an unfinished five-panel futon across the entire shop space and been intently stuffing it with cotton—noticed the two entering. Brushing off cotton fluff that clung like snow around her knees, she welcomed them with a benevolent expression.

“Please do come this way,” she insisted, guiding the two—who had been sitting on benches in the earthen-floored area—to a secluded room in the back.

“Are you not taking the steam railcar?... The next one departs precisely at four, so there’s still an hour left... To have you come all this way to such a place with nothing worth seeing... It’s truly a hopeless spot...”

In a chirping voice, the wife brought tea and sweets.
In the spot where the tanuki was drumming its belly, there had long been a hibachi filled with ash serving as a tobacco tray.

“I wonder if there’s any fire left here,” said the wife, lightly stroking the tanuki’s belly.

“You probably do that sort of thing at home too.”

Watching the narrow-obied wife’s retreating figure, Koiike smirked slyly and said.

“We don’t even run the business anymore… There’s only two geisha left—plus Mother makes four of us. When we get requests from teahouses, we just send the geisha—we don’t take in customers at our house.”

O-hikaru also laughed and stared at Koiike’s face with unsettling intensity.

“It’s hot,” said Koiike, removing his inverness coat and, in the same motion, discarding his thin haori of vertical ro-weave in dark gray. O-hikaru stood up, hung the inverness on a bent nail in the pillar, and folded the haori sleeves neatly before placing it in the alcove.

“With just four women, it must be quite precarious.”
“……What became of your husband?……”

“I don’t have anything like that.…”

“From the very start.…”

With her face flushed crimson, O-hikaru had been conspicuously bowing her head when the wife arrived carrying a tray bearing about five pears and a knife. Raising her face to accept them, she deftly peeled the fruit, cut their dewdrop-glistening white flesh into flower shapes, skewered them on the knife’s tip, and presented it before Koiike.

“In your circles, is serving pears like that to guests all the fashion now?” Koiike said, plucking a piece of the pear.

“It’s not exactly in fashion, but when geisha go through the trouble of serving them like this, the customers end up taking them right into their mouths, you see.”

Putting the smallest piece into her own mouth and wiping her hands with a handkerchief, O-hikaru said.

“Really, you still haven’t taken a husband? … Being an only daughter, you’ll have to get one eventually, I suppose.”

Koiike said this while gazing at O-hikaru, whose demeanor was ill-suited to being called a girl.

“That’s neither here nor there… More importantly, you must have a wife—and children too.…”

O-hikaru’s voice, which had abruptly taken on a resolute tone, seemed to come from a different person’s mouth than before.

“There’s no such thing.”
“My household is just four men living together.”

“All lies… I know all about it, you know.”

Both Koiike and O-hikaru turned serious, laughing only with their lips.

“How did you find me today?... You’ve figured it out well.”

Koiike recalled it all as if from some distant past—how he had left Tokyo yesterday morning, arrived in Kyoto by evening, stayed overnight at a Gion inn, and by just past noon today found himself in Osaka Station’s dim waiting room about to check his luggage when suddenly from behind came a voice in Kansai dialect. The woman—her chignon’s styling, her kimono’s drape so refined one might mistake her for a Tokyoite at first glance—stood slender and composed.

“Of course I knew straight away… You’ve such a fine scent about you… No matter how you try to hide, it won’t work, you know.”

As she spoke and started peeling another pear, Koiike watched as if noticing for the first time that the tip of O-hikaru’s right middle finger was tied with white paper.

“I was properly shocked back then.”
“Tacky for women running Tokyo households—their speech all wrong too—and then you glance at their geta and they’re wearing dreadful ones.”
“Tokyo folk don’t wear geta like that, do they.”

“Still the same old Mr. Slanderer, aren’t you.”
“Of course it couldn’t stay hidden—not from the likes of me.”
“The Tokyo ladies are all proper beauties and ever so extravagant, you see.”

“Your family’s Mother has always been Tokyo-mad—even specially ordering a Tokyo-style long brazier with narrow edges, then sitting before it in a padded robe like some Shinbashi mistress. And now they’ve fashioned you into a Tokyo-style daughter too… Must be quite the strain, skipping right over Osaka nearby to ape far-off Tokyo like that.”

Koiike thoroughly contemplated the mother and child who seemed to be struggling with wasteful expenses while aspiring to a Tokyo-style lifestyle despite living in a small rural town. He also remembered how people from country towns immediately regarded Tokyoites as something noble.

“So you see—if you improve those geta and fix the hairstyle a bit, you could fool people… Well, *you* might… Those in the know would spot it right away, but someone like me? Never.”

“I don’t like being watched like that,” said O-hikaru, averting her eyes from Koiike’s scrutinizing gaze as she stiffened her posture.

“Why do you think I figured out it was you?”
“Earlier in Osaka.”
“…I saw the name tag on your luggage, you know.”
“…Ever since you came in, I thought it might be you, but you’ve changed quite a bit, you know.”
“…I wondered if it might be you, so I checked the name tag.”
“…The name tag was flipped over, so I went up close and turned it back without anyone noticing….”

The peeled pear remained as it had been cut into a flower shape like before.
A nostalgic glimmer had been steadily welling up in O-hikaru’s eyes.

“You’re a woman one can’t let their guard down around… Really, you still haven’t taken a husband?”

“There you go again,” O-hikaru said with a laugh.

“Shall I go purchase the tickets?”

The teahouse wife came out beaming.

VI

“I’ll never come to a place like this again in my life.”
“Since we’ve come all this way, we might as well stop by Tōkōin Temple.” With this, O-hikaru took out silver coins and had the wife purchase tickets to the station for Tōkōin Temple.
After a short while,

“Now, no need to say such things—let this be your reason to visit this humble place again someday,” said the wife, dimples forming at the corners of her mouth as she brought over the blue tickets and copper coins for change.

“The train’s at four, isn’t it?” O-hikaru called from behind Koiike as he walked ahead consulting his pocket watch. The wife stood at her shopfront bathed in western sunlight, squinting against the glare as she vaguely watched O-hikaru hurry after him toward the station.

Inside the steam railcar sat only the two of them.
The seats woven with arabesque patterns in a yellow-green hue identical to those on Tokyo trains became the seed that made Koiike think of his Tokyo home.

Scenes surfaced of when he had taken his young wife and small children to Hakone and Nikko.
The thought of those awaiting souvenirs back home kept recurring.
Even the face of their maid who had served them for two years materialized before his eyes.

When he thought about going today, he couldn't help but recall the aunt in Osaka to whom he'd sent a postcard from Kyoto.
He could almost see his tobacco-loving aunt managing her bustling shop, pipe never leaving her hand as she directed employees—and even amidst that busyness, he couldn't help but imagine her ordering his favorite kamaboko.
As he dwelled on these thoughts, O-hikaru's body sitting pressed against his side began to seem like a snake to him.
The snake's warmth seemed to transmit from O-hikaru's right knee to his left.

He found himself wanting to break free from the implacably clinging snake and sit before his aunt waiting in Osaka. He found himself wanting to flee back to his Tokyo home and wash away even the venom he’d absorbed from the snake.

“Ah, isn’t this the road to Tōkōin Temple?”

Turning toward the window, O-hikaru muttered to herself.
The steam railcar passed by the makeshift station—its open-air platform overgrown with weeds and bearing a station name sign weathered black by rain and wind—with a single blast of its whistle.
The roof tiles and white walls of Tōkōin Temple, which they had seen on their way here, seemed to move in tandem with the steam railcar’s motion, as though smiling from the mountainside.

“That’s right. This is where we get off—but did it even stop here when we came?” Koiike said with a thoughtful air.

The next station was still some distance away.
Unable to wait until reaching it, Koiike descended with O-hikaru onto the long platform paved with fine gravel and, crunching the gravel underfoot, approached the conductor,

“It’s pretty inconvenient to sell tickets and then not stop, don’t you think? If it’s a through station, you should’ve told us when we boarded!” he said, thrusting two tickets under the conductor’s nose.
The conductor gave only a cursory glance at the front of the tickets while bending slightly at the waist,

“I’m afraid it’s not exactly a passing station—that one over there is a request stop, so unless notified, we don’t halt there…” he said apologetically.

“If that’s how it is, you could’ve told us when we boarded,” Koiike said, softening his tone.

“I must sincerely apologize for this oversight. If you would kindly take the next down train back.” The conductor rubbed his hands awkwardly.

Realizing that waiting for the down train would take another hour—and if that too turned out to be a steam-powered railcar, it would be unbearable—Koiike handed the tickets back to the conductor and walked from the platform across the tracks toward the visible road just ahead.

“Where’re we goin’?” O-hikaru called out from behind, stepping uneasily on the black oil-stained railroad ties.

“Well, where are we going?” Koiike stepped out onto the dusty road.

The two walked in silence for a while along the aimless road.

The area had developed into a modest town, where things like hardware stores and fabric shops could be seen.
A simple eatery and a clog shop stood side by side, their fronts littered with empty carts and grimy rickshaws left abandoned.
A house with shoji screens painted red in a large candle shape was there ahead.

Those passing by were mostly vehicles.
They also encountered a middle-aged man and woman who appeared to be farmers, prayer beads around their necks, sitting on a shared carriage with gentle smiles as they were pulled along by a rickshaw driver named Kikuchi, who seemed to be straining under the weight.
They also encountered a large oxcart loaded with numerous garden stones and stone lanterns being pulled by a sturdy ox.
From the ox’s mouth, drool flowed sluggishly.

After walking about three blocks, the town came to an end.

Standing on the dirt bridge spanning a murky stream, Koiike looked back the way they had come to find O-hikaru’s figure gone. As he began retracing his steps to search for her, O-hikaru hurried out from a shop at the town’s edge—a combination haberdashery and hardware store—looking as though she’d bought something, her eyes glistening with crinkled corners as she flashed a brief smile.

“What did you buy?” Koiike focused on O-hikaru’s hands, attempting to see what she carried.

“It’s none o’ your business what I bought.”

In O-hikaru’s hands were only her bat umbrella and the Chiyoda bag; whatever she had bought seemed to be inside that bag.

“What could it be… What did you buy?”
“The more you hide it, the more I wanna see… Really, what’d you buy?”

As if trying to peer through the Chiyoda bag, Koiike said.

“I’m not hiding anything, but a man shouldn’t be asking such things.”

O-hikaru merely laughed and lightly shook the Chiyoda bag.

“Let’s go,” said Koiike, giving up on trying to find out what O-hikaru had bought, and briskly started walking.
Ash-like dust rose like smoke from their feet.
“Let’s go then—but where’re we even headed?”

With a gait that seemed ready to drag a lame leg at any moment, O-hikaru spoke.

“How should I know where we’re supposed to go?” Koiike dismissed her question and stomped off along the streamside path.

“Just wait a moment now… I’ll do it like this, see?”

With a pitiable voice, O-hikaru—who seemed ready to fall behind at any moment—hiked her kimono high, exposing the vivid *tomo-zome* pattern of her sheer gauze-silk underrobe as she began walking briskly, kicking up dust to keep pace with Koiike.

Her subdued demeanor—melancholic, nostalgic, and painfully earnest—appearing unwilling to contradict anything he did or said, made her seem both endearing and pitiable to Koiike. The sensation of being coiled by a snake that he had felt earlier on the steam railcar disappeared completely, replaced by the feeling of holding a canary in his palm.

So he slowed his pace to make it easier for O-hikaru to walk alongside him, all the while feeling an urge to take her hand.

Memories kept surfacing—the stylized gestures of kabuki theater akin to Okaru and Kanpei’s journey scene, accompanied by light, delicate music.

If only these lush rice fields stretching in all directions were rapeseed blossoms, and if cherry flowers bloomed fully among these roadside willows—Koiike envisioned scenery as vivid as kabuki’s painted backdrops.

The thought had even come to him that pursuers akin to Sagisaka Bannai might be gradually drawing near.

Seven

“Hey, we should’ve taken a rickshaw,” called Koiike from behind O-hikaru, who walked on the roadside’s soft grass in low clogs to avoid stirring dust.

“That one’s gone now, you see.”
“There was just one left, but it was too filthy to ride.”

The western sun struck the bat umbrella she carried on her shoulder, making O-hikaru’s face glow crimson.

“There were definitely rickshaws at the station.”
“We didn’t come out the front entrance though—that’s why you didn’t see them.”

“Even if there were rickshaws, we wouldn’t know where to tell them to go—there’s no point.”

“If we ask the rickshaw pullers, they must know somewhere.”

While exchanging such words, the two walked eastward toward the mountain’s foothills. Once they entered the country path, they no longer encountered vehicles but occasionally came across people like a man who seemed to be a village office clerk, a woman likely going to buy liquor with a cheap ceramic flask in hand, and children gathering grass. Every man and woman they passed glared at them with suspicion in their eyes.

To the left of the eastern mountain range, in a hollow resembling a mountain's embrace, what appeared to be Tōkōin Temple—visible earlier from the steam-powered railcar—came into view.

"That must be Tōkōin Temple."
"Since we've made the effort to come this far, let's go take a look there."

As if seeing light in their hopeful path ahead, Koiike declared with renewed vigor.

“We’ll have to go all the way around like this… Seems awfully far, doesn’t it?” O-hikaru chuckled.

Naturally, Koiike’s pace quickened again, and O-hikaru fell about half a chō behind.
Koiike stood by the roadside where yomena flowers bloomed among weeds, waiting for O-hikaru to catch up as she meekly moved her weak legs forward.
With the tip of her rolled bat umbrella, she lightly poked at the frail white yomena flowers.

When he looked back for O-hikaru, she was slightly bowing to a farmer who had come shouldering a hoe from a side path and asking him something, but soon, with a delighted expression, she hurried after Koiike,

“It’s eighteen chō to Tōkōin Temple. If you go straight down this road, there’s a police box—they say you turn north from there,” she said briskly.

The straight path following the stream proved unexpectedly long. As the river gradually narrowed into a filthy, algae-less mud ditch, they reached the entrance of a prosperous farming village where what seemed to be a police station stood at the far end.

With the guilty conscience of someone who’d done wrong, Koiike felt uneasy passing before the police station’s red lanterns—their glass panes blazing under the western sun.

Turning north at a standing stone marker—where moss-covered stone Jizō statues stood aligned, their surface barely legible with the carved characters “Left Tōkōin”—they encountered two or three residences of wealthy farmers boasting white storehouses with two or three ken frontages and barns built from thick timber.
There were also houses that had constructed high stone walls along the road and crowned them with white-plastered enclosures resembling castle ramparts.
An estate-style spiked anti-intruder fence protruded pricklingly beside the nagaya gate.

“This village is a wealthy one, isn’t it?”

Having said this, Koiike thought of how this village—plump and warm-looking, with vibrant light filling both fields and houses—differed from the emaciated, desolate, lackluster villages on Tokyo’s outskirts where he lived.
And then thoughts of his own home began to resurface, bit by bit.

“Farming just isn’t feasible, no matter how good it seems. Even our family has a bit of farmland, but the taxes are so high it’s not worth keeping—they’re talking about selling it off.” O-hikaru’s manner of speaking had now changed entirely from before, taking on a thoroughly domestic tone as if negotiating a business matter, and for the first time, Koiike felt he was seeing her in her role as the proprietress.

When they passed through this village, there were no houses again for some time until the next one.
At the entrance of the next village was a barbershop with broken glass doors mended with white paper.
This village seemed poorer than the previous one.

The base of Tōkōin Temple’s long stone steps was situated at the midpoint of that village.

The sun had finally sunk below the western mountains, and the clouds were dyed a deep crimson.

“Ahh… We’ve finally arrived, haven’t we? …Well, isn’t it beautiful,” O-hikaru said as she stood rooted with her back to the stone steps and gazed at the western sky.

Eight

The long-renowned grounds of Tōkōin Temple hardly seemed worth visiting after their tiring journey—let alone having to climb those lengthy stone steps.
Outside the main sanctuary stood about three small shrine-like halls, which they made a weary inspection of one by one.
O-hikaru only gave a brief bow at the main sanctuary before merely passing by the other halls like Koiike did.

At the priests' quarters, steward monks and temple workers bustled about as if preparing for some event, which they observed with sidelong glances while standing at the head of the descending stone steps.

The western sky that had been crimson gradually faded to peach, and until it shifted into a yellowish green, the two stood gazing intently. From pale ink-colored mountain ridges far ahead, evening mist began rising until even nearby forests and fields came to be enveloped as if wrapped in thin silk. With a roaring distant sound, the steam railcar running north to south appeared through this diaphanous veil like some child’s plaything. From its smokestack it spewed red flames along with smoke. Darkness now crept stealthily up the stone steps.

“At home, they must be wondering where I’ve gone off to, don’t you think?”

When the two had begun descending about halfway down the stone steps side by side, O-hikaru spoke these words with a forlorn expression.

“You’ve grown homesick, haven’t you?……If you leave right now, you’ll arrive by midnight.……You could see your mother’s face again too.”
“Your husband’s face too, I suppose…” Koiike stopped again, gazing blankly into the dusk that spread like a sea.

“You’re saying that again… But there’s no such thing as a husband for me.”
“……You’re the one who must be missing your wife.”
“You’ve been feeling nothing but homesick since earlier—must’ve been thinking about it all along.…”

Saying this, O-hikaru started down the stone steps alone.

“You really don’t have a husband… Tell me the truth,” said Koiike as he too followed her down the stone steps from behind.

“You’re still saying such things.”
“There’s no such thing, I tell you.” O-hikaru declared with force in her voice,

“Well, there might’ve been one before—I can’t say for certain—but there’s none now.”
“If you think I’m lying, come see for yourself—there’s Mother, two geisha, and four of us in the household,” she whispered this last part softly.

“Just like the Isle of Women,”
“I’d truly like to visit once,” said Koiike, who could no longer doubt her words.

“Do come visit.”
“Come now!”
“……Tomorrow……the day after…… See? Mother’ll be so pleased.”
“She… speaks of you sometimes, y’know—wonders how you’re getting on. Says you ought to visit once… what with your father’s grave being here and all. It’s forward of her… but she says she thinks of you like her own child.”

O-hikaru, who had been faintly recalling household matters, now with an air of having forgotten everything, pressed close against Koiike as they descended the stone steps.

Nine

At the base of the stone steps stood a pitch-black dilapidated house that emerged from the darkness like a shadow. On waist-high shoji doors yellowed by lamplight from within, the characters spelling "Preparation Room Yamato-ya" could faintly be discerned.

When Koiike slid open the shoji door and entered, O-hikaru silently followed behind.
The relatively spacious dirt-floored entryway had two or three pairs of clogs neatly arranged, and the smell of stewed food sharply assaulted their noses.
From the back, the sound of a shamisen echoed.

“This is quite a late hour for temple visits, isn’t it.”
“Come now, do come in.” From a dark corner emerged a woman who appeared to be the plump proprietress in her fifties, shuffling forward as she spoke in a hoarse voice.

“Welcome. My, you’re quite late.” A woman emerged from the back as well and guided them through the unexpectedly spacious house. After being led down a long corridor, they were shown to an eight-tatami room right next to where the shamisen was playing.

“Shall I prepare some chicken?… And would you care for sake?” asked the woman who had brought the tobacco tray. Koiike ordered chicken and cider before collapsing wearily in his Inverness coat. O-hikaru stood up, removed the creased Inverness coat from behind him, and hung it together with her unlined haori on the black-lacquered clothes rack.

In the neighboring room, the sound of the shamisen grew increasingly fierce, and a man’s gravelly singing voice became audible. When the song concluded, both men and women erupted into raucous laughter all at once, with an impact resembling something collapsing.

“They’re wasting their money in a place like this,” O-hikaru murmured with a soft chuckle.

Before long, just as the voices seemed to return to normal conversation, the sound of the shamisen ceased, and the guests in the neighboring room appeared to rise noisily from their seats.
The sound of footsteps clattering through the corridor could be heard, and soon there was a sense of cups and dishes being cleared away and someone sweeping with a broom.

“Please come this way,” said the woman as she slid open a decorative karakami paper door inscribed with intricate characters, guiding them to the next ten-mat room.
This inn’s finest guest chamber at the rear—with its rosewood dining table centered and tea utensils and sweets arranged in serene order—bore no resemblance to the room where village youths had moments earlier been making boisterous commotion.
The zashiki’s three sides consisted of glass-paneled shoji screens encircled by a corridor resembling an engawa veranda.
When they stepped outside to look through the shoji, they realized the structure stood elevated like a mezzanine with rice paddies stretching directly below.
Even under starlight alone, one could appreciate its commanding vista.
If only there were a river here too—this thought passed through Koiike’s mind.

The woman who had been playing the shamisen—a twenty-year-old with traces of white powder on her neck—brought chicken, green onions, a sukiyaki pot, and other items arranged on plates, all carried on a rectangular serving tray.
In the center of a plate beautifully arranged with pale red meat, a perfectly round, red egg—its shell not yet formed—shone like a precious jewel.

“This is quite a late visit for prayers, isn’t it,” said the woman as she placed the pot on the hearth and began skillfully cooking.

“Big sis, this place has a nice view,” said Koiike as he drank the cider O-hikaru had poured, cooling it with his breath before sipping.

“Well now, thanks to your patronage, we even get customers making special trips from Osaka on moon-viewing nights and such.”

The woman lifted the cider bottle and said “Pardon me” as she poured for O-hikaru, but upon seeing the pot come to a vigorous boil,

“Madam, I’ll leave this to you,” she said, entrusting matters to O-hikaru before retreating from the room.

“She called me ‘Madam’.”

When the woman’s footsteps had faded down the corridor, O-hikaru murmured this in a low voice, ducking her head.

By the time footsteps echoed through the corridor again and the woman arrived with the rice container, both Koiike and O-hikaru had sated their hunger on greedily devoured meat and vegetables, leaving them utterly listless.

Ten

“I’m sick of walking already.”
“...Why don’t we stay at this inn?”

Koiike said quickly while stifling a yawn and looked at O-hikaru’s face.

“Even if we stayed here till Osaka time, we’d have nowhere to stay... And going home from Osaka would feel too lonely—I couldn’t bring myself to leave.”

O-hikaru also let out an exaggerated yawn and spoke in the same hurried manner.

When Koiike clapped his hands—which made no proper sound—about five times in succession with a *clap-clap*, a distant reply was heard, and the woman with traces of white powder appeared.

“Can we stay here tonight?
I’m exhausted and hate walking in the dark anyway—let’s stay over and catch tomorrow’s first train back. What do you think?” Koiike said with apparent reluctance.

“Oh! So you’ll be staying then?… That’ll let you rest proper-like… Madam.”

The woman glanced at O-hikaru, allowed herself a fleeting smile as she rose, then soon returned bearing two sets of roughly checkered yukata.

“The bath is ready, but if you’ll be staying, please do take one.” She kneeled.

Taking out a red-lined paper case, O-hikaru handed out tips to the woman and the house.

Both changed into yukata and entered the smoky bath one after the other.
Koiike wrapped O-hikaru’s decorative sash around and around over his yukata instead of using an obi.

“Shall we go to your home tomorrow?”

Using his arm as a pillow while stretching his legs sideways and puffing on a hand-rolled cigarette, Koiike—observing O-hikaru, who began applying her post-bath makeup by holding her compact mirror up to the table lamp’s light directly above his head—spoke.

“No matter how you look at it, arriving together unannounced would shock everyone at home,” said O-hikaru, hesitating at the prospect of bringing Koiike back to her house.

“There’s jōruri at Tōkōin Temple tonight—if you care to go listen… We’ll make up your bedding meanwhile.”
“...They’re amateurs mind you, but people say they’re quite skilled.”
“...All the guests who’d been drinking here earlier have already left too.”

The woman came again to persuade them, but neither wished to leave the room.
After she withdrew, Koiike smiled faintly—a softening of his features—

“Since we’re just old familiars from fifteen years back, I got dragged along to this place with you.…… If we’d met for the first time now, I wouldn’t even look your way.” He threw out the words brusquely.

“I’m just the same.… If we hadn’t been childhood friends, a man like you—even if I saw you for the first time—wouldn’t even register in my eyes.”

Having finished applying her adorably light makeup, O-hikaru said haughtily.

The bell had probably been struck at Tōkōin Temple.
A deep gong-like toll of the evening bell reverberated through the air.