Pathway to Japanese Literature

My father died in my eighteenth year—which coincided with the autumn of the Great Kantō Earthquake—so one might assume there should have been ample interaction between father and son, yet there was none.
I was the youngest of thirteen siblings (though some were illegitimate children) with only one younger sister below me, so there was a vast age difference between my father and me.
So when I see my friends—who are only twenty-five or thirty years older than their children—talking with them like friends, it feels strange to me, because my father and I have no such memories at all.

My father was a second- or third-rate politician—what you might call a provincial politician—who was elected to the Diet some ten times as a local branch chairman, a man whose name carried little weight in central political circles.
Yet such men must have been exceedingly busy.
He was rarely ever at home.
But my father was also a Chinese poet who studied under Mori Shuntō, spending thirty years in his later life writing a book titled *Hokuetsu Shiwa*. When home, he would shut himself away in his study without showing his face; I only ever saw him when made to grind ink.
The maid would come summoning me—"The master calls"—though I already knew why: it could only mean grinding ink.
Father never smiled; he only grew irritable if I spilled any.
I simply seethed with resentment.
Why did I have to grind ink when there were so many maids?
That father remained a stranger with whom I shared no interaction beyond ink-grinding; beyond those moments, I never once saw his face elsewhere through the year.

Therefore, I know nothing of my father’s love or anything of the sort. A child without a father might dwell on paternal love; I had a father—summoned about once a month to grind ink for him—a relationship where I’d face his sullen face, endure some irritable remark, then leave in anger—so to speak of a father’s love struck me as utterly absurd and irrelevant. Fortunately, during my elementary school days, there existed no domestic children’s literature akin to what today’s youths read—the books I encountered were all things like Tachikawa Bunko, filled with tales of ninjutsu masters and heroic figures—so there was nothing in those pages to make me contemplate a father’s love. As for my father, I had severed all connection, regarding him as an entity entirely unrelated to myself. And every time I was made to grind ink, I thought he was an annoyance. I thought he was a pompous bastard. And in any case, since he was my father, I supposed there was no helping it.

Given that there were thirteen children, one might expect him to have been utterly weary, but my father’s coldness toward his children appeared rooted in his inherent temperament rather than mere numerical circumstance. I imagine he likely thought to simply leave them to grow up as they pleased and turn out however they would.

However, in provincial families, there was an obsession with maintaining the "household," so he fixated particularly on the eldest son as its successor. My father appeared to have devoted particular care to my eldest brother, but since this brother was significantly older than me and living in Tokyo away from home, I never truly understood their father-son relationship. In my father’s posthumous manuscripts, there existed a late-life poem where, upon seeing his child (the eldest son), he recalled his own late father and lamented his unfilialness—yet I found myself wanting to scoff: Did the old man truly harbor such feelings? This seemed merely the conventional world of poetry. However, when reading biographies of my father, various accounts attested that he had devoted extraordinary care exclusively to the eldest son. In accounts from those like Venerable Ichijima Shunjō—my father’s closest friend—and Machida Chūji, his political colleague, he had constantly entreated them with utmost earnestness regarding his eldest son, and moreover prattled on with pride about matters such as how he began viewing Western paintings at his eldest son’s suggestion or developed a taste for mountain climbing. This remained a world utterly irrelevant to me—while my father, at least, considered my brother in terms of the "household," for me, there was no such thing as a father-son relationship. For me, having a father meant less than nothing compared to children without one; I knew only the unpleasant old man who made me grind ink.

My family was apparently once a great wealthy family.
It’s said that during the Tokugawa period, our family owned silver mines, copper mines, and other such assets beyond their rice fields, and that even if the Aga River were to dry up, the wealth there would never run dry—but my father squandered it all, and by the time I became aware of my surroundings, we were in dire poverty.
It was utterly dire poverty.
They must have been living off borrowed money.
However, the house was spacious.
There were also many servants.
There were many visitors coming and going, but precisely because of that, our poverty was all the more severe, so my mother’s hardships must have been tremendous.
That is why my mother suffered from terrible hysteria.
That anger was concentrated on me.

I was by nature an unmanageable, thoroughly contrary child.
A child devoid of any childish charm—precocious, the ringleader of the brats, doing nothing but fight.
When I was born, some part of my body had gotten caught inside the womb and wouldn't come out, nearly killing my mother. Already worn down by the number of children she had, it seems my mother had been tormented by me from the moment of birth into maintaining a cold distance.
Moreover, as I grew older, I became an increasingly unmanageable and contrary child—so unlike any other child one might encounter that her exasperation could only be natural.

I was reading newspapers from before I even entered elementary school.
My reading wasn't like a child's delight in deciphering characters; I voraciously consumed the content for its interest, particularly the kōdan stories that always accompanied novels in newspapers of that era.
I didn't read novels.
(They bored me.) I read sumo articles.
Those sumo articles invariably contained illustrations of forty-eight techniques whose intense fascination I can never forget.
Throughout elementary school, I never once took first place.
First place always went to a temple child named Yamada; second place alternated between me and Yokoyama (who later became a leftist critic under the pen name Ikeda Hisao), though I generally lost to Yokoyama too, settling for third as I recall.
I never did preparatory studies, reviews, or homework; returning from school meant hurling my bag into the entranceway and playing outdoors until nightfall.
As delinquent ringleader, I'd forcibly summon children who faced scoldings if they didn't study—those refusing my summons risked beatings from me, making them fear me more than their own mothers as they sneaked out through windows. I became universally detested.
I fought with kids from other neighborhoods.
My fighting methods employed such underhanded tactics—utterly alien to normal children's brawling habits—that I earned universal hatred. My clothes would tear within a day, leaving me perpetually dressed in rags like a beggar child.
When night fell and I returned home, Mother would shut the gate and bar the door against me.
The relationship between my mother and me was one of mutual hatred.

What tormented my mother was not just poverty and me alone; in those days, she suffered from a chronic illness—bladder stones—that made her moan ceaselessly whether night or day.
Moreover, my mother was a second wife, and her deceased predecessor’s children included three daughters nearly her own age (meaning that the children of these women—who should have been my sisters—were in fact older than me, making them my nieces and nephews). Of these three, the two eldest conspired to poison her, even bringing morphine when they visited. With my mother driven half-mad by this, all of it inevitably fell upon me.
Now that I understand the reasons, I suppose it was only natural—but back then, I didn’t comprehend them, and so I hated my mother intensely.
Resenting the siblings my mother loved besides me and wondering why I alone was hated, I—around eight years old at the time—once flew into such a rage that I brandished a kitchen cleaver and chased after my brother, who was three years my senior.
A brother three years my senior was beneath my notice.
I was confident that I surpassed him in both physical strength and reading ability, and never showed the kind of respect one would a brother.
I was a brat utterly devoid of anything resembling cuteness—nothing but a detestable, arrogant contrarian.
Even if environment played some role, I think most of it was innate.
Yet for all that, I was cowardly and indecisive—covering up misdeeds unknown to others, snitching on them, all while committing even worse acts myself—yet I calmly framed people, positioned myself as the good child, and generally succeeded.
Because they were so meticulously consistent that no one could believe them a child’s doing—because I had carefully laid precautions against being found out—most people trusted me.
I was more cunning than most adults.

I was around eight years old when Mother, at her wit’s end with me, said, “You’re not my child. You’re adopted.”
How happy I was then.
The revelation that I was not this hag’s child swelled within my chest—whenever alone or slipping into bed, I would imagine my true mother somewhere out there and feel nothing but happiness.
There was a head maid who doted on me; my persistent questioning about my real mother eventually reached Mother’s ears and filled her with dread.
This I came to understand years later from Mother’s own lips.
Mother and I would eventually become the closest of parent and child in our family after two decades had passed.
When I reached an age to comprehend Mother’s position, she came to understand my nature.
No child ever loved their mother as I did.
For Mother’s sake I loved her enough to have thrown away my life.
The one who had understood my nature from earliest days was Father’s third daughter by his first wife—while her two elder sisters tried to kill Mother, this third clung affectionately to her despite being despised.
From her own circumstances she understood me perfectly; once when I was a child, on a storm-wracked day I went to gather clams in raging seas because Mother wanted them—yet she neither noticed nor turned her head at this life-risking act.
I glared at Mother, squared my shoulders, and shut myself in my room—then this sister slipped inside and held me weeping.
Thus I loved this sister from different mothers most of all, maintaining distant yearning until her death.
Even now I cannot forget this sister and that old maid.
Only these two ever loved me.
No one else did.

★

I had come to realize that much of my disposition was innate rather than shaped by environment—that part flowed from my mother's blood—but I felt what remained came from my father.
I did not know my father.
So I read biographies.
It was to search for myself within him.
And there I discovered many unpleasant shadows of my own.
What others praised as my father's virtues and strengths became to me flaws and weaknesses—a realization that pierced me with resentment sharp as enduring grudge.

Father was sincere.
He kept promises and never lied.
Father spent his wealth on others without considering personal gain; he yielded paths to people and deferred his own advancement.
All these were facts of what Father had done.
And just as their opposites held true for me, I believe their opposites also held true in Father’s heart.
Father was a man incapable of evil deeds.
Because he craved others’ praise.
And I think he became someone who sacrificed himself for that very purpose.
It was through self-reflection that I arrived at this understanding.

First and foremost, I have seared into my heart—with such poignancy it brings me to tears—the smallness of my father’s scale.
My father appeared blustery on the surface, but in truth, I think he was both a dutiful man of such nauseating smallness and a petty villain.

The reason I have seared into my heart—through his smallness of scale—this old man who was almost entirely irrelevant to me is that during the earthquake disaster, I was in Tokyo while Father had already taken to his deathbed, unable to move. When I was conducting a solo Tramp divination during the quake, the wall rattled and collapsed onto the spread-out cards. Rising to flee, I found doors collapsing and sliding panels toppling over; staggering past them into the garden as roof tiles came crashing down, I remembered Father and entered his bedroom—there lay the fallen alcove lintel, and I recall supporting the beam by his pillow with both hands.

I think it was the following day.
I was ordered by my father to go offer fire-related condolences.
I visited Katō Takaaki and Wakatsuki Reijirō.
At Wakatsuki Reijirō’s residence, I merely left my calling card, but at Katō Takaaki’s place, I was invited to meet Katō Takaaki himself, who addressed me—a mere middle school student—with utmost courtesy as he inquired extensively about my father’s condition.
I no longer remember the conversation.
Though I have forgotten everything, I could perceive that this large man—truly a monk-like figure with a long, round face of imposing size, resembling a sea monk—despite being an absurdly theatrical and pompous figure, possessed a childlike innocence indistinguishable from my own.
My father had been stubborn, pompous, and difficult—there were similarities in those superficial aspects—but my father had displayed more childlike qualities.
Yet in my father’s true heart, there had not been a trace of the childlike nature that connected with me.
Father had been an adult.
He had possessed no dreams.
In Katō Takaaki, a peculiar childlikeness had abruptly resonated within my heart.
I immediately felt relieved.
And I acutely felt the smallness of my father’s scale.
I was eighteen at that time.

My father cherished a plaque titled "Seven Intolerables" hung in the parlor, written by some Chinese person. The character for "seven" looked more like "long," so everyone read it as "Enduring Unbearably Long." Guests would read it that way and grow flustered at its implication about overstaying visits—a misinterpretation my father found amusing—but now I alone have kept this sole memento of his and hung it in the parlor. Moreover, Father had engraved his bookplate seal with the phrase “Descendants may exchange for wine” and cherished it—here, I think it was not mere affectation on his part but likely genuine sentiment—yet I too share this deeply resonant feeling toward such things; though for me as well they are not affectations either, they amount to nothing profound, but rather a temperamental undercurrent of literary posturing that appears, depending on perspective, profoundly hollow. This is why I always grow lonely, desolate, and wretched.

My father served as a newspaper president and stock exchange chairman alongside his Diet membership; though positioned to amass endless wealth through personal gain, he never sought it at all. Moreover, when recommended for a post like parliamentary vice-minister, he nominated a junior instead of taking it himself. In all matters his approach followed this pattern—and I believe his underlying sentiment lacked purity. I think he wanted for true sincerity. It is precisely because I am that child—the one who inherited such traits—that I understand. My father cut a hearty figure in drinking settings, his drunkenness unrestrained, yet since he apparently never grew overly familiar with women in public—making him far more respectable than I—and given my own disreputable conduct in that regard, I find myself strangely averse to this father of mine who was said to be so boldly openhearted over drinks.

In my father’s biography, there was one statement of his that I found admirable—a piece of advice he had impressed upon people from his position as stock exchange chairman: “When mediating a dispute, push through to reconciliation even if it meant staying up all night. Once reconciled, have them sign immediately. Otherwise, overnight, both sides’ convictions would waver and revert to their original positions.”
When I mediated the dispute between Ozaki Shiro and Takemura Shobo, I succeeded in reconciling them, but because I failed to have them sign the agreement on the spot, an express letter arrived from Ozaki Shiro the very next day reversing everything—and I came to keenly realize how profoundly correct my father’s words had been.
And once again, I found myself following in my father’s footsteps, which filled me with intense revulsion.

In my father’s biography, there is an account from when he was eighteen years old and serving as a director at the Niigata Exchange—Ozaki Yukio, then nineteen and chief editor of the Niigata Newspaper, spoke of him. According to this, my father was the only man among the Niigata natives Ozaki knew who did not get drunk and become overly familiar with women. To this, Ozaki pointedly added: “But what transpired behind the scenes, I cannot say.”
Ozaki Yukio was a man who could not refrain from appending such annotated perspectives to everything—in that regard, he was closer to a literary man than a politician.
His perspective being thoroughly human—humane even—he possessed a disposition that compelled him to append such observations with particular insistence.
My father lacked that.
Yet I have that in abundance—in that regard, I thoroughly embody Ozaki’s acerbic wit.
Even to myself, I reek far too much of Ozaki’s essence—to the point of disgust.
And so, whenever I think of my father—who had been annotated by Ozaki with “But what transpired behind the scenes, I cannot say”—it feels as though he is being especially desecrated by my own unpleasant disposition, and each time I apply Ozaki’s words to myself in imagining this, I am overcome with revulsion.
Therefore, I harbor a loathing for Ozaki akin to how I despise my own stench.
My father possessed neither Ozaki’s acerbic wit nor his sentimentality.
If Ozaki was a second-rate figure, then my father was a third-rate fool at best.

What I feared most in my father’s disposition was the thorough emotional detachment he had shown me.
My mother and I had been bound by hatred, but between my father and me there existed nothing at all that connected us.
This was because Father had been emotionally detached, because Father had pushed me away—and I, having naturally accepted being cast aside—found absolutely no point of connection between us.

I sometimes notice my own astonishing emotional detachment.
There are times when I push everything away.
What lies beneath that surface is that during those times, I am in truth solely fearing society.
When I push away individual things and people, I am conscious of society as a whole; I even push myself away to sell myself to society’s designs.
I think my father was like that.
When Father did not seek personal gain or advancement, by pushing himself away, I think he was in fact selling himself to society’s designs.
My father was the boss of provincial politicians and had a high opinion of himself.

★

Within my emotional detachment lay not only my father’s detachment but also that inherited from my mother. On my mother’s side was the Yoshida family, a major landowning clan; this lineage possessed Jewish-like aquiline noses that I too inherited, and my mother’s elder brother had blue eyes. My mother’s elder brother had a thoroughly Jewish face, resembling nothing among the Japanese people. This hook-nosed, blue-eyed old man slithered close to me—around ten years old at the time—with glinting eyes as if to lick me, and said: “You might become something extraordinary, y’know—or you might turn into an utter villain. An absolute villain, now.” I remember that creepiness as if it were an incantation.

My mother had been a woman whom my stepdaughters tried to kill, who glimpsed the terror of death through chronic illness, and who battled against death through hysteria during my childhood—utterly fearing death—but in old age, after reconciling with me, she became an unflinching old woman calmly awaiting death.
In me there existed not a trace of this boldness that pushed death away; all that filled my thoughts was a timidity that feared death. Yet I knew of the abnormal detachment flowing from my mother to me.

My mother was a woman of utter inconsistency—stingy yet remarkably generous, grudging a single coin yet freely giving things away to people, frugal with individual ceramic pieces yet bold enough to discard all her ceramics and suddenly replace them entirely. This wasn’t mere caprice or moodiness, but rather a complete disconnect in her heart between moments of miserliness and abandon—she could be penny-pinching one moment and extravagantly bold the next, maintaining perfect composure while keeping these contradictions entirely separate.
Even when she generously gave things to others, there was no particular affection for the recipient; it existed entirely in isolation. If you expected a second instance, there would be no follow-through whatsoever—this time, you’d be shown an appallingly stingy side and left thoroughly exasperated.
She doesn’t give a thought to other people.
She accepts everything as natural.
This was because she had resolved in her depths that nothing mattered anymore—she was fundamentally a cold person at her core.

There were many live-in students at my house.
They’ve now become company presidents, executives, mayors, and generals—while they all understood my father’s character, even now my mother’s remains as incomprehensible as a monster.
In truth, she had not a trace of sweetness.
Yet she knew nothing of doubt.
She accepted everything as it was.

Being such an unfathomable woman, she rarely fixated on hatred—except when it came to my two stepdaughters and me. For a child like me to be hated by such a woman meant inevitable torment; ever since elementary school, I had repeatedly wavered between running away from home or committing suicide.
That I was warped upon an inherently warped nature was only natural—since from elementary school onward I never received a single penny nor had anything bought for me, I learned to steal.
Even when I went to middle school, I didn’t receive a single penny of allowance.
I would take items out to sell and buy everything on account to give lavishly to people.
I even bought things I didn’t want.
It wasn’t for me to use—it was for giving to others.
Giving things to others wasn’t out of a desire to be loved; it was to make my mother grieve—an act of rebellion against her.
Therefore, the truth in my chest perpetually strained to burst.

I had been nearsighted since elementary school, but when I entered middle school, even sitting in the front row, I couldn't see the blackboard's characters without glasses. My mother wouldn't buy me glasses. As my vision worsened until I could no longer comprehend English or mathematics, the shame of having this truth exposed drove me to start skipping school. When I finally got glasses through great effort—overjoyed and resolved to study hard this time—I somehow carelessly ended up buying tinted ones instead. I had absolutely no intention of purchasing tinted glasses, so this alone remains inexplicable to me even now. I suspect the optician must have made an error. Unaware they were tinted, I wore them to school. That very day, my friends—fascinated by the novelty—snatched them up to examine, and the glasses broke.

Of course, I knew full well there was no chance of getting another pair bought for me; fortunately, since they were tinted glasses, my friends likely assumed I’d been wearing them for show despite not actually having bad eyesight, and I was relieved that from the next day onward, going without glasses wouldn’t be seen as due to being unable to have them bought for me.
I had no choice but to officially take time off from school and spent day after day lying around in the seaside pine grove.
And then I failed.
However, even though I skipped school, there was no real need for me to fail.
But because I couldn’t resist rebelling against Mother by causing her grief and suffering, I deliberately submitted blank exam papers.
The teacher distributed the papers.
When he finished handing them out, I—with deliberately loud footsteps—put on a clownish smile and submitted my blank answers.
Everyone laughed.
I left with a pretentious air, like a hero—‘See ya!’—but it was strange how my chest didn’t burst from the poignancy.

Because I had failed, my family hired a tutor for me.
He was a top student at a medical university named Kanno Iwao from Morioka.
However, Mr. Kanno didn’t know I wasn’t attending school because without glasses I couldn’t see the blackboard’s writing, and I—being stubborn and prideful—couldn’t bring myself to confess this truth. So I kept skipping school every day as before, lying around in the seaside pine grove on fine days and on the second floor of the bakery next to the school during rainy ones.
And then I was expelled from school.
And then I enrolled at a Tokyo middle school, radiant with hope—joy at being able to part from my mother, and joy that in Tokyo I could likely buy glasses and study.
However, after parting from my mother, I realized I loved her more than anyone else in the world.

★

At Niigata Middle School, I was utterly reckless—an extremely rude child. There was an art teacher nicknamed "Model"—I’ve forgotten his surname—who served as homeroom instructor and demanded we submit absence notices.
I forged them, brought them in, and with a “Here you go!”, tossed them over to the teacher.
The teacher, being a timid man, only glared at me with resentful anger, but even now I still feel remorse over it.
I threw a bucket at the teacher and escaped through the window; though I skipped school every day, I would go to judo practice after school.
The teacher would find me, and I would run away.
Then together with Kitamura—the child of a lantern shop owner—and Ōtani—the child of a brothel owner—we formed something called the Six Flowers Society, skipped school, and practiced karuta on the second floor of a bakery.
By “karuta” I mean the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu: that New Year’s game. That we skipped school day after day for a year and a half to obsessively practice this makes the whole affair utterly ridiculous.
Ōtani—the brothel owner’s son—was a second-year student who filled medicine bottles with alcohol and drank them at school; he once sneaked into the English teacher’s office during exams and stole test questions.
There were times I stole swords from home to sell for drink money, and once—just once—I caused a raucous commotion at a restaurant.
Ōtani seemed to be the mastermind behind these antics, with another expert named Watanabe assisting.
This was the conduct of a second-year middle school student—utterly wild—yet my soul remained as poignant then as it does now.
This poignancy has not changed at all from then to now.
Likely unchanging throughout my lifetime, never growing—this poignancy of fear and longing, of fleeing and yearning to rise—the fifteen-year-old me and the forty-year-old me remain unchanged.

To be fair, when I was six years old, I started skipping kindergarten to play, only to lose my way and wander aimlessly along the roads.
The sorrow of my six-year-old self was also the same, I think.
This sorrow and poignancy—unchanging from the moment of birth until death, never growing—are what someone like me, a warped soul, will likely take as the central pillar of existence to the very end, I think.
Therefore, even now, the reason I am immediately liked by children is that this poignancy instantly connects me with them; though this is a foolish thing, an utterly immature and idiotic affair without doubt, there is no way for me to regret it.

To my father, at least, this sorrow did not exist.
However, the presence or absence of this sorrow was not an innate disposition; because people inherently possess this sorrow, it is primal in nature. My father had either suppressed it or lost it through suppression—a trait acquired later in life—and this manner of processing it may have stemmed from aspects of his character.

Therefore, as a child, I had convinced myself that adults knew nothing of children's sorrow.
Yet when I later came to know Venerable Ichijima Shunjō—a man of uniquely profound sorrow—and observed how this sorrow clung even to elderly figures like Professor Aizu Yaichi, an acquaintance of my father's, I reconsidered.
Thus I sometimes think that were my present self to examine my father, he too might be found to possess this sorrow—yet ultimately I believe he did not.
For my eldest brother, who maintained closest contact with our father, lacks even a particle of this sorrow.
Since this sorrow flows not through hereditary blood but through worldly assimilation via contact—and judging by my brother's current character—it becomes clear our father truly lacked this quality.

Even now, I feel like a stranger toward my father, and thus harbor no hostility or resentment.
And in a different sense from hostility, just as I had disliked my father since childhood, I disliked his businesslike adult demeanor—unconnected to this sorrow—and fundamentally despised all such adultness.
I determine people’s likability and trustworthiness at a glance today based solely on the presence of this sorrow—a highly perilous method that often leads me to misjudge them. But since everyone has their flaws and merits, and nothing is ever perfect, any standard I set would ultimately be just another arbitrary measure anyway.
I have simply come to realize that this standard of mine is one of the lingering resentments passed down from my father’s image to the present day, contemplate the narrow confines within which humans live, and keenly feel that people must meticulously recall and re-examine the small confines they’ve inhabited from birth until now.

Today, I feel an instinctive repulsion toward politicians, business-minded types, and those who bear no shadow of sorrow in their humanity—unyielding in my stance—yet toward those children of man haunted by sorrow’s shadow, I remain heedlessly open, knowing nothing of setting boundaries.

Father had lost his childlike heart.
However, since this was not the form a healthy person’s heart should take, in his later years Father came into contact with his eldest son, discovered the world of children, and grew astonished by its freshness.
He came to gaze with curiosity at things like watching foreign films, taking up mountaineering as a hobby, or engaging in progressive social movements—but this was merely the eye of an uncomprehending foreign traveler, having lost the true sincerity to assimilate and internalize such things.
He himself lacked any essential freshness.

I would contemplate this old man who bore no relation to my heart—considering how our spiritual connection was even more tenuous than with neighboring elders, uncles, or schoolteachers, amounting to nothing—and reflect on how I must call him father.
I would dwell on this old man who had never considered me beyond being the child who ground his ink, who had entrusted no dreams to my posthumous self—and at times, I would fleetingly think of *Dream of the Red Chamber*, where a stone assumes human form through its earnest wish, as though it were my own living truth.
There are moments when I suddenly think—I am like a stone.
And then, the stone thinks.

★

I was afraid of “houses” since childhood.
It was that old ancestral homes in snow country constituted particularly gloomy architecture—every room dimly lit, with ill-defined partitions between chambers—labyrinthine gloom and bleak expanses where one sensed an aura of emotional detachment, emptiness, despair toward the future, and something akin to curses.
The inhabitants were household vermin across generations—completing births, weddings, and funerals within those walls, dying only to be structured as though their spectral presences still lingered there, gradually molded into forms inseparable from the household itself.

The house where I was born and raised in Niigata City was a temporary residence, so it lacked the sprawling gloom of rural ancestral homes. Yet this structure—once a school for monks—stood like a temple at first glance, encircled by a dense pine forest with trunks requiring two arm spans to encircle them. Its garden never saw sunlight, sank into silences pierced only by wind through pines, and became a nesting ground for crows and owls.

I hated the house where my mother was; after returning from school, I would play outside until evening, but when rain left no alternative, I would sneak into the maids’ room.
The maids' room was in the attic—and being part of temple architecture, it was more spacious and gloomy than any other room. Moreover, there remained a section where one beam had been cut for over a ken (≈1.8m), a vestige from its monastic days when a student had hanged himself there; they'd removed just that portion to dispel misfortune.
To be sure, this severed end had become uniformly soot-blackened, any temporal distinctions in its cutting long erased by time’s depths.
This attic twisted into labyrinthine darkness, where I would hide furtively in shadows, absorbed in reading storybooks.
In snow country, nights of endless snowfall exist in absolute silence.
Those unacquainted might envision blizzard fury, but compared to storms howling through skies like screams, the poignancy lies in snow-muffled nights when all sound dissolves into acoustic voids—emptiness sinking through soundless vacuums.
Ah, deep snow again, I think.
And then this thought compels contemplation of formless darkness ahead—ephemerality, hollowness—inescapable reflections.
Even a child’s heart knew this.
I feared “the household” itself.

My house in Tokyo served as a sort of dormitory for my many sisters’ daughters—my nieces—when they grew old enough to attend schools in the city; yet these girls would unanimously claim that this small Tokyo room felt like their own and inspired affectionate feelings.
In country houses, one’s room was broadly connected to every other room, making it impossible to feel as though you had a room of your own.
And over that vast entirety—the house as a single mass—there lingered an air of something gloomy.
It was the history of the household, the fate of those born into it, a sigh—a gloomy sense that seemed to point to the narrow confines of thought and emotion of its household insects, perpetually stifled in their release of freedom.

Especially as a boy, I had no choice but to fear and curse that house because of my mother’s hatred.

From the time I had no choice but to skip middle school and spend my days lying inverted in the seaside pine grove gazing at the sky, my childhood home became the sky, the sea, the sand, and the pine grove. And it was the blowing wind, and it was the sound of the wind.

From kindergarten days, I had already been haunted by a sadness like aimlessly changing paths and wandering into unknown towns; yet skipping school to lie in the shade of cornel bushes beneath pines while watching the sky left me empty and perpetually filled with poignancy.

I still like the sea more than anything else even today.
I like monotonous sandy beaches.
When I lie on the coast gazing at the sea and sky, even if I spend the whole day lying there, my heart feels somehow fulfilled.
For it was my heart—implanted in me since boyhood whether I willed it or not—and the sentiment of home.

However, I had remained unaware of this.
And I had thought that all humans must love such boundless emptiness—the sea, the sky, deserts, plateaus.
I was of a disposition that found no solace in landscapes with mountains and valleys.
Once, when Kitahara Takeo asked if there was a hot spring with good scenery somewhere, I told him about Niikazawa Hot Spring.
There was Asama Highlands—a vast and boundless grassland without a single tree in sight.
It was a place I liked.
However, Kitahara went there and came back saying there was no place with such an unpleasant atmosphere.
Because Kitahara so earnestly detested the monotony of that scenery, it was then that I first noticed with a start and began to doubt that the landscapes I favored lacked universality.
He may like places like Hakone—but indeed, upon later reflection—ninety-nine percent of people prefer landscapes rich in mountain-water variation over what I favor.
And I came to understand why I could remain fulfilled even when lying about all day gazing at sea and sky—the cause rooted in my boyhood memories.
The sorrow and poignancy in my heart had remained unchanged since those boyhood days.

I felt fear and hatred toward “the household,” while in the sea, sky, and wind, I felt love for my hometown. Yet this was simultaneously two sides of the same coin—I felt the strongest sense of hometown and love toward the mother I feared and hated, while in the sea, sky, and wind, I called forth my hometown’s mother. I was always yearning with poignant longing. Therefore, within the house I feared, within that gloomy mass of lingering atmosphere, I also harbored and concealed my irrepressible fate-bound passion. Even as I constantly fled the household, I remained one of its insects.

About a chō away from my house stood a villa belonging to my mother’s family home, Yoshida.
There lived a man who was my cousin, and the child of the head maid was intellectually disabled.
I think he was about five years older than me.

He became intellectually disabled in the fourth grade of elementary school, but at that time his Go skill was around fourth kyu; had he not become disabled, he might have become a proper Go professional.
After becoming intellectually disabled, his strength declined year by year; what had once been him allowing his cousin to take a handicap of several stones became instead him needing to receive a handicap of several stones.
The disabled cousin was stubborn yet cowardly.
The back of this villa faced Niigata Prison, but they would play Go and threaten, "If you lose, we’ll throw you into prison or lock you in the storehouse."
For the intellectually disabled one, his confidence from years earlier—when he had made others place several handicap stones before playing—still wouldn’t leave him, so he sneered (and sneer he did).
(He was so inflexibly stubborn it was exasperating) he would start [the game], but contrary to expectations, the intellectually disabled one would always end up losing.
He would mutter “Huh?”, then begin earnestly pondering once his stones were on the verge of death, growing gravely flustered as he failed to grasp why he kept losing—this obstinacy of the intellectually disabled one held not an ounce of pretense or composure, making the victor’s satisfaction all the more palpable.
However, my cousin was not satisfied with just that; he would actually lock him in the storehouse overnight or push him out through the back gate into the prison’s vegetable field and shut him out.
The intellectually disabled one would whimper apologies all night long.
Yet despite this, he never learned his lesson; come the next day, he would invariably start sneering again. After losing and dejectedly pleading, “Just today, please don’t lock me in the storehouse—spare me this once,” groveling in abject apology, he would once more sneer and mutter that he shouldn’t have lost at all, tilting his head in perplexed contemplation.

Tormented by nightly defeats and being locked in the storehouse, he finally ran away from home.
He scavenged through town garbage dumps, slept rough, and lived like a beggar; having become impossible to apprehend, he wandered for about a year before being committed to a mental hospital by police.
By then his body had been weakened through prolonged vagrancy, and on a winter dusk, he drew his last breath in the hospital.

It was still dusk, and the family at the villa had just finished their meal by the hearth when suddenly a gust roared—first blowing down the entrance door, then tearing through the earthen floor to knock over the hearthside door, next the kitchen door leading deeper inside, and finally smashing the three-mat door where the intellectually disabled cousin had always secluded himself before coming to a stop.
Everything happened in an instant, leaving only a deafening clamor.
It was entirely as if someone had charged forth using every ounce of physical strength to knock down and kick through everything in their path—only their form being wind made it invisible.
At that moment came a call from the hospital informing them that the intellectually disabled cousin had just breathed his last.

I had glimpsed the figure of my intellectually disabled cousin scavenging through garbage dumps and hiding.
His poignancy was my own poignancy.
Had I possessed the confidence that I could survive by rummaging through trash heaps, lying prostrate in fields, and crawling beneath floorboards, there was not a single day I did not yearn to escape home—to break free under that azure sky.
At the time I was a middle schooler who skipped classes daily, hiding in seaside pine groves on fair days and bakery lofts on rainy ones—yet what bewildered me was how my chest never split open from sorrow, how my entire world remained smothered beneath guilt, fear, and darkness.
To the blue sky—a realm of my own!
I perceived that cousin’s anguish as my own visage.
I had been close with this disabled cousin.
On rainy days I would often visit him at the villa where he taught me Go with a four-stone handicap.

The intellectually disabled cousin who had scavenged through garbage dumps, slept rough, and hidden like a dog—refusing to return home no matter what—became a spirit in the instant of his death and violently returned to the house.
It was a homecoming as violent as a thunder god's, yet he never took revenge.
He did not even perform some capricious act of revenge—like twisting his cousin's nose or kicking him in the side while rushing past.
He merely kicked down the door with violent force, slipped past the people around the hearth, and leapt into my three-mat room.
And there, his spirit returned to eternal nothingness.

This fact was seared into my chest.
My feelings toward my mother were also like that.
There were times I skipped school to lie in the pine grove, my chest tearing apart with sorrow to the point of death, and even if my soul were to violently kick down the door and return home, I too would never so much as twist my mother’s nose.
I was always calling out to my unseen mother in the depths of the sky and beyond the sea.
I was calling out to the mother of my hometown.

And even now, I continue to call out.
And even now, I still fear the household.
I wonder on what day, at which door I must kick down and meet my death.
A stone contemplates.