Pathway to Japanese Literature

In the realm of arts, there exist those who have no means to live except through their craft.
In games like Go and Shogi, there are those who attain first dan rank by fourteen or fifteen—individuals endowed with celestial talent in their field—yet prove less useful than elementary school children when made to handle other matters, appearing nearly imbecilic.
However, such peculiar anomalies seem to plateau around fourth or fifth dan, while those reaching master status appear to possess uncommonly distinctive insights into other domains as well.

In literature as well, such writers occasionally emerge.
The general public holds superstitious prejudices about the world of arts, tending to think that all artists and performers are some kind of madmen; while it’s true that their work by nature doesn’t follow regular hours—working nights and sleeping days—that hardly makes them insane.

Fundamentally, arts and artistic endeavors cannot be achieved with an ordinary, everyday state of mind; the other day I observed the decisive match of the Shogi Meijin-sen tournament, where Hachidan Tsukada spent fourteen minutes contemplating his opening move. So I asked Hachidan Doi, who was observing the match, whether one couldn't at least prepare the first move's strategy the night before. He replied that even if you devise plans beforehand, when facing the board your mindset shifts anew; since sealed moves typically limit possible plays to predictable patterns—where you might think "if this move comes I'll do that, if that move comes I'll do this"—no matter how thoroughly you prepare your strategies, when actually confronting the board your thinking changes and you end up making a different move altogether; that's just how it is.

This was no different in our line of work. You might plan to write such a plot, intend to have a character act a certain way—but no matter how thoroughly you prepared, when facing the manuscript paper, your mindset shifted anew.

The shifting of one’s mindset meant that although the plans conceived the night before—those very plans—were in fact devised by our ordinary mindset, when facing the manuscript, the inadequacy of that ordinary mindset became unbearable. Total immersion—such a state was demanded of creative work. If something proceeded exactly according to predetermined plans, it ceased to be creative work and became mere craft production; one may create well-made handicrafts, but true artistic creation does not occur. Artistic creation always begins at the point where it deviates from the plan. A predetermined plan belongs to a writer’s established individuality and existing capabilities; however, art—being the perpetual creation and discovery of self—is by nature unfulfilling unless it reaches the creation and discovery of that which deviates from established plans and defies prediction.

Therefore, while administrators handle affairs systematically, creative work inevitably refuses to conform to such order.
Thus, due to the nature of the work, one’s lifestyle becomes irregular—but this stems from the work’s inherent characteristics, not from any innate disposition of the individual.

Pigs were said to be naturally fastidious creatures. The Japanese kept them in squalid conditions, dumping all manner of filth into pigsties they equated with garbage pits—yet contrary to this practice, pigs inherently abhorred dirt. When provided clean pens, they reportedly maintained this hygiene with daily vigilance. In this regard, writers resembled Japan’s swine. Though their work condemned them to chaotic irregularity, at heart they were unexpectedly methodical—though perhaps, well, best not to dwell on that.

Since literature involves writing about people, one must at least understand human nature thoroughly.
While Go and Shogi may have experts who appear idiotic outside their specialized talents, no such foolishly insightful writers could exist.
Yet exceptions do occur.
Though "idiotic" might not be the precise term, there exist those who can only perform half-heartedly at any work besides writing—people utterly lacking adaptability.
People often think of me this way too, but they're mistaken; generally speaking, even those novelists and poets whom colleagues readily dismiss as hopelessly impractical often prove otherwise—though poets may craft bizarrely unrealistic verses or pen pessimistic poetry, many actually possess temperaments more down-to-earth than professional bureaucrats.
Since literature itself is fundamentally human in nature, its roots must naturally follow suit; the concept of refined literati cannot apply to modern literary figures—their foundations prove more worldly and pragmatic than ordinary people's.

Sanzo Shokichi was billed as an unconventional writer in modern Japanese literature—a standard advertising phrase for his novels—but to my knowledge, he remained Japan’s sole author with no marketable skills beyond writing fiction.

His novels were essentially poetry in prose—the root of his creative work being a poetic soul—and though one might dismiss him as an incompetent prone to anguished composition, destitution, and vagrancy, devoid of money-making talents, it would be wrong to assume he lacked insight into human nature.
His understanding of people proved profound and precise; thus even while living like a phantom, he maintained a more materialistic grasp of reality than ordinary folk.
Though a spendthrift by habit, his core remained miserly—endowed with greater tenacity for hoarding money and possessions than society’s most frugal strivers—yet despite wielding a miser’s obsessions, he persisted as a wastrel.
That modern men of letters become materialistic realists stems from their human insight; to comprehend others is to comprehend oneself, and to “know” people’s fixations means to “possess” them.
Therefore if humanity constitutes something complex and obsession-ridden, then modern writers all share this complexity and obsession—yet simultaneously, he dwelled in phantom existence as both spendthrift and sleepwalker.

Generally speaking, there was no one as eager to hastily pay when they occasionally had money in their pockets as us poor writers.
When three writers gathered to drink and each had money in their pockets, it was invariably the poorest among them who would vehemently insist on paying first when the bill came.
I was exactly like that all the time—putting on this grand show of determination, insisting "No no, today you absolutely must let me handle it!" only to panic when settling accounts and find I didn't have enough money in my pockets.
When they reached the point of wandering about dejectedly, still frantically rummaging through their clothes as if some coin might yet remain hidden, it was always the wealthier writer who—without so much as a fuss—calmly produced from his breast pocket a wallet swollen to bursting.
Sanzo Shokichi too belonged to that group who would panic and fumble out their purses first, yet no one understood through bitter experience the sting of poverty and money's preciousness more than these very people.
Yet the money in their purses would all grow legs and scramble to leap out ahead of each other to flee—truly this world defied control.
Each morning brought fresh regret—no rice nor even a radish tail—and when his wife asked "What are we eating today?", he would fix her with a piercing glare as if she were some accursed demon before either burying himself under the futon or crossing his arms and turning away.

Shokichi moved from place to place.
At most six months, sometimes three—driven by debts to liquor stores, rice shops, and landlords—he feared those marked haori most because it was precisely those petty debts that sent him scrambling across Tokyo's every corner, where both the bosses and errand boys usually wore those marked jackets.
Moreover, they rode bicycles.
The bicycle-riding debt collectors in their marked haori appeared to leap at him through the wind, which was precisely why they struck terror into his heart. So he would take a car to his destination instead; under the driver's glare, he'd fidget and tremble with shame as Arji at his destination paid the fare. Life left him no choice but to act servile everywhere he went.
Moreover, it cost money.
The wealthy had no need to ride in cars.

His wife was perfectly suited to his poverty.
Under the pretense of keeping poverty as a companion—though never truly preferring it in her heart—it had naturally come to be that way.
That was for Shokichi’s novels.

The protagonist of his novels was always himself.
He wrote his own life.
However, he wrote novels not about his real life but about how he wished it were—how it ought to be.
Yet he couldn’t possibly write fantasies too absurd to even dream of—like becoming wealthy—for a writer serves as the most precise prophet of their own life. To imagine himself free from poverty was a delusion he could never permit; artistry does not allow such illusions.
In his works, he was always poor.
He drifted from place to place, resorted to midnight escapes and living off others; in places like Kinada Village and Kazamatsuri Village, he sometimes succeeded—and sometimes failed—in sneaking into sake breweries for clandestine drinking bouts after dark. He fraternized with debt collectors, clashed with a ruthless old moneylender—sometimes dishing out trouble, sometimes receiving it—and all the while his wife gleefully took charge at the front lines, bossing around her useless good-for-nothing husband. Yet he whistled as he fluttered through woodlands, combed his fingers through streams, and soaked his feet in flowing water, cleansed of worldly desires.

Due to possessing fragments of such qualities, Shokichi wrote in that manner; through being written about in that way, his wife naturally became such a person; and because she naturally became that way, he wrote even more intensely.
There exists no limit to writing, but because real humans have their limits, tragedy arises when one crosses that boundary where continuing to write so profusely becomes futile.

It appeared his works too had reached their limit.
The aspirational style of writing—this desire for things to become as he willed—had either peaked or bottomed out, becoming unable to sustain the gap with reality. Thus he required an artistic turning point: to pierce through his own husk and return his works' foundation to stand once more upon reality's solid ground.
Yet were this achievable with ease, there would exist no such thing as tragedy for artists.

★

In Shokichi’s works, one-shō bottles never appeared; large four-tō barrels would materialize for drinking bouts, earning him a reputation as the literary world’s foremost “non-drinker.” Yet he was, in reality, a man uniquely vulnerable to alcohol.

Originally frail in constitution—incapable of heroic drinking—he found even alcohol governed by his nerves. Should his companion become intoxicated first, pressure would overwhelm him, leaving him sober and retching.
When faced with temperamentally incompatible drinking partners, four out of five sessions ended in vomiting rather than intoxication. By cruel irony, this timid soul—whose heart perpetually hungered for human connection yet remained knotted tight—had sunk into such melancholy that only alcohol could loosen his tongue.
Thus when guests arrived—be it dawn or midnight—he would send his wife sprinting to liquor stores already drowning in unpaid debts. She scoured distant neighborhoods without hesitation, pounding on shop doors as though seeking medical aid, until rejections from all nearby shops forced their nocturnal flight to new frontiers—this transfusion route through life being his inescapable fate.

He was a nobleman.
Because his soul remained utterly elegant even in poverty.

He possessed both the devilish insight of modern writers grounded in the mundane and the traditional Japanese literati temperament. Though aware that novels were mere commodities, he regarded art as something transcendent—elegant, alien, and the privileged domain of select individuals. This pride, this single-minded devotion to upholding that dignity, allowed his soul to retain its elegance even in poverty. Yet for that very reason, his works became mere literati playthings, their very foundations increasingly divorced from his lived reality.

Because he himself, while living in poverty, remained most acutely conscious of maintaining elegance, he forcibly and unjustly stifled his devilish insight, descending blindly into literati aesthetics. His toys became playthings for a select few—crafted solely for himself—taking on the nature of rigid artifacts, while art's inherent universal human vitality gradually weakened and faded.

As he turned forty and his poverty deepened, his works grew increasingly "pose-like"—they were becoming ever more elegant in appearance, yet were soon approaching a crisis of being rigidly constrained by their own posturing.

It became unnatural because he stifled his devilish insight. His works remained fantastical, yet even his devilish insight should have possessed its own necessary illusions—what his art by nature ought to be—but he particularly suppressed that insight, fixating instead on literati-inspired fantasies. Therefore, his works became nothing more than masturbation, no longer capable of truly saving or elevating him.

As collateral for his boarding house debt, they left behind his most valuable property—a single mikan box.
In this mikan box were packed all his life’s works.
He was an unpopular writer, having published only about two single-volume works, so the mikan box stuffed with clippings of his pieces from newspapers and magazines stood as a precious testament to his labor.
When Kurisu Ankichi—a third-rate writer and junior colleague who took pity on Shokichi’s panicked despair over “If that box disappears, I disappear too”—paid off the debt and retrieved the mikan box, Shokichi rejoiced. From that day on, he kept the box by his pillow, waking at midnight to rummage through it and lose himself in rereading old works, reciting them sonorously each morning. When drunk, he’d summon his wife to his side and perform dramatic readings with exaggerated gestures. His greatest admirer was himself; next came his wife. She had been an ardent reader since her schoolgirl days as a fan who visited “Master Shokichi,” leading to their courtship and marriage—a long history of devoted readership.
From that moment, she herself became one of the inseparable characters in his works, and precisely because she so adored her fictional counterpart, her real self began to mold itself to resemble those writings.
Art imitates nature, and nature imitates art.
This was because his works contained a reality that convinced her; no matter how fantastical, a work’s foundation must be rooted in reality—it is fiction that takes root in reality, extends its branches, and blooms into flower.

However, the good-for-nothing’s recent works were gradually ceasing to convince his wife.
In other words, the very foundation of his writing had become detached from reality.

He loved his wife, but the itch to stray persisted.
This, too, was another case where one of the fans who had visited him during her schoolgirl days had become a barmaid at a bar.
Shokichi—who had taken charge of the Nihonbashi section in New Tokyo Scenery, a collaborative work by dozens of writers—happened to encounter her during his research for the piece, and from then on, whenever he got drunk, he would go there to court her with dogged persistence.
But she was no longer her former self—she’d stay with wealthy gentlemen for three days or even a week—but when it came to Shokichi, he couldn’t afford to drink at bars, so he drank at oden shops with his junior disciple. Once he confirmed the junior still had some money on him, he’d set out barking orders: “Take me there! Round up the troops!”
The reason he didn’t bring peers or seniors was his inability to swagger before women otherwise—so he’d swagger about with juniors in tow instead—but show-offs without money are most despised in the sex workers’ world. Though Shokichi still schemed to exploit his old schoolgirl fan’s lingering connection, the woman grew increasingly annoyed at his pestering over a bond she’d long forgotten.
Yet whenever Shokichi got drunk, he would inevitably descend upon that place—flirting recklessly until expelled—only for debt collection notices and cooks to arrive with glaring persistence.
Yet drunk again, he would go out—an endless cycle of repetition.
Of course, there was not the slightest prospect of success.

Up to that point, things had still been manageable, but a disciple from his hometown who lived nearby had a slightly alluring sister who became a clerk at a magazine company through his connections.
Ever since then, whenever he got drunk, he would bang on this disciple’s door to demand alcohol, stay over, and—even with the mother lying asleep right beside them—crawl into the younger sister’s futon without hesitation.
He was driven out—indomitable—repeating until exhaustion left him sprawled limply.
This, too, held no prospect of success.

Next, he visited a certain up-and-coming female writer.
This connection arose from his having praised this female writer’s works; though she was Ms. Omekake—a popular writer—when drunk, he would barge into her place.
His drunken compulsion to invariably seek out some woman’s company was becoming an inescapable, fateful sleepwalking ritual.

While his somnambulistic expeditions had still been manageable, now he targeted his wife’s sister—a fourth-year student with a large frame nearing adulthood, yet an incomparably beautiful and alluring girl compared to her sibling.
The night this female student stayed over, summer’s heat forced them to share a single mosquito net. Shokichi’s heavy intoxication became the root of his downfall—in a drunken somnambulist charge, he clambered over his son’s bedding, breached his wife’s barricade, and launched an assault toward the girl.
Even when his wife seized him by the collar and dragged him back, he remained indomitable—like Ono no Tōfū’s persistent frog—for over three hours, though ultimately without success. Only when dawn began to break did he finally succumb to exhaustion and collapse limply. Yet still, up to this point, things had been manageable.

Infidelity was inherently universal—one must not dismiss it as mere drunkenness—for there had to be a coldly observing eye that gazed unflinchingly at adulterous desires, an eye that must form the foundation of one’s work. Though he possessed such an eye, he deemed this very eye itself vulgar.
He fabricated dream stories with himself and his wife as protagonists, but without this eye’s substantiation, they lacked true life—no blood nor flesh.
His wife could no longer be convinced by the good-for-nothing’s works.

Infidelity resides in every heart; even when possessed by adulterous desires and crawling in drunkenly, he remained a man of extraordinary elegance and dignity in his soul.
He pretended not to see his true nature as it was, deliberately crafting dreamlike tales with flowery language while dismissing real life as vulgar—intending to forge his own authentic personalities within his characters—yet without the steady foundation of his own essence, there was no means to create personalities imbued with flesh and blood.
Because he was a man of noble bearing and refined character, even when launching assaults on his sister-in-law’s futon, his wife had not yet lost her esteem for Shukuroku’s unassailable dignity. Yet lacking the realistic foundation needed to convince his characters—instead self-indulgently overturning the toy box and letting its manufactured personalities run rampant—it was precisely through this that fissures began to form.
Because she was no longer Shukuroku’s devoted reader, through doubting and despising his characters, she came to scorn even the real Shukuroku—her eyes now warped to perceive even his unassailable dignity as nothing more than a flimsy pack of lies and half-baked deceptions.

Shokichi had already turned forty.
He trusted and loved his wife completely.
As the pitiable man grew accustomed to his works' foundations detaching from reality's roots—to sealing away and expelling that coldly rigorous devilish insight—he instead began shaping only the surface of his reality to resemble his phantasmal writings, until dream and reality became indistinguishable.

He received manuscript fees at the magazine company.
Hounded by debt collectors and scraping to cover their children's school fees and lunch money, his wife waited in anguish for his return.
In terms of worrying about those debts and their children's school fees, he was by no means less concerned than his wife. He wanted to meet friends; he wanted to safely hand over the manuscript fee in his pocket to her—but as previously mentioned, this money had legs that were eager to scamper away in haste, making it all so agonizing.
Ah, he'd think—just one cup—but soon he'd be drunk. Two cups, three cups, ten cups. Come on, let's make merry! Call that one, call this one—he'd ring everyone up, gather juniors, swagger about. He'd procure things like a track-and-field javelin, loudly recite verses from Baljin—a character in his works—then strike poses as an Athenian citizen, an Athenian athlete, before staggering home.
There was no longer a single penny left in his pocket.
His wife spun around and fled to another room to weep; even as she cried, she endlessly chopped onions for tomorrow's miso soup.
Even when Shukuroku called out to her, there was no response.

This anguish he had never overlooked from the very beginning.
He found poverty more agonizing than his wife did, his debts more sorrowful, his children’s tuition more burdensome.
But just as his works had succeeded in fundamentally severing themselves from reality, unless his own existence achieved that same severance, he would have nowhere left to stand.
He fought debt collectors by casting them as La Mancha’s windmill monsters; even when seducing his wife’s sister, he likened her to Dulcinea of Toboso.
Though he didn’t believe a word of those advertising slogans—"literature of solitary genius," "the unconventional verse of wandering bards"—I succeeded in puffing out my chest and convincing myself this was exactly what I embodied.

While reveling in a fictional world whose foundation was utterly detached from reality’s roots—not only oblivious to its deceit but through successfully shaping reality’s surface to mirror his fictional realm—he became an increasingly fervent admirer of his own works, grew drunk on his creations, and achieved contemptuous dismissal of his actual self’s petty vulgarity.
He now had no choice but to intoxicate himself with his own writings—without doing so, he couldn’t endure the suffocating weight of his existence.

Colleagues and critics still occasionally churned out perfunctory five- or six-line literary reviews in some corner—assiduously yet haphazardly scribbling clichés like "literature of solitary genius" or "unconventional literature" for the sake of income—but now only his wife could no longer be deceived.
This fundamental disconnect between his works and reality was not something her mind perceived—it was judged through her very bones, by her entire being.

At that point, something arose that his wife could no longer endure.

★

They came to live in a somewhat tidy apartment called Giu-so.
The Madam of this apartment was a kept woman who had wheedled her husband into building the apartment under the pretense of earning pocket money, though her true aim was infidelity. Since her husband—a heavy drinker downing a sho of sake each evening—was impotent, the Madam, raised as a geisha, found her constrained circumstances unbearable, and she skillfully flirted and dallied with every tenant in the building as a truly licentious woman.

When her husband came and the evening drinking began, they would say, "Let’s invite that one today," and Shokichi would be summoned.
Madam was a twenty-seven- or twenty-eight-year-old beauty and former geisha—utterly unburdened by domesticity—exuding raw sensuality through her voluptuous allure.
Fawning over him as Master Sanzo sent Shokichi into raptures; from then on his drunken nocturnal pilgrimages to women’s rooms narrowed exclusively to Madam’s quarters.
Drink transformed him into a raucous spectacle—that emaciated frame somehow producing a cracked-bell roar instead of its usual mosquito whine—as he pranced about like some deranged cheerleader, gilding his gravelly interjections with metallic bravado while alternately flattering and propositioning the ladies.
His voice penetrated every cranny of the cramped apartment building,

“Oh Master, your wife might hear you!”

Though she said this, her deliberately audible tone carried lingering flirtation, sending Shokichi spiraling further into ecstasy.

“My wife’s a real looker.”
“Year-round peeling bamboo shoots and chopping onions while crying—from dawn till dusk, every single day—but it’s not like we’re devouring hundreds of shoots daily! She’s some sorceress who spends five hours skinning one bamboo shoot.”
“That’s all the magic she knows—no grasp of real life whatsoever.”

She couldn’t endure overhearing this.
In Japan, wives generally work part-time as maids, with their primary focus on this secondary occupation. However, this isn’t by choice—it stems from a structure where husbands’ incompetence makes genuine partnership impossible, forcing them to endure peeling bamboo shoots through gritted teeth.
Yet what manner of thing is this?
Using their own incompetence as a pretext, husbands call their wives domestic bamboo shoot sorceresses.
Every last good-for-nothing husband, while reducing their wives to sorceresses of domestic drudgery through their own incompetence, secretly yearns for women of pleasure unbound by such toil—rogues every one of them. Small wonder wives unanimously deem courtesans and kept women enemy nations; their grievance is thoroughly justified.

If unseen and unheard, there might be ways to endure—but when visible and audible, the indignation became unbearable, which was only natural. Yet even as her heart ached, he went to the theater with her, got drunk, returned boisterously together, didn’t show his face in her room, and instead drank in Madam’s quarters while braying idiotically.

Chased by deadlines, even when his wife clattered pots—his eyes glinting triangularly as he glared sharply—the moment Madam called out “Master,” he’d contort half his face into a pained expression and scurry out, staying until midnight only to return slurring drunk, his novel unfinished, poverty tightening its grip.

However, Shukuroku’s inner workings were complex and bizarre—he was never popular with women.
He was deftly manipulated by Madam—precisely because he was utterly inept in such matters, merely a petulant child who had earned her husband’s trust—so she would take him out along with another man, get him pleasantly drunk with cheap oden-shop sake, then slip away on pretexts like “Oh Master! I just remembered something!” or “I need to go shopping!”, leaving him behind while she dallied for two hours.
Though her male companions changed constantly, Shokichi’s circumstances remained static—lately growing servile enough that when couples stood up murmuring “Oh! Forgot something…Master,” he’d snicker “Go on then” without hearing them out—a pitiful spectacle.
The wretchedness pierced him bone-deep—he knew this full well—yet when subdued by that flirtatious woman’s voluptuous sorcery and sweet-talked with honeyed words, he could only melt into a simpering grin—a despicableness that grew more loathsome upon reflection.
This wasn’t something confessable to his wife—though he swaggered about like Madam’s beloved favorite—so forgive him wife; here lay art’s wretched wonder! Here he abandoned himself to phantasmal tales unrooted from his true nature—impersonating his own characters until bombastic recitations left him weeping alone at his fabricated pathos.
To his wife’s eyes nothing appeared more absurd.
She could no longer place even trifling value on her husband’s novels.
“You good-for-nothing—just you remember that!” she spat before vanishing.

However, his uncharacteristic infatuation with Madam stemmed not from romantic entanglements or affairs, but rather from his having reached an impasse in literature.
The reason was this: he held no appeal to women whatsoever—used as a pawn in their affairs, disdained, trampled upon. Fully aware of his wretchedness yet dissolving into grins at their transparent sweet talk—this absurdity wasn’t even amusingly tragic. But if he lost confidence in his art, an artist’s life would plunge into utter darkness.
To drift into half-hearted engagement with matters neither amusing nor interesting and which he had no desire to pursue—this was decadence in essence, the inexorable trajectory born of confidence’s collapse.

His wife did not return, having been missing for several days.

Though the anguish threatened to make him faint, Madam coldly remarked, “Oh, your wife’s having an affair?”
“My, how underestimated I was! You’re quite undisciplined too, Master—who’d think a wife like that could attract a Miren?” she showered him with venom-laced words, her underlying contempt thoroughly apparent through the half-mocking glint in her eyes. Yet when teased with lines like “Aren’t you going to have an affair too, Master?”, he grew utterly reckless,

“Madam, let’s go stay somewhere tonight. Come on, it’s fine—let’s go.”

Madam wryly smiled.

“Master, do you even have the money for a night out?”

The retort struck like a blade.

Shokichi stood bisected by the verbal blow, his severed neck—spiteful thing that it was—refusing to burrow into the floorboards as it ought. Instead, it floated weightless through the air, caromed off walls and paper screens, scraped against pillar edges, his snot-caked face twisting grotesquely as it spun five, six revolutions through the stale apartment air.
Even as he longed to shut his eyes, cover his ears, and flee headlong, there existed some persistent, monster-like creature that kept pestering him—

“I’m poor.”
“Poverty is none other than Mr. Sanzo himself—known throughout the land.”
“I’m an artist.”
“I’m great.”
“Even if I waste away to nothing, poverty can’t be helped.”

He couldn’t make sense of any of it.
But his legs gave out, leaving him frozen and unable to flee, so he began shouting something utterly reckless and unexpected.

“Well, you won’t know unless you die, I suppose.”

Madam leaned against the entrance door.
Just then, a man came out into the hallway carrying a towel and soap—this man too was one of those usual men,

“Huh? Die?”

“They say it won’t get better unless you die.”

“Ah, the ‘ba’ shape—you mean hanging?”

“That’s right.”

Madam nodded.

“So you won’t know unless you die, huh? Mr. Kaji, won’t you take me out for a drink tonight?”

He walked off shoulder-to-shoulder with the man.

Several days later, the wife returned.

More than anything, not working was agonizing.
That became the root of such outcomes.
Only work remained.
But why couldn't he work?
Women and alcohol—dreams of dreams, illusions of illusions—were nothing at all.

So he wrote a letter to his junior Kurisu Ankichi: wanting to live apart from his wife and children temporarily to devote himself to writing, was there a suitable room in Ankichi's boarding house? He requested an urgent reply. Unfortunately there being no available rooms, when Ankichi sent a reply to that effect, it turned out Shokichi had only been momentarily serious—he wasn't the sort of man who could live apart from his wife even for a day.
When the reply came from Ankichi, he felt relieved,

“Hey—no rooms available.”
“Well, can’t be helped then.”
“Anyway, I don’t wanna stay here anymore. Let’s go to Odawara.”
“We’re making a clean start from now on.”

“I hate Odawara.”
“I can’t live with your mother.”

“But it can’t be helped.
Because I couldn’t write the manuscript and there’s no prospects elsewhere—anyway, I’ll immerse myself completely in writing in Odawara and produce a masterpiece.”

“Why on earth would we move the luggage?”

“If we ask them, they’d keep our things here.”

“Did you pay the rent?”

“I couldn’t write the manuscript, and with that advance still hanging over us, they probably won’t lend anything now.
If we go to Odawara—anyway, if it’s not in this room, I can write.
If I can just write, the rent’s nothing.”

“But if we don’t pay now, what happens?”
“That’s a midnight flit.”
“There’s luggage!”

“So there.”
“Go ask Madam for me.”
“If you explain the situation, she’ll understand.”

“You go ahead.”
“I can’t go.”

“But you’re not exactly close friends, are you?”

When Shokichi gloomily crossed his arms and fell silent, she—freshly returned from her disappearance—felt compelled to tend to the good-for-nothing’s old wounds,

“Well then, I’ll go.”
“I don’t care if they complain about the rent.”
“Let’s leave with our heads held high.”

“Yeah, I’m counting on you with the luggage too.”

However, when Madam heard their request, her demeanor transformed completely—all cheerfulness, eager agreement, even coming straight over to offer formal greetings,

“So you’re returning to your hometown, I hear.”
“What a shame to part.”
“When you come up to Tokyo again, please do stop by without fail.”
“Even if you were to kindly invite me by phone from Ginza, I’d come running.”
“Even if you were to kindly wake me at midnight, that would be perfectly fine.”
“Let’s have a farewell party today.”

“But we have to catch the train now.”

“Oh, for Odawara, any train would do, wouldn’t it? Well then Master, there’s no food but we’ve got alcohol, so do stay for a little drink.”

“Because we have to arrive before it gets dark.”

“Oh my, but it’s your own house. Oh, Mrs. How cruel of you to treat me so harshly! Mrs., about an hour would be all right, wouldn’t it? I’ll borrow Master for a bit. Mrs., you’ll be organizing the luggage and such, won’t you? Really now, Master, how terribly formal you’re being.”

Shokichi was invited into Madam’s room and treated to her hospitality.
Since the luggage had already been prepared, it became an hour of bitter frustration—

“It’s time. Let’s go.”

“Oh my, the food just arrived. It’s about to begin, you know, Master.”

Without so much as glancing at those words—yank—she seized the arm of the good-for-nothing swaying there with bloodshot drunken eyes,

“Come on, let’s go.”

“You have a drink too.”

“Look, see here.
If you keep carrying on like that, you'll be hated.
Quit meddling, Master.”

“Call it meddling if you want—you’re the one interfering!”
“What are you even? A geisha-turned hussy.”
“I’m the wife here.”

Even with this shift, she put on a bold front.
Shokichi, still in a drunken state that knew its limits and with the misery of their exile from the capital still lodged in his chest, stood up with unexpected obedience.
When Madam rose smoothly and moved behind Shokichi to attempt a double wrist lock, his wife snatched him away without a word and shoved him into the hallway as if hauling a small child.

“Master, do wait for me when you return to Tokyo.”
“Call me right away, won’t you?”

As Shokichi turned to offer his greetings, his wife seized him by the nape, wrenched him around, and shoved him toward the exit; Shokichi went staggering and stumbling, pushed and jostled out into the street, and when he finally turned back in full view of the world, Madam was already gone.

“Tch. Serves you right. Look at you now.”

The wife was fuming, but Madam was likely in her room laughing herself sick.
Yet more than his wife’s anger—it was Shokichi being mocked, insulted, toyed with, and ridiculed that sank like bile into his gut.
But there was no one left to curse but himself.
Work—only work remained. Thus Shokichi fled the capital.

★

At the family home in Odawara, his mother continued her lonely life, guarding the legacy of her deceased husband.
It was truly a resolute solitary life—having worked for many years as an elementary school teacher, lived with masculine rigor, and moreover grown accustomed to loneliness since her days with her late husband.
For her deceased husband had been a captain on international routes who spent most of his life at sea—when he did occasionally return, he would indulge in heavy drinking and boisterous singing at brothels rather than at home, sometimes even taking the still-student Shokichi along and leaving their son overnight at those pleasure quarters. Through repeatedly facing her husband under circumstances akin to a swordsman preparing for a duel with rival schools, she had grown accustomed to this drawn-out way of living.

Her deceased husband’s inheritance was squandered in no time by the underage Shokichi; their estate was seized as collateral for debts; bailiffs came knocking; he fled to play house with some literary-minded girl; manuscripts failed to sell; chased by liquor stores, rice vendors, and landlords; drifting through borrowed lodgings; wandering rootlessly; begging for money when their child fell ill—though she had amassed a nest egg from her decades as a schoolteacher, and though Shokichi kept scheming to swindle it from her, she now refused to give him even a single copper coin.
Driven from boarding houses and finding temporary lodgings increasingly untenable, he would flee to Odawara to scrape by, writing manuscripts until securing some rented room—only to dart out again posthaste. This habitual pattern held not a shred of parental affection; she now thought him nothing but an insufferable nuisance.

However, at that time, Sanzo Shokichi clung to one immense hope that comforted him in his exile from the capital—a first-rate newspaper in the eastern metropolis had commissioned him to write a serialized novel. While newspaper serials nowadays could scarcely buy decent rotgut, in those days such work from a top-tier paper would have dramatically eased his livelihood.

Shokichi was called literature's lone wolf and a Stoic—labels he'd embraced himself—but his true heart craved money above all else. Poverty chafed him raw. Yet paradoxically he nursed delusions of artistic nobility: what need had he for money? Let him but work—were there only a quiet room, a retreat unburdened by wife and children—and masterpieces would flow forth like water.

He possessed, however, the most merciless demon’s eye in reality—literature was but a trifling thing; though art might be spoken of as some yōkai-like pure and mystical divine object, Goethe’s representative masterpiece had been born from him hurriedly writing in imitation after reading Shakespeare and being moved; most masterpieces since antiquity were scrawled out for money by those who wanted money; Balzac wrote for his revelry funds; Chekhov began with a grimace at the theater owner’s unreasonable deadlines; Dostoevsky altered his characters’ personalities to suit readers’ tastes—all were merely talents blessed with the ability to transform any vulgar transaction into divine inspiration and make it the wellspring of their grand endeavors.
Even if one complied with the most vulgar demands of popular magazines, masterpieces could be written—this was something he knew in reality.

In fact, literature is just that.
Freedom is a burden—tell someone "I’ll leave it to your freedom to produce a full-fledged masterpiece," and they often find themselves at a loss.
Because the things one truly wants to write—the things one cannot help but write—are not so numerous.
Therefore, when writers receive specific requests from popular magazines or are told to write certain things, this can actually serve as a catalyst for unique creative endeavors—because while working alone, they tend to remain bound by their own preexisting limitations and struggle to break free, whereas being provided with unexpected starting points from others allows them to spill beyond those confines, initiate unpredictable activities, and discover new dimensions of themselves to incorporate.
Therefore, the notion of wanting to write a masterpiece free from others’ nagging and familial bonds—to create at will—is nothing but a hollow incantation; masterpieces can be written while humming a tune amid bustling streets, and the belief that settling into a quiet room guarantees such work is a wretched superstition.

Similarly, the spiritualism that claims one needs neither fame nor money but only to devote oneself fully to conscientious work was what most misled literature. For writers to fully exert their talents, they required mental encouragement—and fame and money were, in essence, that very encouragement.
Without mental encouragement, no matter how great the talent one might possess, one could not fully bring it to bear.
Even a genius of Dostoevsky’s caliber, once met with public neglect, would for nearly twenty years produce nothing but foolish works in succession—pointlessly imitating others, vacillating left and right, utterly failing to demonstrate his true capabilities.
There was nothing as steeped in self-delusion as those who had fallen behind, but self-delusion differed from confidence—confidence was something people bestowed upon you; that is, it was through others recognizing your talents that one could truly gain confidence. Even a genius like Dostoevsky could only be blessed with the confidence to fully unleash his talents once people acknowledged his abilities and granted him fame and money.

Unlike unknown writers who burned with hope for the future as they devoted themselves wholeheartedly, Shokichi—though once having obtained some literary reputation—never rose above mediocrity; his writings generally failed to sell, and even when brought to magazines, they would inevitably be rejected.
Continuing such an existence led only to losing confidence and wandering lost—self-delusion taking precedence as he strained pointlessly through ascetic discipline and total immersion in creation. The more he strained, the emptier his hackneyed prose became, producing nothing but intricate contrivances detached from his true self, until at last only fabricated novels born of desperate labor emerged.

Shokichi possessed the demonic eye of a modern writer—that merciless objectivity, that unflinching grasp of reality—and had therefore both intuited and understood this truth from the outset.
Yet the era’s prevailing notions refused to anchor this self-awareness in conviction; bereft of confidence, he fixated obsessively on affectations of literati refinement, left powerless to apprehend with certainty either his authentic self or literature’s fundamental nature.

Thus even as he burned with desperation for money, he would declare—in stark contradiction to his true desires—that he mustn’t write for vulgar magazines, that trivial essays were beneath him, that imposed demands offended his sensibilities, all while maintaining this hollow pretense of purity.

When he received a serial novel commission from a first-rate major newspaper in the Eastern Capital, his heart blazed with fervor—yet tending to his child’s schooling, his wife’s demands, and his mother’s disapproving countenance left his mind unmoored. He immersed himself in phantasmal habits of literati pretension, needlessly exhausting himself, and ultimately rented a room at an Odawara inn to keep up appearances as a bestselling author at work. But with payment for this novel still four or five months away should it run in the paper—and if it turned out poorly and was rejected, how would he settle the inn’s bill?—such anxieties consumed him, leaving the actual novel itself to languish in futile agonies, its progress sluggish and halting.

The blazing encouragement that had once ignited his heart now proved utterly useless; any momentary flashes of inspiration led only to sluggish and halting progress; and as he began doubting his own talent, the very loftiness of his initial ambitions served only to deepen his despair, intensifying the depth of his lost confidence. Fretting uselessly, his mind now thrashed about like a floundering creature, wandering through mazes and roaming desolate plains.

Fundamentally, his recent works had already reached their limit—contrivances born from agonizing labor, their very foundations detached from his true self and reality. To break through this limit, this shell, and return to his original self’s work in one fell swoop required a catalyst, for which mental encouragement was the foremost condition—yet having carelessly let slip this heaven-sent gospel, he now found himself growing ever more anxious over that very gospel, spreading his despair, and emptying his heart.

In a rented room, he stared uselessly at blank paper—yet on the surface played the grand novelist serialized in a major newspaper, holding court for juniors from his hometown who came to pay homage, drinking himself senseless and boasting recklessly—“Hey, quit worrying—big money’s coming in! I’m not the old Mr. Sanzo anymore! Sake’s too rough on my gut—got any whiskey? Old Parr’s the stuff—” before staggering home dead drunk.
The wife’s willow-leaf eyebrows bristled with anger,

“Where’ve you been staggering around drinking?”
“How’re you gonna get money for rice and fish?”
“Do I have to go begging your mother for every damn thing?”
“If you want stuff from your mother, you go beg for it yourself.”
“Otherwise, I won’t be in Odawara anymore.”

“What the hell are you talking about? If you’ve got somewhere to go, then get the hell out of here!”

But deep in his chest, his heart thinned like a single strand of thread—how would he handle the novel? He no longer had confidence to continue writing. How would he manage the inn payments and daily liquor bills? If he couldn’t write now, there would be no hope left for his literary life. Where could he direct this anguish?

When he sobered up, his wife’s complaints sank into his chest.
The pathos of his wife begging his mother even for fish money was ultimately his own pathos.
“Don’t worry—I’ll get the money.”
So he wrote hack pieces, went up to Tokyo, made magazine rounds, groveled with endless bows to scrape together cash, drank tea with friends—but since he still couldn’t afford a kimono cord, his wife flew into rages—and by day he put on refined airs while sipping tea, yet as evening neared, felt too ashamed to board trains sober. “Just a quick drink,” he’d say, taking a sip. “Ah well—commuter trains are packed now anyway”—returning home on the last train at midnight.
Dead drunk, staggering, tumbling, mud-smeared, penniless—with lipstick smeared around his collar.

“What’s this lipstick?”

“Ahahaha!”
“Caught me, huh?”
“Ahahaha!”
“That was from being doted on by the Madam of Giu-so.”
“Ahahaha!”

In truth, he had been latched onto by a woman with a mouth like a cannibal’s in some back-alley sham parlor in a corner of Shinbashi, but when impoverished greed runs its course, all that remains is a sadistic streak for bullying the weak; putting on airs of composure, he laughed sloppily with apparent delight and said:
His wife raged like a raging fire, her mind thrown into disarray.
She knew absolutely nothing about the true nature of Shokichi’s relationship with Madam—thus, after over a decade of poverty-driven wandering, years of resentment, repeated indignities, and contempt, the final thread of the persimmon calyx snapped.

The next morning at dawn, she bundled her belongings and headed to the station as if kicking the deserted streets of Odawara, went up to Tokyo, visited Uchida Nobuyuki—the university student disciple of her good-for-nothing husband—and burst into tears.

This university student had previously gone to console her during her disappearance and was comforted in various ways; upon her return from running away, he had even accompanied her back and apologized to the good-for-nothing.
However, being still a university student, he couldn’t grasp the most common realities of the secular world.
There’s a saying that marital fights are not even a dog’s business—since ancient times, those uninvolved ought to stay out of them—but he took the wife’s words completely at face value. When accompanying her back after her disappearance, he delivered a full-fledged lecture: “Master, getting entangled with strange women is utterly inexcusable,” thereby angering Master.

Already nursing his own frustrations, when the wife came bursting in tears again, he sympathized deeply. "You can stay here," he said, but as a university student still dependent on his parents, he couldn't possibly let a woman stay. "Then let's go stay at an inn together," he suggested—having already considered this plan—and so they disappeared hand in hand.

A week passed, and still they did not return.
Shokichi panicked and inquired at his family home, but she wasn’t there either; upon investigating further, he discovered she had disappeared with Uchida Nobuyuki.
Uchida’s father, aghast, prostrated himself before Shokichi and declared, "Once I find that wretched son of mine, I’ll cut him down with my sword to atone for this!" "Now, now, there’s no need for such drastic measures," Shokichi responded with uncharacteristic maturity at the time. But from that day onward, he plunged into frenzied anguish and nervous breakdown, his face rapidly growing gaunt and haggard until he wasted away like an invalid.

★

Shokichi dashed off a letter addressed to his junior, Kurisu Ankichi.
At times like these, the only one he could think of was this detestable wretch.
Even after his wife’s disappearance at Giu-so, he had considered separating from his wife and child to rent a room in that detestable wretch’s boarding house where they could study together; but when no room was available, he fled to Odawara—yet on the eve of his flight, it was that same detestable wretch who appeared like a sudden gust to help him pack his belongings.
So Shokichi sent Ankichi an express letter urging him to come immediately to Odawara upon reading it, declaring he could think of nothing else but seeing his face.

Yet for these past three years, he had found no one as detestable as Ankichi. He was a man to be hated—a man to be cursed. However, he was a kind fellow. He would help find houses for midnight flits, arrange debt repayments, and ease the inconvenience of his son’s ever-changing elementary schools by enrolling him in private institutions—in such moments, he became family. However, he did not understand the proper etiquette a junior should show toward a senior.

Whenever they met, he would inevitably tear into Senior Shokichi’s recent works. When drunk, Shokichi would affix honorifics to himself, referring to himself as "Sanzo-san" or "Sanzo-sensei." Then Ankichi said, “Don’t get full of yourself.” “What’s this stuff you’ve been writing lately?” “Putting on airs of being a master? It’s all just superficial tricks! You’re weighed down by that shell and can’t even move! And first of all, stop this shameless business of reciting your own novels morning, noon, and night!” He said things like this. He always said them.

Sanzo Shokichi flew into a rage, writing letters to their mutual acquaintances declaring that bastard to be an arrogant, delusional lunatic with no sense of decorum—unworthy to stand among literary men. Three years of fury and loathing—hatred piled upon hatred—yet in moments of anguish, he found himself thinking of the wretch.
And he ended up writing an express letter.
When even his close friend Daemon Jiro had cut ties with him, he abruptly had that bastard send an express letter, but then immediately grew furious again.

Ankichi came immediately upon seeing the express letter, but was stunned at how utterly emaciated Shokichi had become.
The flesh had even hollowed from his forehead—his face had shrunk terribly small, so small it could fit within Ankichi’s clenched fist—yet within that shrunken visage, only his eyes, nose, and mouth remained their original size, now darkened like a mummy’s. When he spoke, it seemed as though just his mouth moved like some monstrous apparition.
Excluding the eyes, nose, and mouth, the rest was nothing but yellowed wrinkles and hair.

“Ah, you came all this way for me.”
“I wanted to see you.”
“I’m glad I got to see you.”
“How have you been living since then?”
“Is your room quiet?”
“Were you able to study?”
“Ah, today I am happy.”
“So I’ve finally been able to meet you.”

Ankichi was taken aback once more. Except when drunk, Shokichi had always been gloomy and silent—extremely reserved and withdrawn, a man who never revealed his emotions.

Shokichi persistently urged him to stay overnight, but Ankichi insisted on declining, citing work nearing its deadline. The truth was that conversing with the emaciated Shokichi had become unbearably painful; though Kurisu Ankichi—a third-rate writer who never met deadlines—had no actual pressing work, upon hearing this excuse, Shokichi grew utterly apologetic. "So that's how it was? You came against your will? Forgive me," he said, his shrunken face already appearing on the verge of tears from that alone.

Even so, Ankichi painstakingly devised various arguments. "Even if your wife disappeared with Uchida," he insisted, "it doesn’t necessarily mean there was a physical relationship. If it were an elopement driven by passion, that would be one thing—but when a wife storms out after quarreling with her husband, it’s entirely different. I once took a romantic trip with a girl for over ten days myself, yet she never surrendered herself to me. Your wife’s disappearance this time must be similar; she’d absolutely refuse any physical involvement initially. And since Uchida’s still a student—a sheltered young man—he couldn’t possibly press further. They’re likely just worn out from an overly sentimental journey at most."

"Rather," he continued, "they might have lost their chance and now torment themselves, unable to return home. Even if they ended up committing some sort of double suicide over all this, there still might be no physical relationship between them."

He consoled Shokichi with hollow platitudes: "Worldly affairs are surprisingly like that—it’s precisely the affairs that go completely unnoticed by others that turn serious. These flashy types are all show. If anything, those two are probably just suffering."

Then, while sunlight still lingered, he hurriedly left.

While being comforted by Ankichi, Shokichi felt a semblance of strength, entrusting everything to him and nodding along in complete relief. But when Ankichi hurriedly left—the time spent waiting for his arrival had still been bearable—now that he had come and gone, though there had been some semblance of persuasiveness in his presence while he remained, with Ankichi departed, what remained of those comforting words? Nothing but hollow platitudes. His wife was gone—disappeared with another man—and this fact demanded to be confronted.

Shokichi’s exhaustion and emaciation deteriorated further at an accelerated rate.

Tobita Gorō—a literary-minded junior from Shokichi’s elementary school days—lived directly across the narrow alley from his house, close enough that a “Hey!” shouted from one veranda would draw a response from the other.
Tobita had lived in Tokyo during Shokichi’s time there, working as a bookstore clerk; they were close friends who visited each other almost every three days, companions who racked up debts together while roaming around drinking. However, over the past year, he had returned to Odawara, opening a book stall called Zatsubun-dō in front of the station where he commuted daily.
Admittedly, he entrusted the shop to his clerk and sometimes made collection rounds, but he often drank from noon onward, squandering the day’s earnings in a single night and racking up deficits—now teetering on the brink of yet another midnight flit.

Worn down by worries, he longed for friends more than anything. When friends came and stayed with him, even if there were moments when irritation and anger flared over trivial matters, somewhere deep down he felt fulfilled and at ease.

Tobita was a heavy drinker who understood well the anxiety and pain of hangovers—in such states, he too desperately craved companionship himself. Haunted by these ever-recurring memories, he sympathized with Shokichi’s loneliness. When Shokichi called out “Hey!” from his house across the alley, Tobita would go over and reluctantly keep him company. Of course, Tobita himself had no troubles beyond hangovers and midnight escapes, leaving no room in his heart to extend sympathy through deliberate imagining of foreign circumstances.

This was how everyone was—so mid-conversation, Shokichi would suddenly snatch up a rope in irritation, loop it around the ping-pong table’s leg, form a noose, thrust his head inside, and yank hard while thinking Wouldn’t this kill me?—then grip the rope again irritably, shove his head back in, and haul upward with all his might. His eyes now burned with madness—cloudy, bluish, darkly glinting. Even so, he never seriously entertained thoughts of something like suicide.

It was about four or five days later.

Shokichi called out from inside the house, “Hey! Hey!” but there was no response. There, Shokichi slipped into his geta and came to the door of Tobita’s house,

“Not here?
“Not here? Tobita.”

Tobita’s wife—a former barmaid turned ill-mannered woman who kept her husband under her thumb and loved sprawling out to sleep—muttered angrily from inside the room,

“He’s not here!”

“Where did he go?”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

Shokichi fell silent and turned back.
If Tobita had been home at that time, none of this would have happened.

Shokichi came to the veranda and sat down, but irritably stood up and headed toward the rooms—walking briskly and aimlessly through the parlor to the inner room with the ping-pong table—then returned to the veranda and sat down restlessly.
He’d barely sat down for a moment before abruptly standing up again and entering the children’s room.

Ten minutes later, Tobita returned home.
When he heard “Mr. Sanzo came looking for you,” he circled around from the garden to reach the veranda rather than entering through the front door.
Tobita always made this detour from the garden out of habit.

The children's room was located at the far end of the veranda.
This room resembled an attic, with no ceiling and exposed beams that stood only about six shaku high.
They had essentially tacked on something like a storage space to expand the veranda—a wooden-floored area where chairs and a table were placed.
Though styled like a Western room, the lack of a door meant activity inside could be sensed from the garden.

He sensed a presence.
When Tobita peered in from the garden, he saw Shokichi’s mother—a stout, imposing old woman with the robust build of a former schoolteacher—firmly holding something down with both hands.
Though her back obscured what she restrained, she seemed to be immobilizing something that struggled.
With that realization, Tobita stepped up onto the veranda,

“Madam, what is it?”

When he called out and stepped inside, she turned around and glared at him with eyes that gleamed sharply.

“The idiot died.”

Then she released her hands from what she had been restraining and came out,
“Please call a doctor.”
she said.
When Tobita looked inside, Shokichi was hanging from a rope rigged around the beam.
Since the beam was only about six feet high, Shokichi—a small-statured man—hung with his feet barely grazing the floorboards, swaying faintly as if standing on tiptoe.
Two streams of snot hung long from his nose, and his eyes—red and bulging—glared wildly as if still alive in madness.
Shokichi’s mother had probably heard the strange noise in the children’s room and immediately stood up to go in.
Tobita lowered Shokichi from the beam and ran to fetch a doctor.

★

I went to Odawara after receiving a telegram, but shortly after my arrival, Shokichi’s wife—who had learned of her husband’s suicide from that day’s newspaper—returned. She led me to another room, saying “Please come with me for a moment,” and while changing into mourning clothes she had perhaps taken from the chest of drawers,

“That bastard killed himself just to torment me.”

“That’s not true. People might do all sorts of things to torment others, but they don’t kill themselves over it. He’s not some hysterical young girl—he was a forty-year-old writer.”

“That’s a lie. That bastard—if it’s to torment me, he’d do anything. A spite-driven suicide!”

“Oh, do calm down.”

I turned around and left the room.
I found it strange that she had mourning clothes.
Why was it that only the mourning clothes hadn't been pawned - in a life where every last piece of clothing had been sold off.

The reason I thought such things was that a woman’s mourning clothes possess a strange allure, and seeing her in the very act of putting them on proved particularly tormenting. This strangely alluring and sensual figure streamed tears of bitter frustration while declaring how “that bastard killed himself just to torment me”—I too found myself affected by her seductive air and made a hasty escape. It was truly mortifying.

Not long after that, I set out on a wandering journey to Kyoto.

A year and a half later, on the night I returned to Tokyo, I received a visit from Shokichi’s wife.
She had become utterly degraded.
She had become a kept woman.
She was less a kept woman than an outright prostitute—or rather, the most degraded sort of streetwalker. In that state, I couldn’t bear to look at her directly.
After that, I actually heard rumors that she had fallen into such a life.

Shokichi was a man who crafted dreams.
Not only was his literature his dream, but his real life too had become his dream.

Yet for a dream to become literature, its roots must take hold in real life and sink deep into the earthly foundation where he stood.
At first, they had sunk deep.
Thus his wife came to imitate the version of herself depicted in those dreams, until they became indistinguishable from one another, transforming their shared reality itself into a dream.

His life and literature were like a toy box he had crafted—both he as the protagonist within that toy box and his wife possessed the magical life force he had bestowed, existing more eerily than any living human ever could.

I believe, however, that in his later years, his toy box had been overturned and shattered.
His novels had become detached from the realistic foundation upon which he stood, taking root in an imaginary space, and his wife had come to see through the fact that the wife in the toy box was no longer herself.

Shokichi must have known. The life of his wife was in truth nothing more than the magic he had bestowed upon her within his toy box—when that magic vanished, her life would die. And that were he to die, she would take up with other men, become a kept woman, even turn to prostitution.

His devilish insight should have discerned such matters clearly, yet he remained trapped in baseless, fantastical notions—that his wife was something distinct, a separate entity altogether, a singular woman whose soul only he could know. By the time he died, he had utterly forgotten the crucial root of reality: that a wife left behind would become either a kept woman or a prostitute.

Shokichi, your wife has indeed become just that.

I neither disgrace you nor disgrace your wife. Such is the way of all human affairs.

Why did you forget that your literature, your dreams, your toy box should coldly gaze upon this reality, take root there, and grow from it? Reality is always so merciless, yet even from it, dreams can grow and toy boxes can be built.

When I beheld your wife in her degraded state as a prostitute—Shokichi, look at this! Why did you forget to see this? That’s why you died so pitifully, you fool! That’s why your wife has truly become this wretched—you lost, Shokichi. You lost to this vision of your wife’s degradation. What a thing—that you possessed such formidable devilish insight.

I thought of your truly trivial death and felt so unbearably frustrated.