Pathway to Japanese Literature

Characters of the Epic "Witch"

Kaira Yoshio ( )

Sen Keitaro (Youth)

Tenra Takichi (Independent Painter)

Fuji Mitsuo (Fuchi )

Maria ( )

Devil ( )

Witch ( )

Older Sister ( )

Introductory Poem

All you female readers

We are now in a transitional era,

If you

Concerning love's

If you have no genuine devotion,

I beseech you to refrain from falling in love.

Otherwise, your

cultivation and property

shall meet with utmost peril.

O young women

If you possessed the youthful bravery
to love appropriately in this era—

Please refer to this story of mine
concerning how the Japanese Devil and the Witch and
the Virgin Mary
clashed in a three-way deadlock, bloodied—
please lend your ear to this experience,

○

Chapter 1: The Devil’s Walk,

I

“Can you weep over this world’s—”

“—even its trivial matters?”

“Can you rejoice—even amidst your tedious life—”

“Can you laugh—at your fate—without nihilism—”

The Devil takes his walks with a rattan cane.
Tap-tap on concrete—the Devil walks through Tokyo’s March night streets.

The Devil walked through Tokyo’s March night streets,

The muttering—could one weep? Could one rejoice? Could one laugh?—
A self-interrogation through three incantations—
What terrifying creature had they unleashed upon these streets—
Had they truly set him loose upon the city?

He turned his back toward the moon,

The devilish wretch who spoke to his own shadow—when the answer to the incantation came forth, he impulsively leaped a full meter off the ground. To test whether his own answer was correct or erroneous, he stormed into any and every place like a tempest. Because of its ferocity and violence and eerie quality—

Why is it that every last shop in town—
Why haven’t they clattered down their wooden shutters and storm shutters?

II

The town’s neon signs—
beautifully illuminating—
the blue and red of neon tubes
whose points of contact grew even more beautiful
as they shone with an eerie radiance,
quivering violently
through the evening’s space and time of the town
that walked through water’s depths with stillness—
The Devil possessed youthful beauty,

And he stopped abruptly,
a small black hole in a single spot on the pavement

When he found

He inserted his cane into the hole.

He vigorously twisted the cane.

Then suddenly, there gaped

a deep black hole like a skeletal mouth,

the sewer's

round concrete cover

soared high into the air.

When it fell onto the pavement,

Clang-clang-clang—with terrifying

ill-omened resonance—the cover

tumbled wildly through the streets.

When the Devil saw that,

his guffaws showed no sign of ceasing,

and

he peered intently into the dark, round depth of the sewer hole.

He spat a glob of white phlegm into it, then brandished his cane once more and started walking. He began singing cheerfully in a fine voice—a Russian-language walking poem by the poet Mayakovsky:

Pose, Zel, Fuseichi
Shaag, Burgor
Gurohaichi
Taaku, Za, Kubai

Smeff, Hitob

Kāmen

Roparushicha

Fu, Hohhochi※ (small katakana ヱ)

(After all labor

Let the footfalls of your stroll resound,

Let laughter gush forth

stones go HA-HA

as if in uproarious laughter)

O Maria of Japan,
O beloved wife of the Devil,
You were the celestial maiden of love,
You now lay upon your sickbed,
And your husband, the Devil, wandered aimlessly,

The long, melancholy days of illness—

Unbearable—your flesh,
Your heart was a cuckoo clock
making sounds like spilling water,
tick-tick-ticking away time,
and the fading sadness of death—
The endless measuring of your husband's waxing and waning affection,
the weighing of hearts had no end—
your flesh and spirit
were what the Devil had utilized—

It was ten years in the past,

At that time, with the intensity of their love,
Fire and ice somersaulted as if they had swapped places,
When the two of them wandered through the snow,
The coldness of the snow was also like fire.
For the two of them, it was hot.
The blizzard brute,
Like a hussar,
Lead bullets against their cheeks and
It struck their black youthful hair, but

Oh, how all the painful things and sorrowful things—
the agonizing things—
Love would have made every last one seem delightful,

In the midst of the raging blizzard,
From within a single cloak
Four legs protruded,
Two legs were in rubber boots.
The other two legs were geta with red straps.

When one leg was firmly planted on the ground,
the other was always floating in midair.
The man and woman—
if they weren’t supporting one of them within the cloak—

The two of them would have plopped down right there—they would have ended up sitting in the snow—the rapture of love, the fluctuations of spirit: a rendezvous. The Virgin Mary’s sea of sweetness and the Devil’s land’s bitterness—the two abrupt natures as human—seeking harmony through their embrace within the cloak. Ah—that sound of the instinctive first kiss! But at that moment, that the Devil had let slip an enigmatic smile—the Virgin Mary did not notice at all—O Eternity! O Woman! O turbulent spirit of the land—

O you who stir up the sea of compassion—
And land and sea—
For some time remained gentle—
the contact of love formed calm ripples,

The home was happily peaceful—as for what was intense, there was only the sizzling noise from the frying pan over flames in the kitchen.
"My, what a racket you're making," he said. "The oil’s splattering—isn’t that dangerous? Your beautiful face... What if she got burned? Didn’t they teach you at girls’ school... Didn’t they teach you during housekeeping class... what to do when the frying pan’s heated and the oil splatters?"
The man laughed as

He deftly tossed the nearby green onions into the pot.

Then came the loud splatter of oil—

The clattering sound softened.

“The way you’re cutting that meat’s dangerous!”
“Your precious fingers—”
What if she cut—
“This’s how you properly slice meat.”

The man explained the fibers of the beef,
wielded the kitchen knife,
and demonstrated the correct way to cut meat for her.

What vast knowledge he possessed!
What a young husband he must be,

Such kindness he showed! The steadfast companionship along destiny’s long path—the abundant love this man would bring to their future life together—imagining all this, her heart quickened. “No, at school I hated housekeeping and sewing,” she confessed. “But that was wrong of me.” Saying this, she proudly displayed her lack of culinary skill—not with a maid’s subservience, but with the willful charm of a daughter.

Implicitly hinting at things left unsaid, she coaxed the man with sweet dependency.

And with perfect timing,

the beef and green onions simmered in the pot.

Then the woman and the man faced each other,

and at the childless dining table opposite one another, began to eat.

“What tough green onions these are—don’t you think?
You won’t forgive me—
I can’t even make sukiyaki properly.”

With that，the woman flung down the chopsticks.
She covered her face with the sleeve.
What a thing—

What an astonishing thing—
The man was startled and pressed his face to hers.
When he peered beneath her sleeves—there she was, genuinely weeping.
And the woman, weeping like an inexhaustible spring,
continued soaking cheeks ceaselessly,
showing signs of endless tears.
Her beautiful way of crying—
the tears flowed from eyes unchanged,
streaming down cheeks unrestrained,
making her flushed face glow beautifully—
while skillfully managing sniffles,
she wiped her nose with sleeve.
The tenderness or toughness of the meat,

Regarding the tenderness and firmness of the green onions—just that alone—for a time in their newlywed days, the two of them spent their time crying and laughing. The butter dropped into the frying pan had unawares been replaced with cheap lard. And then as time passed,

The woman pleaded with the butcher,
even begging for scraps of meat fat—
they gradually sank into poverty.
Back then, their life together had been joyful,
for the curtain of their fate had only just risen.
Now? Let us simply state it plainly—

“And then ten years had passed,”

Ten years ago in the kitchen, she sang.

The Joseiran lullaby was suppressed by her husband,

the Santa Lucia song she had mastered

“The moon is high

shines in the sky,

the wind subsides,

waves are still

…………

Koyoya, friend, the ship awaits,

Santa Lucia,

“Santa Lucia”

“Enough of your foolish song—‘the wind subsides, waves are still’?!
We didn’t live in such a tranquil reality—
The year was 1935.
In the atheist’s kitchen,
‘It’s not like we’re singing Santa Lucia here,’”
the man berated; the woman abruptly stopped singing.
In place of her song of “wind subsiding, waves still,”

The man, with one foot planted on the desk and striking a grand pose, bellows a line from Shakespeare’s King Lear—

King Lear’s line

With one foot planted on the desk and striking a grand pose, he bellows—

“Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow! Blow! Thou, O torrents and whirlwinds, blow waters! Drown the weathervane until you have flooded even the pointed tower’s pinnacle! Thou sulphurous fire that run swift as thought! Thou lightning that rends oaks as precursor to thunderous fire! Scorch my hoary head!”

“Hey Mom—Bardak Borishevich—you know,”

By her side now stood a ten-year-old boy.

He brought up topics his mother didn't know about—daily introducing new ones to perplex her—
"Hey old man,"

“I want to try just a tiny sip of alcohol,”

“Very well.”

“But you see, he’s in Russian fairy tales—Bardak Borishevich, who has seven kids but’s a drunkard, always sleeping it off at the liquor store. Then the King of Kiev comes asking him to lead the attack against Sultan of Turkey!”

In attacking the Turkish King Sultan,

“They came to ask Bardak to be their general,”

“And Bardak went on the attack,”

“Ah! Ah! ‘Now I know what comes next!’”

“the enemy Sultan’s seven daughters”

“would sleep inside the tent—”

“That’s right, that’s right,”

“And then I drink alcohol”

“‘I want to get strong,’”

“And then sleep inside the tent—”

Ha ha ha!

The mother floundered,

She listened to the progression of the father and son’s conversation.

“My, how obscene...”

“What obscene folktales there must be,”

In the world of sexuality, it was obscene,

In the realm of men’s battles—what then?

The seven-year-old General Bardak

The seven-year-old Turkish king’s daughter, using female sexuality and love,

Within the tent, the man’s battle—

She embraced him, trying to melt away his will,

Planned to render him ineffective.

But resolutely, young Bardak’s—

His will to fight remained resolute,

As she lay beside him,
she secretly applied gold paint

She applied gold paint as a mark and returned.
As the night broke open and the sun rose,

The daughter returned to the Turkish king’s castle.

Due to the enemy king’s summons to identify which leader was which—

At a glance, the gold paint on his shin would reveal Bardak—

a sexual strategy meant to remain undetected.

Men’s wisdom was infinite and endless,

“Cease, O gentle shadow of fleeting desire,”
there was ecstasy only while sleeping at night—
when the sun rose, the man’s intoxication faded because
those in whom the sun never rose in their spirit
only men, whether day or night, lost to women,

“If, O women—
if you seek to capture men and pursue them—
a man’s love eternal and absolute—”

If you seek to make it so—

“Close all windows—make it dark even at noon,”
“To the room, to the spirit—lower the curtains,”
“Ah, but though one may close the room,”
“Even if one may close it,”
The light of the universe could not be extinguished.
The gigantic sun that traversed heaven and earth—
Even sparrows chirped at the eaves when it rose,
Lightly pecking at each other’s beaks
In temporary farewell
Before the male sparrow left his mate’s side—
Didn’t men fly off for life’s sake?

When the mountain temple bell boomed deeply,
like fine grains of sand scattered against the shoji paper at dawn,
there came a swishing sound.
That shook the pine trees—
the refreshing sound of the wind,
and "Skin and Skin That Cannot Part"—
an ancient Oriental folk ballad in its pure form,
transcending history from night until dawn—
the form of obsessive passion takes shape anew.
"Does affection lack progressiveness?"
"Is love despair? Is love repetition?"
The Devil, throughout his long existence,
had contemplated that matter.
The Devil's mental wanderings continued for a long time.

Once a lovely youth's
To those once-smooth emotions

Now, countless cracks had formed.
Marriage was something unforeseen—
a program that unfurled itself,
where unmarried men and women
found their scenario unveiled in ways none could have anticipated.

The effervescence of married life
agonizing in its youth,
Had they not tried to part from each other,
Times spent together over times spent apart—
they came to savor,
creating space within each other's lives
they came to learn the art of enjoying space,
Only space—each other's
The world of freedom—sorrowful, pitifully abundant world,
In the salaryman’s dutiful outings
The wife briskly pressing three fingers to the genkan entrance
Not the sending-off of her husband
It was the expulsion of the husband—〈Unfinished〉