Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Takami Jun

Under what star was I born, that I should be so faint-hearted in this world? My heart that smolders in shadow braces against wind and rain, containing these faltering thoughts. Flowers exist to be plucked; the moon exists to be yearned for. How shall I shape what lies formless within me?

Love? No. Longing? No… Chogyū

Chapter One: Backstage of the Heart

The sky directly above the entertainment district—visible beyond the window of my desolate third-floor apartment study—hung dark and heavily overcast. Under the naked lightbulb suspended near the window by a makeshift string, I had positioned a small work desk facing the glass, yet there I sat hunched before it, doing absolutely nothing like a fool. Compressing my chest as much as possible in a posture that seemed intent on stifling my breath entirely, I planted both elbows on the desk and clasped my hands together, then perched my chin on the protruding tips of my pressed-together thumbs as I stared at the turbid sky. Or rather than the sky itself, perhaps it would be more accurate to say I was staring through it. Though nothing was visible in that void, my eyes might as well have been seeing nothing at all. Yet as I sat motionless, something uncanny caught my vision—like when you finally clean a long-neglected room and mold-shaped black dust motes with long tails billow up in startling clouds—a similarly bizarre debris-like entity flitting through the haze beyond, that murky sky perpetually clouded by dust rising ceaselessly from the entertainment district below. This debris had clustered in chaotic mold-like clumps, but as I watched, it elongated into a slender V-shape.

It was geese.—I fear readers may laugh at my clumsy fabrication, my hyperbolic phrasing, for likening flying geese to garbage. To dispel such misunderstandings, there was likely no other means than to have readers see the actual scene I witnessed—and how vexing it was that even this remained impossible to achieve, no matter how much I might wish it. Unless one actually saw it, one could never comprehend just how bizarre—how like garbage—it had appeared, for the geese were at an utterly preposterous, absolutely staggering height. Is the flight of geese always like that?—Whether I had ever seen geese flying before that moment, or whether I’d only ever seen them in pictures—that point remained unclear. So whether geese always fly at such an astonishing height, I cannot say. Therefore—those geese I had chanced to see from my room near Asakusa’s entertainment district gave me two powerful impressions: first, that they were indeed geese, and second, that they flew at such an astonishing altitude. It was something I’ve now forgotten—a sudden encounter with what felt like a nostalgic dream from the past, one that had long since departed from me—a sensation that tightened my chest.—The dream flew away into the distant sky. A height beyond reach, impossible to grasp.—Dreams coldly, rapidly depart.

I leaned over my desk and followed the departing geese with my eyes. Finally, I left my desk and stood by the window. The geese flew upstream along the Sumida River. For a long time, I stood motionless by the window.

Autumn, too, was already coming to an end.

I had rented this six-tatami room in Asakusa for twelve yen when spring was coming to an end. I had packed into a passenger car—a small desk with one floor cushion, two layers of bedding, one washbasin, and then inkwells, ashtrays, cups, hand towels, tea caddies, and such that all fit into a trunk (listing them one by one would barely fill a line)—and transported these meager belongings from my home in Omori to this place. But since it was nearing summer, I hadn’t brought anything to prepare for cold seasons. Yet—around the time the geese had receded into the distance and become flea-sized (though until then I had been watching them continuously), as if the geese themselves were heralds of twilight, dusk suddenly descended from the sky, bringing with it a biting cold that seeped into my bones.

I closed the window and returned to my desk. I stuffed both hands into my pockets and hunched my shoulders. It was cold. It might not have actually been that cold, but the lack of preparations against the cold must have psychosomatically summoned the chill. The heart’s longing for what is absent only grows stronger.

I sat there steeped in wretchedness. I wasn’t acting under anyone’s orders. I was doing this of my own accord. In other words, there was no particular reason I had to sit like that—and yet I remained sitting perfectly still. And,

“Why must I sit here all alone in this desolate room?” I hurled the unanswerable question at myself. This was the room I had rented as my study. By that logic, I ought to have been sitting there to work. But my hands refused to touch any work, and I had already given up hope that keeping still like this might rouse my spirit to face the task ahead. If that were true, then going out would seem the better option. After all, I’d rented this room near the entertainment district precisely to thrust my listless self—when left alone—into that dizzying crowd, jolting my nerves to drive myself toward work—a strategy that had somehow hardened into habit. Therefore under normal circumstances, rather than sitting idle because work seemed impossible, I should have gone to those bustling streets to make it possible. Yet I couldn’t. Because I knew full well that even in the entertainment district, I’d gain no mental state fit for work—on the contrary, my mind would grow thoroughly disordered and my spirit utterly deranged.

To put it with some exaggeration, I was afraid to go out more than just because of its futility. Even so, staying in the room didn’t seem likely to bring any mental cohesion either. Thus, whether I stayed in the room or went outside—if neither worked—it would be better to just return home. If I’m just going to sit here in this chilly room steeped in misery, I might as well go home. If it were home—unlike this apartment—if I said I wanted a fire, they’d prepare it right away, and my heart would be warmed too. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to go back. I still wanted to remain in Asakusa where she was.

The “she” in question was Koyanagi Masako, a dancer at the Levio revue theater. 17.… “What do you mean by ‘she’s good—’?” “Do you mean she’s a good dancer?” “Or do you mean you like that girl…?” I had once said, “Koyanagi Masako is good—” and been questioned in that way by a Levio fan friend. “How should I put it… Hmm,” I faltered.

On another occasion, to a Levio playwright friend of mine,

“Such a child—you,” he said. “She’s just a kid—what can you do?” “What can you do?” “She’s just a kid—a kid who doesn’t know anything yet!” Though he spoke reproachfully, I cut him off with “No…,” then, crimson with shame, stammered, “N-no, I… I’m not… I’m not doing anything…” I—well then, since Koyanagi Masako will eventually make her appearance in this tale with her delicate figure, and her story can be told leisurely when she does—shall return for now to my pitiable self, sitting hunched in this apartment room. To add one more thing—earlier I said I felt some fear about going outside, but this was because unless I had a proper purpose for venturing out—like convincing myself I was going somewhere specific for a meal—if I instead strolled out aimlessly without any goal, my feet would invariably turn toward the Levio Theater where she danced, as though pulled by some invisible, utterly irresistible thread. Before I knew it, I would find myself standing before the Levio Theater like a sleepwalker. And just as a snake effortlessly swallows a foolish frog that stands slender and wobbly before it, the theater swallows foolish me without hesitation…

Perhaps from associations stirred by seeing the wild geese pass overhead, I recalled a story about a foreigner I had heard the day before from a painter friend visiting Asakusa. The man was said to be a fairly renowned poet who had left his homeland years earlier, abandoned poetry, and embarked on an aimless journey that eventually brought him to Japan. “My friend became his interpreter—and told me this story,” said the painter friend. “It happened when they took him to Hakone.” The foreigner and interpreter had gone out walking. As they strolled along a lonely, deserted path, the interpreter asked during a lull, “What brings you on this journey?” The foreigner gave no answer. When asked whether his wanderings aimed to enrich his poetic inspiration, he replied clearly: “—No.” When pressed if it was mere curiosity driving his global roaming, he again stated firmly: “—No.”

“—Then, what is it?” “I don’t know.” Even I myself didn’t know why I traveled from sea to sea across unknown countries as if pursued. But I did know that I was seeking "something" in my heart—though what that "something" was, I did not know. “So to speak, it was as if I wandered to make myself understand that unknown ‘something.’” The blue-eyed poet said this in an unexpectedly calm voice.

The two continued walking in silence. The foreigner’s face had turned ashen as if after a brawl, crimson blotches submerged beneath his pallid skin. Suddenly, from a side path, came the vibrant laughter of a young couple. At those bright, audacious voices brimming with youthful exultation, the foreigner’s face contorted as though struck by gravel. Before his tormented visage materialized a dashing pair—the man a twenty-two- or twenty-three-year-old college athlete with lustrous skin, a stature rivaling the foreigner’s slender height, and broad shoulders; the woman an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old of equally sturdy build, her limbs fresh and supple—advancing unselfconsciously, exuding an overflowing vitality of youth. Right before the transfixed foreigner, they pivoted to reveal their backs and sauntered down the sun-drenched road, laughing gaily about some shared delight. The wandering poet stood motionless watching them depart, his bearing that of one pierced by profound awe and sorrow. The interpreter attempted to speak. Then the poet veiled his face with his hands, whirled about abruptly, and fled back down the path without uttering a word—staggering as he ran.

When the interpreter chased after him and returned to the hotel, he found the man lying on the bed, writhing violently amid wailing sobs that made it seem as though he had gone mad. “Is he old?”

I interjected midway through his story. I couldn't refrain from asking.

“No, he’s still young.—Around the same age as us, apparently.” “Thirty-three or thirty-four...”

The painter friend said this in a somber voice and peered into my eyes. I had tried to explain to my friend—or rather, it felt more like I was speaking to myself—the utterly unmanageable state I’d been in these days: my heart parched and starving, my mind adrift in a hollow, gutless daze even as it burned with a desperate, stinging craving for something indefinable. It was then that the painter friend told me this story about the foreigner.

“The same age as us?” “Hmm,” I nodded.

After a period of silence, my friend continued. “Once his fit-like wailing subsided, the foreigner immediately checked out of the hotel, returned to Tokyo, and soon left Japan.” “He went to France—but that foreigner was wealthy—and took along the friend who had served as his interpreter.” “Even if we’re the same age—his being wealthy—that’s where he differs from us.”

I—so to speak—having been the one who initiated things yet unable to endure the oppressive atmosphere, said this as if to sweep it away.

“—Now then, there’s another interesting story about that.” “Regarding how my friend came to go to France…”

Regarding that—there was such a story. When checking out of the Hakone hotel, after the interpreter paid the lodging fee, the front desk clerk secretly returned a portion of it to his hand. When he asked what it was, they said it was a commission for bringing in a foreign tourist. When he said he didn’t need it, they explained that it was standard practice at the hotel to refund a commission to guides. “So that means the lodging fee’s been inflated by that amount. Well then, I don’t need any commission—just reduce the fee by that much instead. Rewrite the bill.” When he said that, they replied, “That won’t work.” “There’s no reason it can’t be done!”

Amidst such insistent argument, the foreigner appeared and demanded, “What are you fighting about?” The money he had refused and tossed onto the table had already drawn the foreigner’s eye, leaving the interpreter no choice but to lay out the circumstances plainly. Having heard this, the foreigner wordlessly left the scene—only to later tell the interpreter, “Speak your wish without reserve—anything at all. If it lies within my power, I shall fulfill it.”

“It’s like he said something straight out of a god from fairy tales,” the painter friend told me. “The friend was an eccentric sort—he said he felt irritated that a human would say something only a god should utter.” “So when you said you’d be leaving Japan right away, he asked where you were going.” When met with ‘I don’t know,’ he suggested, ‘Why not go to France?’ ‘Why?’ asked the foreigner. ‘If you’re going to France—take me with you.’ That was his wish.—Though half expecting refusal, he’d apparently said it partly out of spiteful impulse to make unreasonable demands, yet half in earnest—for he’d genuinely wanted to study painting in Paris.—But—it was agreed. “They say the foreigner—now that his destination was settled—looked truly delighted as he offered a handshake.”

Hearing such stories, I felt envy, jealousy, and resentment toward that foreigner’s wealthy status—that he could immediately take someone along to Paris if he wished to go—(and this called forth pain within me). “It’s certainly an interesting story, but I find it a bit unpleasant,” I said. The pure, piercing sadness that the earlier story—of him weeping at the sight of the young couple—had instilled in me seemed to fade because of this. But as the storyteller, it seemed he had added such tales with the aim of casting a bright light upon the desolation of the autumn wind.

When I came to my senses, the room was pitch black. I languidly stood up, reached out through the half-opened door to the switch on its outer side, and twisted it with a click. As I tried to return to my desk, I suddenly noticed a red, rusted gas heater in the corner of the room. The gas had been installed in the room to allow for cooking. Ah, right—I thought—this thing could serve as a substitute for the hibachi. Laughing at my own carelessness for not having noticed it until now, I promptly lit the fire to test its effectiveness. When I held my hand over the blue flame that had flared up with a lively crackle—of course keeping it at a reasonable distance—it was hot. So I tried shielding my hand from the side, but the gas heater was evidently designed that way from the start—it emitted no heat whatsoever to the sides, as if in deceit. To receive any warmth, I still had to place my hand directly over the flame. Even when held quite a distance above, it was still hot. Moving my hand up and down to test it, I found that it abruptly shifted from hot areas to cold ones that weren’t hot at all, with no in-between warmth that could be considered just right. Disheartened by this unreliable substitute, I still kept diligently turning my hand over to warm it—until my own emaciated hand, all skin and bones, began to look pitifully like a squid tentacle being charred in the flames, filling me with revulsion.

I began to long for the hibachi's fire. "—Ah right. Let's go to the okonomiyaki restaurant."

In a section of Tajima-cho—behind Honganji Temple, where the houses of entertainers crowded the streets—there stood an okonomiyaki restaurant I frequented. To that place in the opposite direction from Rokku, I set out.

That place was called "Okonomiyaki Alley." The entrance to that alleyway—where a Revue Theater actor’s house stood at the corner—was narrow enough for only one person to pass through, and within that alley, three ordinary rented houses repurposed as okonomiyaki restaurants faced each other. Of these, the okonomiyaki restaurant opened by the wife of Mori-ke Hottarō—a comic storyteller—after her husband had gone off to war was the one I frequented. When I opened the glass-paneled door bearing the shop name “Fūryū Okonomiyaki—Hottarō”—using his stage name Hottarō directly as its sign—the narrow dirt-floored entryway was crammed with assorted geta clogs of dubious quality, leaving nowhere to step.

“Oh my, we’ve got ourselves a real crowd here!”

As I stood overwhelmed, from inside came the wife’s voice—“Come in”—and with it, warm air laden with the okonomiyaki shop’s signature smells—the reek of lard and burnt sauce—flowed to my nostrils, carrying a commotion that felt different from the usual customer bustle. In the three-tatami room beside the entrance, her three-year-old child, perhaps continuing an afternoon nap, slept soundly and peacefully, utterly unfazed by the clamor from the back—though “back” meant just two rooms away—the six-tatami room at the rear.

Now then, if we were to liken this to a play, it was here that the story's curtain was finally being raised for the first time. Then what had all that previous chatter been about? I had taken a peek into the inner workings of my heart as this story's narrator, but upon reflection, perhaps such an act had been unnecessary.

*Part Two: Fūryū Okonomiyaki*

For instance, around a large hibachi of the sort commonly found in school janitor’s rooms—and by “janitor’s rooms,” I ask you to imagine one of those decidedly unrefined hibachi—they had placed a broad iron plate, its surface blackened and glossy. Packed tightly around it were men and women who at a glance could be recognized as not being high-class entertainers either—though only one woman was present there—each casually cooking their own okonomiyaki. Generally, the customers who frequented “Fūryū Okonomiyaki—Hottarō” were mostly entertainers due to Hottarō’s connection as a performer at the park’s vaudeville hall, and since they were always the same regulars—though not very numerous—I had come to recognize all their faces; however, that day’s customers were almost all unfamiliar faces. They were all haggard, withered, lifeless faces that seemed steeped in the grime of wretched lives—faces utterly devoid of grease, even as they ate sizzling okonomiyaki fried in pork fat, as if they were gnawing on lard itself. And beneath those faces, they wore gaudy neckties and shirts in vulgar colors—flimsy things that looked like discount-rack bargains—which served splendidly to make their wearers appear as cheap as wares left on display. Now, this manner of writing may convey to readers that my eyes were filled with sneering antipathy when I saw those people, but in truth, the opposite was the case. In my eyes—the moment I saw those people—an indescribable affection and a gentle peace of mind welled up within me; the emotion they brought must have been shining vividly.

Propelled by that emotion from behind, I went up into the room even while knowing I couldn't squeeze in at the hibachi. Then from among that desolate group packed around the hearth, a young man with a woman-style artificial silk muffler around his neck—frail-bodied yet with something of a leading man's features—looked up at me through lowered lashes and said: "—Excuse me." "It'll free up soon—apologies."

The way he hunched his slender chest in a bow went beyond courteous deference into something wretchedly servile in its sadness—and his voice too carried that same mournful submissiveness. “Please take your time.” I too—thinking this might spare the pitiable young man’s feelings while matching his abjectness with my own—spoke these words in a voice strained toward compliance, then with similarly forced decorum settled into the room’s corner.

The young man was eating his rice with *gyūten* that he had slathered messily in sauce. Those thin lips, vivid red like blood, appeared to my eyes as some ominous portent of misfortune gnawing at his youth—for a moment I imagined he might be concealing some illness in his chest—yet into that very mouth he kept frantically cramming white rice. Though he ate with ravenous motions, it looked unappetizing, giving off the contradictory air of someone forcing himself to eat without appetite. Having emptied his bowl in an instant,

“Mii-chan.” “Sorry.” He called out toward the kitchen in that manner and raised his rice bowl aloft.

The young woman called Mii-chan—wearing a green Western-style dress—came rushing out from the kitchen while irritably trying to disentangle yellow Chinese-style noodles wrapped around her finger. I was acquainted with this woman called Mii-chan. When she saw me, she jerked into a bow with a brusque, almost masculine abruptness, “—Old Hand-Dance.” she said in a tone that sounded angry.

“That’s rough,” I said just as the young man—passing his bowl with slender, feminine hands—murmured, “Sorry ’bout that.” “Enough already—quit your apologizing,” Mii-chan cut in with sisterly sharpness. “But…” “Can’t stand it.” “What kind of man are you?” “——Sorry.” He said it playfully this time, yet even through the jest his voice retained that fragile quiver—like a thin metallic wire trembling under tension.

From within the group came a voice—absurd and tinged with a lewd tone—saying, “—That’s way outta line.”

Was there something between Mii-chan and that young man? Even I, unaware of the circumstances, could sense from that voice that they seemed to be covering it up. But Mii-chan, with a face utterly unperturbed, left for the kitchen where the wife here was busily portioning out okonomiyaki ingredients, small plates clattering. The young man, as if to hide his embarrassment, “They’re done.”

and pointed at the Chinese-style noodles being cooked by the actress-like woman beside him. "You're making us jealous!" someone promptly said.

――Here, let me say a little about Mii-chan. When I first came to this okonomiyaki restaurant and met Mii-chan, seeing her appear to be a customer yet diligently helping with every little thing as in this instance, I wondered what this girl was all about. When I quietly asked the revue playwright who had brought me here, he told me she was Mine Misako, a dancer who had previously been with the T Theater Dancing Team before moving to O Hall and was no longer performing on the park stage. ――He didn’t know anything beyond that.

Asakusa’s stages were grueling work, and when dancers quit those stages, they suddenly gained weight. Misako too displayed that peculiar swelling—as if her body had puffed out the moment its constricting hoops were removed—and though she should still have been young, she now carried flab akin to a middle-aged woman’s excess flesh: wobbling beneath her chin where visible, and around her waist where invisible yet unmistakable. I fixed my gaze on her with an “Ah, I see” look.—Her eyelids were swollen as if bee-stung; when she laughed, her eyes disappeared entirely; her nose approached a button-like shape; her lower lip thrust out defiantly. Even before whatever current puffiness afflicted her, I couldn’t imagine that face had ever been particularly charming. But her voice—well, how to describe it? Yes, like the peculiar pleasure of wasabi in the mouth that tickles sharply behind the nose—it was a voice that imparted a similarly strange refreshment, and to me at least, held no small measure of charm.

After that, I began frequenting that okonomiyaki restaurant—drawn again by what I can only describe as its down-and-out atmosphere—and each time I went, Mii-chan, that is Misako, was usually there. And always, while appearing like a customer, she was helping out with an attentiveness that went beyond what one would expect from a patron. ——Here, Misako would refer to the wife—a spirited woman just past thirty with a slender build—as “Sis” in a sweet, almost coquettish tone. (This “Sis” had a strong accent on the second syllable, with the “-san” pronounced somewhere between “san” and “sun”—a subtle sweetness that defied verbal description.) Left to herself, Misako radiated a somewhat overpowering impression—like a bold, thick-stroked “woman” character written with a large brush dripping ink—that made her appear as nothing but a strong-willed woman indifferent to men’s masculinity; yet occasionally, within those sweet words of hers—ah? she would radiate a tenderness that took one by surprise.)——The wife here called Misako “Mii-chan” like a younger sister (or perhaps as one would a beloved cat).

The young dancers at the Revue Theater would affectionately call close men “brother” in an endearing tone. Whenever I heard Misako say “Sis,” I would quietly grasp that sweetness that stirred my heart and substitute it with the word “brother.” I closed my eyes and secretly mimicked that sweet tone, “——Brother”

There were times I would mutter under my breath. In my heart, I envisioned the beautiful sweet face and beautiful sweet form of the dancer I adored. Ah—when would that day come when she I yearned for—that dear Koyanagi Masako—would call me “Brother”? How eagerly I had waited for that day to arrive. Yet at the same time, something about its approach filled me with dread. For reasons I couldn’t fathom, part of me wished that day might never come……

The narrative returns to Misako—though I must say, this abrupt shift from matters of romantic longing to culinary ones makes for a peculiar transition—the "Bifuteki," the okonomiyaki "Bifuteki." The "Bifuteki"—which required a somewhat complex procedure, not merely greasing the pan and frying but also skillfully drizzling successive layers of honey, sake, pepper, Ajinomoto, sauce, and such while cooking—was something I entrusted to Misako to prepare. I would make my request with a phrase like “How about I take care of this one?”—partly because the cooking method was difficult and somewhat beyond my unskilled hands, but also because Misako seemed poised at my side, itching to take charge. To ignore such a palpable hope—or rather, desire—and sizzle and flip it myself was simply not in my nature. But as is well known, the appeal of okonomiyaki lies in grilling it yourself—to merely eat it would mean losing nearly all the fun and enjoyment, one might say. I endured that and entrusted it to Misako. This must have been clear to Misako as well, so the act took on the appearance of currying her favor. I could find no necessity within myself to win Misako’s favor, but—such a stance stemmed in part from my aforementioned disposition—I had discerned that Misako’s eagerness to take charge of the cooking arose not merely from some frivolous desire, whether to enjoy the greater share of okonomiyaki’s pleasures herself or to display her culinary prowess. She wanted to prepare delicious meals for a man and have him enjoy them. It was because I had discerned that sorrow within her—a longing for domestic life hidden deep within her heart, a feminine thirst to devote herself to a man. Perhaps Misako herself was unaware of the sorrow I had perceived. On the surface, Misako wore an expression that said she’d take over the cooking because it was difficult, but given her strong-willed nature, she might have genuinely intended to do it herself.

On one such occasion, in a casual tone,

“Why did you quit the stage?” I asked. Only Misako and I remained by the hibachi. It was an unusually quiet evening with no customers. Usually there would be small children loitering around the hibachi, pestering any customer they could find, but tonight none were present.

“—Because it was boring.” “Hmm.”

Having left the cooking to Misako and with nothing to do, I tapped the rim of the hibachi with a brass scraper. “When you say ‘boring—’…” Had she grown tired of the stage?

She cut him off in a wifely tone, “Pass me the honey, would you?”

I let out a flustered "Right away!" and reached out to take the honey container. She poured the honey over the meat—which shriveled and sizzled all the more as it cooked—while, “At my age, I can’t keep dancing alongside sixteen- or seventeen-year-old girls.” When she said that, she set it down roughly with a clatter, as if striking the container. From the words “sixteen or seventeen,” I recalled Koyanagi Masako. I compared the seventeen-year-old’s lovely, delicately beautiful body—always sharply etched in my mind—with the greasy, flabby one before me (to put it somewhat exaggeratedly). —This would indeed look absurd if they danced side by side. No, it would be cruel to call it absurd. Without needing to imagine that scene, I have actually seen such mismatched dancers perform. Among the vibrant bodies, the older dancers with their deteriorating forms—how pitiful they looked. While their grotesqueness stands out in stark contrast, their defeated appearance is nearly too painful to behold……

“You’re no spring chicken—no offense,” “That’s really rude of you.” Her eyes—brimming with a coquettish, unconscious coquettishness—glared at me.

I drank the lukewarm tea and, “Come to think of it, the park’s dancers are always just kids." “When they grow up, they quit one after another—and new kids take their place.” Over the past few years, I had been made to think of the truly numerous Revue Theater dancers who had bloomed like flowers upon the park’s stage only to scatter like petals and vanish somewhere. A lonely feeling welled up in my chest.

“Why do they quit?”

“But there’s no point in keeping on dancing, you know.” “If you say there’s no helping it, then I guess there’s no helping it…” “—It’s done. A plate.” “Here you go,” I said as I passed her the plate, “So you did grow tired of the stage after all?” Without answering, she deftly transferred the quartered meat pieces to a small plate with practiced hands, then skillfully scooped up the remaining juices sizzling with reddish-brown bubbles on the griddle using a flat scraper and added them to the plate,

“This sauce is delicious, isn’t it?” With that, she said “Here” and handed me the plate, “—It’s not like someone like me got tired of it, though…” she murmured.

Then why did she quit? I started to ask but, thinking it too intrusive, held back and reached for the sake flask instead. “Shall I pour for you?”

“—No, thank you.” She took up the sake flask and poured for me. With a white, delicately textured hand, dimples appeared at the base of her fingers. “Well, you see…” She started to speak abruptly only to fall silent, “Huh?” I said.

“No—about what we were discussing earlier.” “Ah, I see,” I nodded. “There might be some who quit out of boredom, but I don’t think most people quit for that reason.” I silently drank from my cup. “How should I put it… You just naturally end up having to quit. That’s what I think.”

After blurting out her final words with sudden force, she nodded to herself,

“I think I’ll have a drink too.” “Can you handle it?” Apologizing that I hadn’t known—(until now, I’d never seen her drink here)—I drained my cup in a hurry. And as I moved to hand it to her, I pulled myself up short—realizing it was too forward of me— “Give me the cup.” “—I don’t really hold my liquor well…” Whether hesitation had taken root—or perhaps because I simply couldn’t make myself move—

“Auntie—one sake cup.”

She called out to the kitchen.

“No, I…” She stood up and addressed the shop owner, “Sis, I’ll have a drink.” Her voice held a pleading tone.

“Oh my, oh my, Mii-chan. Are you all right?”

“What do you mean, ‘all right’?” “I don’t know why, but…” “It’s fine.” She came back carrying the cup,

“Sis, won’t you come over here? Won’t you drink with me?” “How trying.”

The shop owner replied in a detached voice,

“Don’t go too wild, please.” “I might get rowdy.” She said in a mannish way, then grew solemn—though not in a tone meant to be heard—

“I… somehow suddenly want to see Tajima.” “Lover?”

And here, in a teasing tone, I interjected. “Your husband,” she said outright. “Your husband—right—go see him.” Making a face that seemed to say whatever, she poured from the sake flask. She sniffled vaguely and did not engage with my jest. Narrowing her eyes but with a bitter twist to her mouth, she tilted the cup back forcefully, and then— “But you see… I can’t just go see him.” “Why?” “Because he’s not in Tokyo.” Her words grew gradually rougher, yet still tinged with affection.

“That’s rough. Where is he?” “Shizuoka.” “Shizuoka, hmm.” I refrained from asking why they’d separated. In their world, male-female relationships showed a disorder that defied common sense—for instance, I often heard exchanges like this: “How’s A-kun doing?” “Seems to be rotting away.” So far, normal enough. This was ordinary conversation you might hear anywhere. But then would always come the addendum: “Is A-kun still with B-ko?” “Somehow, seems they still are.” They said it in a tone that made their continued togetherness sound downright puzzling.

I had nearly asked—but held back, thinking it might concern some awkward separation—yet because I stayed silent, she ended up being the one to speak. "He went back home to the countryside because he's sick." "Hmm." "—This guy's no fun." When I offered her some meat,

“Because I’ll get fat…”

She shook her head. Her refusal felt abrupt and unhesitating—under normal circumstances, she would have quipped something like, “If I get any fatter, it’ll be a disaster”—but…

Silence fell. Because she was pouring sake over the iron griddle, occasionally some would spill onto the heated metal, sizzling with an anxious sound. The air was oppressive. As if to brush it aside,

“Right, got it.”

I strained my voice into its most exaggeratedly jovial tone, "So you quit the stage because you got together with that husband of yours, huh?"

After saying it, I realized it wasn’t a particularly clever remark. She shook her head no. “Marriage and the stage are different things.” “Both are important.” “—Sure there’s folks who quit after marrying—” When she said that, she suddenly grew talkative as if the alcohol had kicked in at once, launching into her reasons for leaving the stage. Her explanation jumped haphazardly between points that should’ve come later and details needing upfront clarification—so to reconstruct it coherently: The Levio Theater by the park typically divided its productions into two types—plays and dances. The “executive-tier members” mainly handled plays—or rather,the actors monopolized those senior positions while dancers remained general ensemble members. They—the Dancing Team women—stuck being perpetual underlings no matter how many years they performed; so long as they kept dancing without switching to acting careers,speaking plainly,there was no path upwards from those cramped dressing rooms.

“There’s no tale more nonsensical and demeaning than this rubbish—when you first join, you’re dying to reach the front row—the dance front row—which in the Dancing Team is practically what they call an executive position—you dance clinging to that hope, but after years of grinding, when you finally scramble up there, it means absolutely nothing.” “That’s where it stops”—unless you move over to theater, you’ll never make executive. “And even if you want to switch, that side’s already packed tight—no room to squeeze in.” “The ones who can dance well but act poorly just rot away as they age until they quit.” “The moment someone quits, fresh-faced girls pour in—if they’re pretty, they’re overnight sensations. Those brats swagger around basking in their popularity despite dancing like clods, sneering at us veterans. Then during performances, there they are beside you onstage, barking ‘One-two-three-four!’ loud enough for the audience to hear while you’re trying to dance. It’s so mortifyingly stupid and maddening you think, ‘To hell with this—I’m done.’” “Even if promotions are hopeless, even if you want to keep dancing what you love—all that nonsense makes quitting inevitable.”

“There’s someone from Theater T’s literary department who called us stage consumables.” I had often watched Levio performances and had various friends connected to Levio theaters, but until then I’d always viewed the Levio dancers through a lens of sweetly romantic yearning—something vaguely exotic. This was my first exposure to such bleak reality. I said, averting my eyes.

“So you—pretentious as it sounds—still haven’t lost your passion for the stage, then.” “I’d want to dance my whole life if I could.”

Silence fell again. “Mii-chan, you’re putting on quite the spectacle,” said the wife as she emerged from the kitchen. Misako changed the subject. “And you—Mr. Takase—what line of work are you in?” At those words, I broke into a smile—relieved with a sigh from the oppressive weight that had been pressing down on me. Here, I went by the name Takase. It had started when the Levio playwright who first brought me here jokingly called me Takase. All along the way there, that friend would tease me whenever I happened to roll my eyes wide, saying I looked just like some comedian named Takase. Carrying on with that joke when we arrived, my friend called out “—Takase-kun.” That became the name I went by here.

“Well… what could it be?” Feigning ignorance, “Couldn’t he be in the same line of work as Mr. Tajima?” The wife, her hands stained with oil, said to Misako while wiping the iron griddle. “As for this Mr. Tajima…” When I asked,

“He used to write books,” answered the wife. Here, “books” referred to scripts. “Well, I suppose it’s the same line of work.”

Just then, one of the regulars here—the manzai comedian “Pon-tan”—bustled in noisily with a “Good evening!” (“Tsuruchiya Anpon” was this “Kameya Pontan’s” comedy partner, but “Anpon” had never shown his face here.)

“It’s time. Dosakan.”

There was a staircase leading to the second floor in the kitchen. Someone shouted down from the top of those stairs. Ever since I had entered, there had been a clattering commotion upstairs—the sound of several people mumbling under their breath one moment, then abruptly bursting into shouts, laughter, or sobs the next. “Right away!” The one who answered was that young man we’d seen earlier.

Dosakan? It must be a nickname, but such a strange one—I fixed my gaze on the hastily rising young man’s back as if trying to decipher its meaning. Later, I learned that “Dosa” came from traveling troupes and “Kan” from Kan’ichi of *The Golden Demon*—that this nickname had caught on among his peers after someone joked how, while he couldn’t pass as a leading man in Tokyo, he might just manage a Kan’ichi-style romantic role in some provincial theater company.

When Dosakan’s seat opened up, I was urged to take it with a “Please,” but feeling somewhat hesitant, I couldn’t bring myself to cut in. Instead, I stepped back and leaned against the paper sliding door. Feeling awkward and at a loss, I muttered “Right” to myself and surreptitiously pulled out from my pocket a peculiar notebook—its tea-brown cover bearing “ALGEBRA” on one side and “TIMETABLE” on the other, with a schedule printed inside—likely meant for elementary students but bought cheaply for jotting memos, too embarrassing to show in public—and began copying down the okonomiyaki menu items I’d long intended to record, thinking they might prove useful if I ever wrote a novel set in this restaurant. Here, I will transcribe them once more from that notebook and present them to the reader. However, while the real menu posted on the okonomiyaki restaurant’s wall is neatly arranged in horizontal rows, here it would be both wasteful and impractical to line them up horizontally on paper, so I will present them vertically.

Yakisoba. Ikaten. Ebiten. Ankoten. Mochiten. Ankomaki. Moyashi. Anzumaki. Yosenabe. Gyūten. Cabbage ball. Shumai. (All of the above have “5 sen” written below as their price.) From there, the prices increase). Tekki, 20 sen. Okonomiyaki, 15 sen. Mihara-yaki, 15 sen. Fried rice, 10 sen. Cutlet, 15 sen. Omelette, 15 sen.

Shimbashi-yaki, 15 sen. Five-ingredient pancake, 10 sen. Egg pancake, Market price. I disliked this use of the character “sen.” “Why not just write ‘sen’ as ‘coin’?” I later casually remarked to the wife, who explained that 仙 combined “person” (人) and “mountain” (山)—“They say it’s auspicious because it means people will come in crowds like a mountain.”

—Mid-transcription, a newcomer descended from the second floor. Then one of those gathered around the brazier yelled, “Did Mr. ○○ die?”

In a loud voice, he said to the one who had come down: “Nah, he hasn’t been killed yet. But he’ll be killed soon.” “I see. Then he’d better hurry up and eat.” —It had been a play rehearsal. They had formed a troupe and prepared a show to market as an attraction for movie theaters. One of the actors had rented the second floor of the okonomiyaki restaurant—a space far too cramped for rehearsals—but they’d taken it precisely because no seating fee was charged. The actor staying upstairs was Suehiro Harukichi, whom I’d become acquainted with at the brazier downstairs. He lived in Asakusa but remained an impoverished actor unconnected to the park’s stage. Such actors—young and old, men and women—littered the park’s surroundings in uncountable numbers……

Eventually, like waves receding—yes, much like the pitch-black waves at Omori Coast retreating while carrying old clogs, cat carcasses, rubber products, and such filth—the group upstairs finished their rehearsal and departed. The room was densely packed with the evaporating stench of lard, scorched sauce turned gaseous, tobacco smoke, carbon dioxide exhaled from assorted lungs, and the immense dust shed from every part of their bodies—all of which left me utterly overwhelmed by that ghastly air. My stomach, though surely empty by now, felt on the verge of heaving. But having endured this long only to leave without eating felt too awkward, so I insisted there was no rush and ordered an omelette.

Then Misako promptly prepared a plate, came out from the kitchen, and plopped down right in front of me. “It’s such a ruckus.” I nodded silently, finding speech too bothersome, and slowly scrubbed the grime-caked iron griddle with a large scraper. When I casually looked up, Misako was staring intently at my face. When our eyes met, she flusteredly averted her puffy eyes, but immediately brought them back with defiant resolve to meet mine,

“You’re called Mr. Kurahashi, they say.”

Kurahashi is my real name. I forced a wry smile,

“—Who said that?”

With those words, I had effectively acknowledged on my own that I was Kurahashi. “—So you really are Mr. Kurahashi, then.” When I nodded firmly,

“The novelist Mr. Kurahashi, huh?” she pressed further. For some reason, being called a novelist made me awkwardly self-conscious, so I nodded while scratching my forehead frantically.

“Mr. Kurahashi—you divorced your wife before… And after leaving you, that wife became an actress… That Mr. Kurahashi, right?” “That Mr. Kurahashi, right?” What a brutal way to press for confirmation. Utterly embarrassed, I rubbed my greasy, dirty face all over. “Just now, I heard that you’re Mr. Kurahashi—I’m surprised.”

“Did you hear that just now?”

“Dosakan-chan told me.”

Now that she mentioned it, the two of them had been glancing furtively in my direction while whispering secretively in the corner of the kitchen. I had been linking that to how the troupe members were teasing the two of them and watching.

“Dosakan-kun?”

Cutting off her attempt to continue, she said hurriedly. “—You know.” (This “you know” slightly resembled that ridiculous yet detestable “you know” which was Takasei-bou’s trademark.) —“You know, I’ve been associating with you all this time without realizing you were Mr. Kurahashi—but actually, there’s a very strange connection between you and me.” In Misako’s eyes burned a light—something akin to hatred—that startled me.

“When you say ‘karmic tie’…” I felt unsettled. “I’ll tell you eventually.” “Don’t keep me dangling.”

I pressed her, but she pursed her lips tightly, turned her face—sterner than I’d ever seen before—away from me, and refused to engage.……

I forced the omelette down my throat, then—unable to endure the foul air a moment longer—stood up. When Misako asked where I was going, I replied I would wander around the area, and—

“Maybe I should come along.” “Is that okay?” “—Please do.”

Thinking I might be able to draw out from her—as we walked—the story about our connection that she had brought up but ultimately left untold, I invited her even more proactively to go.

Misako suggested going to Rokku.

—And so, we eventually made our way to a place where one might behold a scene straight out of an illustration printed on the following page—but where exactly that was, and what conversations we exchanged there—these matters, alas, must regrettably be left for the next installment, as the page count allotted for this story’s second part has now been exhausted.

Part Three: Winter Fountain

We were standing on the bridge over Hyōtan Pond, which had a wisteria trellis above. Misako and I had come through the cinema district to the front of K Theater facing Hyōtan Pond when suddenly—as if by mutual agreement—we both turned at a right angle from there and hurriedly veered off toward the dark pond with steps that seemed to flee something.—Why did we veer away? As for me—my Koyanagi Masako (People, if you’d mock my self-importance, then laugh!) was at K Theater. That’s why. If I had been alone in that situation, my feet would surely have been sucked into the theater as a matter of course. Whenever we reached the front of K Theater, it was already over. This stemmed from my own foolishness—no, not merely foolishness, for that word fell short—a hopelessly incurable, indescribably idiotic yearning born of such stupidity. Yet I felt as though some external, irresistible, invisible violence assailed me, thrusting me forcefully into K Theater. At that moment, because Misako was by my side, I found within myself an unexpected strength to thrust back against that violence. However, due to this force’s equally unexpected backlash, I was flung with a jolt in a direction perpendicular to K Theater—a motion that seemed to reveal the truth behind why I veered toward Hyōtan Pond as if fleeing. Oh, what a tedious way of putting things. Was there no way to put it more directly? Though I thought so myself, since I simply could not manage it, I had no choice but to beg the reader’s indulgence.

And as for Misako? The fact that Misako, too, walked with equally fleeing steps! It struck me that she had invited me to Rokku out of nostalgia for the district she now found herself estranged from—a frustrated longing for its stage, from which she’d parted against her will yet remained unable to sever her lingering attachment. Along the way, she had uttered words that made this abundantly clear. Yet when we arrived, we were assailed by pain akin to that of moths lured into flames. To escape it, we seemed to have veered off toward the dark pond.

We came to the bridge and let out a sigh of relief. That was what had made our feet come to an involuntary halt on the bridge. Embarrassed by my own pathetic state, I cast my eyes toward the neon signs of “Bikkuri Zenzai” and “Daizen” spanning the river—glowing large and beautiful like set-piece fireworks—and said, “My, how pretty.” That served as the pretext for having stopped my feet. At the entrance to Hisago Street—commonly called “Yonekyu Street” due to the presence of Yonekyu—which branches slightly rightward off the cinema district’s main thoroughfare running straight toward Senzoku, stood “Bikkuri Zenzai” on one side. It displayed a red neon sign with the characters for “Bikkuri” split into two lines inside a large double circle. On the opposite side, “Daizen” displayed a red line-drawn tuna neon—its fins disproportionately large—appearing to swim toward that double circle, while above it glowed blue neon reading “Daizen,” and below, an elaborate blue bulb panel attached to depict undulating waves through flashing patterns. When standing beneath the wisteria trellis, they came into full view ahead, their gaudy, vivid reflections cast upon the black pond’s surface. The surface of the pond, reflecting the shop lights and Hisago Street’s lily-of-the-valley-shaped bulbs, held something akin to a hidden pleasure quarter in its depths, exuding an uncanny beauty as though that light were seeping out. “—It’s beautiful…” Misako’s tone, too, sounded as if she were hiding embarrassment. Even though no wind could be felt, the pond appeared to have small crepe-like ripples, causing the reflections to quiver thinly. No—though I was made aware that ripples must be forming from the quivering of what seemed like trembling reflections—the expanse of water visible from the bridge emitted an oily, viscous black sheen, its surface utterly smooth and unwrinkled.

The two of us stood motionless in silence for some time. As time passed, an unfathomable restlessness began smoldering within me, and I sensed that a similar agitation had seemingly kindled within Misako as well. Misako suddenly said with abrupt intensity. “Mr. Kurahashi, why are you wandering around Asakusa?”

“—Well…” Finding it too bothersome to give a straightforward explanation, I hedged my words. “Gathering material?” “That’s not it.” I stated this clearly. “So, what then?” “—Because Asakusa’s interesting.” The made-up excuse slipped out before I could stop it. Then Misako scowled. Even in the darkness, her grimace stood starkly visible. In a cutting tone, she demanded: “Are you prowling around Asakusa with some morbid fascination?”

When I first heard the term “morbid curiosity,” I didn’t immediately grasp its meaning—huh? I tilted my head quizzically—but upon realizing ah, that’s what she meant—the novelty of encountering such an unusual phrase brought a smile to my lips, and I stayed silent, smiling to myself.

Misako tapped the toes of her shoes,

“Butajima detested people who looked at Asakusa through the lens of morbid curiosity,” she said. When Misako mentioned “Butajima,” it struck me as utterly abrupt, so I merely responded, “Hmm.” “Mr. Tajima, you know,” I added. (Over time, as I repeatedly encountered such abruptness from her, I grew accustomed to it and ceased to register it as abrupt. Simultaneously, I came to understand that Misako’s sudden references stemmed from how Butajima would invade her thoughts at every turn—how he had taken root within her unnoticed.)

“Yes, Butajima truly hated people like that.”

Misako said bluntly, her tone making it clear she shared Butajima’s sentiments. “If Butajima were in Asakusa and met you—if he found out about your morbid curiosity—he’d have flown into a rage for sure.” Hearing this, I panicked. I protested that I hadn’t come to Asakusa out of any so-called morbid curiosity—though truth be told, while I’d rented this apartment under the pretext of needing a workspace, I couldn’t deny there was something faintly voyeuristic in how I viewed Asakusa. Precisely because of this, now that half a year had passed since my arrival—now that I felt halfway an insider myself—I couldn’t claim not to understand Butajima’s fury toward those outsiders who gawked at Asakusa like some lurid spectacle. Yet I feigned ignorance and asked Misako why Mr. Tajima would get angry. Butajima himself had begun to intrigue me—a peculiar fascination I couldn’t quite name. More than grasping his reasons for anger, I wanted to draw from Misako some sense of the man himself.

Misako’s reply was ambiguous and unsatisfactory. The ambiguity stemmed from an inability to articulate it properly. She grew frustrated at being unable to articulate it properly, and her frustration only made her words more tangled—yet I grasped her meaning. Even though I understood her meaning, my desire to know Butajima as a person remained unsatisfied.

When you’re living your life with all seriousness, only to have outsiders peer into it with voyeuristic interest—isn’t it only natural to feel enraged? In essence, that was what she meant, but her inability to articulate it properly only deepened Misako’s sullenness. Such was her state when, as I tried to leave the okonomiyaki shop, she said, “Shall I come with you? Is that okay?” The Misako who had followed me along was, in my mind, something entirely separate—a different entity that refused to coalesce with the one I knew.

But this was because I did not know about the peculiar connection between her and me that Misako had spoken of. And—or rather, because of that—it was because I could not grasp what feelings had driven her to follow me, nor what feelings had led her to so bluntly confront my morbid curiosity. ——

I was soon able to hear about that connection—though only a part of it. We stopped at a tea shop called "Omasa" immediately to the right after crossing the bridge. During summer I'd often eaten their vinegar-dressed tokoroten there—but with the cooling weather I'd forgotten all about it until now. Precisely because my chest burned from forcing down that okonomiyaki earlier, I thought of eating it again and invited Misako. "It's cold," Misako said, but didn't object.

On the island of Hyōtan Pond, besides "Omasa," there was another such shop to the left, facing toward the neon signs we had been gazing at from the bridge—this shop had arranged its benches toward the opposite side where the fountain stood. When I sat on the summer-style bench ill-suited to the season, Hyōtan Pond appeared almost like a private pool belonging to this establishment. Misako too ordered tokoroten. Now regarding this connection—because it weighed on me, I said with uncharacteristic forcefulness in a demanding tone that I wanted to hear it. The way Misako had bluntly stated something that seemed to implicate me reflexively hardened my resolve.—Misako pursed her mouth like a suction cup and noisily slurped down the tokoroten.

“I don’t know what it is, but—I want to hear it, you know?”

Misako placed the hand holding the plate on her knee and, “Do you see your ex-wife?” “What’s she doing now?” There was a sarcastic edge to her polite tone. “—She’s in Shanghai.” “In Shanghai?” She didn’t voice it, but her face betrayed a desire to ask why she went to Shanghai. I, however, remained silent. I found myself gazing at the fountain in the pond, which, unlike in summer, now sprayed its cold water with eager fidelity yet forlornly—even with a somewhat indignant air—despite being utterly ignored by all.

——My former wife Ayuko was at a bar in Shanghai. The Ginza bar where she used to work had opened a new branch in Shanghai. She had been called there and went. —One of my friends, upon hearing of her departure for Shanghai, said this to me: "I shouldn't say this, but—when you hear other women are going to Shanghai, well, it makes you go 'hmm' and pause for thought. But with Ayuko, it just slips right into place, you know?" "With a sense of finality, Ayuko and Shanghai just seem to fit perfectly, don't they?"

I forced a wry smile and nodded without saying anything. As for Ayuko going to Shanghai—that it’s just like her, so hearing about it doesn’t shock me—I agreed with that sentiment, but my friend’s words carried the added implication that Ayuko had finally fallen to where she was meant to fall. To that, I could not agree. Not out of sympathy or pity for Ayuko, but because her move to Shanghai gives me no sense whatsoever that she has fallen to where she was meant to fall.

The life Ayuko had led these past few years since leaving me—each time I heard rumors from others or met her myself in Ginza to talk, I was always informed of some new state of affairs different from before, a life of truly ceaseless change—left me utterly baffled as to what on earth was going on. It felt as though no words other than those could adequately express the true nature of her life. However, utterly baffled as I was by it all, there was something that vividly pierced through such phenomena. There existed a single clear line that I could grasp with certainty. It was her abundant vitality. Ayuko was always living with truly sturdy resilience. She lived boldly and with spirited vigor. Feeling the scarcity of my own vitality all the more—it was due to this scarcity that Ayuko had left me—Ayuko’s robust way of living struck me with even greater vividness. Even upon hearing of her Shanghai trip, the first thing I felt was astonishment at how the tentacles of her vigorous life had extended even there.

A few days prior, I had received a letter from Ayuko in Shanghai. In it were written details of how Ayuko had met N-san—a writer I was close with who had joined the Frontline Writers Corps and been deployed to China—along with her earnest recommendation: “You must find a way to come here at least once—I strongly urge you.” Something to the effect that your sodden personality and sodden novels would surely be reforged into something stronger—or so she had written in her brisk script.——

“Speaking of Shanghai—what happened with Mr. Ooya Goro?” Misako’s face at that moment was—to borrow my friend’s words—the face of someone going “Hmm… Shanghai, eh?” and grunting in contemplation. “Well—”

The relationship between Ayuko and Ooya Goro—no sooner had I heard they’d broken up than there’d be talk of them getting back together; just when I thought they were together, I’d be told they’d split—it was all so baffling I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Ooya Goro was a revue singer in Shinagawa Rokuba’s troupe; though Ayuko was a year younger than him, she called him “Goro-chan” with an elder-sisterly air. I first heard about their living together roughly two years ago.

“Do you know Goro-chan?”

When I said this, “Know him? It’s not just that…” Misako snorted derisively with a sneering expression, “—Ooya Goro,” and now addressed him bluntly by name,

“My sister’s…” Whether she meant to say “husband” or “lover”—she twisted her lips as if struggling to articulate it, then skipped over it entirely— “—This was before he got involved with your ex-wife.” “Oh?”

This was the first time I’d heard this story. It was an utterly strange twist of fate. I was surprised. At that moment, had Misako not worn that strangely contorted expression—as if suppressing tears—that grave expression which made clear to my eyes the truth of her story, I might have thought it a fabricated tale. I might have harbored such a suspicion. So much so had I been taken aback.

Indeed, even in reality, this story carried the whiff of fabrication. All the more so now that it was being narrated as fiction—readers would surely dismiss this strange entanglement as my contrivance. But had I meant to fabricate, I—clumsy novelist though I was—would never have crafted something so obviously artificial. I would have offered up a more plausible falsehood.—(Though I later learned of another tale involving Koyanagi Masako—one even more fantastically wrought—that shall remain untold for now.)

“So was your sister also working at the Revue Theater?” I said while rubbing my hands. The area around the pond was growing cold. “Yes, she was at the T Theater with me.” “Back then, Mr. Ooya Goro was also at the T Theater…” “And your sister now…” “She’s dead.”

She said it in a startlingly loud voice, as if spitting the words out, then abruptly turned her face away.

For a while, we were silent. I was gazing vacantly toward the far side of the pond. There—speaking from the movie theater district—it was behind O Hall, something I’d never noticed before—five shops clustered together in a row, each displaying nearly identical signs facing the pond that read “Oyakodon, Sushi, Tendon.” “Her name—what was it?” Misako remained silent. But before long,

“Ichikawa Reiko.”

Her voice was low and trembling. —And with that, the story of the strange relationship between Misako and me was cut short. But that alone had merely revealed the outermost contours. Therefore, even with that much, matters such as what feelings Misako had when she came to follow me—as I wrote at the end of the previous section—still remained unclear to me. It was only later, when I had come to know the full story, that I was finally able to grasp it—but now did not seem to be the time to speak of it.

Now, this pondside where we stood was right behind the movie theater district—so close you could almost reach out and touch someone on the street—but perhaps because of the night stalls lined tightly along the water’s edge like a wall, the lively commotion from the thoroughfare reached us here only as an unbelievably distant murmur, so faint it made me doubt my own ears. It made this cold, forsaken place feel all the more desolate. It also made my mood there desolate and left me feeling somewhat apprehensive.…

Part Four: Downfall

That night—somehow feeling strangely exhausted and drained—I found myself reluctant to return to my house in Ōmori and decided to stay at the apartment. It was not yet midnight, but after pulling the futon over my head—yet my mind was alert, and sleep wouldn’t come—eventually, the creaking sound of someone climbing the stairs to the third floor reached me, and when it stopped outside my room,

“Oh, you’re here!” I had left the light on in my room, and my slippers were out in the hallway—those things must have indicated my presence. (The light—it was meant to prevent those unruly insects from emerging out of nowhere to bite me when it was dark—but after letting them feed on my blood once, perhaps because it had grown colder by then, they’d mostly stopped appearing around that time.) When I poked my head out from under the futon like a turtle to see who it was, outside the room,

“Mr. Kurahashi—working?”

From that gravelly voice—forced into enunciation as if each phrase were being hurled in rapid-fire—I recognized it as Asano Mitsuo’s.

“Oh, Mr. Asano.” “Please come in.”

Asano opened the door and, “Ah, are you already in bed?” “Have you been staying here lately?”

And without waiting for my reply, “In the past, even when I came at night, you were never here. So lately I’d given up coming here—” Asano’s drink-flushed face glowed brighter still with a hunter’s triumphant glee at cornering his prey. “You’re here days, I suppose, but I held back—didn’t want to interrupt your precious work.” Though I’d never once sought out Asano—this Asakusa-dwelling acquaintance—myself, a sudden shame pricked me. When I moved to offer excuses, he barreled on as if to smother my words,

“Mr. Kurahashi’s Asakusa life has finally become full-fledged with you staying over like this, hasn’t it?”

he said.

Unable to find proper words to greet him, I wore an ambiguous smile while straightening the kimono draped over my sleeping robe. Then Asano, "—I can't say I approve," he said. This made finding a response even harder. "How's your work going?" He fired rapidly. With the sensation of being machine-gunned, "—No good, I suppose."

I said, and slumped down onto the futon as though spent. By saying "It's no good," I—though interrupted by Asano's arrival—now revived the thoughts that had been circling endlessly in my head while I lay there. To put it plainly—it was about wanting to write some vigorous, potent novel. Yet right after that aspiration came chasing after it—the realization that even if I thought this way, I might ultimately prove incapable of writing it at all. I had been going around in circles with it.

The words of the French writer Montherlant were etched into my mind and refused to fade. “Literary work inevitably comes saddled with the unbecoming whining of losers—that’s why it sickens me. In sports, there is no whining. The one who jumps fifty centimeters less than their opponent never comes complaining afterward,” Montherlant said. When I read that—given how my own novels were especially rife with “the unbecoming whining of losers”—and since I myself had finally begun wanting to write proper novels unlike those, novels that would refresh readers’ spirits, make them healthy, noble, bold; novels that could stir vigorous aspirations for living and robust mental fortitude—for “robust, powerful novels” meant precisely that—I felt a stinging lash of reproach. Most of my novels were the kind that whined and sniveled afterward at those who jumped fifty centimeters farther. I wanted to write a novel as refreshingly robust as one that could leap fifty meters.

This desire had arisen within me alongside the incident. Rather than something demanded from outside, it felt more like a physiological urge welling up naturally within me. Yet I found myself utterly unable to write such novels. Desires would surge up futilely, only to resist being shaped into fiction. Thus unfulfilled, they festered inside me until I’d fallen into something like hysteria.

I thought that if I went to the battlefield, I might be saved from that hysterical state. But to me—a Category C unfit for combat—the idea of going where my compatriots were risking their lives felt exactly like going “sightseeing,” leaving me unbearably self-conscious about it. Even if the battlefield wouldn’t view me that way, I still felt guilty. While fully acknowledging myself as a spectator—both inwardly and outwardly—it felt inexcusable toward the soldiers sacrificing their lives, as if I were parading about with a sign on my forehead proclaiming myself a “sightseer concerned with self-preservation.”—Once, when a senior critic who had already visited the front lines twice asked, “Aren’t you going to the battlefield?” I replied, “I do want to go, but…” and confessed these feelings. Then the critic—

“You…” he glared at me, then slammed the desk. “You’re no good.—That’s why you’re no good.” The critic didn’t explain why I was no good, but I realized these feelings of mine were trivial. If I went to the front lines, those petty personal sentiments would be blown away—and with their vanishing, I felt certain I’d gain something precious unattainable without going. I thought that going to battle meant standing on some grander, loftier plane where such miserly emotions meant nothing. But even so, those feelings clung stubbornly within me, refusing to be swept from my heart.

And yet—despite all that—I wandered Asakusa, leading a shiftless life that seemed, at a glance, inexcusable to everyone. The reason I had rented an apartment in Asakusa, I had already explained before. But I had not explained why, though there were various entertainment districts, I had specifically chosen Asakusa. I had until then loved Ginza as an entertainment district, but I had come to feel disgust toward Ginza and all things Ginza-like—including the Ginza-like elements within myself—while simultaneously being drawn to Asakusa by the vague (careless) notion that it was the people’s entertainment district, which is why I came here. There, I thought I wanted to place myself among the crowds of the people. (This too was a careless conceptual notion.)—I wanted to chafe my nerves with the people’s simplicity, honesty, resilience and such to cure my hysteria. But…

No—if I let myself go on talking like this, I’ll have to cut off what would become truly endless chatter right here.

—I told Asano that my work wasn’t going well. Then, Asano’s face lit up as though I’d voiced his own thoughts, “The air of Asakusa doesn’t suit us.” He bit down hard on the word “us,” declaring it like teeth sinking into flesh. “Asakusa makes people shiftless—it’s poison. Here you can idle your days away and still keep breathing.” “That’s the rot of it.” I finally grasped what he’d meant about disapproving of my settling into Asakusa life. “I’m living proof.” “Through and through.” “A perfect specimen—Asakusa-toxic, atmosphere-corrupted proof.”

Asano bared his dirty, tobacco-stained teeth and laughed. Asano used to write good novels but had stopped publishing anything in recent years. (Actually, he wrote miscellaneous articles under different pseudonyms each time to make ends meet—he merely earned enough for basic living expenses and never attempted to write anything beyond that.) He blamed these circumstances—though I couldn’t verify their truth—on having moved to Asakusa and sinking into its depths. And so Asano cursed Asakusa, this place that sapped people’s will, even as he refused to leave it.

“The other day when I read *Sanin*—there’s this supporting character named Yurii.” “A weak man—the exact opposite of *Sanin*—and there was this line from Yurii.” “‘My friend…’ Yurii says.” “‘Says my life’s a cautionary tale.’” “‘Meaning one mustn’t live this way…’ he says—but I’m precisely that sort of cautionary figure myself.” “How Asakusa rots people through and through…”

I found it hard to listen to Asano referring to himself like some defeated remnant and frantically tried to change the subject. (The reason I had no desire to visit him was that going to see him felt like going specifically to hear those defeat-tinged words.)

“Oh right—” I slapped my knee.

“Mr. Asano—don’t you know someone called Butajima? …who apparently wrote scripts here in Asakusa…” Even as I thought there was no way he would know—I said it as a convenient way to shift the topic. But— “Has Butajima shown up in Asakusa? — Did you meet him?” Asano’s eyes gleamed. “No, it’s not that I’ve met him.” “Ah, right—Butajima is Yurii.” Asano interjected. “—Even the ‘ex-leftist’ label matches him perfectly.”

“Ex-leftist?” “That’s right.—I despise leftists, so I don’t know much about that side of things, but Butajima was supposedly involved in leftist theater.—Back then, he was still a student.” “In the end, he quit school and shifted from theater to political activism.” “Then when the leftists collapsed, he came tumbling into Asakusa.” “As for Butajima—he must’ve meant to build himself a new life here.”

Asano bit down on the end of his cigarette, “What’s with ‘ex-leftist’—ah right, that term’s fallen out of fashion these days.” “It’s fallen out of use.” “Or maybe they’re called ‘ideological converts’ now?” “Among that lot, for some reason, there’s an oddly large number of ones with a strong life force.” “I hate leftists—can’t stand that lot.” “But Butajima—that guy, despite being an ex-leftist—he’s completely useless.” “He’s got absolutely no vitality.” “Not that he doesn’t have it—he lost it here in Asakusa.” “Came to Asakusa intending to stir up new life force, but no—ended up drained of spirit instead, body ruined in the end.” “Butajima’s one of those intellectuals ruined—as expected—by Asakusa’s atmosphere.”

The interest in Butajima that Mii-chan had instilled in me was further fueled. Asano continued speaking on his own.

“On that point, I’m the sort who commiserates with fellow sufferers—I feel an affectionate bond with Butajima—but just a bit… he’s a strange one.”

Asano’s eyes took on the look of someone searching for a figure in the darkness, “Butajima—he himself is completely useless, yet he’s got this uncanny knack for stirring up vitality in those around him in Asakusa—call it a force, an effect, or an influence… this subtle, bizarre thing he wields…” (I could sense that Asano’s voice—though I couldn’t tell what emotion it was—was being stirred into turbulence by his own words.) “This guy is truly uncanny, you know.” “—He doesn’t seem to be doing it consciously.” “He himself is useless, but isn’t he operating with the resolve to make those around him get their act together?” “For instance—let’s say there’s some guy here plotting evil deeds.” “Suppose there’s a man trying to sweet-talk some out-of-work Asakusa dancers—idle ones lounging around—into getting sold off to some godforsaken place.” “That guy—well, he’s not a real villain, just conflicted.” “What should I do? Should I go through with it? No, wait—that sort of back-and-forth.” “At times like that, if you meet Butajima—that’s right—you just need to look at his face.” “Even if Butajima says nothing—when you meet him, you immediately feel like throwing in the towel.” “Butajima—he’s just that kind of guy.” “This is an actual story.” “Because I heard about that incident from that petty villain.” “Butajima is that kind of uncanny person.” “He himself is a moralist.” “That said, he’s a moralist only in words.” “So that’s probably why things turn out that way—but anyway, there’s no way Butajima would ever tell that petty villain to sell off women.” “Yet when you meet Butajima, your resolve hardens to sell them off.—Hearing this makes it clear he isn’t consciously influencing others—but his peculiar effect isn’t limited to inciting wrongdoing.” “That sort of thing stirs up an outrageous vitality—but it also stirs up vitality in a good sense.”

“He rouses listless actors into action, gets those who’ve hit rock bottom and turned into nuisances to muster decent resolve and open oden shops—Butajima might just be some kind of extraordinary man, you know. Not like normal people—someone with something truly bizarre about him.”

He had spoken in one breath, but whether imagined or not, his hoarse voice trembled as he uttered those final words, quivering with a grotesque mixture of awe resembling terror and revulsion akin to hatred. But immediately, Asano shook his head as if dispelling a nightmare, "No, that’s not it." he declared loudly, grimacing at his own volume as if startled by himself—then, as though attempting to soften that rigid scowl,

“Mr. Kurahashi.” “Won’t you have some pie?”

When he suddenly said that, his brow relaxed. "I suppose I will." "—Mr. Kurahashi." "I don't have any money—do you?" "Yes, I have some." I felt ashamed of Asano's words as if I'd uttered them myself. And Asano wore an expression that mirrored mine perfectly.

I immediately tried to stand up. Then Asano, as if to restrain me, “That Butajima, you see—” he said. “It might not be that Butajima is particularly responsible. The thing is—he’s the only intellectual here; the people around him in Asakusa are different from him. That’s why the crowd holds Butajima in high regard. They respect him. They lend an ear to what Butajima says. From that very point, even though Butajima himself isn’t doing anything in particular, this thing called Butajima’s effect might be arising.” (Asano nodded, as if to convince himself.) “That’s right. That must be it. Butajima is always saying this. ‘Live robustly,’ you know. This is his catchphrase, you know. It’s a bit of an affected line, but. ‘Live robustly.’ The one spouting that line isn’t robust in the slightest himself—what a farce—” (twisting his leaden lips venomously) “—well, it’s just a hollow mantra. This mantra—whenever anything happens, the people around Butajima have it drilled into their heads by him. So when they see Butajima’s face, that phrase must immediately come to mind—that petty villain from before surely felt the same way. When you see Butajima’s face, you feel compelled to live robustly.”

“This clicked.” “So just meeting Butajima—even without him saying a word—made them resolve to go through with it.” “That must be it.” “Butajima’s ‘Live robustly’ motto probably wasn’t meant to incite such malice, but petty villains can’t grasp what an intellectual like him means by ‘live robustly.’” “They take it in their lowlife way—‘Just do whatever, go all out, get it done.’” “So seeing Butajima roused their wicked intentions.” “That’s how it is.—Exactly.” “It’s nothing significant.” “There’s nothing surprising about it at all.”

Asano himself had vividly depicted Butajima’s grotesque image before me, only to then dismantle it with his own hands. While dismantling it, Asano’s eyes gleamed with what seemed like his signature ecstatic self-loathing, his entire body surging with fierce energy—but once the destruction was complete, he abruptly shrank with a clatter, his frame withering small, his face taking on a lonely, pained expression.

And then, muttering under his breath, he added—in a tone as if gathering fragments of a shattered statue— “However, it’s true that Butajima does have this strangely compelling quality about him.” “Even now, everyone still gossips about Butajima nonstop and wants to see him.—Butajima isn’t in Asakusa anymore, but he lingers in everyone’s hearts.” “That’s about the size of it.” Having said that, he sucked the cigarette down to the filter until his lips nearly burned, then craned his neck and took a final sharp puff—clicking his lips with a *pah-pah*—before tossing the smoldering stub into the ashtray.

“Well, shall we head out?” And as he stood up, with an air of sudden realization, “Mr. Kurahashi—how do you know Butajima?” (Asano’s legs were so short they gave a somewhat grotesque impression. He was terribly long-torsoed—to exaggerate, even when standing, his height barely changed from when he was seated.) “Through his wife and getting acquainted at an okonomiyaki restaurant in Tajima-cho…” “Hotarō—isn’t that the place?”

Asano cut in. “The okonomiyaki restaurant called Hotarō, isn’t that right?” At Hotarō，I still hadn’t met Asano.

“Mr. Asano, do you go there…” “I haven’t been going there lately…”

We left the room.

Asano went down the steep stairs first,

“That okonomiyaki restaurant—this too is Butajima’s... should I call it a creation? That place—after Hotarō, the husband, was conscripted, his wife opened it—started out at home, you see. Butajima convinced his wife to start it.”

We descended the stairs and stood in a dim kitchen where brownish electric light hung stagnant. This was the apartment residents' communal cooking area. In its corner stood an entrance—unlike any proper apartment entrance should appear—resembling a kitchen doorway (though in truth it surely was one). The first floor facing the main street housed shops: a joinery, a dried bonito dealer, while the second and third floors comprised apartments; their proper entrance lay in the back alley. There we stepped down to an earthen floor strewn with dirty geta, moving with the cautious air of second-floor tenants sneaking out through service quarters. Beside the entrance sat a toilet—a flush toilet oddly incongruous here—and at that moment came the terrifying roar of water surging through pipes with ferocious intensity.

“Where shall we go?” When I suggested going outside, the moon hung over the alley. That night alone—as if it had flown far away—it appeared terribly distant and small. “Let’s go for awamori.”

“I have two or three yen, but...” Right. “Shall we go to the okonomiyaki restaurant?”

“No, no.”

Asano shook his head. “Awamori’s better than cheap booze.” Near the apartment stood an awamori shop that wouldn’t shove you out even if you lingered past midnight—provided you entered before twelve. (This detail came from Asano himself.) Until we reached it—what had gotten into him? The same Asano who’d been ranting alone in the apartment like a fever-madman now marched sullenly ahead of me, his geta clattering briskly. Those hunched shoulders—was that their natural slope, or did he deliberately hike them up?—jutted starkly through his threadbare double-layered coat, every fleshless bone visible beneath the discolored fabric. He carried those ruin-steeped shoulders like precious cargo balanced on his frame, never letting them tremble as he glided forward—a specter distinguished only by the shassha rhythm from his straw-thin geta and the faint pleasure he took in his own gait.

The awamori shop was a narrow place that would fill up with just five or six people lined up at the counter, run single-handedly by a portly old woman. She had married her daughter to a film actor—though her son-in-law now languished in obscurity, he’d once shown promise of breaking into the business—and perhaps owing to that connection, a noren curtain gifted by Takada Minoru among others, now thoroughly faded, hung at the entrance. Most patrons had ties to the park’s concession stalls. They sold authentic Ryukyuan awamori here, bottles labeled “Port Departure Tax Paid—Naha Tax Office” scattered about the entryway like discarded props. The Asakusa crowd drank counterfeit liquors with cheerful abandon—not from being duped, but in full knowledge of the deception. When it came to discerning true awamori by taste alone, they could school any merchant. Asano numbered among these connoisseurs. “Here I am,” he announced to the granny. Their exchanges ran to familiar refrains—“Oh, the noisy one’s here”—her brusque manner less customer service than shrewd performance art.

When the awamori went down, Asano’s tongue started moving again. He began telling Hotarō’s story. “Hotarō’s old man—he’s actually one hell of a performer, you know? Now he’s just wasting away as an okonomiyaki shop owner.” “They say he can’t perform anymore because of war injuries…” “Ah, but that’s just it.” “The part about not being able to perform isn’t entirely a lie.—Got hit in Baoding, they say.” “The old man was a combat engineer—you’ve heard this story, right?” “No?” “Listen up then.” “It’s good stuff.” “Apparently he was damn brave.” “He’ll give you the full dramatic version if you ask right.” “But you gotta catch him in a good mood—draw it out of him. He’s a strange one, won’t talk easy on his own.—Took it in the thigh, see.” “So they sent him home—been rotting in hospitals till he healed enough, I guess.” “Looks fine on the surface, but when he stands on stage too long—starts aching or going numb.” “Now he says he can’t return to manzai yet, but deep down—isn’t it that he just doesn’t want to? That he’s sick of the stage?” “Not that he’s happy flipping okonomiyaki either…”

Asano pressed the thick glass to his mouth. “Did he grow tired of being an entertainer?” I lifted the heavy glass too, and as I pressed its rim to my lips—unnerved by its oddly smooth texture—I took a sip of the clear, potent liquid before hurriedly drinking water. “That’s not it.”

With that, Asano wiped his lips sloppily with the back of his grime-caked hand—its overgrown nails packed with black filth—(exuding the sleazy air of an awamori-bar drunkard). “He’s a proper entertainer, you see.” “The current stage scene’s crawling with worthless amateur performers—I can’t stand it.” “Those amateur manzai acts putting on airs make him sick.—No, I get how he feels.”

Asano glared fiercely at my face—(You damn amateur writer!)—as if hurling the words through his eyes. “He isn’t the type for manzai”—here Asano’s tone shifted slightly—“he once told me this: ‘A real entertainer stands alone on stage and holds his own against a crowd. Those manzai duos prancing about? Not true artists.’” He chuckled dryly. “Said becoming a manzai performer meant he’d stopped being a real entertainer altogether. Started out in yose theaters, you know. Long ago—back when vaudeville was dying out—he had no choice but to switch to manzai. Or should I say…fall into it?” “Joined Moriya Hotarōjō’s troupe and took the name Moriya Hotarō. But get this—Hotarōjō himself had abandoned rakugo for manzai when yose went under. Former master storyteller turned cheap comedian.” Asano’s fingers drummed the counter. “Now Hotarō-kun”—his phrasing turned oddly formal—“was primarily Kiyomoto school. His mother studied under Mistress Enju herself, they say. Forced into shamisen lessons as a child—served his full apprenticeship.” “Father was some big-shot contractor. Proper tradesman stock. So how’d he end up a performer?” Asano shrugged. “Your guess. Misfortune of art putting food on the table, I suppose.” He slammed his empty glass. “Hey old lady! Keep it coming.”

Asano emptied his glass in no time. He stared intently at the old lady as she poured,

“All sorts of entertainers come to the okonomiyaki shop, you know. Even if they’re varied, since it’s such a dirty place, no one worthwhile comes. It’s all just the kind of worthless amateur manzai performers the old man hates—those amateurs coil around the place, ranting and raving about how much they earned at some fancy gig tonight or how they’re so busy they don’t have enough bodies to go around, which only makes the old man even more sour.”

"So even though his wife was busy working alone, he kept going out for walks," Asano said.

In this story, while introducing “Fūryū Okonomiyaki—Hotarō,” I had yet to bring forth Hotarō himself. It would have been more expedient to have introduced Hotarō beforehand—indeed, before recounting Asano’s story of this nature—or so it seemed. But this wasn’t due to my carelessness; it wasn’t that I hadn’t brought him out, but rather that Hotarō simply wouldn’t appear. Whenever I attempted to introduce Hotarō in the narrative, he was invariably absent from home. When I asked his wife, she said he seemed to have gone to visit his war comrades. “They must be quite dear to him,” she remarked. “And his comrades come here too, you know.”

By the way, Asano’s remark about amateur manzai performers carrying on at “Hotarō” brought Kameya Pontan to my mind. Pontan had until very recently been a traveling actor. Still under twenty, he’d been nothing but a low-ranking performer when he teamed up with Tsuruya Anpon—whom he called “brother”—to become a manzai comedian. In those early days, they were being tried out everywhere and kept frantically busy. It was around then that I often encountered him at Hotarō’s place, brimming with ambition. When I heard he was making several hundred yen a month—though there was likely some boasting involved—I thought it only natural he’d make a stir, having leapt from a hand-to-mouth actor’s life to such earnings overnight. Yet even in this manzai-crazed era, that one could simply take the stage and earn a living struck me as downright alarming. If even an outsider like me found it astonishing, how galling it must have been for Hotarō. But back then, I knew nothing of what lay in Hotarō’s heart.

Now, this may be a digression, but before long the duo of Tsuruya Anpon and Kameya Pontan managed to secure a spot in Hall E of Asakusa Park’s “Manzai Permanent Hall.” Though amateurs, they must have been skilled. Or perhaps it was the “freshness” of amateurs that appealed to the audience. Thus, while it was good that they could now appear on Asakusa’s prestigious stage, being mere newcomers meant their monthly salary was sixty yen—thirty yen each, since the amount was for the pair.

By the way, Tsuruya Anpon—unlike Pontan, who came from an acting background—had no prior connection to the stage, having formerly been an assistant stationmaster at a certain station in Kyushu. He had become infatuated with a geisha, proceeded to neglect all his obligations in every quarter, ransomed her to live together, and got himself fired from his job—following the standard course of such affairs—before the two of them came up to Tokyo. As for how this former railway official came to be a manzai performer—I will omit that process for now—his wife, the former geisha, also became a manzai performer at the same time. That is, originally they had worked as a married couple, but upon teaming up with Kameya Pontan and aiming for a breakthrough, they began what they called “three-dimensional manzai” (though there was nothing particularly innovative about it—it was just a name; the content was no different from regular manzai). When they began this, his wife teamed up with others separately. Since his wife earned separately through other work, Anpon could manage even on his thirty-yen income—but Pontan, being single and lacking such supplementary earnings, couldn’t scrape by on thirty yen, despite the minimal expenses of his rented-room existence. So he said to “Bro”—“Let’s perform at some rundown theater and earn money—if we don’t earn, we’ll starve”—but Anpon refused, saying, “That’d be beneath our status. This is where we must endure.”

“It was this story that I heard from Hotarō’s wife.” “Mr. Pontan was so full of life just the other day—it’s a shame how he’s lost all his vigor now.—Manzai just doesn’t pay when you’re on your own, you know.” Back when Pontan was full of vigor, “—Hey, got any funny material? Please share some with me. I just can’t come up with a good closing bit.”

He would say this upon seeing my face, but lately he had stopped saying anything at all. He silently spent a long time eating Gosen’s “yakisoba.”— “Novels are no different, are they?” Asano leaned his elbows on the counter, propped his chin in his hands, and said with a mocking air. “Compared to literary novels, isn’t it the amateur ones—using cheap gimmicks to lure readers—that are dominating the scene? I’m of the same mind as Hotarō here.” “Pah!” “Makes me sick!”

It was a provocative voice. But then he immediately removed his hand from his chin, let his head drop with a heavy thud, and suddenly adopted a feeble, ingratiating tone. “No, the reason I don’t write novels—it’s not that I don’t write them, it’s that I can’t.—I’m no good.” “Oh, don’t say anything…” “I’m no good.”

—I was drunk. When drunk, the delicate figure of Koyanagi Masako began swirling wildly through my mind. I could no longer keep Koyanagi Masako’s name from escaping my lips. “The Koyanagi from K Theater?” Asano said. “If it’s K Theater, that’s my turf. How dare you trespass on my turf!” It seemed half in jest, half in earnest. Asano himself appeared both intoxicated and perfectly sober. “Trespass or not—I haven’t even exchanged a single word with her yet…”

“I just watch her dancing on stage from a corner of the audience, letting my heart race…” I said. My own words caught in my throat, and I wondered—*oh, had I turned into a maudlin drunk?* “I just watch her dancing on stage from a corner of the audience, letting my heart race…” “Well, well…”

Asano interrupted. "What’s this now? "That’s—" And wearing a mocking smile,

“Well then, let’s go to the dressing room together tomorrow.” “I’ll have you meet Koyanagi Masako.” “And then we’ll go out and have some tea or something, shall we?”

“……”

I wasn’t without acquaintances at Asakusa’s Leviou—had I asked, I could have secured such an opportunity—but something kept me from mustering the resolve to plead, and thus I had remained deprived of such chances until now. And now, the time had come for me to be granted such an opportunity. But I hesitated.

But Asano decided on his own, “You’ll be at your apartment tomorrow. I’ll come to fetch you in the evening.” When Asano decisively settled the matter, I was finally able to clearly confront the joy of meeting the longed-for Koyanagi Masako. Whether it was from joy or from alcohol, my heart was racing. “If it’s about Asakusa, leave everything to me…”

Having declared this with such bravado—it was here that I first saw Asano brimming with such vigor—Asano slapped his exposed bony chest with a thump and staggered from the force of his own blow.

Part Five: Beautiful Skin

This peculiar novel has already reached its fifth installment here. Seven months have already passed since I began writing—(not five months but seven; this discrepancy stems from having taken a two-month hiatus—and why did I stop? Ah, but that’s neither here nor there.) In those seven months, what have I managed to write? Ah, how absurd—a mere single day’s worth of story. Of course, the story hasn’t shown a shred of progress. If this had been written by a skilled author, they might have spun a tale spanning five or even seven years of tumultuous events in that same period. Even I hear my own voice muttering, *I need to find a way.* I must strive to somehow quicken the story’s tempo.

*

As promised, Asano Mitsuo came to visit my apartment, and I left. At the corner leading out to Kokusai-dori—the street with the Kokusai Theater—there was a bicycle parking area. Asano said: “It’s quite common, I hear—people leave their bicycles parked here and never come back to retrieve them. Some errand boy or something, must be. They park their bicycle while out on an errand, intending to catch a quick moving picture show, but end up idling around and can’t go back to their master. So they abandon their bicycles and run away. I hear there are bicycles like that around all the time.” Just as he had been the previous night, Asano was talkative.

When we emerged onto Kokusai-dori, it seemed the matinee performance of the Shochiku Girls’ Revue at the Kokusai Theater had just let out, and a vibrant crowd of young women—likely audience members—filled the sidewalk to overflowing, streaming toward Tawaramachi. Vividly conveying something distinctly different from Asakusa’s usual atmosphere, that resplendent current flowed straight toward Tawaramachi’s tram, bus, and subway stations. The Shochiku Girls’ Revue had originated in Asakusa and still performed at the Kokusai Theater located there, but its current audience turned their backs on Asakusa with a mix of disgust, contempt, and faint apprehension—shuttling briskly in unwavering straight lines between the station and theater, never veering toward Rokku or daring to set foot there. A sign at the Tawaramachi subway exit read “Please proceed straight to the Kokusai Theater”—and indeed, exactly as instructed, they arrived straight and departed straight. Faced with this self-assured torrent, I had long felt—though why? For I was neither a restaurateur hoping young patrons would stray toward Rokku to spend their money nor connected to any haberdashery catering to fashionable women—a frustration akin to what one feels toward those radiating confidence. And in that moment, confronted by what I might call a perfume-drenched certainty, we—oh, how utterly devoid of confidence we were in all things! We—who wore our diffidence like a badge of honor, having no other pride to claim—found ourselves thoroughly overwhelmed, spilling out toward the roadway. Yet for Asano, ever the chatterbox, this was precisely where he felt compelled to interject another remark. But no—scarcely had the words dried on my lips from vowing to quicken the story’s tempo than this outcome left me mortified.

Let’s press onward.

We went to the stage door of K Theater. Asano strode inside briskly with the air of someone who belonged there. His back seemed to radiate the same kind of triumphant confidence as when he had thumped his chest the previous night while declaring, "If it's about Asakusa, leave everything to me..." When entering, Asano said to me, "Well—," but it felt too ambiguously phrased to be a proper invitation to follow, and since I felt utterly intimidated, I remained alone outside.

In that alleyway before the stage door stood another bicycle parking area. Adjacent to it lay the rear of T Hall—a vaudeville theater facing Kokusai-dori—from which intermission music came drifting through. My heart pounded in rhythm with the melodies. "What's wrong?" Asano poked his head out from the doorway and asked.

I swallowed my saliva.

The Dancing Team’s dressing room was on the third floor backstage, shrouded in darkness. Nearly losing my footing on the steep, bare iron staircase, I climbed to the third floor. Of course, I hadn’t exactly waltzed into the dressing room with ease—but setting aside that noisy inner turmoil of mine, as for the dressing room scene: should I describe it here in meticulous detail or not? I wanted to write about it. As someone of my frivolous disposition—having long anticipated this dressing room scene with the perverse curiosity of one peering into women’s secrets, my heart racing at any cost to glimpse it—I’d rashly assumed you all shared this same prurient fascination. What’s more, armed with an idiotic sense of superiority that only I could satisfy such curiosity by having actually seen it, and consequently with a showy urge to babble on with a foolish grin—I wanted to write about it here, but no—I’ll omit this too.

The omission wasn't solely for maintaining the promised tempo. To confess—in that moment, seated at the center of that narrow room (compelled there by Asano?), flanked by rows of dancers on both sides, I became like some deep-sea creature with vestigial eyes hauled up into garish sunlight—not a single detail registered clearly in my vision. And so—yes, afterward this became my pretext for occasional dressing room visits, each time stealthily brushing away fragments of backstage life to hoard in memory until I could describe them at will. Yet how dishonest it would be to flaunt such accumulated observations when that first intrusion bore no resemblance—when through fidelity to that initial blindness, writing nothing became the only realism (?), and so I omit.

I was introduced to Koyanagi Masako. “Koyanagi-kun. This is Mr. Kurahashi—a novelist.”

Asano sat cross-legged at the center of the dressing room and announced in a haughty, pompous tone: "Mr. Kurahashi here is your greatest admirer, Koyanagi-kun—you'd do well to treat him properly." He spoke so loudly that all the dancers turned toward us. I flushed crimson, "The pleasure is all mine..." Then Asano pulled a face that seemed to protest how unbecoming it was for someone styled "Sensei" to adopt such a subservient manner, attempting to halt my bow mid-motion.

“Sensei…” Asano began in an even sterner voice—

“Mr. Asano…” I interrupted. (Sensei this, Sensei that—spare me.) Feeling mocked and pained, I tried to say it, but my nerves left me tongue-tied. Koyanagi Masako turned her knees toward me and sat up properly, frantically tugging her skirt to hide her bare knees while wearing a humiliated expression. She hunched her shoulders, kept her head bowed, and remained silent.

She still had a body like a child’s. When seen on stage, despite her delicate and fragile beauty, she appeared fully mature—yet here, she seemed like a different girl altogether. Her neck was painfully slender, her chest like a boy’s. I, too—with the sensation that I was somehow humiliating and tormenting her, who still seemed little more than a child—felt a pain in my chest, when one of the dancers nearby— “Hey, Mr. Asano,”

When she said this, I felt a wave of relief. “Last night, Mr. XX and the others came over to my place—wait, no—it wasn’t last night anymore, it’s already today.” “—Wait, no—it wasn’t last night anymore. It’s already today.” In a masculine tone, she continued, “—Said they were going drinking in Yoshiwara. They were all wasted, you know, insisting I come along.” “When I said no, they insisted I at least serve them tea, so I took them up to my place—and they just plopped down, started talking, and didn’t leave until morning.”

“Mr. XX and who?” “Who was it again? —I’m really at my wit’s end here.” The dancer—with her flat nose and lips that protruded as if compensating—began this exchange with Asano while vigorously scratching her unceremoniously splayed bare legs.

Koyanagi Masako and I sat there stiffly in silence. Before long, Asano,

“Sā-chan, let me introduce you,” he said. The dancer named Sā-chan, her legs still splayed out, “Nice to meet you…”

With practiced composure that betrayed no awkwardness, I felt relieved. "This one here runs the Senju Broom Shop in Senju," Asano said. "Even if you tried draping a hand towel over a broom to shoo away last night's lingering guests, the whole place is so crammed with brooms you couldn't pick which one to use..." "Silly man, Mr. Asano..." "But it's true, isn't it?" "Well, the brooms everywhere part's true enough..." "Didn't you come up with that hand towel gag yourself once?" "Oh? Now that you mention it... I suppose I did."

Sā-chan laughed brightly.

—It was before the show began. Once the show ended, it was decided that we would go out for tea during intermission with Sā-chan and Koyanagi Masako, so we waited in the basement beneath the stage until the show was over.

In the basement were costume rooms and such, and in that narrow corridor, dancers in provocative outfits wandered about, waiting for their cue.

I wanted to go around to the audience seats and watch the show, but Asano— “There’s no point in watching the show anyway.” He cracked a joke and looked at me with eyes that seemed to say he preferred the raw vitality of this place. To the point of making an uncharacteristic joke for Asano, his face was utterly buoyant—and in that manner, “Kamiguchi-kun.”

he called out to a tall man holding a guitar.

“Oh, Mr. Asano!”

That was Kamiguchi Kurosu Hyōe—one of the quartet of vaudevillians known as "The Cheerful Four." Asano exchanged some idle talk with Kamiguchi and then,

“Let me introduce you—this is Mr. Kurahashi, the novelist.” Then Kamiguchi, “Well, well…” Then—as befitting a stage performer—he made an exaggerated gesture of respect, “I’ve always made a point of reading your esteemed works.” I flushed with embarrassment, “Oh—uh, thank you.” “Last month’s piece—was it in Kōdan World?—I found your esteemed work most entertaining...” I had never once written for Kōdan World, a popular magazine. I was utterly flustered,

“Oh—uh, thanks.” In Metro Alley stood a café called “Bon Jour” that had a Ginza-like feel—an uncommon sight in Asakusa. Ginza-style—now that I thought of it, Ginza-style cafés couldn’t penetrate what you might call Asakusa’s inner heart. Instead, they spread like psoriatic rashes across its periphery—places like Metro Alley and International Street that clung to Asakusa like a flimsy membrane. Looking at it that way, Metro Alley was Asakusa’s version of a Ginza street—yes. That’s right. A memory surfaced.

How many years ago was that now? Back when Ayuko had left me and was working as an actress for S Movie Studio, I had happened upon her walking along Ginza Avenue with another actress from the same studio, and somehow we three ended up coming to Asakusa on a whim. We even went into this Ginza-style café in Metro Alley. It was winter. When we stepped out and were about to head toward the subway station, those two actresses in gaudy outfits suddenly stopped short and began murmuring to each other. They whispered conspiratorially while darting glances toward the hardware store’s display window nearby.

“What’s up?” “What’s wrong?”

I turned around and said.

“No, it’s just that this person here...”

Ayuko said, turning to the other actress—whose high, upturned nose perhaps gave her an air of affected refinement, her face stiff like porcelain— “—Well, this person here was saying she might want to buy a hot-water bottle...”

“A hot-water bottle?” The prim and proper actress and the hot-water bottle.

It felt utterly bizarre.—Looking closer, at the front of the hardware store, several egg-shaped hot-water bottles hung strung together, emanating their own slightly uncanny air. Would an actress ever feel inclined to buy a hot-water bottle on Ginza Avenue? That alley may have been a Ginza-like street in Asakusa, but it still wasn’t Ginza.

In a corner of that street’s “Bon Jour,” Asano and I sat facing Koyanagi Masako and Sā-chan across from us in pairs.

At last, I had met the longed-for Koyanagi Masako. I had finally attained a state where I could gaze upon her bare face and her figure as closely as I wished, and speak with her about anything at all.

What joy. But along with joy, I was assailed by a deep sadness I had not anticipated until that moment. What was I supposed to do now that we’d met? I ask myself.

…

Now that I’d met her—what was I supposed to talk about? There was nothing to talk about. Even so, trying to say something, I searched for words, but my heart was empty.

―Asano alone was talking. “I hear Koyanagi is also going to China this time with the comfort troupe from K Theater.” “—Yes.” In a bashfully small voice, she wore a smile that seemed to compensate for it. “When are you leaving?” “Meiji Festival Day.” “Where from—Tokyo Station? Hmm.” “Is someone seeing you off? What time?” “—Three o’clock.” She looked bashful, her voice still small. “How many people are going in total?” Under the barrage of questions—blinking like a small bird battered to the ground, fluttering its wings in sorrow—she turned a pleading face toward Sā-chan.

“There are five of us in total,” Sā-chan answered on her behalf. Following this, Masako nodded two or three times with a smile that seemed to require great effort. Masako seemed to smile in place of words—she would not speak unless spoken to, and even then, her responses were brief. Such a Masako—whether due to her dewy, or rather pallid complexion from lack of sunlight—evoked the image of a delicate potted herb. It was the delicate beauty of a small plant blooming quietly and ephemerally. It was a pitiable quality—one that stirred not love but pity in the hearts of men.

“Where does Koyanagi-kun live?” To Asano’s question, “—Terajima, right?” Sā-chan answered on her behalf. “Terajima?” “Hirokōji, right?”

“Asano—‘On rehearsal nights—do you go home or stay over?’” “We stay in the dressing room.” “Where I live，even if it’s one or two in the morning，I can still walk home.” “In Terajima—can’t she walk?” (And turning toward me) “You see，everyone stays in the dressing room we went to earlier．Except for the first and second days when there’s no rehearsal，from the third day onward，rehearsals for the next show start right up，so those from far away in our troupe end up staying in the dressing room．” “So，out of ten days，they can only go home on the two without rehearsals—meaning they spend nearly the entire month sleeping in the dressing room．” “They’re holding up remarkably well．” “On top of how grueling just performing on stage is，they have rehearsals after shows，then sleep packed like sardines in that dusty dressing room—honestly，I’m amazed they don’t ruin their health．” “It’s their youth，I suppose．” “It’s because they’re young—that’s how everyone manages it，I suppose．”

(I recalled Mine Misako’s words—how a literary member from T Theater had told her that Asakusa dancers were mere stage consumables.) “Mr. Asano, comparing us to sardines in a can—that’s a terrible thing to say!” “But isn’t that exactly how it is? If as many as twenty-odd people are sleeping in that cramped dressing room—” “Sardines… Yeah, now that you mention it, we dancers really are like sardines, aren’t we?” “Don’t take it so personally.”

“I would resent it!” “But sardines taste better than half-baked sea bream,” Asano countered. “No need to demean yourself.” He bared his tobacco-stained teeth in a grotesque grin directed at me. “Especially when you’ve gorged on nothing but sea bream—makes you crave sardines. Try them and you’ll see—sardines outclass sea bream any day.” “Oh, come off it,” Sā-chan retorted.

“Asa—it’s nothing. Anyway—don’t get angry when they call you sardines.” When we had engaged in such talk just then—hunger abruptly came over us.

That was what prompted us to go eat kamameshi. Since we had moved to a new location, hoping to shift the mood and engage Masako in conversation, I found her picking up a scrap of paper from the corner of the tatami room, placing it on her lap, and staring down at it intently—

“What’s that—let me see.” I said. Masako silently smiled and handed it over. She didn’t offer any explanation. There was a kind of sad meekness in how she complied without question. When I looked—it turned out to be something utterly absurd. A cosmetic pamphlet. Someone must have bought the product here, opened the box, and discarded just this leaflet. If it hadn’t been meek Masako offering this, I might have taken it as mockery and grown angry. In any case, this provided no conversational material with her. Though absurdly disappointed, I couldn’t simply discard it and sat scowling. As I did so, my eyes caught on an odd phrase: “Plant-Based Bi-Hadōso Formula.” “Shokubutsusei, Bi…” I muttered.

"Bi... Bihadso, Haigou..." I placed the paper on the table. The table was sticky with alcohol.

“How was this supposed to be read? Bihadso—what sound does ‘skin’ make? What was it I said?” With a look that asked what nonsense I was spouting now, Asano—

“Skin?” “The sound of skin?”

“Yeah.” “Skin… Well…” “The ‘hada’ in ‘skin,’ you see.” “Hmm, what would you call it… Wait—it’s *hada*, right?” “The body’s *happu*—this we receive from our parents…” “You mustn’t damage your hair and skin.” “Happu.” “Hatsu is hair—and Hada would be *pu*, wasn’t it?” “No, that’s not right.” “Or is ‘pu’ the ‘fu’ in ‘skin’?”

Masako pressed the backs of her hands to her flushed cheeks and laughed. Her peach-colored little finger looked so adorably edible it made you want to devour it whole. "Skin—now that you mention it, Koyanagi-kun does have nice skin."

Asano narrowed his eyes and took a quick sip of his drink, “Truly beautiful skin.”

Having said that, he casually crumpled the efficacy pamphlet into a ball with a loud crunch. Perhaps due to the paper’s quality, it made an alarmingly loud noise. “Mā-chan’s skin is so beautiful.” Sā-chan said, idly poking her finger into her nostril. “You’re stunning when you’re naked. So pure white and smooth…” “So pure white and silky smooth…” “—This is painful.” “Even a woman like me can’t help but be smitten.” Masako blushed but, without making a fuss, cupped both cheeks with her hands and lowered her eyes to the table. I, too, looked down.

“I always wash Mā-chan’s back in the dressing room bath.” “I love washing Mā-chan’s body.” “It’s such a beautiful body, you know.”

Then suddenly,

“Mr. Kurahashi,”

Asano interrupted in a hoarse voice. “Do you know the garden at Denbō-in?” He said something outlandish. But I felt I somehow understood why Asano had so abruptly cut off Sā-chan’s talk. “Speaking of Denbō-in’s garden…” “It’s a landscape garden.” “Speaking of gardens…” “The one in front of the ward office—”

“Ah, that place there?” “Not yet…” “Never been inside?” “Pathetic.” “…………”

“It’s quite nice.” “You know nothing about Asakusa, Mr. Kurahashi—they say that was designed by Kobori Enshū, a strolling garden like Kyoto’s Katsura Imperial Villa.” (This, I later learned, was plainly written at the garden’s entrance.) “The place in front of Tamaki-za, the one with the wall around it…”

Sā-chan interjected. "Yeah." "I’ve never been in there either. I’ve heard about it, though." Asano gave a wry smile. "A nice garden?" "Sure, it’s nice." With unnervingly forced effort, "It’s perfect for a rendezvous.—How about it? Mr. Kurahashi, how about going on a rendezvous with Masako?"

Having said that—in a hurried, forceful voice as if trying to retract those very words— “It’s a truly fine garden steeped in Edo’s atmosphere, but… From behind Noguchi Diner, some vulgar pop song record keeps blaring away—that’s what ruins it all. And then beyond this garden brimming with Edo charm, you’ve got those horribly modern ward office sirens and loudspeakers looming over everything. Doesn’t it all feel jarringly mismatched?”

The iron pot rice arrived.

“Now then, please help yourselves.”

Asano said, "Oh, where’s the fish cake soup?" This was for the waitress— We had ordered fish cake soup. “Yes, right away.” The shop was a chaotic jumble of people. We were sitting in a corner on the second floor. When the waitress left,

“Having to wait for them to bring out the soup last—what a drag.”

Even as he said this, he had already lifted the pot’s lid, plunged his chopsticks into the rising steam, and promptly took a bite. “Hot!”

He rolled his eyes wildly. In that comical, wretched shape of his mouth—like a hungry dog struggling with a hard bone— “How funny!”

Sā-chan put her hands on Masako’s knees, shaking them as she guffawed. Masako also twisted her body as if tickled and laughed.

Though young in years, these revue dancers were already fully-fledged adults living independently. Yet holding hands and laughing uproariously like that, the two of them resembled innocent children. It was an innocent laugh, like that of children who knew nothing of life’s hardships.

Asano, however, seemed to take offense at their laughter, “They’re making me out to be the comic relief here—Mr. Kurahashi’s quite the leading man…”

It was a voice directed at me. Next to us sat an elderly couple who seemed to have come from Yamanote to visit Asakusa—though not finely dressed, they had a gentle, pleasant air about them. Though sharing one table should have meant sitting face-to-face, they instead pressed close together at the table’s corner, sitting primly with their bodies nearly touching. “Old man,” “Granny,” they murmured with mutual care, chewing as they brought their mouths close to each other’s ears, chatting happily about this and that. As they spoke, the old woman took oysters from her own pot and transferred them to the old man’s—and there alone, amidst the surrounding clamor, a gentle tranquility seemed to linger undisturbed. I envied that atmosphere.

At Asano’s words, Masako stifled her laughter, but Sā-chan kept on laughing, “Mr. Asano, if you played the comic role, you’d definitely kill it.” Sā-chan said. “Don’t talk nonsense.” “By the way, Mr. Kurahashi—” Blowing on his tongue, “Lately, they’ve set up archery ranges all over the park, haven’t they?”

“Hmm.” “Mr. Kurahashi—you haven’t even noticed? That’s just pitiful.” Masako had gingerly lifted the iron pot’s lid to peer inside, but at Asano’s sharp tone, she snapped it shut. “Hurry up and eat—once it cools, it’ll taste awful for me too. Do you think it’s because of the war?” “Huh?” “About archery ranges… I believe they’ll multiply.” "They’re bound to become popular." "Archery ranges have always been an Asakusa specialty—though of course today’s versions differ from the old ones—but you could call it a revival of sorts.”

“I see.”

Masako was picking small scallops from the pot and putting them into her mouth one by one. Though likely no longer scalding, she parted her thin-skinned lips—so delicate they might blister from even mild heat—to clamp the morsel between teeth of translucent whiteness tinged faintly blue. A whisper of rouge colored only the outer edges of her lips, so when pursed, they revealed unadorned inner flesh—a beautiful pale pink—while between the red cosmetic and white enamel glistened that vividly moist hue of living tissue, unbearably sensual pressing against my vision. I felt as though the sensuality I'd desperately concealed had been effortlessly uncovered and precisely pricked, leaving me both ashamed and sorrowful. That's right. That pose of Masako's—her lips pursed in unintentional allure—was not, I thought, consciously meant to create such an impression, yet it undeniably constituted a coquettish gesture. From that coquettish gesture, Asano, as if trying to divert my gaze,

“Writers of old apparently frequented Asakusa’s archery ranges quite a bit, I hear.” he went on. “Take Myōbisai—he caused scandals with women at archery ranges. They say it was Kōda Rohan who taught him the ropes of those pastimes. But when it came to skill in frequenting archery ranges and the exclusive sake houses that sprang up afterward, Myōbisai couldn’t hold a candle to Rohan’s reputation as a playboy back then. Hard to imagine from the Rohan we know today.”

“I see.” “What do you think? Wouldn’t that make a fine essay topic? I’d hate for you to steal it—no, go ahead and write it if you like.”

“…………”

I wanted to talk to Masako! But as Asano went on ranting alone about such nonsense to me, time passed all too anticlimactically.

As time grew short, I escorted Masako and the others as they hurried off to the backstage entrance, where we parted ways.

It felt utterly anticlimactic. Perhaps because of that anticlimactic feeling, when I parted with Masako, I was relentlessly assailed by a sadness—a sadness as though I had lost something, though I couldn’t say what. That's right. Even while we were together—my heart fluttering with excitement yet simultaneously gripped by unshakable sorrow—now only sadness claimed my heart. I was dreadfully, unspeakably weary.

Ah, how fervent—downright idiotic—were the feelings I had harbored for Koyanagi Masako! That I had finally managed to meet Koyanagi Masako—and this was the result? Such heartrending sorrow, such desolate exhaustion—what in the world did it all mean? Amidst the bustling crowds of the movie theater district at its peak, I tilted my face like a lifeless fool. Never had I felt so clearly—so vividly, with such unwitting anguish—the loneliness in the bustle, the solitude amidst the crowd, that I had secretly cherished until now.

Even Asano had completely slipped from my mind. Asano, too, had fallen silent.

But suddenly, Asano lashed out at me in a venomous, spiteful tone.

“Someone like Koyanagi Masako—Mr. Kurahashi—she’s utterly childish, unreliable, and uninteresting, don’t you think?” “Or is eating unripe fruit your hobby, Mr. Kurahashi?”

“Eat? Such a—I...” “As for Koyanagi—she puts on that childish air, but she might be playing innocent for all we know…” “Playing innocent?” “You’re quite the one for playing innocent yourself.” “What do you mean by ‘playing innocent’?”

Asano floated a faint smile and, with a single smooth motion, stroked down his sallow face. “When you grow tired of sea bream, you start craving wretched sardines.” “But when you hide those true cravings from others and say ‘It’s not like I want it’—that’s what we call playing innocent.” This was the same Asano who had so eagerly—nay, proudly—introduced Masako to me. Yet now his words laid bare his regret, his detestation of my “poisonous fangs” that he himself had nurtured.

Before long, I parted ways with Asano.

Alone now, I scrutinized myself anew—this self that Asano had labeled "a man who's grown tired of sea bream and now seeks sardines." I certainly don't recall growing tired of sea bream—but when I strictly examined whether my feelings for Koyanagi Masako truly contained no trace of ambition, I couldn't definitively say they didn't. But to think of myself as someone who couldn't say it was terribly shameful. And to have been thought of by Asano as that kind of man was deeply shameful—a profoundly humiliating sensation.

Perhaps Masako too had seen me as that kind of man. Perhaps? No—undoubtedly, she must have seen me that way. When I thought of that, I couldn’t bear it. Sā-chan must have seen me that way too. That’s right—the dancers in the dressing room must have all seen me that way. Kamiguchi Kurosu Hyōe must have seen me that way too. Unaware of this, I had been shamelessly flaunting my face around the dressing room. How wretchedly tainted and brazen my face must have appeared.

I felt my entire body burning with shame.

I recalled Mine Misako’s words to me—her question of whether I was prowling Asakusa with some grotesque curiosity. Misako too had seen me as a man searching for "sardines".

If that’s the case—Dosakan must have seen me that way too.

The wife of “Hotarō” must have seen me that way too. Kameya Pontan, Suematsu Haruyoshi, and... I felt those eyes sternly fixed upon me lashing like a whip—crack after crack. Within those eyes, I even saw the eyes of Butajima Shigeru, whom I had never met. It was shining the most brightly, for some reason.— Those eyes were, so to speak, the eyes of Asakusa.

I could no longer bear to stay in Asakusa.

I returned home to Ōmori as if pursued.

……

Part Six: There’s a Head Under the Hat

How many days had it been since I had last been to Asakusa? Within me, a kind of nostalgic sentiment toward Asakusa had finally begun to accumulate. Yet again, I found myself wanting to go to Asakusa. At first, it was a vague thought—something like “Ah, I kinda want to go to Asakusa”—but before long, that feeling progressed into concrete desires: things I wanted to do this way and that once I went there. It was akin to how someone living abroad might have felt a concrete form of nostalgia through desires like craving a bowl of ochazuke with takuan—that crisp, crackling bite of pickled radish they wanted to gobble down in one brisk motion. Yet for me, Asakusa itself had become the foreign land, making this an odd reversal. In other words, perhaps it should have been called longing rather than nostalgia. But in terms of emotion, it had felt far closer to nostalgia than longing.

I found myself intensely longing for those bowls from Asakusa’s cheap eateries—the ones heaping with "meal" piled mountain-high. As I ate my "proper rice" from the neat, modest bowls in my own home, I began craving a grubby, robust "meal". It might be called a kind of self-indulgence, but—That’s right—there was a friend of mine who lived alone in an apartment and took all three (or perhaps two daily) meals at cheap eateries, when one time—

“I want to sit down and eat proper rice.” There was a time when he had said such things, but if that friend were to speak of my current yearnings, they would surely be deemed utterly preposterous. That friend, though on a different topic, also told us this: “I’ve had enough of love affairs with women who are like cheap à la carte dishes. I want to experience love with a first-class woman who feels as richly abundant as an extravagant table d’hôte where different dishes keep appearing one after another.”

The expression was so brilliantly apt that we burst into uproarious laughter at its cleverness. That had also pinpointed all of our feelings. The women we knew—or rather, those within our daily, easily accessible sphere—were entirely “third-rate” women: spiritually impoverished, shallow, emaciated creatures who could be understood at a single glance, like à la carte dishes. We knew no women who, the more you associated with them, the more richness you could feel.

By the way, when that friend said he wanted to sit down and eat proper rice, we burst into uproarious laughter. It wasn’t a laughing matter, which was precisely why we did so. First and foremost, the one who had said it was the first to burst out laughing uproariously, and laughed the most violently. My longing—or perhaps nostalgia—for those bowl meals, when compared to my friend’s heartfelt yearning for proper home-cooked dinners, seemed truly laughable, shameful, and foolish. But this was not akin to what Asano had meant by growing tired of sea bream and craving sardines. Meals at home were by no means “sea bream,” nor did I have any desire to eat “sea bream”-like meals outside. So what did it mean that I longed for these bowl meals? Could it be some peculiar fondness for wallowing in destitution? That’s right. Could it be a quirk? Or perhaps…

*

It was an unseasonably mild afternoon. I opened the second-floor shoji screen and the glass door beyond it, settling at my desk facing outward to work on my manuscript. My thoughts kept scattering, making no progress. Across the street stood a two-story house with its window shut tight, yet I found myself staring blankly at that closed pane more often than not. Determined to reset my mood, I rose to visit the bathroom. After lingering there longer than necessary and returning upstairs, I discovered the opposite window had been opened during my absence—a girl of fourteen or fifteen leaned against its frame from the neighboring house. Her gloomy eyes gazed outward as though immersed in melancholy thoughts.

Our eyes met. Both averted their gazes simultaneously. I had been facing my desk but eventually stole a glance—though we were fully visible to each other across the gap, and since I remained stubbornly exposed, I assumed she must have withdrawn from the window thinking “How vulgar,” yet she—she too held her ground. Her profile betrayed awareness of my stare. Every girl her age tumbles into that awkward phase between bud and bloom—a peculiar homeliness—but hers stood out: a pallid face dotted with blemishes that flaunted this transitional ugliness with shameless composure. That profile seemed both genuinely absorbed in melancholy thoughts and deliberately performing them for my benefit. Catching a glimpse of a girl privately nursing her sorrows might move one to pity—but having that sadness thrust upon you, even by a fourteen-year-old, can’t help but breed resentment. They’d mock me for pettiness, but it felt downright unsavory. Her plainness surely contributed, yet my irritation ran deeper. I couldn’t write a damned word.

At first I’d been stealing furtive glances, but soon I abruptly raised my head and glared. I kept my glaring eyes fixed on the girl’s face. The girl was fully aware of this—composed, reveling in her melancholy mood, her face taking even greater pleasure from showing me this posture of sorrow. Defeated, I slammed the shoji shut with a sharp clatter.

In that instant, I realized my novel was the spitting image of that unpleasant girl. I had a particular fondness for writing novels that shoved things like “I am sad—” down readers’ throats. “—What the hell is this?”

I couldn’t fathom in what way that had become the impetus, but that day, taking that as the trigger, I went to Asakusa.

On Kokusai-dori in Rokku stood a milk hall called Sakata that felt like a rest stop for the shack dwellers of the district. (It had been handsomely renovated that year—December 1938—and though its sign had formerly read “milk hall,” it was now rebranded as a “milk parlor.”) I went there to drink milk coffee.

I hadn’t wanted to meet anyone—or rather, I had been afraid of meeting anyone—but there I encountered Dosakan.

Dosakan and I had only met at “Hotarou,” but perhaps because I’d heard from Misako that Dosakan knew of me, I got the mistaken impression we were acquaintances and greeted him with a “Hey there”—but when Dosakan blinked in surprise, I realized my error. By then, I was already seated in the chair across from him. Feeling compelled to say something to dispel the awkwardness, “That act you were rehearsing upstairs at Hotarou the other day—how did it go?”

“The other day, that act you were rehearsing upstairs at Hotarou—how did that turn out?” I said. Dosakan wore a friendly yet timid-seeming smile and said in a somber voice that his sales weren’t going well and he still hadn’t performed even once since rehearsing. “That must be tough.” With that, the conversation came to an abrupt halt.

Dosakan and I turned our faces away at the same time. “Excuse me, excuse me—milk coffee.”

I said to the waitress there in Western clothes and geta. On the long, narrow table were plates heaped with boiled eggs, jars containing bagged butter-coated peanuts, and a glass confectionery box filled with donuts, waffles, cream puffs, spiral castella cakes, and the like. I cast my eyes upon the confectionery box but somehow felt a greedy urge coming over me— “Hey, hey—give me this one. The Siberia.”

I said to the waitress dragging her scuffed geta with a shuffling scrape. The waitress’s bare feet were pockmarked with insect bites. Dosakan and I were turned away from each other. Yet before long—though I couldn’t say how much time had passed—we found ourselves exchanging words with an intimacy that belied our having only just met. On one hand, I was terribly shy around strangers; yet paradoxically, I also possessed such a nature, and Dosakan seemed to share this same nature as me.

And then Dosakan told me this story. “I hear your ex-wife has gone to Shanghai. “Yes—Mii-chan—Miss Mine Misako—told me.” “What ever happened with Goro-chan—Ooya Goro?” “Did they break up?” “I’d thought they’d split up anyway—but if they were going to part ways—I’d have rather kept Reiko-chan and Ooya Goro together.—That’s right.” “Ichikawa Reiko—she’s Mii-chan’s younger sister.” “She used to be with Goro-chan.” “Poor thing died.” “The reason being—she was abandoned by Ooya Goro.” “Originally—she had a weak constitution.” “Maybe because of that—she was timid but kind-hearted—and truly met a pitiful end.” “Not long after splitting with Ooya Goro—it must’ve hit her hard—she coughed up blood onstage during rehearsal.—After that—she was hospitalized but never recovered.—They say Ooya Goro’s a real bastard.” “Yes—he’s a bad one.” “But I shouldn’t say this—your ex-wife’s also at fault.” “If anything—your ex-wife’s worse.” “She was an actress at S Movie.” “At that time—Ooya Goro performed at T Theater—and next door was S Movie’s premiere theater.” “Then there was Ayuko-san—your ex-wife was named Ayuko-san—” “Ayuko-san appeared in a live show there—and that’s how she met Ooya Goro.”

“He was a leading man, you see.” “Ayuko-san had fallen head over heels for Goro-chan—even after her live performance ended, she came to Asakusa every day and camped out in T Theater’s dressing room.” “She didn’t care a whit about people’s stares.” “It caused quite a scandal back then.” “Ooya Goro already had a proper girlfriend—Reiko-chan—who was also performing at T Theater.” “Ayuko-san might not have known that at first, but once she started haunting that dressing room, she must’ve heard.” “Yet she kept swaggering in there anyway—until Reiko-chan ended up shrinking into herself.” “When outraged folks told Reiko-chan, ‘We can’t just stand by and watch this,’ she’d only weep and say, ‘But...’” “Then Goro brought up breaking things off with her.” He’d apparently said: “Ayuko-san’s got this wealthy patron—a decent sort—who’s promised her a fat sum when she marries proper.” “So she says she’ll ditch him to marry me—use that money to fund my studies.” “Wants to make me a top singer while she ‘settles down reformed.’” “‘My big chance to rise from Asakusa’s gutter,’ he told her—‘so let’s end this.’” “And Reiko-chan—truly, I think that girl was Asakusa’s saddest child—” “‘If it’ll help Goro-chan succeed,’ she said through tears, ‘I’ll step aside.’” “Poor thing loved him to death.—‘Once you’re coughing blood in the hospital,’ she’d say, ‘you’re already gone.’” “‘Let me see him one last time,’ she begged Mii-chan through her tears, they say.” “Mii-chan raged about that heartless bastard, scolding Reiko—‘Don’t you dare ask for him!’—but the girl wouldn’t listen.” “In the end, pity won out—Mii-chan swallowed her pride and went to fetch Goro.”

“It’s like a *Shinpa* tragedy—unbelievable, but—in Asakusa, such *Shinpa*-style tragedies lie thick on the ground.” “That may be Asakusa’s charm, but it’s also its undoing.” “Because those bastards swoop in and exploit that very charm.—Take Goro-chan coming to visit—that’s exactly it.” “Goro-chan came to the hospital with Ayuko-san.” “The two marched right up to Reiko-chan’s bedside—and then Ayuko-san brought this ridiculously expensive-looking bouquet as a get-well gift, they say. Later, Mii-chan was furious—‘Bringing such goddamn useless flowers!’ she fumed.” “‘If they were gonna bring something anyway,’ she said, ‘they should’ve brought eggs or something practical.’” “She’d been scrambling to scrape together the hospital money, you see.” “After Goro-chan and the others left, Mii-chan apparently chucked that bouquet right out the window.” “Then soon after—calling ‘Goro-chan… Goro-chan…’—Reiko-chan died.”

Dosakan twisted his blood-red lips and, while plaintively stroking his chest that seemed afflicted with the same illness as Reiko's, "It's a complete Shinpa tragedy, isn't it?" "Damn it all—this is utterly contemptible!"

“Mm—”

I emitted a groan as though stifling agony.

How utterly this story had shocked me. That something straight out of a Shinpa tragedy had occurred in reality—that something so unthinkable had truly happened—the horror of that fact struck me.

And then I—by some turn (there must have been a connection there, though I couldn’t grasp it myself)—amidst a tempest of violent emotions, abruptly recalled something pitiable about Koyanagi Masako’s figure. “I—and then—”

Dosakan continued speaking. “—The reason I recognized your face from before—though I shouldn’t phrase it this way—was because I kept wondering what sort of man could’ve been married to someone like Ayuko-san…”

“Mm—” Again, I let out a groan of agony. Beside me, a man who appeared to be a traveling actor recruiter and another who looked like an actor had both thrust their hands into a single sleeve and were negotiating wages (*oshinsho*) with their fingers. “Another one, please. Come on.”

A thug-like man with a gourd-shaped face, his eyes smeared black beneath, was putting on a show of deference and pleading obsequiously. "It’s so hard, I tell ya." the other man said. The two of them were so engrossed in that, they didn’t even glance our way. Outside on International Avenue, an extra edition seller rang his bell and scurried past.……

⁂

…………

I was standing in the darkness at the very back of K Theater’s audience seats.

The movie would soon end. K Theater screened both films and shows; those connected to Leviou in Rokku saw the movies as mere supplements, while film industry people considered their pictures the main attraction with shows being courtesy offerings for moviegoers. (It paralleled how writers from pure literature backgrounds—yielding to journalism’s demands—produced popular novels alongside serious works, leading some to dismiss them as commercial hacks while others still defended their literary credentials.) The film—adapted from an elementary schoolgirl’s composition in Kōtō Ward that newspapers had inexplicably lionized, proclaiming her a genius before adapting her essay into a stage play—was one I’d already seen at a Marunouchi cinema when invited by a friend. My reason for rewatching it at K Theater stemmed not from any particular merit in the film itself; to me, even cinematic masterpieces shown here felt like afterthoughts. What I truly craved was the show—specifically, the show featuring Koyanagi Masako. Yet entering solely for the performance felt awkwardly transparent before the now-familiar ticket-taker girl, so I arrived early before showtime and endured this twice-seen film with obligingly unenthusiastic detachment.

The scene was—the schoolgirl’s tinsmith father, despite it being New Year’s Eve, hadn’t been paid by his boss and faced the New Year penniless. The good-natured father flew into a frenzy as if driven mad by anguish when he returned home to his family. The scene reached that point, but compared to the rowdy commotion on screen, the audience sat in dead silence—and I thought, Huh? When I saw it in Marunouchi, the Marunouchi audience burst out laughing here. Salarymen who’d never known debt collection’s hardships, students who could lie around waiting for parental funds even when broke, rentiers who’d surely never seen a Kōtō tenement—those Marunouchi patrons roared with laughter at the New Year’s tragedy. True, even I had chuckled some—the actor playing the tinsmith father gave a comically frenzied performance—but at that humor, the Asakusa crowd never laughed. Far from laughing—when I looked, the woman before me, likely a craftsman’s wife, wiped her eyes with a shawl despite soot-stained strands clinging to her face. Sobs seeped from every corner.

(Oh, Asakusa!)

My heart constricted by emotion, I wanted to reach out to Asakusa—to this entity whose true nature I couldn’t grasp, this vague entity called Asakusa. I was reaching out.

(After all, it’s Asakusa.) Involuntarily, I muttered those words to myself. What could save me—adrift in midair and floundering pointlessly—was Asakusa. Yes, coming to Asakusa had been right. That conviction sank into me with quiet intensity. I wanted to cry. I was happy—I had been crying. But that meant I’d wept at the movie alongside Asakusa’s audience. I wanted to shed tears for the entity called Asakusa. I had been drifting aimlessly—but now I’d finally collided with something, clung to it. Though I still didn’t fully grasp what that something was—whether it was truly worth clinging to or might save me if I did—even so, if I held fast and pressed onward, yes, I felt I might finally be able to “place a hat upon my head.” A strange phrase—to explain: once a drunkard had picked up a hat dropped on the road, placed it on his head, and bellowed, “There’s a head under this hat!” That fragment alone had reached my ears in passing; I never learned what he’d said before. There must have been more context, but that odd phrase alone had fully captured my interest and seeped into my mind.

“There’s a head under the hat.……” Perhaps there existed a song like this, or something of the sort. It might have been an inane prank of a phrase, but to me, it resonated with bottomless significance.

“There’s a head under the hat. “There’s a human inside the clothes.” I had muttered those words once before. A hat ought to sit atop one’s head. Hats exist to be worn by people—they should serve human heads. But a head existing for the sake of a hat... do such people not exist? Hats—what an intriguing symbol. “There’s a head under the hat.” This phrase fascinated me. Just as I was marveling at it, those words cracked like a whip against my skin. Wasn’t I precisely that sort of person—one with a head merely serving as pedestal for a hat? Hadn’t there been countless such moments?……

The movie ended. At last came the show.

But I discovered there a self different from the one who had entered K Theater to see the show. I had been in a mood to look upward as though trying to admire flowers, but now I found myself gazing downward at my own feet. Yet my longing for Koyanagi Masako was no mere romantic infatuation—it must have been one manifestation of my heart’s wanderings seeking something to cling to—and in that shared desperation lay some common ground after all.

Before I knew it, the orchestra resounded, and the curtain smoothly rose.

From both stage wings, the dance troupe darted out in unison. Though the dancers wore identical costumes, performed synchronized moves, and shared similar makeup and physiques—making them indistinguishable when huddled together—to my eyes Masalone stood radiantly apart, glowing so distinctly I could spot her instantly without effort. Her legs were fully exposed. That milky skin—which even Sā-chan, herself a woman, had admitted left her breathless—blinded me with its brilliance.

If "dazzling" was the word for it—what on earth was this? Before meeting Masako, even when her brilliance dazzled me, I could fix my gaze upon her unflinchingly—yet after we met, I felt inexplicably bashful. To repeat: once I had seen Masako properly clothed, her exposed hands and legs became unbearably dazzling. To repeat further: once my face had become known to her, it felt as though she too could see the glint in my eyes lingering on her bare legs—though in reality, she couldn’t possibly notice me in the shadows—and no matter what, I could no longer hold my gaze steady upon her. I shifted my gaze to Sā-chan. Then I met Sā-chan’s gaze—though of course she couldn’t have known I was in the audience, couldn’t have noticed me at all—so it wasn’t that our eyes had met, but merely that I’d imagined her glance drifting vaguely in my direction. Still, I felt a sudden shame and averted my eyes.

Before long, the dancing team withdrew to the rear of the stage, and the tap dancer emerged with a dashing flourish. And there before the dancers, he performed a tap dance with an air of showing off to them—but how intensely I envied that man. It might be better termed jealousy. At the same time, I even felt jealous of the orchestra members—they were so detached. What glowed in my eyes remained invisible to any of theirs. It was precisely because of that—because what glowed in my eyes remained invisible to theirs—that I felt all the more jealous of them.

I stealthily glanced toward Masako. Masako stood alongside Sā-chan with her legs neatly aligned, those dewy, lustrous, truly unblemished-looking, supple legs of hers—(forgive me this verbose description, dear reader. My inexperienced self could do nothing but fret futilely over how to convey the multitude of alluring elements richly contained within those legs, unable to find a concise and precise expression. (Since I’m being verbose anyway—to elaborate further—) those legs that seemed impossible to grasp without one’s fingers slipping away, yet paradoxically appeared so firm that touching them might tear the skin and send pale pink translucent blood spurting forth—Masako shyly twisted them sideways. What bewitching curves those were! But at the same time, I was—to put it somewhat dramatically—startled by the shame that those beautiful lines seemed to manifest. This too was likely just my imagination—a consequence of having met Masako—but even so, I sensed something different and unpleasant, something distinct from the shame Masako had shown when I first visited her dressing room a few days prior, when she had frantically tugged at her skirt to hide her bare knees. Unpleasant—for me, it was a painful sensation.

But immediately, the dancing team split into two groups and rushed to the edge of the stage, Masako vanished from my line of sight, and in their place, the “Four Comedians” made their entrance onto the stage, strumming guitars.

When I left K Theater,

“I want to see Masako.” But I couldn’t go to the dressing room alone. “I still need Asano-kun here...” When I muttered such things to myself, Asano’s face suddenly loomed close—the face glaring at me hatefully, then Misako’s face when she said, “Why are you wandering around Asakusa?”…

There, I thought I saw Asakusa’s face watching me. Even if I reached out my hand, Asakusa’s face refused to accept it. I had come to reconsider that even what moved me at K Theater might have been some shallow thrill. I was walking through the dark backstreets of the movie theater district. And when I emerged before the brightly lit Park Theater,

Special Offer

Bear Hot Pot XX Zoo Disposal Bears Such a bizarre poster, boldly plastered up, caught my eye. “Zoo disposal?” Some customers must be lured in by the poster’s cheerful promise—no, precisely because they were lured in, they flaunted such posters—but when I pictured that bear in my mind, the one pacing listlessly yet with a sorrowful persistence in its cramped zoo cage, its fur threadbare, aged beyond years, pitiable precisely for its grimy wretchedness, I couldn’t have brought myself to eat it—not even under threat. Not only was it pitiable—merely imagining the meat of such a bear turned my stomach. But in this world, there were also those exotic food enthusiasts who relished such fare. I, too, had considered myself no slouch when it came to exotic foods—but this...

(No, wait—maybe if I eat some too, it'll toughen up these fragile nerves.) I couldn't shake the feeling that some secret to becoming stronger lay hidden there. If I endured eating that repulsive stuff, my nerves might grow resilient—with that resilience, perhaps I could finally write a robust novel. Such thoughts began taking hold of me.

It was what you might call a popular beef hot pot restaurant. In summer, whenever I passed by its side, I would often see a woman out back cutting edamame, her demeanor so obviously fresh from the countryside. She crammed her red, swollen fingers into the scissors with visible discomfort, cutting through the edamame piled high on the ground in a listless, sluggish manner—one pod at a time. Whenever the flashy, coquettish voices of the women out front reached her ears, she would turn an envious gaze in their direction. I want to get moved from backroom work to the front soon—that expression remained etched in my mind.

(I wonder if that woman’s working out front now.) As soon as I brought my face close to the shop curtain, “Welcome!” Lunging forward—truly befitting a place that serves bear hot pot—the utterly ferocious voices of the women sent me reeling back in shock. In other words, I failed to toughen my fragile nerves.

＊

That's right. Speaking of food, at the beginning of this chapter, I had written about cafeteria meals. —The Asakusa eateries I frequented varied without consistency—in short, when pressed for time, I went to one near my apartment on Kappabashi-dori; when strolling leisurely, I passed through the park to Umamichi and visited those in that area. The eateries within the area commonly called Asakusa—sandwiched between Umamichi and Kokusai-dori, between Hirokoji-dori and Kototoi-dori—were, so to speak, establishments catering to visitors from outside Asakusa. As for the cheap eateries meant for those working within Asakusa—though this distinction wasn’t absolute—they clustered on the outskirts of that district. Umamichi, Kokusai-dori, Hirokoji, Kototoi-dori—there were the quintessential cheap eateries that truly embodied what a *meshiya* should be.

At Daikokuya on Umamichi, facing an “umbrella seller”—a trade unique to Asakusa where men appear in the Sixth District during rain to hawk bamboo umbrellas—I’d occasionally cross paths with one such man there until we gradually became acquainted. He’d strike up conversations about the old woman handling umbrella wholesaling, grumbling how she’d recently raised her wholesale prices—that brazen hag—and I’d eat my thirteen-sen meal—(miso soup for three sen, vegetable plate for five sen, bowl of rice called *shiro* for five sen). Total thirteen sen. Incidentally, when wanting a bit more rice, there’s a small bowl of rice called *han* for three sen.)—Given that the umbrella seller was waiting there drinking shochu, suggesting an ominous sky, I stepped outside and wandered toward Azumabashi, where I bumped into Pontan hurriedly emerging from Matsuya’s Tobu Railway exit. It was the day after the previous section.

“Good morning…” Pontan’s face looked oddly pale, but when I asked if his home was along the Tobu Railway line, he squinted his strangely bloodshot eyes and— "Nah, I just dropped by Terajima-machi last night…" Grinning slyly, he— “Terajima-machi?” I had heard that Koyanagi Masako’s house was in Terajima Hirokoji. I remembered Masako. Then, to my earnest—no, naive—face, “How crude.”

And Pontan made a gesture as if to pat my shoulder, “To that woman’s place, you see… just a little….” “To her place in Terajima-machi…” “……?” I still didn’t understand. “Sleepy, sleepy.”

This was in Osaka dialect,

“Well then—how about we go together sometime?” By the time I realized—Ah, so he’d gone to the Den of Vice—Pontan was already swaying his shoulders like a woman as he crossed the roadway. Now, I ate a thirteen-sen meal and then went to drink a twenty-sen coffee, but— (“Bon Jour” has become so routine.) (I’ll try going somewhere unfamiliar.)

So I pushed open the door of a place called "Maromi" near Kaminarimon by Azumabashi Bridge—a shop I’d never entered before. After ordering coffee and lighting a cigarette, Sā-chan unexpectedly walked in. She seemed to have arranged to meet someone there; darting her eyes about the shop, she noticed me and flushed crimson. When it became clear her companion hadn’t arrived, Sā-chan came over to my side—

“Thank you for treating me the other day.” Even as she said this, she stood there fidgeting— “Well, have a seat.” I said. The shop was full of couples.

Sā-chan also had strangely red eyes. Her eyes resembled Pontan’s. “……?”

At my gaze, Sā-chan—who had sat down before me—flushed crimson once more, “Strange, aren’t they? My eyes…” Her voice was flustered. Both that voice and her excessive blushing felt utterly unlike Sā-chan. “I ended up crying.” “You cried?”

“Yes, I was just sobbing loudly moments ago, you know. My eyes are red, aren’t they?” Having seemingly regained her composure, “Don-chan—you know, the girl sitting right next to you in the dressing room when you came that time—” In a friendly voice, she said this and paused as if waiting for my nod. When I’d gone to the dressing room, I’d been too flustered to remember anything, but I nodded along anyway.

“That person—she suddenly had to leave the troupe, so today’s her final performance.” “She doesn’t want to quit herself, you know.” “But since her father’s going to Manchuria, she’s being taken along with him.” “So earlier, even on stage she was making this half-crying face, and when she went into the dressing room, she suddenly burst out wailing…”

Mixing polite and rough language together, Sā-chan kept talking while glancing toward the door. "Then, you see, this dancer who'd just left O Hall to join our troupe came into the dressing room carrying a trunk and sniffling." "That person had also just come from crying her eyes out with everyone at O Hall when she said goodbye." "When she came over here, Don-chan was already wailing her eyes out, you see." "So then, that person got sad again too, threw down her trunk, and started wailing." "Hugging Don-chan and wailing, wailing." "So then we got sad too and started crying along with them, until everyone in the dressing room was wailing, wailing." "It was a complete uproar."

“Hmm.” “So then our eyes ended up bright red.” That story didn’t seem to be a lie, but the redness of Sā-chan’s eyes didn’t appear to be solely due to that. After finishing her story, Sā-chan said in a restless voice,

“Hey, Sensei,”

Even as she faltered, “Well…” “Mr. Kamiguchi hasn’t come here, has he?”

“Well, I’ve only just arrived myself…” As if to prove this, the coffee I ordered arrived. Sā-chan’s face flushed crimson again.

Kamiguchi never showed up in the end.……

Part Seven: A Chapter Composed of Diaries and Notes

(—For some reason, whenever I try to approach the main storyline, my pen resists. This time, to avoid such obstruction, I plan to move the narrative forward by transcribing excerpts from my diaries of that period and supplementing them with annotations.)

*

[X month X day.]

Go to “Hotarō”. Malraux’s half-read *The Royal Way* in my coat pocket. Because there were no customers, I read in front of the iron griddle. (Note 1) I want to go on a journey too. “You know what they call men who are ‘perverts’? … They call them ‘intellectuals’…” (From *The Royal Way*)

* When I casually mentioned to my wife, "I hear Asano used to come here quite often," I was informed that he had been letting his okonomiyaki bills pile up into a hefty sum and dodging payment. "From what people say, some are so fed up with his stinginess they're practically livid." My wife said resentfully.

Suematsu Haruyoshi said that since his acts weren't going well, he was thinking of switching to manzai. At night, I wrote a sickly-sweet popular novel.

Returned to Ōmori. (Note 1) While I was reading *The Royal Way* alone, Suematsu Haruyoshi—who had likely dashed around various places negotiating attractions—returned with an utterly exhausted, pale face.

"How did it go—" "Haru-san?" called my wife from the kitchen.

“—It’s no good,” he said.

As if his spine had turned into konjac or something, he slumped limply in front of the iron griddle, yet his voice remained remarkably light and cheerful. Was it his nature? His habit? No—nature and habit couldn’t be separated so neatly—but the glaring gap between his evident exhaustion and that cheerfulness struck me as both uncanny and pitiable. (But this was because I hadn’t yet understood the weed-like tenacity of these entertainers infesting Asakusa. They never despair, no matter the circumstances. Even when unsure of their next meal, they sing cheerfully. —And how I revel in such despairing moods!)

“I met Dosakan yesterday,” I said. “I’m thinking of teaming up with Dosakan, you see…” “Hmm.” “But seems Mii-chan’s holding him back, saying it’s no good. So the guy went to Mr. Tajima’s place to figure things out—meaning he’s seeking counsel.” “Heard he sent a letter to consult the Great Deity Tajima.” “Why’s she stopping him? Is he unwell…” “Is he unwell…” “No—” Suematsu shot a furtive glance toward the kitchen where his wife stood and lowered his voice. “It’s ’cause he’ll fall.” “Once you fall, you never climb back up—that’s what Mii-chan says.” “Well, can’t argue with that, but…”

Suematsu Haruyoshi had once been part of a certain Leviou troupe on equal footing with Kamiguchi Kurosu Hyōe—one of “The Four Comedians”—though it must be said they were relegated to the communal dressing room. Now，Kamiguchi (his stage name wasn’t Kamiguchi back then) had become a top entertainer in Enko，while Suematsu had fallen—hiding away in the two-mat room on the second floor of “Hotarō.” Suematsu’s words must have been filled with real emotion，but his cheerful voice showed no trace of it.

Suematsu went on to say that Mii-chan—no, Misako—was worried about Dosakan’s fall because she was in love with him. Dosakan was also in love with Misako, and Suematsu said, “If anything, he’s the one who’s far more smitten, I’d say.” “So for him to consult Mr. Tajima—Misako’s husband—about that… How peculiar.” “To consult the husband of the object of his illicit love about such a thing…”

“Illicit love was all well and good.” “Hyah-heh-heh…—” Suematsu let out a strange laugh—whether it was genuine or a stage laugh, I couldn’t tell—and merely laughed without saying anything. That day, Misako was unusually absent, but as I had written before, she was almost always at Hotarō, helping out as if it were her job. Wondering if she had some special connection to this place, that day I asked Suematsu. “When Mii-chan and Mr. Tajima first set up a household, they rented the second floor here.” “Mii-chan received a lot of help from the auntie here, so when she’s free, well, she comes by to help out, sort of like pitching in.”

That was Suematsu’s answer.

“So, where is Ms. Misako living now?” “She’s gone back to her family home. Because Mr. Tajima got sick and went off to his country home…”

“Her family home is around here…”

“No, it’s near Tamanoi.” I let the remark pass without pursuing it further. I’d heard Koyanagi Masako’s house was also in Terajima, but this connection didn’t occur to me then.

X/X.

In the morning, at home, I write a column article for A Newspaper. (※二)

In the afternoon, I went to Asakusa.

＊

Despite this cold, Aiyu Jelly is still being served. I’m surprised people are still coming in. (※三)

＊

Dogs and Children (※四)

A quote from Chekhov in Bunin’s memoir: “Suppose there are a big dog and a small dog here. But the small dog must not let its courage be broken by the presence of the big one.—And it must bark with the voice God gave it……”

＊

In the evening, I visited Asano’s boarding house.

“How unusual… You’ve got that look—like you want me to arrange a meeting with Koyanagi Masako.” Dead center. Yet I didn’t meet Masako. (※5) Asano called me “a man who’s glutted on sea bream and now hungers for sardines” yet again. Keep repeating that, and I’ll truly become one. “Tell a villain three or four times daily that he embodies honesty, and he’ll assuredly transform into a full-fledged ‘champion of justice.’ Conversely, brand an honest man a villain too persistently, and he’ll cultivate a twisted urge to prove he’s not entirely un-villainous.” (Edgar Allan Poe)

I was never an "honest man" to begin with. (Note 2) The column article was as follows.

"When reading biographies of people who have done great work, there invariably appears a section on humanity." "What is great work?" "It is the fullest exertion of human capability." "And what is humanity?" "At times, under the 'beautiful name' of humanity, those who have exerted their abilities to the utmost are dragged down to a lowly, petty level where one lives at the bare minimum of human capability." "And at that level, human weaknesses are enumerated, and that comes to be called humanity." "When it comes to humans, from the so-called modern view of humanity that insists they must have weaknesses, that becomes an endearing foible." "A little endearing foible is acceptable, but if taken too far, even the fact that the fullest exertion of human capability is achieved not through so-called low humanity but actually through humanity elevated to its highest level comes to be ignored."

“Literature had adhered to such a view of humanity. Literature is the work of exploring humanity. Therefore, among humans who become literature’s subjects exist both those who exerted their capabilities to their utmost limit and those who lived at their minimum. Yet literature had clung more to the latter. For there lay abundant exposure of that familiar humanity. —Such literature now came face to face with war. War constitutes a great endeavor wherein human capabilities are exerted to their utmost limit. Though a human endeavor, it achieves this not through so-called low humanity but through heightened spiritual elevation. Such solemn facts have generally fostered anticipation for literature depicting humanity’s fullest exertion through capabilities elevated to that same plane.”

I myself had wanted to write such novels. That desire to write was free of deceit, but desire and reality refused to align. My emotions raced ahead like a wild horse galloping on heedless of my having fallen from the saddle, leaving me clinging to the reins as I was dragged along the ground in a desperate bid not to be left behind. (Note 3) Aiyu Jelly was a yellowish agar-like substance said to be made by mashing Taiwanese fig fruits. Diced into cubes, it was served with sugar water and ice poured over it—essentially kōri azuki with this gelatinous substitute for red beans, priced at five sen per cup. (It would rise to seven sen the following year.) In this frigid weather where kōri azuki had vanished from all of Tokyo, Asakusa still sold Aiyu Jelly topped with ice. I’d assumed it was strictly a summer business—yet there they remained through winter’s depths, their stall brazenly open even as ice sheeted the streets. Customers were scarce, true, but occasionally you’d spot patrons with scarves wrapped twice around their necks sitting on the same wooden benches used in summer, crunching away at ice within that exposed stall devoid of any insulation from the cold. In other words, Asakusa served ice year-round. The entertainment circles must have been running hot indeed.

(Note 4)

Something I witnessed while wandering aimlessly through the back alleys near my apartment.—

A pathetically scrawny little dog, pitiful at first glance, was frightened by a ferociously large, fat dog—menacing in appearance—and fled yelping in terror. Feeling pity, I sympathized with the tiny dog. However, there were several children there who, upon seeing this, began throwing stones at the dog while shouting, “Hey, you!”—but it was not that detestably ferocious dog they targeted. Their stones flew toward the small dog instead—the one tucking its tail between its legs in utter misery, scrambling through the dirt as it desperately fled.

I felt sickened. The ferocious dog must have been one familiar to those children, while the pitiful small dog was likely a stray that had wandered into the area—a creature with no connection to them whatsoever. Was this why the children sided with the ferocious beast that needed no further help, bullying the weak little dog that did? Even so, there was no need to pelt it with stones as it fled. As I watched these thoughts unfold, the large dog eventually sauntered away with evident satisfaction—the children’s failure to call out to it making clear they shared no bond with the animal. It became apparent that the children had thrown stones purely from a love of cruelty, naively gripped in that moment by the pleasure of tormenting weakness and the hatred they felt toward wretchedness.

I hated the hearts of those children. But when I reflected on whether I was any better—I remembered something. I remembered a dream. Since it was a dream I had right after parting with Ayuko—something from long ago—the fact that I still recall it so vividly proves just how vile it must have been. Around the time when the film *Under the Roofs of Paris* premiered, it left a deep impression on me. The dream borrowed a scene from it—a fight by railroad tracks. There were tracks near my house, and perhaps because I walked that path morning and evening, I found myself surrounded at the pitch-dark edge of those rails by powerfully built men—men my feeble self could never hope to resist—though I stood alone against their numbers. Since it was a dream—if only—though reality made it impossible—no, precisely because of that—I might have at least dreamed of hurling those men aside with satisfying thuds—what a spineless wretch I was. There I was, being kicked and beaten relentlessly. But this pitiful dream merely embodied my bitter teeth-gnashing at having been abandoned by Ayuko. Ayuko leaving me might have been reasonable from her perspective, but for me, it remained utterly unacceptable. I could only see it as lawless, unreasonable cruelty. “I’ve lost all love for you. Let’s part ways.” When Ayuko said this, even if I’d declared “Then I’ll do the same,” I couldn’t have discarded my love for her as easily as tossing an old hat. Even had I pleaded “This is unbearable—I still love you, I don’t want to lose you”—no, even had I begged through tears—still I couldn’t have stopped her from leaving. I was being mercilessly pummeled by those invincible arms, forced to watch through frustrated tears as they—unhindered by my weakness—walked calmly away. The dream had given concrete form to that irrepressible bitterness.

But then, this happened: As I was being mercilessly pummeled by a gang of thugs, I suddenly became aware—through that absurd logic unique to dreams—that I had transformed into one of my own assailants. And there I stood, consumed by inexpressible hatred and fury toward the spineless wretch groveling in the dirt. Drunk on the pleasure of tormenting that pitiful creature—whether it violated all reason or not—I found myself burning with the urge to keep stomping and kicking him.

And then, when I approached him—Oh!—he was none other than myself! I awoke with a start. My pillow was wet with tears.

I was filled with an indescribable, unpleasant feeling. The fact that even the scene by the railroad tracks remained vividly in my mind further intensified that unpleasant feeling. Moreover—the thought that this dream could be turned into a novel struck me unbidden in the next moment, but even such wretchedness only intensified my unpleasant feeling further.… (Note 5) Before I met Koyanagi Masako, that melancholy, lonely yearning had been something both sorrowful and sweet—a truth I came to know through the bitter, painful longing that followed our meeting. What exactly was this yearning I felt for Koyanagi Masako? Once more, I found myself compelled to ponder. Wasn't it a manifestation of some spiritual thirst? Yet when I finally met Koyanagi Masako—until then, that yearning had hovered like wispy clouds or mist in the sky, elusive and bittersweet, something I could gaze upon like spring haze or summer clouds with a strange joy—suddenly, to borrow Asano's words, it felt as though something vulgar and club-like, akin to "abandoning sea bream for sardines," had thrust itself bluntly into those clouds. I hated that club, but through hating it, returning it to vapor was now beyond my reach.

And yet, I wanted to see her. The thought that Masako would see me as "the man going after sardines" was unbearable, but even so, I wanted to meet her—now that we had met once, I could no longer endure merely watching her onstage from the distant audience seats. I hated Asano for calling me "the man going after sardines," but to meet Masako, I still had to depend on him. I couldn't go to the dressing room alone.

Asano was renting a room on the second floor of a small sundries shop in Senzoku-cho.

“Mr. Asano, are you there?” When I asked the proprietress of Sugame,

“He’s here.” Possibly out of irritation that I wasn’t a customer, her voice was curt and grudging. Despite her efforts to feign ignorance,

“Is he here?” Instead of asking her to call him, I said awkwardly, “Go around to the back and go up.” Passing through an alley reeking of foul odors, circling around to the kitchen entrance, and forcing open a poorly fitted glass door that wouldn’t open unless you dislodged it, I found what appeared to be Asano’s worn-out geta there. On those jet-black geta rested a tightly coiled strand of reddish stray hair that likely belonged to the proprietress from the front.

“—Mr. Asano.”

When I called out from below the dark stairs,

“—Oh”

There was a sound of something being hurriedly overturned, and Asano abruptly thrust his face out. Perhaps because it was dark, his eyes shone with an eerie gleam like a cat’s.

“Oh, Mr. Asano.” As I tried to climb the stairs,

“Let’s go out.” “—Wait a moment.”

He made a terribly flustered gesture, as though to block me from climbing up.

—When we stepped outside,

“It’s rare for you to visit my place. —Judging by your face, you’re here to demand I let you see Koyanagi Masako.” I remained silent, smirking.

Eventually we went around to the back of K Theater, but as I approached the stage door entrance, my legs suddenly locked up. "I think I'll pass on going into the dressing room."

“—Why?”

“………”

“I see.” “Well then…” He said tersely. Then, clacking his geta before me, he strode off briskly.

We went to “Bon Jour.” There, Asano proposed that we should start an Asakusa Appreciation Society. The idea was to gather literary figures and journalists who had either affection for or interest in Asakusa and form something like an Asakusa Appreciation Society. “Let’s invite the theater people from Rokku District one by one to join us.” “It’ll be an interesting society.” “Well, for the first one, it should be K Theater, right? Where your Koyanagi Masako is…” Asano was getting worked up all by himself.

X/X.

I met Suematsu Haruyoshi and went together to the manzai hall E Hall. (Note 6) Thinking about originality. At Hotarō, I met Misako. (Note 7)

I stayed at the apartment.

A female guest came to the neighboring apartment and was talking in a loud voice. “A detective-like person came from over there. We haven’t done anything shameful...”

“Looks suspicious, don’t you think?” “Oh, I see.” I overheard such a conversation. It was like witnessing a real-life manzai routine. They say truth is stranger than fiction, but reality might be stranger than manzai. A few days ago, when I went to the apartment kitchen during the daytime, a drunkard was shouting outside. “Even a grasshopper has a house of his own, doesn’t he?”

He was cursing at the apartment residents. I didn’t understand why he was so angry, but I thought his grasshopper analogy was rather clever. Was it a line he had picked up from manzai, or was it the drunk’s own invention? I read Stendhal’s *Lord Byron*. A thought-provoking statement.—“In that Lord Byron’s temperament—constantly haunted by self and preoccupied solely with the effect he had on others—bore a striking resemblance to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s. There could be no other poet as utterly incapable of theater as His Lordship. His Lordship was unable to become other characters. It was for this reason that His Lordship particularly detested Shakespeare. Moreover, the reason His Lordship held Shakespeare in contempt was that Shakespeare could become both the rogue Jew Shylock of Venice and the despicable rebel leader Jack Cade.”

(Note 6) When I met Suematsu Haruyoshi on Kokusai-dori Street, he said he was going to E Hall to meet Kameya Pontan. "I'm steadily transitioning to manzai comedy." Suematsu wore an oddly short overcoat that didn't fit him at all, looking thoroughly uncomfortable. "Do you have any ideas for a good stage name?" "Well..." "Please think one up for me. Something patriotic..." "Patriotic..." "Yeah, I heard something like this recently." "Protect the Nation." "They split that into two parts: 'Kuniwo' and 'Mamoru.'" "Gotta admit, that's one hell of a name they came up with." "This one's from someone who just switched from acting to manzai too..."

I started walking with him toward E Hall. "Oh right," he said, "Mii-chan was at Hotarō asking if you'd disappeared." "Did she need something...?" "Didn't seem like any particular business."

“Let’s go check later.”

When we arrived at E Hall, they said Kameya Pontan was about to go on stage. Suematsu went backstage while I entered the audience seating. The booth had been positioned so narrowly that every audience face was clearly visible from the stage. Being tall and wearing high wooden clogs at the time, my face jutted out above the standing patrons' heads—the moment I stepped in, Pontan on stage and I abruptly locked eyes. "Oh—"

Pontan made a face as if saying "Oh—". His expression was perfectly legible. I nodded back in a way that echoed "Oh—". "Oh? So 'ton' counts as English now?"

Pontan looked at me and said in a feignedly clueless voice.

“It’s English!” This was Tsurugiya Anpon—Pontan’s so-called “brother.” He stood slightly taller than Pontan but leaner in build, with the face of a leading man type. Both wore double-breasted suits—and zōri sandals. “Then, in German, what do they call a pig...” “German?” “—In German, they say it’s ham.” “Ah, got it.” “You’d better remember that.” “Then in French...” “Sausage, I tell ya!”

I had heard this routine before at performances by “first-rate” manzai comedians. It wasn’t an exact copy, but it followed the same comedic formula—manzai consists of combining several independent short jokes. Thus, they could slip in one or two borrowed elements amidst their original material, but I couldn’t suppress my discomfort and contempt. I had not only despised that particular manzai act but also scorned the very nature of manzai that allowed such borrowed material to be inserted so effortlessly. Yet—when I thought about it—even in “highbrow” cultural fields, there seemed to be works of a similar nature—no, works that were seventy percent borrowed material and a mere thirty percent original, yet paraded about with an air of bold originality.—Everything’s just like manzai.

(Note 7)

When I went to Hotarō, Misako was not there. "She went out for something related to an entertainment gig," said the wife. Two young male customers had come in; scooping up udon flour with a spoon and drizzling it, they wrote what seemed to be their names in Roman letters on the iron griddle, exclaiming things like "This time I got it right!" as they amused themselves. The udon flour wouldn’t cooperate, making the timing tricky. Lured by how fun it looked, I too received some anko-ten. After meticulously mixing the anko into the udon flour, I went to write my own name—but something made me hesitate. Then—someone else’s name—I nodded in agreement.

I first wrote a K. Indeed, it was difficult. Where I first plopped down the udon flour on top of the pillar, a large cancer-like lump formed. Next, o—next, y—Koyanagi Masako

The result was unbearably clumsy. With the scraper, I ended up haphazardly consolidating the mess. Once more—this time proceeding methodically—I managed something barely presentable. Leaving it as it was—(That’s right—when the thought struck me (This time in Japanese characters…)

“Auntie, we’re heading out,” said the earlier customers.

I was alone. I sat back down and began to write “Ko…”—but for some reason, my chest was suddenly gripped by a sharp, aching pang of longing. Koyanagi Masako had become unbearably dear to me. When I wrote in Roman letters, that hadn’t happened—perhaps because Roman script lacked the visceral immediacy to evoke such raw emotion. Or was it because there had been customers at that time?

I let out a sigh and moved the spoon. Koyanagi Masako. A horribly sprawling, bloated character took shape. The bloated, ugly letters bore no resemblance to Koyanagi Masako’s slender figure, and I hated their ugliness—but as I stared, within that revulsion, a different, far more intense disgust began welling up. Though the shape of those characters bore no resemblance to the real Koyanagi Masako, they were undeniably her full name. To be mercilessly roasting them upon the iron griddle began to feel like performing some cursed ritual akin to a midnight pilgrimage.

(This won't do.) The udon flour began toasting gradually from its thin outer edges, its color changing as it cooked. I muttered "No good, no good" in my heart, yet kept watching it transform.

Then, at that moment,

“Brr, it’s freezing!” Misako violently flung open the front door. “Oh, Mr. Kurahashi.” “Oh, good evening.”

Misako took off her shoes while standing and stepped inside. “Oh!” She shifted her gaze from the characters on the iron griddle to me.

“That—did you write that, Mr. Kurahashi?”

“Yeah.” “You know Masako?” “—My lover.” “Your lover?” As she let out a bizarre cry, “No, just kidding.” “She’s someone I reaally like.”

“…!” Misako, who had remained standing all this time, fixed me with a sharp glare. I averted my eyes and took a bite of the “ko” character, putting it in my mouth. “Ouch... Hot.” Misako plopped down heavily in front of me. I worked my mouth open and shut, “You know Ms. Koyanagi? —Well, of course you would if you’re in the same Asakusa.” Flustered, I rambled on by myself.

“More importantly, you—the other day I met Dosakan-kun—ugh, it’s so awkward to say—and heard a shocking story. I was stunned—why did you only tell me half of it and not say everything?” Just then, Hotarō—the owner of Hotarō—returned from outside, cutting our conversation short.

“It’s damn cold out— Welcome! It’s freezing out there. Let’s see… The kid’s asleep in the three-mat room,” he muttered, peering inside. “Maybe I’ll pop over to the bathhouse and warm myself up a bit.”

Part Eight: The Call to Travel

……………………

…………………… It was a cold evening—though of course, being winter, the cold was to be expected—but with no source of warmth beyond the lamp hanging by my pillow, the chill struck even deeper into my psyche. In that apartment room, I burrowed into the futon and read a book. When I would take one hand out from under the futon to prop the book above my eyes, that hand would quickly grow cold, the chill turning painful—so I’d switch to the other hand that had been warming under the covers. But by nature’s law, the warmed hand would inevitably chill faster in the open air than the cold hand could regain warmth beneath the futon, forcing me to bring out the insufficiently warmed hand before it was ready. Each switch grew hastier until, with the hand beneath the futon not recovering at all, the exposed one would grow intolerably cold—until both hands had chilled beyond any quick recovery. Reluctantly, I placed the book—forcing myself to endure the acute pain of interrupting my reading due to such external circumstances—atop my forehead. Though it resembled an ice pack laid upon my aching head, as if attempting to soothe the throbbing pain of interruption itself, I then thrust both hands under the futon, plunging them near my thighs to warm them faster. The instant coldness struck like pressed ice, I yelped “Brr!” and muttered, “I can’t keep staying in this apartment once it gets this cold”—yet in truth, I had remained precisely because the thought of trudging all the way back to Ōmori in this chill felt utterly unbearable.

It was past one o'clock—though in truth, that apartment's liveliest hour during summer had always been from half past midnight until around one-thirty. Even at such hours, hostesses would come clomping up the stairs with unsteady steps, slurring to themselves, "I'm not drunk or anythin'," yet in summer, even when returning alone to their rooms, they'd still be buzzing from the night's work—making noise by themselves, sometimes dragging equally intoxicated colleagues inside to shriek like animals, eventually fighting or bursting into tears, creating quite the ruckus. But now, though these rowdy residents still staggered as drunkenly as in summer, the cold seemed to have sapped their spirits—they had already gone to sleep in utter silence. It was utterly silent. Inside and out—.

Inside and outside— That's right. In summer, until around three o'clock—or with slight exaggeration, all night long—the apartment's main street remained bustling with foot traffic whose echoes reached my pillow. Amid those footsteps were sounds like Asano Mitsuo's geta dragging their worn-out teeth gratingly along—unpleasant, yet mingled with the brisk clacking of thin-soled hiyori geta that evoked alluring steps, which together proved rather agreeable. But now, the street lay hushed, and from afar came the lonely bark of a dog. That it sounded forlorn might have been a projection of my own desolate heart, but then again, perhaps—I found myself thinking—that detestable big dog I once saw terrorizing a smaller one had met with some misfortune of its own and was now letting out those pitiful whines in utter dejection. Strangely, this thought brought a measure of solace to my lonesome spirit.

As I strained my ears—a phenomenon that sometimes occurs on nights when rain clouds hang low—the faint sound of a low, booming steam whistle reached me from the direction of Ueno Station far in the distance. (I want to go on a journey.) Suddenly, I felt it acutely. But this desire to go on a journey had been burning within me all along. That's right. Wasn’t my coming to Asakusa itself a kind of journey? It was then that I realized this for the first time.

I had written earlier that my room’s only source of warmth was the electric lamp, but in my case, even without heating, I at least had winter bedding prepared. This reminded me of a story I’d heard from Suematsu Haruyoshi—about his unemployed actor friend who, after pawning everything he owned, had been left with only a single thin futon on winter nights and truly relied on the heat from an electric lamp to endure the cold. He would crawl into the closet, wrap himself in a thin futon on its sealed upper shelf to sleep, then pull an electric lamp into the lower shelf and attach an absurdly large bulb he’d procured from somewhere, using its blazing light for warmth—or so the story went. Whether this actually provided any heat, I cannot verify, never having tried it myself. But according to Suematsu Haruyoshi, the man had dubbed this preposterous contraption his “newly invented electric stove,” laughing as he added, “What a dimwit.” I laughed too—it was a genuinely funny story, yet one where sadness seeped out from beneath the humor. I knew this tragicomic quality could only be conveyed through descriptive writing, but having already turned that story into a short piece once before, I refrained from retelling it to avoid redundancy. At that earlier time, when I hadn’t yet written it as a story, I found myself vaguely recalling the tale while secretly nurturing the conviction that I could shape it into fiction. Now, this vague recollection arose precisely because though my hands had grown considerably warmer—despite how agonizing it had been earlier to stop reading to warm them—I now felt reluctant to even reach out to resume reading. The book I’d placed on my forehead had slid off to the back of my head as I lazily shifted my neck. In other words, with my hands now warmed, drowsiness was creeping over me.

Just then, suddenly, hurried footsteps echoed from outside—voices shouting over one another—until even beneath the apartment grew tumultuous. Straining to discern the commotion, a voice from below the stairs struck my ears: "Where is it? The fire?" I sprang upright. To be perfectly honest—more from curiosity than alarm—

I opened the window. Toward Kaminarimon Gate—(Oh, what a sinful sensation this is! But to be honest about my actual sensation at that moment,) a fire that looked truly warm was rising.

When I suddenly noticed, I had layered a kimono over my nightclothes and donned a tonbi coat. I had dressed with such remarkable speed that it would be more accurate to say I found myself already wearing these layers before becoming aware of putting them on. And yet—though by all rights I should have discovered myself mid-sprint toward Kaminarimon Gate—for reasons unknown, I instead calmly reached for the leftover inarizushi on my desk. To adopt that same detached tone: this inarizushi came from Momotarō—a shop where our apartment alley met Kokusai-dori Street, its noren curtain proclaiming “Famous Old-Time Dango”—and while I make no effort to promote the establishment, it was exceptionally delicious inari-zushi, indeed famously so. Yet as previously described, that night’s cold—which chilled even hands pulsing with warm blood—had turned this already cool rice bundle to ice, its frigidity needling through my teeth. I went outside with a shiver and click of my lips. (I grew up in Tokyo’s Yamanote district, where as a child we had nighttime inarizushi vendors who called “Oinaa-risaaan!”—never appearing by day but materializing at midnight when streets emptied. That uncanny voice would approach without footsteps, making my childish self imagine kidnappers lurking. These days I scarcely know downtown areas anymore, but even in Yamanote those calls—“Oinaa-risaaan,” “Karin-karin,” “Nabeya-aki udon”—have nearly vanished along with the shrill flutes of Chinese soba stalls. Yet biting into this inarizushi revived those memories—and whether from childish fire-watching excitement or something deeper, I’d slipped into an utterly juvenile mood……)

The fire was behind Meiji Seika's snack stand at Kaminarimon Gate, but I went as far as the front of Chin'ya and watched it there. And this was no figure of speech—truly, when I suddenly became aware, I found myself surrounded entirely by women of varying ages, all likely shop girls from eateries, their disheveled figures suggesting they’d been roused mid-slumber and rushed out just as they were. Huh? With that thought, I turned around to see that even in several half-opened armored doors of Chin'ya's windows—where during daytime one would find all those vivacious butcher shop girls—they now appeared with all makeup removed, their faces transformed into unsightly pale visages so mortifying to behold that I felt ashamed for them. These faces layered one upon another and thrust outward created a kind of spectacular yet utterly harrowing sight. I shifted my gaze to Hirokoji Street, overflowing with spectators. There as well—it wasn’t entirely women, but truly, there were so many. In the astonishing multitude of women before me, I felt as though I had made some significant discovery about Asakusa—a sensation that left me not a little solemn. Most of those women appeared to be shop girls from eateries. I had never noticed until now, but the thought that so many women were packed into cramped rooms of park-side eateries to sleep struck me with an eerie and uncanny sensation—a strangeness so intense it verged on solemnity.

(Wait—Koyanagi Masako might be among these women.) The realization caught my breath. If Masako—who spent most nights backstage—had come to watch the fire, I might have naturally run into her. This possibility brought not just surging joy but bitter regret at my delayed awareness. Now the fire seemed trivial; turning from the flames, I began searching for her silhouette.

Before I had gone far, instead of the crucial Koyanagi Masako, I found the utterly superfluous Suematsu Haruyoshi in the crowd—and just as I spotted him, he noticed me too. "Oh—heading back?" "It's freezing." As I tried to slip away with that lie,

“It’s cold, isn’t it? —Well, I’ll head back too. Let’s go together.” By the time I thought Oh no—it was already too late—he fell into step beside me. “They say years with three Days of the Rooster have more fires—truer words never spoken.” He shuddered violently, teeth chattering. “This ain’t good—I’m frozen clean through. Won’t sleep a wink like this—what d’you say, boss? Shall we hit up Pai Ichi?” While murmuring “I suppose,” I let my eyes roam restlessly through the crowd.

Koyanagi Masako was nowhere to be found. I found myself half-believing it was somehow Suematsu Haruyoshi’s fault. “Where’s Pai Ichi held? Is there even a spot open?” I snapped brusquely, then added with meek apology, “—I’ll just go fetch my wallet from the apartment,” speaking gently. Leaving Suematsu waiting on the outer street, I went to my apartment, and when I returned, he was chatting with a short elderly man who seemed to be returning from the same fire-watching. When he saw me, Suematsu parted with the shabbily dressed man, and we set off down Kokusai-dori Street toward Kokusai Theater.

“Do you know the Asakusa of old?” Suematsu said. “The old man we saw earlier is Tenchūken Tokoton.” “He made a name for himself with Egawa’s ball-riding act back in the day…” In my childhood, I had a memory of seeing either Egawa’s ball-riding or Aoki’s ball-riding—I couldn’t recall which—but I didn’t remember the performer’s name. “He was really famous back then, they say, but now he’s washed up…” When I asked what he did now, the reply came that he still performed ball-riding—stubbornly clinging to the act, with the whole family doing it together. When I asked, somewhat taken aback, “Does ball-riding even exist nowadays?” he answered, “Well, there’s occasional work at vaudeville theaters and banquet halls…” “Usually they’re all about pasting paper bags—from dawn till dusk, starting with Tokoton-san himself, his wife, son, daughter, the whole family mobilized to paste away like their lives depended on it.” “Hmm, that’s pitiful,” I said. “Well—it’s not exactly pitiful.” “But you see—Tokoton-san’s sitting on a mountain of savings.” “And out of genuine kindness, he lends money to struggling performers.” “Thanks to that chivalrous spirit of his, they say he’s pulled plenty of artists out of the gutter.” Suematsu continued his story. “He’s quite the character.” “You saw how he was wearing that tattered padded jacket earlier?” “That ain’t just sleepwear—he dresses like a beggar every day.” “The whole family does.” “His daughter wears these awful kimonos—doesn’t bat an eye—waltzing around the neighborhood like that. She goes to Hotarō dressed just so to collect udon flour scraps. Customers who don’t know better think she’s some beggar’s kid.—They use the flour for paste in their paper bags.” “You know how udon flour sticks to the bottom of containers?” “Hotarō’s wife saves every last bit for Tokoton-san—must be a pain—but she keeps at it for his daughter who comes collecting daily.” “They paste like madmen, and just last week donated fifty yen from their savings too.”

“Hō, that’s quite impressive,” I said. “That’s quite impressive indeed,” Suematsu parroted back—and come to think of it, when seeing off soldiers departing for the front, Tokoton-san would throw himself into it with such fervor that his excessive enthusiasm sometimes ended up causing more trouble than anything. According to Suematsu Haruyoshi’s account of how exactly this caused trouble—every time a conscript left the neighborhood, he would make splendid send-off flags. Once the used flags accumulated, he would fashion them into kimonos. He would don that kimono—the one emblazoned across the back with phrases like “Celebrate Departure Mr. So-and-so”—and take his place at the head of the send-off procession. But as his excitement grew, his stubby-legged frame would go scurrying several ken ahead of the group. There he’d stop, raise his hands, and greet the approaching procession with cries of “Banzai! Banzai!” As the procession drew near, he’d dart ahead again and cry out, “—Banzai! Banzai!” One could appreciate his sincerity and fervor, but the kimono he’d fashioned from those flags was so outlandish—resembling a street performer’s garb—and his scurrying about with that peculiar ball-riding posture made the whole spectacle absurdly comical. Yet people couldn’t bring themselves to laugh at the absurdity, which was precisely what made it so awkward, or so they said.

“Since he’s dead serious, you can’t exactly tell him to quit wearing those outlandish kimonos and scurrying about with his ridiculous antics.” “In truth, Tokoton-san means every word—he’s always going on about how we owe our peaceful lives to those fighting in our stead. Like when he spots someone with a red mobilization sash on the train…” “Well then, the old man elbows through the crowd, plants himself right before them, bows like he’s greeting the emperor himself, and declares in that gravely earnest voice of his—” “‘Thanks to you fine folk, we’re able to live safe and sound like this.’” “‘Our deepest gratitude,’ he says.” “You might sympathize with his sentiment, but it’s all so abrupt—and given how he’s always dressed like some ragpicker…” “Comes off downright unhinged, leaves the poor soul he’s addressing flustered beyond words.” “When you’re stuck beside Tokoton during these antics, everyone gawks at you—mortifying, I tell you. Even Hotarō’s old man complained about it once.” “Never mind that Hotarō’s father himself got one of those ‘thank you’ speeches from Tokoton when he was drafted.”

We entered an all-night eatery on Kototoi-dori Street that catered to automobile drivers. Moved by Tenchūken Tokoton’s sincerity and grateful to Suematsu Haruyoshi for sharing such a story, even my frustration at having failed to meet Koyanagi Masako had now completely vanished from my heart. I drank sake with yudofu and cod roe as accompaniments; the sake flask had a blue line around its neck like a headband—perhaps why when I said to Sis, “—More sake,” she called out, “Right away! Maki, a refill!”

“Mii-chan was pretty indignant with you the other day, you know.” “Indignant—or maybe that’s not quite the word...” Suematsu clicked his tongue and drank his sake. “There was some involvement with you once, I hear.” “She was saying things like that too.” “Involved? “What could that be about?” Judging by the taste, the sake seemed to be that atapin variety—something like Kuromatsu Hyakutaka (not Shirotaka) or Sumimatsu Shirotaka (not Kuromatsu)—so I drank cautiously.

“Something about Mii-chan’s dead sister…” “Ah.” I realized this must be about that time I went to “Omasa” at Hyoutan Pond.

In a corner of this shop sat a gaunt, middle-aged man whose dignified features recalled an old samurai, though his threadbare appearance told a different story. Whether out of stubbornness or habit, he held his spine rigidly erect as he drank with an impassive face, downing the sake as casually as if it were water. While casting glances his way, I wondered—in one corner of my mind—what thoughts might occupy that man’s head as he drank, that man who somehow piqued my curiosity. Yet finding myself utterly unable to imagine it, I felt something akin to a peculiar irritation. Indeed, it is only natural that one cannot peer into another’s mind as easily as one gazes upon their face—yet when considered, that very naturalness takes on an unsettling quality. While vaguely pondering such things in one corner of my mind, in another corner I found myself sifting through memories of that time at Omasa, wondering whether Misako had been involved with me then without my realizing it.

“Mii-chan used to say she liked you before, but somehow the wind changed direction, and the other day she was absolutely furious.” “She even brought up her dead sister…”

I recalled how Misako had interrogated me at Hyoutan Pond, demanding to know why I had come to Asakusa. At that time, after those accusatory words, Misako said there was a strange karmic connection between us and spoke of the peculiar relationship between her deceased sister Ichikawa Reiko and my former wife Ayuko. Though she said no more then, I later learned from Dosakan that this "relationship" had in fact been a grave one—Ayuko had suddenly appeared in Asakusa and, on a fleeting whim, stolen Ooya Goro away from Reiko, thereby taking Reiko’s life as well. The fact that Misako herself had not spoken of such matters made me feel how profound her resentment toward Ayuko must have been. And when outsiders like Ayuko came to Asakusa—much like mischief-prone people throwing stones into ponds, unaware that frogs struck by their stones would die—Misako harbored deep resentment on Reiko’s behalf toward such acts of heedless disruption. She must have viewed me too as one of those stone-throwers, interrogating me with “Why have you come to Asakusa?” That was how I had surmised Misako’s state of mind at the time. As I considered that Misako’s indignation had likely stemmed from such circumstances,

“Did she say she liked me?” Since I couldn’t definitively claim to be someone who never played pranks, I had been flustered by Misako’s indignation—and so, to hide that fluster, I had spoken in such a flippant tone. (Misako had not, in fact, been vaguely indignant as I had thought.) As I wrote previously, it was through the okonomiyaki incident that Misako learned of my obsession with Koyanagi Masako. It was particularly from the matter of Koyanagi Masako that Misako had become indignant—though this only became clear later—so why had Misako become indignant specifically because of Koyanagi Masako? (It seemed it was not yet time to speak of that.)

Suematsu also said in a playful tone, imitating Misako’s voice. “Mr. Kurahashi seems like such a lonely person, doesn’t he? I do like that sort of lonely-looking person, you know. Mii-chan said that to me once, you know.” Seeming to have grown drunker, he began embellishing his story with gestures.

“So then, I—well, I told him, ‘I’m a lively person, you know.’” “That’s right—back then, you went by Mr. Takase instead of Mr. Kurahashi, didn’t you?” “How come you…” Finding it too troublesome to explain, I simply said he had gotten my name wrong and poured sake into Suematsu’s cup, “Speaking of Dosakan—ah, it’s hard to say—Do, Sa, Kan, Kun—how’s he doing?”

“That guy can’t make up his mind—it’s a real pain,” he said, then belched—“Ugh”—before continuing, “With this kinda situation, we ain’t gonna make it through the year.”

“I wonder if Leviou would be better,” I mused. “That person was performing at O Hall, wasn’t he? I hear.” “Well you see—poor guy had the dancer he was sweet on snatched away by that troupe leader there.” “So then he got all worked up, picked a fight with the leader, and ended up getting kicked out.” “Looks timid but he’s got a stubborn streak.” “Oh right—I hear you used to aspire to be a novelist, Mr. Kurahashi.” “Might still have an interest in it even now.” “I’ve been reading your novels quite a bit, you know.—Oh! The sake bottle’s already empty?”

“Maki, another round,” I said to Sis.

*

The first Tori no Ichi of that year fell on November 1st. Since I had no particular faith in or interest in such things, I did not go to the Tori no Ichi festival.

November 3rd. Meiji Festival Day. On this day, Koyanagi Masako joined the comfort troupe and departed for China on the 3:00 train from Tokyo Station. Since she wouldn’t return for about a month, I had desperately wanted to share one last meal with her before her departure—yet that chance never materialized. From the audience seats, I had secretly whispered “Go safely” to her onstage... The third dawned rainy. I contemplated seeing her off at Tokyo Station, but the imagined spectacle of my awkward figure amidst proper well-wishers rendered this impossible. When her train departed, I stood gazing from my apartment window. The Jintan advertisement light in Tawaramachi—already forlorn-looking by day without its electric glow—now stood drenched in icy rain, wretchedly solitary. In the bleak vista beyond my window where only rooftops stretched, this sodden relic alone commanded my attention.

Even something trivial would do—I tried to occupy my mind with some thought to drive away these frivolous feelings toward Koyanagi Masako, and in doing so, I ended up conjuring the most trivial notion imaginable. To explain what that was—Suematsu Haruyoshi had asked me to devise a stage name for him in advance. The idea for that stage name suddenly came to mind—perhaps through association with Jintan—how about something like House of Nōshin or House of Tērin? Our manzai could position itself as curing audience headaches like Nōshin or Tērin... If we used those medicine names, maybe the manufacturers would pay us for advertising. Two birds with one stone! Wait—what about House of Adalin or House of Calmotin? That could be interesting too. No, but if listening to Suematsu Haruyoshi’s manzai made people as drowsy as Adalin or Calmotin’s effects, that’d be troublesome. Then how about House of Aspirin and House of Tokkapiin? But Mr. Suematsu had mentioned wanting a stage name that reflected the current times. Borrowing medicine names probably wouldn’t work...

A few days later, I met Asano Mitsuo, and when Asano saw my face, “Ah, Mr. Kurahashi. “The other night on the first Tori no Ichi, Koyanagi Masako’s fan club held a farewell party for her since she was going to China. “They were holding it on the second floor of Juraku. You should’ve gone, you know. “Koyanagi Masako must’ve been delighted though.”

I had no idea at all that such a farewell party had taken place. Asano had never told me about the existence of such a fan club, nor had he informed me of such a farewell party.

“Oh—there’s a fan club?”

I said this while feeling discontent toward Asano, who had brought up such a matter only afterward, but Asano seemed to take amusement in my presumed regret as he spoke in that manner. “What a grand fan club indeed,”

Asano bared his dirty teeth in a smirk,

“The members are—let’s see—shoemakers’ apprentices, fishmongers’ sons, tonkatsu shop boys, soba delivery boys, round-trip taxi assistants, electroplating factory workers… What a drag.” “When those fellows hold a meeting, they gather in their Sunday best, surround Koyanagi Masako, put on solemn faces, and launch into grand debates about Miss Koyanagi’s artistic style—now that’s a spectacle worth seeing, I tell you.” “This would make good material for a novel. What a shame—you should’ve gone, Mr. Kurahashi…”

He smirked maliciously, “By the way, about that Asakusa Society we discussed the other day—I thought we’d start with K Theater, so when I mentioned it to Kamiguchi-kun, he was delighted and said he’d definitely do it.” “I could talk to the publicity department and have them cover the society’s expenses, you know.—What do you say?” “Let’s do it!”

I nodded vaguely, “If we’re going to do it, it’d be better if we each pay our own membership fees.” “Well then, if the Publicity Department provides the funds, we’ll redirect that money to liquor instead.—Anyway, why don’t we go take a look at K Theater’s backstage? Since Koyanagi Masako isn’t here, I suppose Mr. Kurahashi has no interest in going, hmm?”

I was rather the opposite—it was precisely because Koyanagi Masako was away that I felt I could enter that dressing room. In the past, even when I wanted to go, I couldn't bring myself to pass through the entrance of K Theater's dressing room when the moment arrived—but now, together with Asano, I entered unhesitatingly without faltering.

Chapter Nine: This Pallid Scene

Ah, how now, O traveler—this pallid scene, doth mirror thine own pallid mien. Verlaine

As I mentioned briefly before, the dressing room was on the third floor backstage. Just as I reached the narrow landing between the second and third floors while climbing the dark, steep stairs toward that dressing room—Asano, who had gone ahead of me, had already vanished onto the third floor—precisely then, as if a sudden light had flashed across the dim staircase above, a group of dancers holding up the hems of their costumes appeared overhead. Their outfits—what fabric was that?—glistened white and translucent, billowy enough on their own to seem alluringly provocative, with flower-like frills adorning their shoulders and beautiful pouches resembling garlands attached to the open hems at their thighs. The show was about to begin. With a startled gasp, I pressed myself into the corner of the landing just as stage shoes clattered frantically down the stairs. But given the steepness of the steps and the cramped space, red shoes were nearly at my nose in an instant—and then that billowing costume brushed past my cheek, teasingly tantalizing some part of my psyche before sweeping onward. To put it with some exaggeration, my eyes darted back and forth in utter shock. Leaving aside the hems themselves, this indescribable wind stirred up by their fluttering skirts swept mercilessly across my cheeks. Suddenly it struck me—if liquor is called madness water, then this breeze must surely be madness wind.

How many dancers had descended? I was too agitated to tell, but after several had passed in this manner, even in my agitated state, I could at least discern that this wasn’t the entire dancing team—only a portion of them. If I lingered here dazedly, more would come rushing down from above—an unbearable thought (though by no means an unpleasant one). It was the opposite—or rather, so excessively opposite that it became painful—and so I rushed up the stairs. But in my haste to climb quickly, I ended up holding up the hem of my double-layered kimono with both hands—an exact mirror of those dancers clutching their skirts. But what a difference there was between those dancers and myself—I couldn’t help but wryly smile at the thought.

To the immediate left after ascending the stairs was the shoe removal area; beyond it lay the dancing team’s long, narrow dressing room. Just as I had thought, the remaining dancers burst forth from there in a surge—but with my vision blurred from excitement, I could grasp nothing but the overwhelming rush of their movement, let alone discern any individual faces amidst it all— "Oh—Sensei." A voice called out. Following the voice, I fixed my eyes and found Sā-chan there.

Unaccustomed to such situations, I found no words coming to mind in the moment; shaking my head with a few awkward "Uh, uhs," I— "Sensei, the 'Ma' girl isn't here." "The 'Ma' girl?" Probably thinking I was feigning ignorance, Sā-chan descended the stairs, leaving behind a meaningful smile. It was only afterward that I realized the "Ma" girl was Koyanagi Masako. The dressing room—now that the dancers had all departed, left completely empty—lay strewn with haphazardly discarded practice clothes, and there sat Asano alone, composed and unperturbed. "Well, won’t you come in?"

His tone was as casual as if inviting me into his own room, but coming from Asano—who would never allow me into his second-floor room above the sundries shop—it felt all the more peculiar. Be that as it may, taking advantage of the emptiness, I entered and there managed to take in the dressing room's interior thoroughly enough to fully appreciate it for the first time. On both sides of the long, narrow room, mirror stands were lined up in rows, most being small egg-shaped red ones. The north-facing wall had windows admitting meager light, while above the mirrors electric bulbs hung in rows like shopping district streetlamps. I had written previously about using electric lights for warmth, but in that room's stifling atmosphere—thick with complex odors—the bulbs' heat seemed to exert no small influence. Above them ran a laundry-drying cord hung with washed socks—mostly those carrot-colored ones I detested, then in fashion—and mouse-gray undergarments, all likely being dried by the bulbs' warmth.

The mere description of this laundry-draped scene already allows one to easily imagine the room’s sordid allure—but upon shifting one’s gaze beneath the mirror stands, the frayed-edged, reddish tatami mats lay strewn with rolled-up nightclothes stained with grime, practice outfits bundled with rehearsal shoes, and face towels scattered about, evoking the sensation of peering into a closet crammed haphazardly with a slovenly woman’s soiled garments. Here, squalor struck the eye more forcefully than any lingering sensuality. At this point in my description, it may seem as though I strive to convey a thoroughly disillusioned impression. However, this was a place where young dancers spent nearly every hour—not only during daylight but often staying overnight—living out their lives. Therefore, even as it remained undeniably squalid, within that squalor one could discern the tragically fleeting efforts of these women—at that dream-prone age—striving to make it as pleasant a living space as possible, efforts that did much to offset the grimy impression. For instance, on the walls—next to an oval-shaped sponge hanging where a peony brush might have been, utterly devoid of allure—were pasted photos of handsome foreign actors seemingly cut from movie magazines, and occasionally those of beautiful film actresses too, despite being women themselves. And beside the mirror stand, next to where the rouge brush stood, were small dolls, cute scented balls inscribed with phrases like “To So-and-so”—likely gifts from fans—and other little trinkets that girls would favor, all arranged as if treasured possessions. If one were to look only there—the delicate beauty of each girl striving to build as joyful a life as possible in that cramped space—it could not help but strike the viewer’s eye.

And so I never once frowned at the sordid squalor there. Nor did I secretly leer at its sensuality. A certain melancholy came over me. Even when Asano spoke to me, I gave no animated reply. Then Asano, "Already planning to use this dressing room scene as material?" He must have interpreted my silence as contemplative research. "Or perhaps—" Asano continued, "Is it because Koyanagi Masako isn’t here that you’re feeling desolate?"

With the short show over, the dancers soon came clamoring back to the dressing room. And before my very eyes—whether nonchalantly or not—they removed those feather-like costumes, for there was no concealing their undressing from my shamelessly seated presence in this fully exposed room. Sweating despite winter's chill and near half-naked—vivid proof of dance's grueling physical demands—they began jostling before mirror stands to remove makeup. One had plopped onto a forgotten pillow, knees raised like a man's as she thrust her neck toward the mirror stand. When I say like a man's—her bare legs were as hairy as a man's shins. Speaking of bare feet—there sat others cross-legged with soles jet-black. These sights proved mildly disillusioning.

Now, these dancers—though their ages varied, most being under twenty—appeared far older when viewed from the audience seats. Thus when observed in the dressing room, they gave an entirely different impression—but even within that same dressing room, there was again a stark contrast between those with their makeup applied and those who had removed it. When they hastily wiped off their stage makeup, there emerged a face as smooth as a peeled hard-boiled egg—though not eggshell-white, but rather a sallow, unpleasant hue, whether from exhaustion or lack of sunlight—and that face, devoid of eyebrows or anything else, made one start: so much that one was startled—a face so childlike, or rather, almost infantile in its appearance. The character for makeup is written as "transform-adorn," and it truly does transform. (Once, a woman with a long career as an actress had told me—"When I put on stage makeup, it feels like wearing a mask—it gives me courage, changes my mood, and that's how I can stand on stage. But with my bare face, I just can't do it. Even though I've been on stage for years and consider myself quite brazen, it still doesn't work.")

Sā-chan turned her smooth, makeup-free face toward me, "Mr. Asano, are you organizing some sort of gathering?" "Ah—who told you that?"

“From Mr. Kamiguchi.”

Though Sā-chan and Koyanagi Masako shared no facial resemblance, whenever I looked at Sā-chan’s face, I found myself inexplicably conjuring Masako’s features with vivid clarity. “Mr. Kamiguchi told me—he said Mr. Asano wants to invite us to that event and have us serve drinks like geisha! How awful!” “Making us do some geisha impersonation?” “I never said any such thing!”

However, Asano was clearly flustered.

I later met Kamiguchi Kurosu Hyōe at the dressing room entrance. Kamiguchi wore an immaculate Western suit and gleaming shoes—before which my own grimy zori sandals and shabby double-layered coat appeared all the more wretched by contrast—and tapped my shoulder with a familiarity befitting decade-old acquaintances. “Hey, Sensei.” “Ha.” In that world, nearly everyone was called Sensei. While it remained somewhat tolerable for literary club members and choreographers to bear the title, even former enka singers and voice actors turned manzai comedians were addressed as Sensei within the troupe hierarchy. Thus though I’d already learned by then that being called Sensei warranted no surprise, when I found myself sheepishly rubbing my face,

“Hey, Sensei. “I hear you’re going to hold an event for us.” “Please, I beg of you.” “To be honest, Senseis, we’re at the most critical juncture right now—we want to make our big push here—but for that, we absolutely must have your backing…” “Well…” “Don’t say such things—come on, please take me under your wing.” “Please, I beg you—give us a chance to make our name!”

To be honest—being flattered in that manner, given my indolent disposition, I didn't feel particularly displeased. No—even if I suspected what might be said behind my back, hearing such words to my face felt undeniably pleasant. I recalled Suematsu Haruyoshi, who had once been in the same troupe as this Kamiguchi, and contrasting Suematsu's somewhat awkward, fumbling manner with Kamiguchi's, I thought to myself that Kamiguchi would surely rise in the world. Personally speaking, I preferred Suematsu—that is, given my fondness for down-at-heel atmospheres like those found in okonomiyaki shops—in the sense that I felt an affinity for him; but at the same time, I also liked Kamiguchi, who knew just how to scratch that strange vanity I kept hidden like a shameful skin rash in some unreachable corner of my heart. And while I had a sense that this Kamiguchi would likely become the sort of person I'd dislike if he achieved the success he desired, I couldn't bring myself to hate him in his current state of fervent ambition—there was even a certain grandeur to it, like watching a roaring blaze.

“Oh my, oh my—what dreadful dandruff.”

Kamiguchi even went so far as to brush off the back of my double-layered kimono, “Ma-chan will be back by early December, but as for the event—well, I suppose it’ll have to wait until Ma-chan returns.”

He chuckled and tapped my shoulder. Whether it was Sā-chan’s remarks or Kamiguchi’s words, my infatuation with Koyanagi Masako seemed to have already become “famous” throughout the entire troupe. You must have spread the rumors—when I directed such a look at Asano, he turned his back to me, “Kamiguchi-kun is truly—no, absolutely—going all out, isn’t he?” Then Kamiguchi briskly clapped his leather-gloved hands,

“If I don’t get fired up now, there’ll never be another chance to get fired up!” “It’s because we’re finally gaining some traction.” “If we don’t make our big push and take over here now…” “That’s right, that’s right.” They were lively words, but spoken in a hollow voice. Asano had once told me that Asakusa wouldn’t let people stay idle, and while it was true the district’s atmosphere had that quality, seeing someone like Kamiguchi made me realize that beneath that languid air swirled a fierce struggle for survival—a realization that stirred up and excited my own indolent mind.

I’ve got to get fired up too!

As usual, Asano and I went to Bon Jour in the Subway Alley, but on the way there along Shin Nakamise Street, I happened to run into one of the so-called coffee girls I used to know from a certain "special café" in the backstreets of Ginza where I had loitered before coming to Asakusa. I hadn’t been to that shop in quite some time, but she apparently still remembered my face—for when she spotted my figure in the crowd, she turned her face aside with an expression that said she’d encountered something unpleasant.

There was a man beside the woman, but the way she averted her face made clear what that man meant to her.

Right. I hadn't written about this before, but bumping into Ginza women using Asakusa for their rendezvous like this wasn't my first time. Just how many times had both the woman and I found ourselves feeling this awkward in such situations? Thus I realized these Ginza women chose Asakusa thinking they wouldn't meet customers from their shops here—that they needn't worry about encountering those who frequented their establishments and spread troublesome gossip. Yet my very presence cast an unpleasant shadow over this sense of security, and through having my face averted, I was made to understand I too had been seen as one of those trivial patrons prone to spreading such trivial rumors. Now to change the subject—curiously enough, while Ginza women came to Asakusa, the café girls from Subway Alley would head to Ginza on their days off. This wasn't necessarily for trysts—they went purely for moviegoing pleasure. Though you'd think they could watch films at nearby Rokku, they deliberately journeyed all the way to Marunouchi. Once when I remarked on this oddity to one of them,

“But I mean… it just doesn’t have the right atmosphere.” She answered smartly. I gave a nod that was both understanding and not understanding, but then, upon learning that even the movies they watched had to be foreign films for “the atmosphere to come through,” I gave another nod that was neither understanding nor not understanding.

Indeed, I had not yet spoken even once of those I encountered in Asakusa who were not themselves Asakusa people, but now I would take this opportunity to shift my narrative to them.

＊

Taking the road in front of my apartment in Tajima-cho—not toward Rokku but in the opposite direction, that is, toward where Hotarō stood—and emerging onto Kikuya Bridge’s tram-lined street, that tram-lined street formed a somewhat peculiar shopping district. Namely, if I were to introduce the signboard of one of those shops: Utensils for Various Eating and Drinking Establishments Pickles and Sushi Shop Utensils They were written in two rows like this. Next to it hung a sign reading “Display Bottles Shop.” Peering inside, you would see every conceivable type of display bottle—the electric lamp-shaped ones holding rice crackers that you might find at your local rice cracker shop, the square ones filled with tobacco at a tobacco shop, or even the small acorn-shaped bottles used in cafés to showcase coffee beans with declarations like “We use this premium blend here.” These and all other varieties of display bottles—nothing else—crowded the shop from wall to wall. Next to it, you might find a shop selling nothing but Western-style plates, Chinese soba bowls, and large teacups for sushi shops—but cross over to the other side of the tram tracks, and there lay a store offering chairs ranging from shoddy ones for cheap eateries to rather splendid long benches for cafés, all strictly commercial-grade rather than for household use. In this manner, the entire area formed a supremely convenient shopping district where, should you suddenly decide to open a tonkatsu restaurant tomorrow, you could instantly procure everything from backroom tools like meat cleavers and oil pots to front-of-house furnishings like tables and chairs. When it came to restaurant utensils, there was nothing they didn’t sell. Chopstick specialty shops, condiment container specialty shops, and then… Ah, enough of this.

“If I can’t write novels anymore, maybe I’ll gather some cheap utensils here and set up a food stall,” I mused. While lost in these rather dreary fantasies, I found myself walking through that area one day. As I wandered—eyes gleaming with forced amusement beneath a sullen expression, peering into shop after shop—I had just reached the stretch beyond Kappabashi’s tram stop when: “Well, well.” The voice startled me. Turning, I recognized the bartender from an Omori café I used to frequent—

“What an unexpected place to—” With a look of surprise, “What are you doing here in a place like this, coming all the way from Omori…?” “I’m here to buy Christmas decorations…” She was carrying something like that tucked under her arm. "Ah, I see," I thought. There was a shop there that specialized in selling exactly those kinds of things. I was feeling somewhat reluctant, but as the other person’s persistent quizzical expression grew tiresome, I briefly explained why I was strolling around such a place. And since the bartender said he was heading back by way of Rokku, we turned together toward Shibasaki-cho—but there, when approached from Asakusa Park, lay behind the International Theater—another peculiar district in its own right.

That street was colloquially called Confectioners' Lane, every house a confectionery shop—manufacturers of sweets clustered together in that block. For a long time, I had arbitrarily assumed that this Confectioners' Lane was simply a corrupted pronunciation of Confectioners' New Avenue, but much later, I was informed that it actually meant "the confectioners’ path."

If I had gone straight, I would have emerged onto Kokusai-dori Street, but midway I somehow turned right and found myself on Kappabashi-dori Street. “Is everyone doing well?”

I said to the bartender. “It’s been ages since I last saw you all—how about Ei-chan? Is she still well?”

Ei-chan was the name of one of the café girls there. That said, there were only two girls there. “Ei-chan quit.” “She quit?” “It was more like Yurippe drove her out…” “Hmm.” At the shop, Ei-ko had been there longer, and back when Yuriko had just started working there, I once overheard them having such a conversation. I suddenly remembered that.

“It must’ve been a mistake to look back—I’m sure of it. I thought it was dangerous and ducked toward the eaves, but the bicycle came right at where I’d dodged—wham!”

“Oh, you’re making fun of me.” Yuriko kicked the floor with her shoe heel in frustration. This had apparently occurred in a narrow alley called Nomihei Yokochō, running alongside the railway tracks near Ōmori Station.

“It hurt.”

Ei-ko was wearing a kimono. “We have that happen often too, don’t we?” “When you try to dodge a bicycle, you end up stepping right into its path instead.” “I’m sure that bicycle was the same way.” “Because I turned around and tried to dodge in a panic, I was startled and ended up making it crash into me instead.” “Don’t be ridiculous. It might’ve been deliberate.” “You should’ve yelled at them to watch out!” “What did you say back then?”

Ei-ko giggled softly.

“You’re such a strange one, Ei-ko.” “But even I think it’s strange, when you consider it. I ended up reflexively saying, ‘I’m sorry.’” “Well…” “It’s strange, but… you understand, right?” “I don’t understand,” said Yuriko. She clicked her teeth coldly. “You understand, right?” And so I interjected. Even I, for instance, when someone steps on my foot, tend to feel that it’s my fault for having my foot sticking out in the way, and when the other person says, “Excuse me,” I’m always the one to shrink back with a “No, no.”

Now, I didn't know the exact circumstances, but it seemed Ei-ko had quit as if driven out by Yuriko, the newcomer. Why? Even without asking why, this notion that Yuriko had ousted her slipped effortlessly into my mind as something entirely plausible. I prayed she might have found a better establishment, yet I couldn't help thinking: upon women like Ei-ko, society's rough seas would always crash with particular fury, while women like Yuriko would keep shouting warnings at those very waves, living willfully strong and self-assured.

“Ei-chan was a good kid, though…” “She was a good woman as far as that goes, but...” “But for the shop—if it came down to choosing between Ei-ko and Yuriko in a clash—Yurippe was better at handling customers, you see.” “It’s true Ei-chan was senior, and it was pitiful, but still…”

There, I was addressed once again. “Hey there!” The voice came from Dosakan, who had just emerged through the black noren curtain bearing the inscription “Iida’s Loach Restaurant.” “Hey—” Since I had my companion with me, I attempted to move on after exchanging greetings. “Mr. Kurahashi,”

Dosakan chased after me and said, “I need to talk to you for a moment.” He had a stiff face that was somehow startling.

I had been remiss in mentioning this earlier—but given that we had come to buy Christmas decorations, which readers will likely have deduced by now—it was already mid-December at that time. In other words, about a month had passed between the previous section and this one.…

“It seems I’ve written nothing but show-offish things, but if I stubbornly continue in that vein: at the left corner where Kappabashi-dori meets Kokusai-dori stands ‘Imahan,’ and on the second floor of that building is a bathhouse.” The entrance faced Kappabashi-dori, with a signboard on the second floor reading “Japan Government-Registered Ronjin Seiyoku—Glass Bath.” The name “Glass Bath,” however, did not mean that its tubs were made of glass or anything of the sort—rather, it originated from the fact that hot water once used at a glass factory (now long gone) behind the building had been diverted for use in this public bathhouse. Second-floor bathhouses exist in parks as well and are not uncommon, but the name “Glass Bath” is somewhat unusual.

Beneath that bathhouse were Tokiwaya Shokudo, Maruyo Kajiten, and then Kawagane—a Western-style restaurant famous among the shack dwellers—making three establishments in total, with a billiard hall called Hanatsuki further down in the basement. Just as we reached that spot, from the slightly opened window of the Glass Bath—despite it being midwinter—came the pleasant rhythmic patting sounds of a sansuke bath attendant massaging shoulders. It was an unseasonably refreshing sound that reached my ears precisely because we—myself at the center, flanked by the bartender and Dosakan—were all walking in silence. To belabor the point, our silent procession stemmed from Dosakan's grim expression. The bartender, unaware of Dosakan's background, wore an equally stern look—likely thinking *This guy must be some troublemaker from the entertainment circles*—while I myself, though privy to Dosakan's circumstances, found myself tongue-tied by the peculiar tension, my face hardening into a frown.

Part 10: Around the Day of the Rooster After crossing Kokusai-dori Street and proceeding straight down the avenue where Shūraku (until recently the Kannon Theater) stood on the left corner and Koyoken on the right,

“Let’s go this way.”

Dosakan pointed toward Koyoken. “Because if we run into those bastards from Theater O, it’ll be unpleasant...” At the end of that street came into view the O Hall of the Leviou Theater where Dosakan had once belonged. We veered right as Dosakan instructed, but after walking a short distance encountered a waitress from Koyoken, “Good day.—And thank you for the other time.” we were greeted. “She’s chic.” “Is she an actress or something?” As if trying to dispel the heavy air, the café bartender said.

“She’s a waitress at Koyoken, you see.” “Ah—the one on that corner.” “That place is an old café, isn’t it?” He looked back and said, “A café waitress, huh. “She’s a beautiful woman.” “She doesn’t look like a waitress though.” “She was an actress until recently.” “Ah—I see.”

The bartender nodded approvingly (on his neck was a scar resembling scrofula). “They say that place is run by Moulin Rouge people.—Are you a regular at that café, Mr. Kurahashi?” “No, I’ve only been once—the other day was my first time.” Though the waitress greeted me warmly enough to make me seem like a regular, if you had seen the flustered, surprised look on my face at that moment, you would have known my words weren’t a lie. I had been invited by an acquaintance and, though I had long known its name and reputation, had never once set foot in—nor felt any temptation to enter—that establishment until visiting it for the first time just a few days prior. This acquaintance was someone who, during the era when a certain “Okimi-san” had been celebrated at that establishment—a time roughly corresponding to when “Ochika-san” was famous at Ginza’s Lion café (to be precise, slightly after Ochika-san’s heyday)—had made a point of commuting all the way from Yamanote to Asakusa just to pursue Okimi-san. Though I casually refer to him as an acquaintance, he was over a decade older than me, and while his past as a café habitué might evoke rakish connotations, he now held a respectable position as an executive at a certain company—the sort of man who, after the Incident, traveled back and forth to the continent by plane with the same nonchalance as my own mundane commutes between Ōmori and Asakusa on the municipal railway. On the day we met—some days after his return from Beijing—he asked me, “Where do you spend your time these days?” When I replied, “I’ve been frequenting Asakusa,”

“It’s been ages.” “Let’s go.—To Koyoken.” For him, Asakusa meant Koyoken—that seemed to be his association. Similarly, there may be those who associate Ginza with “Lion,” but in this present day when “Lion” had vanished, Koyoken still retained something of that era’s café atmosphere—though admittedly altered in some ways—and I thought that its mere survival, even without Okimi-san, must feel like a kind of happiness to that man. The reason I felt no attraction to that establishment was likely because I had never experienced the so-called golden age of cafés—even if I had heard rumors of it during my upright student days—and my somewhat belated history of “dissipation” only began later, within the bars that had replaced cafés in Ginza. Cafés simply didn’t click with me in this “new era.” Moreover, the atmosphere of that place—perceptible even from outside without entering—was not so much Asakusa-like as Ginza-like, or rather, a Ginza-style ambiance blended with a certain percentage of Asakusa’s local flavor, which also did not sit well with me. Led inside by that acquaintance—indeed, just as reputed, the waitresses were all beauties, refined like Yamanote-bred young ladies (or perhaps former noblewomen of bygone eras)—I found myself standing beside him. Though we were both outsiders to Asakusa, I inexplicably felt like an ill-fitting Asakusa local myself, while recognizing how perfectly suited my acquaintance, an executive at a certain company, was to that establishment.

The waitress who had greeted me so amiably was a girl not yet twenty years old who had until recently performed on stages in Shinjuku—a truly lovely girl, radiant with youthful vitality, making the bartender’s exclamation of “What a beautiful woman!” entirely understandable. Back when she had been on stage—when theater professionals had pinned great hopes on her future, when her name had appeared multiple times in newspaper reviews, when praise-filled articles had been written about her even just before she quit—why had she given it all up? From Leviou’s stage had already emerged several movie stars and record singers, with the theater itself being called a veritable star incubator. Had she abandoned acting in despair to become a waitress, that would make sense—but to discard such promising prospects at their very peak? That eluded me. Or rather, to say it eluded me was merely rhetorical—it must have been about money, plain and simple. Waitressing paid better. There were likely other circumstances too. As I gazed at that beautiful girl, these joyless thoughts rose in my mind—that perhaps this very speculation had contributed to my lack of enjoyment at that café. I had digressed unexpectedly, but—

“Speaking of Koyoken, the former Shūraku...” the bartender said. “The development of Sudamachi Dining Hall is really something, isn’t it?”

I was also aware that the various Shūraku restaurants were managed by Sudamachi Dining Hall, but—

“—I hear they’re buying Hanayashiki this time.” Though I spent nearly every day in Asakusa, it was from the bartender at that Omori café that I first heard such news. I marveled at how professionals truly know their own world.

“Hmm.” “Hanayashiki, huh.”

—The once-celebrated landmarks had now fallen to ruin. Speaking of ruins, even the aquarium in Asakusa—Leviou’s birthplace—stood abandoned, its condition so wretched that ghost stories circulated of tap-dancing footsteps echoing from its rooftop late into the night. (This structure was demolished not long after. The former devotees of Casino Folie now found themselves bereft of even these spectral remnants.) In my possession lies a volume titled *Tokyo Guide*, compiled by Tokyo City and published in Meiji 40 (1907)—the year of my birth, which lends me particular fondness for this book—containing within its Asakusa section a map of the park. Perusing it, I noted that most major eateries listed still endure today—*Yakko* eel restaurant in Tawaramachi, *Chinya* beef establishment in Hirokōji, *Tentō* tempura shop, *Umezono* sweet red bean soup parlor in Nakamise, *Kaneda* poultry restaurant in Umamichi, *Ikkō* traditional restaurant behind Hanayashiki, *Kusatsu* in Senzoku-chō, and *Yonekyū* beef house among them—yet in matters of entertainment, both substance and nomenclature have undergone near-total transformation.

Even from this, one could grasp a certain formidable quality inherent to eateries. The fact that Sudamachi Dining Hall was acquiring Hanayashiki was surely just another manifestation of that formidable power. To demonstrate just how tumultuous the vicissitudes of the entertainment world were, I decided to include here an excerpt from that same book concerning Rokku (Sixth District).

As for Rokku (Sixth District), it may be called the central hub of park attractions, with the district divided into four numbered areas. Though these attractions frequently changed and proved difficult to fix definitively, I shall here record those current in Meiji 39 as follows. Area 1 [between the present-day Egawa News Theater and Taishōkan]

Attractions included Taiseikan (Egawa Tamanojo’s Juggling) (Adults 3 sen, Children 2 sen) and Seiyukan (Naniwa Dance) (Adults 3 sen, Children 2 sen). Kyōseikan (Shōnen Bidan) (Adults 3 sen, Children 2 sen) Kyōseikan (Aoki Tamanojō) (Adults 3 sen, Children 2 sen); additionally, a monkey show. (The rest is omitted)

Area 2 [the section where the Opera Hall was located at the time]

Attractions included Nihonkan (Girls' Capital Dance) (Adults 3 sen, Children 2 sen); Nomi (Swordsmanship) (Adults 3 sen, Children 2 sen). (The rest is omitted) Area 3 [between the present-day Chiyoda Theater and Kinryūkan] Attractions included Seimeikan (Sword Dance) (Adults 2 sen, Children 1 sen 5 rin), Meijikan (Great Kagura) (Adults 3 sen, Children 2 sen), and Denkikan (Moving Pictures) (Adults 5 sen, Children 2 sen).

Theater Tokiwaza (Admission 6 sen), Yose Kinsha (Admission 6 sen). (The rest is omitted)

Area 4 [the location of the present-day Fuji-kan and Teikoku-kan].

Attractions included Nippon Panorama (Adults 10 sen, Children 5 sen), Curio World (Adults 5 sen, Children 3 sen), Wooden Horse Hall (5 sen), and S-ha Shinengeki Asahi (Adults 2 sen, Children 1 sen 5 rin).

(The rest is omitted)

“Are they buying Hanayashiki to turn it into a dining hall? But it’s too large for that—could they be reviving Hanayashiki instead?” I made these remarks and turned toward Dosakan—whom I’d been ignoring until then—as if testing the rumor’s validity. “Mr. Kurahashi.” His voice held a stern edge demanding an end to trivial chatter. It suddenly reminded me of how he’d sounded when we first met at Hotarō—that obsequious tone surpassing mere courtesy as he said, “A table will open soon—our apologies.” What a stark contrast.

I came to the front of Shochikuza Theater. A popular female swordplay drama was showing, and in front of the theater stood an eccentric billboard featuring the swordplay actress striking a dramatic pose with her thighs exposed.

“About Mii-chan…” “Please stop putting strange ideas into that woman’s head.” It came with a sharp finality—yes, abruptly—though from his own perspective, it might not have been abrupt at all. “What do you mean by ‘ideas’?” I had no idea what he was talking about. Dosakan seemed about to say something more, but just then a gust of wind blew straight at us from ahead, and he broke into a violent coughing fit. It was a cough that eerily conveyed to my ears how far his chest illness had progressed.

I veered off toward Nihonkan, “On the Third Day of the Rooster with Mii-chan…” In a feeble voice, perhaps from coughing, Dosakan said, “Yeah, we stayed up all night…” I nodded and, with the sleeve of my double-layered kimono that had tangled around my hand, absentmindedly wiped the side of my nose. White grease clung to the black woolen fabric with startling vividness, thick and glaring. At that moment, recalling Asano’s own filth—his double-layered collar littered with dandruff—I frowned and thought: So I too have become steeped in Asakusa’s air. The grease wouldn’t come off no matter how much I brushed it. Back when I lived in the house in Ōmori, my face would dry out and become flaky in winter—it never got this oily. Though having oily skin—or rather, acknowledging the oil on my face—wasn’t such a bad feeling. Though it felt healthier than the dry, withered sensation I used to have, even such trivial sensations were hardly insignificant to me in how they immediately affected my state of mind.

To the left appeared Aiyu Tsumashi’s shop—as I had written before—and there, despite it being winter, a block of ice sat imposingly at the storefront with a posture brimming with confidence, as if certain of its allure to passersby. “The person before you…” Dosakan said this about Ayuko, “Please don’t do something like that—like that person did when they snatched Goro away from Reiko-chan.” Now his voice carried a pleading tone.

I later learned that *konakakeru* (indeed, though it’s fallen out of fashion now, it was once commonly used) was backstage slang meaning to make a move on someone. I had met that Ooya Goro in Ginza a few days prior. “Oh, Mr. Kura.” “Oh, Goro-chan.”

This was our greeting. One could easily imagine from such an unseemly description (though I felt nothing unseemly about it) that we stood there poised to slap each other's shoulders—yes, like in foreign films where close friends reunite after a long absence and suddenly embrace, patting each other's backs as if they were lovers. Had we been born abroad, perhaps we too would have clung together in that manner, laying bare our affection.

Goro-chan was the current husband (or lover) of my ex-wife Ayuko—to put it more accurately, the lover (or husband) of the woman who had abandoned me—so to some, our apparent closeness might have made us seem like peculiar men. No, we were without doubt strange men. When Ayuko had first introduced him to me with “This is Goro-chan,” even sharing a drink together had felt somewhat odd initially. But he proved such compelling company that we quickly—or perhaps I too had struck him as interesting—in any case, we became thoroughly intimate in no time, until that sense of peculiarity faded entirely. In retrospect, it seemed our very peculiarity had paradoxically drawn us closer. It was indeed an abnormal intimacy.

As I expressed that abnormal affection through words and expressions as was my habit—I jolted. Dosakan’s words flashed through my mind with intense agony. (That damn bastard who killed Ichikawa Reiko.) I twisted my face.

Just as I was about to say that, Goro-chan cut in first,

“Have you seen Ayuko-chan?” (Ayuko would normally be called by her name, but Goro-chan referred to her as such, and Ayuko too called Ooya Goro “Goro-chan” in public.)

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Did she come back from Shanghai?” “It’s already been over half a month…” And then he’d say something odd like, “Is it cold today? Or is it hot?” only to suddenly start singing “la-la-la” in a soft voice, complete with gestures even in the middle of the crowd— “Lately, I haven’t been going to Ginza.” “La-la-la….” “She’s decked out in some extravagant astrakhan fur or something—it’s something else, I tell you.”

He swept his hands briskly along both sides of his body as if brushing off dust—likely an exaggerated gesture—then shook his shoulders and demonstrated a mincing walk with swaying hips. While sensing something unsettling in Goro-chan’s tone, “So—is she with you now, Goro-chan?” “Why would she?” Goro-chan bellowed those words in a thunderous voice and, as if seizing something, thrust his hand before his face—

“Pah!” With a strange cry—as if flinging something clutched in his hand at my face—he suddenly splayed his fingers wide open. “What’s that? You’re revolting.” I was startled. It wasn’t just the “Pah!” that shocked me. Though Goro-chan maintained his usual jocular tone—he was always clowning around—I detected something unnervingly bleak beneath it. Like finding a hard, jagged stone buried in soft down.

“Heh heh heh.”

And Goro-chan laughed with a guttural chuckle. When I looked, his face wasn’t smiling. “……?” But in the next instant, Goro-chan—still holding his hand aloft in that clumsy pose, as if someone had ordered him to raise it—jerked it inward, slapped it flat against his own face, then dragged it down with such roughness it seemed he might peel off his own skin. And then, his face blotchy,

“Hey, Mr. Kura… do I seem a bit crazy to you?” “Crazy?” “They all call me crazy,” he said, switching between “I” and “me,” “and when they say that, even I start to think I might be a little crazy.” “Get a grip. Goro-chan. What’s wrong with you? What’re you even saying? I can’t make heads or tails of it.” He was someone who would casually toss out wildly disconnected things mid-conversation—talking with him had always been taxing for those unaccustomed—but this was crossing a line.

Goro-chan bared his teeth and laughed outright this time,

“Gorilla.” No sooner had he said that than— “Just following your lead, Mr. Kura. Teheh.”

He lightly tapped his forehead. A loud sound rang out. And perhaps because of that—his tapered, bottle-shaped trousers caused his visibly unsteady legs to stagger.

“Goro-chan…” Before I knew it, I exclaimed, “Why would that be?” And the strange Leviou actor, having jumped to his own conclusion, “Because that’s what makes it funny.” He clapped his hands with a bang. “What?” Without answering that, “When I came to my senses—lo and behold—there was nothing left. And then—poof!” “What’s missing then?” “Tools.” “Ayuko’s tools.” “She’s a clever woman, that one.” “That woman’s got some lavish tools, huh.” “You should’ve told me that from the start.”

Then the other person stared at me blankly for a while, “Were you lonely? This is how she says it.” “‘Hmm-hmm,’ when I came back from Shanghai...”

“Ah, I was lonely.”

“(Even though these should’ve been Goro-chan’s own words, he said them in a woman’s voice.) But get this—Ayu-chan went and found herself a man in Shanghai! Don’t be shocked—no, wait, be absolutely shocked! She came back hand in hand with him, but didn’t let on one bit. So I had no clue! Then she started sneaking her tools out of the apartment one by one, and before I knew it—poof! Everything was gone. And just like that… Ayu-chan vanished from my life…”

“Saying ‘when I came to my senses’ is strange, don’t you think?” “Is that strange?” He tilted his head slightly. “That’s strange. If you were living together… But… if you were living together—” When Ayuko had vanished from my place, she’d hired a truck without my permission while I was away, moved out all her belongings in one go, and at the same time removed herself from our life together. “When you put it that way,”

Goro-chan blinked in surprise and said, “That’s a bit strange.” “That’s no joke.” “So, like I told you earlier, see? “There are times even I think I’m a bit crazy.” “Goro-chan!” I felt as though I too was being made to feel strangely off. Feelings of pity and anger were tangled together. “Is it since Ayu-chan vanished that everyone’s been saying you’re crazy, Goro-chan? “Or was it even before that…?”

“After she vanished.” With a strained intensity, “And they all say that’s why I’ve gone off the deep end.” “So, Goro-chan—what about the theater?” *(Will he even manage?)*

"I quit," he said with utmost cheerfulness. While thinking he’d probably been fired,

“So, what are you doing now?” I asked. “I’ve been focusing on this...” Bringing his fingers, shaped into a cup, to his mouth, “Glug-glug, like this.” “Money?” While I was unable to bring myself to say,

“Ayu-chan has her good points, huh.” “I’m having Ayu-chan support me.” In the end, I parted ways with Goro-chan without telling him the story I’d heard from Dosakan. Goro-chan mimicked tilting a cup with a glug-glug motion, and this seemed to inflame his desires all the more—he licked his lips to show it. “How ’bout a drink?” he said. When I refused with “I’ve got work,” he breezily uttered what should have been my line—“Well then, take care”—and tangled up those unsteady legs of his in a stagger that, though always part of his gait, had grown markedly worse. Then he disappeared into the bustling crowds of Ginza at its peak hour. But I couldn’t say it—though part of why I couldn’t was that Goro-chan’s sheer strangeness had left me dumbfounded, feeling as though I’d been swallowed whole. Even after we parted, I remained unable to recover from my mental vertigo for some time.

“Goro-chan has gone mad.” Even I, who had said that, now felt as though my own mind were slipping into madness.

Now, amidst that chaos, there was something piercing through like a single vivid thread. It was an astonishment bordering on admiration for Ayuko’s conduct, as I’d heard it from Goro-chan. That Ayuko had taken up with a man in Shanghai had exactly the feel of her persisting in being the same person she’d been in Japan even after moving to China—I had long marveled at her particular brand of tenacity, but now I found myself astonished anew by her sheer audacity.

Chapter Eleven: On Reality’s Renewed Assault Returning to the main thread—Dosakan had told me not to imitate Ayuko’s act of snatching Ooya Goro from Misako’s sister—which unmistakably meant I shouldn’t pursue improper feelings toward Misako—yet to me, those words remained utterly unfathomable. But on the Third Day of the Rooster, I had stayed out all night with Misako. The sole thing I grasped was that Dosakan appeared to have misunderstood something about this.

"It’s a preposterous misunderstanding," I said. It felt ridiculous even to have to say it. "Misunderstanding?" As Dosakan fixed his bloodshot eyes—whites showing all around—on me, "Yeah…"

I shook my head emphatically, but Dosakan said nothing and gave a series of small nods. It was not a nod of approval but one that seemed to scrutinize my words, making me uneasy. "Speaking of Ooya Goro—you know, this time poor Goro-chan was clearly dumped by Ayuko..."

I said this to deflect the conversation, but Dosakan still said nothing. To escape that silent pressure, I continued, "So, Goro-chan—well, I met Goro-chan the other day, and he seems a bit off." "Off?" Dosakan finally spoke.

"Yeah, like... like he's been done in or something—like his head's not working right..." We had arrived in front of Café Hatoya. "I wonder if we should go in," I said ambiguously to neither Dosakan nor the bartender in particular, then peeked through the noren curtain to find it packed. This place was never not crowded—most customers being people from the Six District theaters, some catching their breath over five-sen coffees, others gnawing on "curry dogs" stuffed with curry rice instead of sausages—leaving the cramped shop utterly full.

We gave up and started walking, but when we came to Park Theater,

“Well, I’ll take my leave here…”

The bartender gestured toward Tanuki Alley and, “There’s a place I need to stop by, so…”

He wore a look that seemed troubled about leaving me alone.

—Dosakan and I were left alone.

The Third Day of the Rooster was November 25th. (The first day was the First Rooster, the thirteenth was the Second Rooster—) On the evening of the 24th, I met Misako at Hotarō’s place; she was on her way back from a banquet job.

“I’m so sick of this,” “When I thought I’d just dance and go home, they told me to serve drinks too.” “...Makes me feel like some kind of dance geisha.” Misako’s eyes were red-rimmed as she slumped listlessly before the griddle. “So you went ahead and served them anyway, Mii-chan?” As she placed unopened clams on the griddle and clamped down the aluminum lid of the rice steamer, Hotarō’s wife spoke with unmistakable indignation lacing her voice.

“But, you see—just when I thought I’d leave if they kept mocking me, the maid there—the one who’d be called an attendant if they were geisha—persuaded me with her ‘there, there,’ and I ended up doing it.” “The customers were saying things like that, so I was asked to do it.” “Customers?” “What do you mean, ‘those customers’?” Hotarō’s wife spoke in a clearly angry voice, as though she herself had been insulted. “What kind of banquet was it? —Where?” “And where was that banquet held?”

“○○ no △△ Villa.” With a spatula, Misako struck the griddle—lightly, yet with a desperate air—

“—They seemed to be factory bosses.” “Mouthing off about wartime prosperity—disagreeable customers.”

Beside them, even though it was already late at night, a child was quietly playing alone with a toy tank. “Mii-chan…” After sprinkling aonori seaweed over the small dish of pickled eggplant and placing it before me, Hotarō’s wife folded her hands on her lap and fixed her gaze on Misako, “From now on, Mii-chan, when that happens, you must refuse them outright.” “That’s right.” “You were invited to dance as entertainment at the banquet.” “You didn’t go there to serve drinks to customers—right?”

She turned her face toward the kitchen. In the kitchen, Hotarō hunched his back and held his hands over the briquettes. “—Well?” Hotarō’s wife urged again, as if prompting agreement—but he, a returned soldier said to have sustained war wounds in Baoding, merely rested his hand on what seemed to be his injured thigh and offered a faint smile, making no attempt to speak further. It was a gentle smile, yet I felt something sharp piercing my chest.

“That’s not true.”

And Hotarō’s wife continued on her own.

“There are dancers who’ve become geisha.” “So those customers probably think they’re practically the same thing.” “But…” With a clink, the shellfish popped open its aluminum lid. The clam juice sizzled and seared onto the griddle. “Even if you say you’ve left the stage, Mii-chan, you’re still a performer.” “Performers should sell their art, that’s all.” “Just because some maid asked you doesn’t mean you have to serve drinks. Don’t let those wartime profiteers make a mockery of Asakusa performers.”

“Sis,” Misako interjected. Her hand, ungloved and reddened by the cold outside, pressed flat against the counter,

“I’m sorry… I…” “There’s nothing to apologize for. When I think about how awful you must have felt, Mii-chan, I can’t help getting angry… I know how strong-willed you are, Mii-chan. When I think about how much you must have agonized, it makes me furious too.—You must’ve been forced to drink quite a lot. You look like you’re in pain.” “Mii-chan.” “Want some water?”

Hotarō, who had been silent until then, suddenly spoke. "I'm sorry."

“There.” It was a caring voice.

From amidst the gushing sound of water from the faucet,

“Wartime prosperity, huh?”

Hotarō’s muttering could be heard.

It was such an evening.

When midnight passed that evening, it became the 25th, and the Third Day of the Rooster began. From before twelve o'clock, people were crowding into Washinomiya Shrine.

Without either of us inviting the other, Masako and I went out to the O-Tori-sama festival. On O-Tori-sama nights, park food stalls were permitted to operate until two o'clock. When we reached the front of Juraku, a truck piled high with bedding futons was parked there—likely prepared to lodge employees who couldn’t return home due to operating until two o’clock. Something about this spectacle made me stop in my tracks,

“That’s ten sen per set,” Misako said. “Huh?” “Ten sen to rent one for the night.” “—I see.”

A man who had climbed onto the truck was dropping thin rental futons directly onto the pavement, handling them as if they were straw mats—thud thud.

“Staying overnight in the dressing room—when I think back on it now, it was fun.”

“…………” “If I end up dancing at banquets and getting told things like ‘Hey, Modern-san, pour one for me too,’ then it’s all over.” “Maybe next year I’ll just go on a trip.”

That day hadn’t been particularly cold during daylight hours, but as midnight approached, the temperature dropped sharply. The quick, shuffling footsteps of people hurrying along the sidewalk with their necks hunched rustled over the surface of Kokusai-dori Street—its expanse appearing desolately wide in the darkness, gleaming coldly like a black river. The sound didn’t rise into the sky but seemed to creep low along the ground. “Or maybe I should just marry Mr. Suematsu and start doing manzai comedy or something.” “Husband and wife?”

“Yes, teaming up with Mr. Suematsu…” At the front of a horse meat shop where multiple lanterns bearing shop names hung beneath straw-thatched eaves, young men were setting up a stand to store decorative rakes. “Butajima said he’s coming to Tokyo for New Year’s.” “The other day, in a letter—” “I wrote to Butajima about you in my letter.” “Then he said that when he comes here, he wants to meet you, Mr. Kurahashi…” “Oh.” I wanted to meet Butajima. When I tried to pursue the topic, Misako evaded it,

“They say these decorative rakes come in two types—incoming ship and outgoing ship,” she said.

“Hmm.” “Geisha houses get outgoing ships, restaurants get incoming ships...”

“—I see.” I sneezed once and said, “Which one would we be?” In terms of manuscripts being produced in great quantity, it’s an outgoing ship; but in terms of money coming in, it’s an incoming ship. As I was about to speak, I recalled how someone had once joked—albeit in jest—about a manuscript request from a magazine being akin to “receiving a summons from XX Publishing House,” and how I had felt repulsed at writers being likened to geishas. Buying an outgoing ship rake meant considering oneself a geisha.

There, I— “After all, it’s the incoming ship. No matter how many manuscripts I put out, unpaid ones are useless.—But which would you and your group be?” Damn it. Hadn’t Hotarō’s wife just said entertainers should have proper pride and not act like geishas? There, I—

"That’s right," I thought. "Daughters about to marry—especially those with distant prospects—should buy the outgoing ship rake. Those wanting a son-in-law quickly should get the incoming ship..." In the past, only nightlife and service trade workers bought Tori-no-Machi decorative rakes, but now ordinary people did too. The observation struck me as clever at first—until I realized these money-focused talismans held no real meaning. "You wouldn’t happen to know, would you?"

“I said to Dosakan. “They say there are incoming ship and outgoing ship types of decorative rakes, you know. “What kind are incoming ships and what kind are outgoing ships…””

We were walking along Shin-Nakamise Street, already permeated with the bustle of year's end.

An awkward silence had persisted between us for a long time. Those words had been my attempt to break it.

What constituted an incoming ship and what an outgoing ship was something I had discussed with Masako on the evening of the Tori-no-Machi festival. Masako only knew that there were incoming ship and outgoing ship types. The rakes were adorned with treasure ships, target arrows, jade stalks, golden chests, rice bales, Okame masks, Ebisu and Daikoku figures—each one so varied that at a glance you couldn’t tell which was outgoing and which incoming. I could have bought a rake to ask about them, but felt too self-conscious to purchase even a small one from the open-front stall. “Maybe there’s some distinction in the treasure ships,” I thought. “Perhaps they’re differentiated by whether the bow faces left or right,” I said offhandedly as we walked past. Yet among the smaller rakes, some lacked treasure ships altogether, and even those that had them showed no such distinction—so we never did find out. Instead of a decorative rake, I bought sweet potatoes skewered on bamboo branches and cut sansho sweets as souvenirs for Masako, while we each purchased our rakes separately at Washinomiya Shrine.

“I used this same rake last year too.” “I really should be buying one twice as large, but…”

“I’m the same way.” Looking back, the previous year I had come to the Tori-no-Machi festival with Ayuko, Ooya Goro, and a few others from that circle. Ayuko had been working at a Ginza bar then, and though I never bothered to clarify whether she and Ooya were breaking up or already broken up—during the festival they’d been in high spirits, playfully slapping each other’s shoulders while exclaiming “Stop it!” and “Don’t be silly!” We passed Yoshiwara Hospital and entered the pleasure quarter. Nakanocho teemed with people coming from and going to the Tori-no-Machi festivities. Amateur women mingled with jeering men as they filed through Sumi-ebi’s front garden—this being their prime chance to gawk at the spectacle. In such moments, my wretched habit of siding with the miserable made me ponder: Here were women condemned through cruel fate to this harsh world, forced to endure being ogled by carefree women of their own sex who happened upon better fortune. It made for an unsavory scene.

“Are we drinking somewhere, Mr. Kurahashi?”

“You drinking somewhere, Mr. Kurahashi?” Masako said. Her tone was brusque, but her eyes glimmered with a coquettish light. “Hmm, what should we do?” “If you’re drinking, I’ll join you.” “I’ll drink too.”

“In that case, maybe we could stop by Kikukiya.”

A shop known for its beautiful sisters, located at the corner of Edo-machi. "I have something I need to talk to you about, Mr. Kurahashi." "Well…"

“I don’t know,” Dosakan said coldly.

Silence came again.

We came to Nakamise. Normally I would have briskly crossed through that crowd—once I reached that point, it was inevitable I’d head to Bon Jour in the subway alley. But at that moment, finding it unbearable to sit facing Dosakan in a café, I turned left. Though I’d rented a room in Asakusa for over half a year now, somehow—whether by chance or disposition—I’d hardly ever walked through places like Nakamise, Kannon’s temple grounds, or Rokku’s movie theater district (though I had my reasons for the latter, as I’d written before). In short, I rarely ventured into what might be called Asakusa’s proper face. My wanderings mostly took me through backstreets that felt like the back, the armpit, the spaces between fingers—areas that felt… well… like that. Heading toward Niohmon Gate, it was rare for me to walk boldly(?) through Nakamise—Asakusa’s flower path-like thoroughfare.

“You seem to be misunderstanding something—though it seems the misunderstanding hasn’t cleared,” I said, sniffing back a runny nose and stammering slightly. “If it’s just a misunderstanding, that’s fine.”

Dosakan kicked the paving stone with his heel. “If it were true—if you ever try to seduce Mii-chan from now on, I’ll…”

“You—” I interrupted involuntarily in a harsh tone, but immediately let my voice slacken into a feeble jest. “Feels like I’m being threatened here.” “Yes,” Dosakan replied, “I am threatening you.” His words—absurd yet laced with menace—gained weight as he continued: “I am seriously threatening you.”

“……” “It’s not just Mii-chan. Please don’t lay hands on the women of Asakusa.” “……” The thought of Koyanagi Masako came to me. As for Masako, I told myself I had no intention of making advances toward her, but... “We talked about Rei-chan who died some time ago, didn’t we? After being abandoned by Ooya Goro, her illness suddenly worsened until she coughed up blood on stage and died... Just like some Shinpa tragedy— But most women in Asakusa carry something of those tragic heroines about them. Of course, there are terrible ones too. No shortage of those who could rival your ex...”

Twisting his blood-red lips, Dosakan let out a sickening laugh that felt like something being crushed. To liken it to an object, it was a laugh like a sponge soaked in foul fluid—but rather than a soft sponge, I felt as if a hard stone had been slammed against my cheek with a crack. Though this stone had been thrown at Ayuko, I somehow felt its impact on my own cheek. A smoldering anger flared up within me. “Well, if you say Ayuko’s a bad woman, then she is, but—”

I had no intention whatsoever of defending Ayuko. But I was spewing out anger nonetheless. "She may be a bad woman, but look—it's men who're the fools." "We're hopeless." "Myself included." "And women too—they're fools." "Hopeless." "I suppose that's partly what makes Ayuko a bad woman." "—The women of Asakusa are fools, aren't they?" Dosakan snapped like a provoked dog. "But isn't that foolishness precisely what's good about them?"

“That may be so, but…” I felt somehow foolish and fell silent.

I couldn’t understand why Dosakan had suddenly started taking this threatening attitude toward me—the very attitude he himself had described. I turned my head toward him. What I did understand was his apparent infatuation with Misako. Because of that…?

No, if we get to the bottom of it, this was a ridiculous affair, so let's abandon the pretentious prose. I later learned that Misako had apparently egged Dosakan on. Knowing Dosakan was infatuated with her, Misako had exploited that very point to provoke him. Had she outright lied to Dosakan—explicitly claiming I was trying to seduce her—to spur him into action? Or had Dosakan, smitten with Misako, interpreted some vague remark of hers through jealous lenses? The details remained unclear to me. Yet it felt only proper that Misako had incited Dosakan to reprimand me. But why had she done such a thing?

It seemed Misako had been about to speak up herself on the night of the Tori Festival. She had tried to reprimand me herself. The talk that Misako had tried to broach with me by saying, “There’s something I need to talk to you about,” had likely been about that very matter. But Misako ultimately never had that talk. And instead of doing so herself, she incited Dosakan and made him do it in her place. Why did Misako try to reprimand me?—

—We had circled around Kannon Hall and come to the back on the right. The liveliness and bustle before Kannon Hall had shifted to the left, leaving its rear eerily quiet as if it were all a lie. It was a desolate place where the vibrant commotion of Nakamise—which we had just passed through moments earlier—now felt like a fleeting dream. There stood a bronze statue of the Ninth Danjūrō in *Shibaraku*, its inscription penned by Mori Ōgai. Beyond it lay the monks' modern residence, and beneath a ginkgo tree at the corner stood a public telephone booth—an incongruously lonely sentinel in that bleak spot. Just then, a stylish woman who seemed to be returning from Hikan Inari Shrine appeared. She paused before the booth, her hesitant steps stilling as she gazed at the fallen ginkgo leaves beneath her feet, then abruptly turned and stepped inside. Whether it was her alluring figure standing out starkly against the desolate surroundings or the very nature of that secluded telephone in such a lonely place—I imagined with uncanny certainty that she must be calling a man she loved. A surge of longing for Koyanagi Masako rose within me. I looked up at Danjūrō's blackened face tinged with verdigris while,

“You told me earlier not to lay hands on Asakusa women—but to avoid any misunderstanding, let me make one thing clear to you.” “There’s someone among the dancers that I like.” “I just like her—it’s not like I intend to do anything about it.” “But even if my saying I like her comes across to you in some strange way, that’s why I’m telling you this now.” “Who?”

“Koyanagi Masako from K Theater.”

“Ma-chan?” “Yeah, Ma-chan.” “W-wait.” Dosakan stopped in his tracks. “Then—you—Mr. Kurahashi, you knew that? “That’s Mii-chan’s sister…” “Sister?” I also stopped in my tracks. “A sister? —Then the one who died, Rei-chan…” “Rei-chan was the middle sister, and Ma-chan’s the youngest.”

“Is that really true?” “What’s the point of me lying?” “But no matter how you look at it—her being Misako’s sister……” “Misako never breathed a word about this……” “She must know I’m Koyanagi Masako’s admirer.” “Yet Mii-chan never……” “She won’t speak of it……” “Doesn’t so much as hint at it.”

“…………”

“You’re not being taken in by this, are you?” “That’s not…” “I was shocked.” I let out a sigh. Just then, Dosakan—who had looked toward Hikan Inari Shrine— “Oh?”

I also looked that way and—"Oh!"—widened my eyes.

“Isn’t that Sā-chan over there?” “That’s right. Since Sā-chan’s in the same K Theater as Ma-chan, you know her, don’t you?” Along the wall of the monks’ residence stood a row of various stone monuments—the monument commemorating Santō-an Kyōden’s writing desk, Nakahara Kōchō’s brush tomb, and a stele engraved with Namiki Gohei’s verse *“Tsukihana no tawamigokoro ya yuki no take”* (“The moonflower’s capricious heart—ah, bamboo in snow”). Beyond that lay Hikan Inari Shrine, where people of refined taste often made their wishes. There was Sā-chan, tying her fortune slip to the lattice of the sacred lantern—a dancer in gaudy Western clothes juxtaposed with an old-fashioned paper oracle.

“Bad luck,” Dosakan muttered as if to himself. “That girl—there’s someone named Kamiguchi at K Theater. She’s involved with him…” “Hmm,” I said. _Under normal circumstances I would’ve exclaimed “Huh?”_ “Kamiguchi has all sorts of women…” “Hmm.” _Under normal circumstances I would’ve gasped “Hoh!”_ Dosakan suggested Sā-chan drawing fortunes might stem from trouble with Kamiguchi, but my mind remained wholly consumed by the staggering revelation—so unbelievable it felt like a lie—that Koyanagi Masako was Misako’s sister. My “hmm”s were empty responses, my thoughts elsewhere.

Like a lie—yes, I may be a poor novelist, but even I couldn't have written such an implausible plot. Yet reality wrote on with bold assurance. The brazenness of reality—calmly unfolding matters so absurd, contrived, and wretched that no novelist could bring themselves to write them—and the sheer terror of that naked reality mercilessly shattered my fragile novelist's nerves. That's right. Though I had been continuously battered by reality's strangeness, this particular strangeness—precisely because of its foolishly intimate proximity—possessed overwhelming power to crush me. In my resolve, I had intended to remain humble before reality, likely due to being pummeled by it without respite. I had strived to avoid presumptuous acts like dissecting reality through fiction—acts that might anger it, so to speak. Yet why did reality hold such resentment toward me, dealing such a cruel beating? The pain I felt wasn't merely shock at discovering Koyanagi Masako was Mine Misako's sister!

When we reached Hikan Inari Shrine, Sā-chan—unaware of our presence—hurried off toward Asakusa Shrine, and neither Dosakan nor I made any attempt to call out to her. Before the shrine stood a stone torii said to have been donated by Shinmon Tatsugorō, its pillar carved with "Shinmon," and within it was a small wooden sacred lantern. The fortune slips tied to the well-like lattice shone brightly white in the deepening dusk.

Chapter Twelve: Fui na Are (Asakusa’s revue dancers call their finale fui na Are.) The discussion about forming an Asakusa Appreciation Society first arose between Asano Mitsuo and me back in October—before Koyanagi Masako had even joined K Theater’s comfort troupe bound for China. The plan languished in limbo until finally taking shape after New Year’s, when January was already half gone. One mid-January morning—though “morning” hardly applied by then—I lay asleep in my seldom-used apartment (indeed, I’d grown scarce in Asakusa altogether lately) when Asano’s visit roused me.

When I lifted my head, a sharp, stabbing pain shot through it. "This must be a hangover. Last night at that awamori shop—yes, the one Mr. Asano had told me about—I drank too much…"

For someone as habitually despondent as I was, it was unusual to have drunk so much after a heated argument with a friend. Or perhaps we’d argued because we drank too much—either way, I’d stayed at the apartment due to sheer overindulgence. “A hangover calls for the hair of the dog, you know.” Asano bared his discolored teeth in apparent delight. “You really must have a morning drink.”—His undisguised cheerfulness—was he simply glad to have found me here? Or did he want us to share this morning drink together?

Following his lead, I went to Iida, an eel restaurant on Kappabashi-dori Street where Dosakan had once appeared. “Catfish boosts your energy, you know.”

As Asano kept insisting, I saw no particular reason to object, so I went along with his suggestion, “Then I’ll have the whale.” But Asano raised an objection and called out to the waitress, “One whale hot pot, one river fish hot pot.” “Right away!” “One whale hot pot, one river fish hot pot!” the waitress called out to the kitchen. “And some sake.” “Right away! And one bottle of sake.” “And one bottle of sake.”

The only difference between Asano’s words and the waitress’s was that she had specified one bottle of sake. The interior of the crowded shop was divided evenly between an earthen-floored area and tatami mats, and nearly all the customers seated in the earthen area were eating rice with miso soup. Loach soup, whale soup, clam soup, *aomi* soup (vegetable-based), tofu soup, leek soup—all for five sen each, with rice available for ten or fifteen sen. The fact that they could eat without a hint of shame at the cheapness of fifteen sen—the atmosphere of people enjoying their meals, this very air of Asakusa—soothed my heart. I wanted to join the others in the earthen-floored area and eat loach soup instead of sitting on the tatami and having complicated things like whale or river fish.

Asano pulled out around fifty reply postcards from his pocket. They were mimeographed invitations for the Asakusa Appreciation Society. For the first meeting, as we had long discussed, it was decided to invite the troupe members from K Theater and hold the event. Asano single-handedly negotiated with the theater and secured the venue and other arrangements. “Well, I’ll send these out then.”

The postcards had been handled by the theater staff and mimeographed by the literature club, but the ink was too thick, making them look messy. That garishness faintly evoked the lurid performance style of Asakusa’s small playhouses. “I’m sorry for not doing anything at all.”

I had been reluctant. Ever since hearing that unexpected story from Dosakan, I had been keeping my distance from K Theater—and from Hotarō, where I might have encountered Misako. A small pot with neatly piled charcoal embers arrived first. Asano promptly held his hands over it, “Hey, where’s the sake?” “Right away.” When the sake arrived, he eagerly poured it for me, and the moment he finished pouring, without a moment’s pause, he clinked the sake bottle against the cup he’d already prepared in his left hand. He slurped loudly,

“Something unpleasant happened this morning—I ended up waking up early. Had to have a drink or…” He kept clutching the sake bottle instead of setting it down. A whale hot pot arrived, its surface glazed with something like translucent agar. “Went to the toilet this morning and found mail—my manuscript had been sent back.” “Happens every time, sure, but I’d actually believed in this one. Knocked me flat.” “Tried going back to bed—couldn’t sleep a wink.—Hey, Zuu! What’s the holdup?”

“Right away.” “It’s a humorous novel, you see. “This sort of tale. “I’ll withhold names, but I’d gone to visit a dancer’s home at one of those small theaters on some business. “I—it was a cold night. “A true story, mind you. “When I arrived, the girl hadn’t returned yet—just an old woman sleeping alone. “Might’ve been her mother, but anyway this elder crawled out from a threadbare futon visible right from the entryway, saying since she’d likely be back soon, ‘Do come up! It’s a wretched place, but please make yourself at home.’ “Truly a foul caretaker’s hovel. When I went up—‘Must be freezing out there.’ “‘Let me fetch hot tea…’ “Positively fawning hospitality. “I told her not to trouble herself, but she laid out this proper tea set—nothing like that rice-cracker futon—then stood up. I assumed she’d boil water in the kitchen, but no—she thrust her hand into that very futon. “What’s this? Out comes a hot water bottle. “Wrapped in grimy rags. “She hefted it with a grunt and plopped before me. “As I’m thinking *What now?* she peels back the rags and starts unscrewing the cap. “‘Huh?’ “Just as I gaped, she pressed the bottle’s spout over the teapot—would you believe it?—and started glugging out water she’d been warming her feet with moments before… “I was utterly dumbstruck! “But the crone remained unbothered. After pouring tea from that bottle-water, she goes ‘There we are—drink up.’”

“I said ‘Oh, thank you,’ but inside I was screaming ‘No way!’” “The old woman poured that revolting tea into her own bowl too—‘Drink it before it gets cold.’” “Then she calmly picked up her bowl, gulped it down with a *glug*, and went ‘Ahhh, delicious.’” “‘Ahhh, delicious’—that part’s my own invention, you see.” “What do you think of this story?”

“Hmm.”

The Zuu-nabe arrived. The bloodied chunks of flesh from a live catfish—diced into cubes head and all—were still twitching in the pot. “It’s interesting, but that material’s tough to write.” As he said this, Asano tilted a wooden box shaped like a hibachi’s ash drawer and vigorously poured the green onions inside into the whale hot pot. The finely chopped seasoning green onions formed a towering mound in the pot. “It must be hard to write, I suppose.”

“I finally wrote it. Earlier I said I had confidence, but it was more about the struggle than confidence. It’s precisely because I struggled so hard that having it rejected feels so bitter…” The catfish in the pot suddenly twitched its whiskers. The moment I gasped “Huh?!” in surprise—it went limp and sank into what should have been scalding broth. I felt profoundly unsettled.

“They say it’s not funny at all—that it’s not a humorous novel.” “The editors—they just don’t get the nuance.”

Asano had already emptied the sake bottle. “I’ll pay, I will.”

Asano was practically spoiling for a fight. Exiting that place, when we arrived at Kokusai-dori Street, “Shall we go check out K Theater?” As I stroked my face, which had turned completely red from the morning-after drink, “What do you think about going there drunk in broad daylight?”

“What does it matter?”

“But…”

We crossed to the opposite side and made our way toward T Hall, the manzai comedy theater. The stage door of K Theater lay at its rear.

“Let’s go take a look, shall we?” “Well…” Through my hesitant eyes came the sight of Suematsu Haruyoshi approaching from across the street, dressed in a Western suit with straw sandals. Suematsu noticed me immediately too, halting before Theater T with a nod that seemed to say, “Well now.” “Hey,” I said aloud, moving to Suematsu’s side.

“How’s it going?” Having said that, I looked up at Theater T’s signboard: “Military Manzai”— Edo’s Suke-san and Kata-san: *Rōkyoku Manzai* Tachibanaya Koen, Yoshiharaya Shimehachi: *Japanese-Western Ensemble Manzai* Ukiyo Seki Ganneko, Dewa San, and others were listed, among which—in small— Humorous: Kameya Pontan

*Manzai*: Usagiya Hyoutan The entry for *Usagiya Hyoutan* alone appeared especially large to my drunken eyes. “Oh, well, I’m Hyoutan Bokkuriko here!” I couldn’t grasp its meaning—perhaps even Suematsu himself didn’t—but he patted the back of his head with a smack and laughed, so I likewise opened my mouth and laughed a soundless laugh. Usagiya Hyoutan was none other than Suematsu’s stage name. He had finally become a manzai comedian. I had previously written about how Kameya Pontan, unable to make ends meet on just thirty yen a month, told his senior Tsuruya Anpon that they should earn money at a rundown theater, but when “Aniki” refused to agree, insisting it would lower their standing, they found themselves in a bind. Whether due to such circumstances or not, the two eventually ended up having a “divorce.” It was precisely when Suematsu—or, as I would put it, was “steadily transitioning to manzai”—and when he was struggling because Dosakan, whom he had chosen as his partner, refused to make that transition, that Suematsu and Pontan formed a new duo. In manzai, despite being younger, Kameya Pontan—the senior—became the senior figure to Usagiya Hyoutan, that is, Suematsu Haruyoshi.

“How’s it going?”

I said again. “How’s it going with the stage?”

“Well, thanks to you.” Suematsu—or rather, Usagiya Hyoutan—had already adopted the comedic hand-rubbing of a seasoned manzai performer, “It’s re~ally tough, I tell you.” “Oh right, Mr. Kurahashi—what do you think of this bit?” “Now, just listen.” He clapped his hands lightly, “So, about airplanes—I’m saving up like crazy to donate one.” “That’s how you set it up.” “I’m working my hardest, hoping to reach a hundred yen soon.”

“A hundred yen?” Then his partner cut in—“You think you can buy an airplane with a hundred yen?” “Can’t you?” “Don’t be ridiculous.” “Is it really that expensive?” “Look, pal—you’d need at least five hundred yen to buy one airplane…” “Ha ha ha.” When I forced a laugh, “Funny, right?” He glared with mock indignation. “It’s supposed to be hilarious, but it just doesn’t land. “They never laugh.”

“Hmm.”

“They might actually think you can buy an airplane with five hundred yen, but—” “Well, it’s really quite difficult, I tell you.” He made a face caught between tears and laughter. I sensed something resonating with Asano’s earlier story. The material sounded amusing when described, but when actually performed for an audience, it somehow turned dull. Just then came a woman who might have stepped straight from Asano’s tale of the old lady—though neither aged nor elderly in appearance, she carried that crone-like aura—clattering over in stubby clogs. After exchanging greetings with Suematsu, she flusteredly vanished into Theater T.

“That’s Mr. Tenchūken Tokoton’s wife…” “Hmm.” “She’s working this circuit now.” “Circuit?” I had asked what he meant, but— “Yes,” he nodded. “She only just started the other day…” “Is Mr. Tokoton still going strong?” “Still the same as ever, I tell you.” “He’s still pasting paper bags…” “And then he scurries about…” Asano used to frequent “Hotarō,” so he must have known Suematsu, yet he passed by acting as if he didn’t recognize him; and though Suematsu must have known Asano, he never mentioned him to me.

In the end, without going to K Theater, we headed straight toward Tawaramachi and emerged onto Hirokoji Avenue. Running east-west, that Hirokoji Avenue had sunlight only on the south-facing side near the park, while the other side remained entirely in shadow. The shaded side—bleak and oddly dim even at midday—felt as if all the winter’s cold had gathered there, while the sunny side, mercifully free of wind, offered a comfort that made one want to curl up like a cat basking in the sun, rounding one’s back and narrowing one’s eyes. While feeling within myself like a plant starved of sunlight, I blinked rapidly and suddenly recalled the scene I had witnessed when I ventured out for a stroll to Yoshiwara at the end of last year. It was a scene that seared itself into my eyes. It was a quiet hour just before noon—when the entire district seemed to let out a collective sigh—on a street in Edo-machi or Kado-machi, though this street, much like Hirokoji Avenue, had sunlight only on one side. That street, which at night would be filled with the bustle of people, lay utterly still at that hour. Perhaps because it contrasted with nighttime’s impression, the stillness held an unnervingly crisp clarity—and due to that clarity, even the sunlight illuminating one side of the road felt pure, truly serene, and brimming with bountiful warmth.

“Mr. Asano, you know about this, right? A peddler who only makes his rounds within the brothel quarter, catering to courtesans. Feather dusters, rice bowls, dolls to decorate rooms—they’d load their cart with things like that and come to sell in the brothel quarter. ……That cart had come to a stop right there on the street, bathed in bright, warm sunlight……” I had been telling Asano. The alcohol had made me voice whatever came to mind immediately. And due to the drink, my tone had taken on a somewhat sentimental quality.

“When I looked, the courtesans were gathered around the cart buying something.” “Wondering what they were buying, I went closer to look.” “When I got near—since they weren’t wearing makeup—even those courtesans who looked beautiful at night had sallow, swollen faces.” “That complexion was truly unpleasant.” “Maybe from lack of sunlight, or perhaps...” “No.” “That doesn’t matter.” “The courtesans were sunbathing while clustered around the cart, you see.” “They’d say things like ‘Too pricey’ or ‘Won’t you lower it?’ to the peddler fellow, but never actually bought anything.” “From what I could tell, they’d come outside under the pretense of the peddler’s visit just to soak up some sun...” “But eventually one bought a cheap toothpick holder.” “A few others were basking around it when one turned toward the shop and said something.” “Ain’tcha gonna buy nothin’?” in country dialect. Then when I casually glanced toward the shop—there on the raised entranceway floor, right at sunlight’s farthest reach, courtesans had brought out vanity tables and were doing their hair. “Even while styling their hair, they were angling for sunlight, you see.” “It made me feel I was being shown sunlight’s true value for the first time.” “And when I looked outside, there were bonsai lined up before the shop.” Bonsai that had been confined all day inside sunless rooms. They were giving them a spell in the light. The bonsai seemed to be quietly relishing this fleeting taste of solar grace.

“I saw the courtesans in those bonsai.” “And by the same token, I saw pitiful bonsai in the courtesans—since that day, I’ve hated anything called bonsai.” “This idea that bonsai cultivation represents austere refinement or whatever they say—it’s a lie.” “Isn’t it just cruelty?”

“You can really capture a scene, can’t you? That one…” “That scene…”

I nodded emphatically, "Speaking of Yoshiwara, I hear Kamiguchi Kurosu Hyōe from K Theater is the son of a teahouse broker." Asano nodded emphatically and scrutinized my face. "What do you mean?" "No."

Asano turned away. “Mr. Kurahashi, you were reluctant to go to K Theater earlier… When you first suggested going yourself, you said you didn’t want to, but…” He had been muttering up to this point before pressing further: “Between then and now—what’s changed? Are you acting from the same state of mind? Or…” He said this while exhaling booze-tinged breath into my face. “State of mind?” I didn’t understand what he meant.

“Is how you feel today about refusing to go the same as when you refused before?” He’d slurred his words, but perhaps infuriated by his own stumbling tongue, he didn’t wait for my reply and barreled on in a tone that screamed *To hell with it—just say it outright*, “The rumor about Kamiguchi and Koyanagi Masako—Mr. Kurahashi, do you…?” Now that he’d started, would he demand confirmation? “No use hiding it—out with it!” Asano thrust his face toward mine with that look, “They say Koyanagi Masako got herself seduced by Kamiguchi.”

Though it was an obscure slang term I didn’t recognize, the meaning pierced through me instantly. It struck my heart like a physical blow. “The story goes she made a wish with *gorigan*, but—Koyanagi Masako’s one hell of a fake innocent,” he said. “I hear she’s been acting all high-and-mighty like some proper lady.” *Gorigan* meant... well, it meant that sort of thing. I’d heard the term before. Once when I’d visited backstage, Kamiguchi—fully aware of my obsession with Koyanagi Masako—had remarked, “We’ll hold the meeting after Koyanagi Ma-chan returns,” all while he’d already been scheming to claim her for himself.

Ah, my Koyanagi Masako! (People—laugh at me!) My Koyanagi Masako has finally been lost to me.

No, wait—am I the one who tried to seduce Masako... I don't want to use such an abhorrent word. What should I say—had I been trying to do something about Masako? That couldn't have been my true feelings. Then there was nothing to lose or not lose.—So then, what exactly was this yearning of mine?

Hadn’t I known all along that a day like this would come? My pitiful yearning! “Well, but let’s go ahead with the meeting, shall we?”

Asano spoke, and I simply kept nodding. I gazed intently at the lovely image of Koyanagi Masako concealed within me—as if trying to shield it from vanishing.

Koyanagi Masako.

But the Koyanagi Masako within me, just like the wild geese I had once seen in the distant sky, was rapidly and cruelly receding into the distance. She was fading away. Yet strangely enough, this yearning within me alone remained—like a nest abandoned by birds—refusing to disappear.

…………………

＊

Asakusa’s Hirokoji Street, much like Yoshiwara, wore an entirely different face by day and by night. When night fell—on the same side where tranquil sunlight had bathed the street by day—rows of food stalls lined up, their shop curtains sheltering crowds huddled inside buying warm meals. Though their faces stayed hidden, their legs remained fully exposed below, while dogs with glinting eyes—appearing from nowhere—prowled restlessly about their feet. Truly, what a bustling spectacle it presented. A few days after walking along Hirokoji Street with Asano during the day, I met Dosakan on Hirokoji Street at night. He wore a mask, so his face stayed unclear, but I recognized him immediately as Dosakan. I had been on my way to get beef rice when,

“How about we grab some beef rice together?” I invited Dosakan. We passed through the noren curtain of Tanakaya—the beef rice shop favored by the troupe members—and when Dosakan removed his mask, I started. It might have been the lighting, I thought, but his haggardness was appalling all the same—his face looked exactly like a corpse’s. Dosakan pressed a hand to his cheek as if to hide his face—(perhaps because that hand was as pale and slender as a woman’s, it held a certain *onnagata*-like grace that lent an odd sensuality to the gesture.)

“Were you meeting Mii-chan?” “—No.” After a pause, “Were you meeting Ma-chan?” “—No.” The food stall was packed with jumpers and milling customers. Amidst all that bustle, the stall owner was scooping some broth into a small dish to taste. At those somewhat affected gestures, we found ourselves vaguely staring. Before long, Dosakan said, “I hear Mr. Butajima is coming.” “Hoh.” My face was steamed by the heat rising from the pot while my feet were exposed to the cold wind—a peculiar state of affairs.

“I’m thinking of going back to my hometown instead.” “Instead?” Dosakan turned sideways and coughed harshly, offering no reply, “Mii-chan has joined Hanayashiki.”

“Hanayashiki?” “They say Hanayashiki’s being revived this time.” “It’ll be called Asakusa Rakutenchi or something like that.” “She’s joined their show.” “That’s good news.” “But being a dancer in a sideshow—what kind of life is that?” “Mii-chan invited me too, but I said no.” “Here y’are! Sorry fer the wait,” came the shout as a bowl of beef rice—scattered with onions and sparse meat—was set before us. Dosakan snapped his chopsticks apart, rubbed them together with impatient clacks, and—betraying his ravenous hunger—lifted the bowl to his mouth. But whether from haste or steam, he choked on the rice and broke into violent coughs. He reluctantly set down the bowl and hunched over to stifle the hacking, but it refused to cease. Mid-fit, he flung his chopsticks aside and stumbled out through the noren curtain.

Thinking he would stop coughing outside and return, I ate my beef rice alone, though uneasily. Since it was such an unpleasant cough, even after he had left, the customers inside the noren curtain kept staring this way with disgusted looks, and I alone had to bear those stares. In the midst of this unbearable state of mind, since Dosakan showed no sign of returning, I said "Excuse me" to the owner and stepped outside. Dosakan was crouching motionless in the dark shadow between the cars—parked in what had become a parking lot on the roadway—and the food stall. He was no longer coughing, but he was breathing laboriously through his shoulders.

“What’s wrong?” Startled by my voice, Dosakan raised his face, but with that feminine-looking rayon muffler covering his mouth and the darkness there, his expression remained unreadable. “Are you okay?” As I tried to place my hand on his shoulder, I saw something like blood thickly spat out in the gutter before him.

“…!” I averted my eyes immediately, as if I had seen something I shouldn’t have. So whether it was truly blood or not remained uncertain—but when I reached out to touch Dosakan’s shoulder, he staggered to his feet as though trying to avoid my hand. That was also why I couldn’t bring myself to look at the gutter again. Dosakan stood up and, from under his muffler,

“Excuse me.” he said. It was so muffled it was nearly inaudible, but this time, clearly,

“Well then, Mr. Kurahashi… Take care of yourself.” Having said that, he slipped between the cars and tried to leave. At his shadow-like retreating figure, “Wait!” “Let’s go together.” “I’ll just go settle the bill, so…”

I called out to stop him, ran to the stall, hurriedly paid the money, and rushed back—but Dosakan was nowhere to be seen.

A skin-piercing wind noisily flapped the noren curtain of a stall weighed down by an ungainly counterweight.

—I once called the relationship between Dosakan and Misako an ill-fated love. Dosakan had indeed been in love, it seemed. But Misako—it seemed she’d felt something like a sister’s affection, as if sheltering the frail Dosakan.…

＊

The Asakusa Society’s meeting was held at Sanshuya on Kokusai-dori Street.

That day coincided with K Theater’s opening performance, and since there were no rehearsals on opening day, once the show’s crew finished their stage duties—unlike on regular days—they could enjoy themselves afterward. Since this meant they could attend the meeting too, that day had been specifically chosen. I hadn’t been to Asakusa at all until that day, and when I left my house in Omori right on time that day, Asano was standing in front of Sanshuya—spotting me, he came dashing over— “Mr. Kurahashi, this is terrible!”

He had apparently been waiting impatiently for me and suddenly snapped at me. "This is a complete mess, Mr. Kurahashi!" He seemed to have had a fair amount to drink.

“What’s wrong?” I said, stepping back, “What’s done is done—this is no time for that! You should’ve been here in Asakusa when it counted!” “I’m very sorry. I was working, you see.” “Work? Isn’t your work supposed to be done at the apartment? Didn’t you rent the apartment as your workplace? Did you rent it for some other purpose?” Despite his nagging, I grew irritated and said nothing. Perhaps due to the wind’s direction, faint yet lively strains of festive hayashi music drifted over from Theater T across the street. Lively—yet somehow a lonely sound it was. I wondered how Suematsu Haruyoshi was doing. He’d become a manzai comedian under the bizarre stage name Toya Hyoutan—but here he was, straining to make the audience laugh yet failing utterly, left cackling all by himself in that strained, solitary way.

“Well, what are we supposed to do now?” Asano said in a suddenly dejected voice. “The main members of K Theater have been wholesale poached by Kyoto’s S Production—so K Theater’s in no state to host any meetings.”

“Huh?!” I panicked in an instant.

Asano saw my flustered state and regained his vigor. "No one's left. "They've all bolted to Kyoto. "If there's no one here, we can't hold a meeting at all."

“No one’s here?” “Only small fry remain.” “The folks we wanted at tonight’s meeting—whether it’s the Four Comedians or anyone else—none of them are here. And to top it off, they left just a day ago! It’s absolutely infuriating, don’t you think?” “They were right here until last night—and since today’s the opening day, it was practically tailor-made for them to vanish.” “After finishing last night’s performance, they apparently slipped out secretly and boarded the night train right away.”

“Hmm.”

I could only let out a low groan. “Just now, I got this apology note from Kamiguchi—looks like he scribbled it at the station—but what good’s that to anyone?”

“Kamiguchi…” “Koyanagi Masako’s gone off to Kyoto with them too, of course.” he spat out.

“What about Sā-chan?”

“Sā-chan stayed.” “Hmm.”

At any rate, we went up to Sanshuya’s second floor. In the corner of a room lined with low, small tables, only two of my close writer friends sat quietly. “What are we supposed to do? Is no one coming from K Theater?” I said to Asano in a voice that pleaded for salvation. “No one’s coming,” he replied coldly. “It’s not the time for that—I just got an earful from the PR guy. K Theater’s in total uproar—”

he said coldly and dismissively. "What should I do?"

The organizers were listed as myself, Asano, and my friend T, whose name we had borrowed. If all the people we’d sent invitations to were to gather, how should I apologize?—Not only would it be inexcusable to T, whose name we’d borrowed, but I felt my life shortening at the very thought. Every time I heard footsteps on the stairs, my already gaunt body seemed to grow thinner still.

The scheduled time had already passed by nearly an hour. But still only a few attendees were there. Let this be the end already, I prayed inwardly, clasping my hands.

“Let’s state our reasons and get started, shall we?”

I said to Asano. I wanted a drink soon. Being sober was unbearable. "They won’t be coming anymore," I said, praying they wouldn’t come. "But this is a real problem."

Asano shrugged his bony shoulders. "We told Sanshuya to expect around thirty people, but…" "I wonder if they’re not coming anymore." "Mr.Kurahashi, your face isn’t quite the draw I expected, is it?" “……?” "I thought they’d come flocking at the sight of your face."

Asano was surely relieved about the sparse attendance, just as I was—yet he spoke this way. No—relieved, he’d likely found the vigor to make spiteful remarks. As for me—or rather, my despondency—it was as if Asano’s verbal blow had finally struck bedrock, and from that impact arose an odd vitality within me. This wasn’t some transient surge of energy. It felt like genuine, sustaining strength—the precious kind that might at last lift me from the six-month slump I’d been drowning in.

“In this state, if the K Theater crowd had come in full force, that would’ve been another embarrassment in its own right, wouldn’t it?”

Asano’s words were entirely reasonable. “Well then, shall we begin?” Asano started to stand up to speak to the waitress, “Actually, today I ran into Tajima on Kappabashi-dori Street. I thought that guy might show up to this meeting, but…”

“Oh—Tajima Shigeru, huh?”

“His wife seems to have summoned him to Tokyo.” “She summoned him?”

“Tajima said so.” Asano stared intently at my face, “It seems she sought salvation from Tajima.” “I had no idea, but it seems Mr. Kurahashi was making advances on his wife as well, so I hear.” にもに力を入れて、 “To think you’d make moves on both sisters at once—my, how resourceful of you.”

“Mr. Asano.” “Did I go too far? But it seems Mine Misako was the one who fell for you—yes? That she’s the one smitten with Mr. Kurahashi.” “……………” “So she panicked at her own feelings and rushed to summon Butajima.” “Butajima told you that…?” “Not exactly.” “But something along those lines…?” As I pressed him breathlessly, Asano smirked. “No—it’s my fabrication. Having written novels myself, you see… When I heard Butajima had been called to Tokyo, well—I indulged in some creative speculation.”

He licked his lips, “But Mr. Kurahashi, isn’t it true that on the night of the Rooster festival in Yoshiwara, you got quite cozy with Mine Misako?” “……” When Misako said she had something to discuss with me in Yoshiwara, what she meant—to borrow Asano’s words—was to condemn me for making advances on her younger sister Koyanagi Masako. That was the kind of “cozy” scene she had orchestrated for that purpose. This was Misako—who had already condemned my (to borrow her words) “morbid curiosity” stemming from that strange connection to Ichikawa Reiko, even before she knew of my obsession with her younger sister Masako. Upon learning that this “morbid curiosity” was now directed at her sister Masako, Misako had likely sought to condemn me to protect her—and inciting Dosakan must have been another attempt to shield her sister as well. That was how I interpreted it, but… And that was indeed the truth—but.

So why hadn’t Misako tried to tell me herself that night of the Rooster festival? I couldn’t understand why. (Was it because Misako had feelings for me?) Upon hearing Asano’s words—precisely because he claimed his story about Misako was fictional—it paradoxically felt not like a crafted lie but like the truth, and I found myself suddenly thinking this, yet— (—No way.) I vehemently denied it. That Misako had feelings for me—I couldn’t believe it, or rather, I didn’t want to believe it.

At that moment, “Hey.”

With that, the unexpected Ooya Goro suddenly appeared. “Hey there, Mr. Kurahashi.” He let out a shrill cry, and as Asano turned to face him, suddenly— “Snap!” It was his signature gesture. Asano leaped back in surprise. “One for the books!” With that, he snapped his left hand open and jerked it downward like a mechanical doll, then brought his right hand over it in a motion mimicking kneading dough. “—Not good enough.”

The people in the room burst into laughter. Until then, the room had been steeped in a heavy, funeral-like atmosphere, but his sudden appearance instantly swept all of that away.

“Goro-chan!”

“Call me Goro-chan, and I’ll answer as Mr. Kura.”

Goro-chan came to my side with a walk that tangled his legs in his baggy trousers and said, “I wanted to see you, Mr. Kura.” “Thank you.” “I heard there was a meeting here today, so I thought if I came here, I could meet you…” Though Goro-chan seemed like a madman, when he spoke like this, he appeared perfectly lucid. But immediately, in a strange voice, “Let me have some sake…” This was Ayuko’s tone. Goro-chan must have thought of it from that,

“Flew off to Shanghai, Ayuko-chan did.” “—What a shock!” “Did she go to Shanghai again?” “A complete shock. Hmph!”

Asano, still standing at the threshold, glared down at Goro-chan with a thoroughly disgusted expression.

Just then, the sound of a trumpet playing the Patriotic March could be heard. The trumpet’s playing was not particularly skilled—precisely why it lent an air of solemnity—and that familiar sound conjured the image of a procession: townspeople led by conscripts at the forefront as they made their way to shrine worship. That ball-riding old man must have been part of that procession too.

Eventually, I rose unsteadily to my feet to declare the start of this peculiar gathering.