Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Edogawa Ranpo

I Kakutaro, afflicted with lung disease, had once again been left behind by his wife today and was forced to absentmindedly keep watch over the house. In the beginning, even he, for all his good nature, had felt intense anger and even contemplated using that as grounds for divorce, but the illness—that weakness—gradually made him grow resigned. When he thought of his own short future and the beloved child’s welfare, he couldn’t bring himself to act rashly. In that regard, it was third parties like the younger brother Kakujiro who had decisive ideas. He was frustrated by elder brother’s timidity and would sometimes speak up with pointed opinions.

“Why must you be like that?” “If it were me, I would’ve divorced her long ago.” “Does someone like that even deserve your pity?”

But for Kakutaro, it wasn’t merely a matter of pity. Indeed, he knew full well that if he were to divorce Osei now, she and her lover—who was undoubtedly some penniless student—would immediately find themselves in dire straits that very day. Yet while that pity played its part, Kakutaro had another reason altogether. Of course he was worried about his child’s future, and moreover, he was too ashamed to confide in his brother, but even so, he still couldn’t bring himself to give up on Osei. Therefore, he was so afraid that she would leave him completely that he even refrained from reproaching her for her infidelity.

On Osei’s part, she knew Kakutaro’s feelings all too well. To put it grandly, something resembling a tacit compromise had been established there. In the intervals between her dalliances with her secret lover, she would not forget to use her remaining energy to spare Kakutaro her attentions. From Kakutaro’s perspective, he could do nothing but feel pathetically satisfied with this meager kindness of hers.

“But when I think about the child…” “I can’t just dismiss it outright.” “My days are numbered—maybe a year or two left—and if he were to lose his mother too on top of that, it’d be too cruel for the boy.” “Well, I’ll try enduring it a while longer.” “Ah, Osei’s bound to come around eventually.” Kakutaro would answer like this, invariably aggravating his younger brother further.

But bound by Kakutaro’s Buddha-like mercy, Osei, far from reconsidering, sank deeper day by day into her illicit affair. For this purpose, her father—impoverished and bedridden from prolonged illness—served as an excuse. Under the pretense of visiting her father, she would scarcely let three days pass without leaving the house. Verifying whether she had indeed returned to her parents’ home was naturally a simple matter, yet Kakutaro did not even do that. It was a peculiar state of mind. He even shielded Osei from himself.

Once again today, Osei meticulously groomed herself from morning and bustled out eagerly.

“You don’t need makeup to go back to your parents’ home, do you?” Kakutaro endured such sarcastic remarks that had risen to his lips. Lately, he had even come to feel a certain pleasure in his own pathetic tenderness—in not voicing the things he so wanted to say. After his wife left, he would begin tending bonsai—a hobby he’d adopted to counter aimlessness. Stepping barefoot into the garden and coating himself in dirt brought him some measure of relief. Another reason was that feigning absorption in this pastime had grown necessary—both for others’ perceptions and his own self-deception.

When noon approached, the housemaid came to inform him that the meal was ready. “The midday meal is ready, but would you prefer to wait a little longer?” Even the housemaid looking at him with that exaggeratedly deferential gaze was excruciating for Kakutaro. “Oh, is it that time already?” “Then shall we have our meal?” “Go ahead and call the boy.” He answered with false bravado, feigning cheerfulness. By now, false bravado had become his habit in all things.

On such days, perhaps out of kindness from the housemaids’ side, more lavish dishes than usual were laid out on the dining table. But for about a month now, Kakutaro had not tasted a single delicious meal. Even Seiichi—the boisterous ringleader of neighborhood children outdoors—would grow listless when exposed to his home’s frigid air. “Where did Mama go?” Though he already anticipated this answer, he could not feel at ease without asking.

“She has gone to Grandfather’s place.”

When the housemaid answered, he—with a sneer unbefitting a seven-year-old child—merely said “Hmph” and began shoveling his meal. Child though he was, refraining from further questions appeared like deference to his father. And he too had his own false bravado.

“Papa, can I call friends over?” When the meal was finished, Seiichi peered into father’s face in a coaxing manner. Kakutaro sensed that this was the endearing child’s utmost attempt to curry favor, and he could not help but feel both heartrending tenderness and simultaneous discomfort toward himself. But the reply that escaped his lips was nothing but his usual false bravado. “Ah, you can call them over.” “Behave and play nicely.”

Having received his father’s permission—though this too might have been a child’s false bravado—Seiichi dashed out toward the front gate, shouting “I’m so happy! So happy!” with exaggerated cheerfulness, and soon returned dragging three or four playmates behind him. And then, as Kakutaro was using a toothpick at the meal tray, the sound of thudding and banging began to be heard from the direction of the children’s room.

II The children did not stay still in the children’s room for long. It seemed they had started a game of tag or something, for the sounds of them running from room to room and the housemaid’s attempts to restrain them reached even Kakutaro’s room. Among them was even a child who, confused, opened the sliding door behind him. “Ah! There’s the mister!” When they saw Kakutaro’s face, they shouted such things with sheepish expressions and fled to the other side. In the end, even Seiichi burst into his room. And saying things like “I’ll hide here,” he crouched down under his father’s desk.

As he watched those scenes, Kakutaro felt his heart swell with a reassuring warmth. And then, suddenly, he felt like putting aside his bonsai pruning for the day and joining the children’s play. “Boy, stop making such a ruckus. Papa will tell you all a fun story, so go call everyone over.” “Oh, I’m so happy!”

Hearing this, Seiichi suddenly jumped out from under the desk and ran off. “Papa is really good at telling stories!” Before long, Seiichi entered Kakutaro’s room dragging his companions along while making such a cheeky introduction. “Come on, tell us a story!” “A scary story!” The children crowded together there, sitting with eyes shining in curiosity—some looking shy, others hesitant—as they gazed at Kakutaro’s face. They knew nothing of Kakutaro’s illness, and even if they had, being children, they didn’t display the overly cautious demeanor typical of adult visitors. For Kakutaro, that too was a source of joy.

There, more invigorated than he had been in some time and recalling tales sure to delight the children, he began, “Once upon a time in a certain country, there was a king of unfathomable depth.” Even after finishing one story, the children refused to yield, clamoring “More! More!” He obliged their demands, weaving two or three additional tales. And as he wandered through this realm of fairy tales alongside them, his cheerfulness steadily intensified.

“Alright, let’s stop the stories. This time we’ll play hide-and-seek. Uncle will join in too.” Finally, he proposed this. “Yeah, hide-and-seek sounds good!”

The children, as if to proclaim they had gotten their way, immediately agreed. “Alright then, we’ll hide here in the house. Ready? Come on, rock-paper-scissors!” With a cry of “Rock-paper-scissors!”, he began frolicking like a child. This might have been his illness’s doing. Or perhaps it was unspoken bravado in response to his wife’s misconduct. Whatever the case, his behavior undeniably carried a tinge of reckless abandon.

The first two or three times, he deliberately played the role of the seeker and searched for the children’s innocent hiding spots. When he grew tired of that, he switched to hiding and struggled to conceal his large frame alongside the children in places like closets and under desks.

“Are you ready?” “Not yet!” The calls resounded through the house with a touch of madness.

Kakutaro was hiding alone in the dark closet of his room. The child who had become “it” could faintly be heard moving from room to room, calling out, “Found you, So-and-so!” Among them, there were even children who shouted “Waaah!” and leapt out from their hiding spots. Before long, each of them had been found, and it seemed only he remained; the children banded together and began combing through room after room with great fervor. “Where did Uncle hide?”

“Uncleee, come on out already!” Hearing them chatter such things in unison, they gradually approached the closet. “Giggling, Papa’s definitely inside the closet!” In Seiichi’s voice, a whisper was heard right at the door. Kakutaro, realizing he was about to be found, decided to tease them a little longer. Quietly opening the lid of an old nagamochi storage chest inside the closet, he slipped inside, closed the lid as it had been, and held his breath. Inside were fluffy bedding or something of the sort, and it felt just like lying on a bed, so it wasn’t uncomfortable.

As he closed the lid of the nagamochi storage chest, the heavy wooden door slid open with a clatter, “Uncle, I found you!” A shout of “Uncle, I found you!” was heard. “Huh? He’s not here!”

“But there was a sound earlier, right, So-and-so?” “That must’ve been a mouse.” The children kept repeating their innocent whispers in hushed voices (which, within the sealed nagamochi storage chest, sounded as if coming from very far away), but no matter how much time passed, the dim closet remained silent and devoid of any human presence, “A ghost!”

When someone shouted, they let out a panicked “Waaah!” and fled. And then, in a distant room, “Uncleee, come on out!” The sound of their voices calling in unison could faintly be heard. They were still opening closets in that area and searching around.

III

The inside of the pitch-black, camphor-smelling nagamochi storage chest was strangely comfortable. Kakutaro suddenly became tearfully moved by nostalgic memories from his boyhood. This old nagamochi storage chest was one of his deceased mother’s dowry items. He remembered how he often likened it to a boat and climbed inside to play. As he did so, even the face of his kind mother seemed to float up like a phantom in the darkness. But when he noticed, the children seemed to have given up searching and fallen silent. After straining his ears for a while,

“This is so boring. Let’s go play outside!” From which child it came was unclear, but such words, spoken in a disenchanted tone, reached him faintly.

“Paaapa!”

It was Seiichi’s voice. With that as the last call, he too seemed ready to head outside. When Kakutaro heard this, he finally decided to emerge from the nagamochi storage chest. He thought he would leap out and startle the fidgety children thoroughly. Mustering his strength, he tried to lift the lid of the nagamochi storage chest—but somehow, it remained tightly sealed and refused to budge. At first assuming it was nothing serious, he attempted pushing it multiple times, but gradually came to understand a horrifying truth. He had accidentally been locked inside the nagamochi storage chest.

The nagamochi storage chest’s lid had a butterfly-shaped metal fitting with a hole that was designed to fit into a protruding metal fixture below. However, when someone had closed the lid earlier, that raised fitting had accidentally fallen into place, effectively locking it as if with a key. The antique nagamochi storage chest—not only sturdily built with iron plates riveted into every corner of its hardwood panels but also fitted with equally robust metal fixtures—was something Kakutaro, in his sickly state, could not possibly break through.

He called out Seiichi’s name at the top of his voice and banged frantically on the underside of the lid. But perhaps the children had given up and gone out to play, for there was no answer. Thereupon, he now began shouting the housemaids’ names one after another, mustering all the strength he could, and thrashed about inside the nagamochi storage chest. But such is the way of ill-fated moments—there was nothing to be done. Whether the housemaids were once again idling by the well or perhaps they were in their quarters but couldn’t hear him, there was no response here either.

His room with the closet was located in the innermost part of the house, and given that he was shouting from within a tightly sealed box, it was doubtful whether his voice would carry even two or three rooms away. Moreover, since the housemaids’ quarters were located on the far side near the kitchen, unless they were deliberately straining to listen, there was virtually no chance of being heard. Kakutaro, his voice growing shriller as he shouted, began to fear that no one would come and he would die inside the nagamochi storage chest. On one hand, he felt it was utterly absurd—so ridiculous he could almost laugh—but on the other, he couldn’t dismiss it as mere farce. When he became aware, he—with his illness making him sensitive to air—somehow sensed that it had grown scarce, and not just from his thrashing, he felt a kind of suffocation. Due to its meticulous old craftsmanship, the tightly sealed nagamochi storage chest undoubtedly had no gaps for air to pass through.

When he thought of that, he summoned what little strength remained from his earlier violent exertions, pounding and kicking in a deathly frenzy. If he had possessed a healthy body, all that thrashing might have easily created at least one gap somewhere in the nagamochi storage chest—but with his weakened heart and emaciated limbs, he could not possibly exert such force. To make matters worse, the suffocating lack of air was steadily intensifying. Due to fatigue and terror, his throat grew so parched that even breathing became painful. How can one describe the state of his mind in that moment?

If he had been shut away in some slightly different place, Kakutaro—destined to die sooner or later from his illness—would surely have resigned himself. But suffocating inside the nagamochi storage chest in his own closet—no matter how he considered it—was utterly inconceivable, absurd to the extreme, so he loathed the thought of succumbing to such a comedic death. Even as he remained like this, it wasn’t impossible that the housemaids might come here. If that happened, he could be saved as if in a dream. He could dismiss this agony as nothing more than a humorous anecdote. The very fact that there was a high possibility of rescue made it all the harder for him to give up. And with that, the fear and suffering grew even more intense.

He thrashed about and cursed the innocent housemaids in a hoarse voice. He even cursed his own son Seiichi. Their malice-free indifference—separated by a distance of perhaps no more than twenty ken—seemed all the more resentful precisely because it held no malice.

In the darkness, the suffocation grew more intense with each passing moment. He could no longer make a sound. Only his exhaled breaths continued, making strange noises like a fish stranded on land. The mouth opened wider and wider. And skeleton-like upper and lower white teeth appeared down to the roots of the gums. Even while knowing that doing such a thing was futile, the nails of both hands frantically scraped the underside of the lid with a grating sound. He was no longer even aware of the nails tearing off. It was the agony of death throes.

Yet even then, clinging to a thread of hope that rescue might still come, unable to resign himself to death—the circumstances of his demise were unspeakably cruel. It was a torment unlike any suffered by those who perished from incurable diseases or even condemned criminals.

Four

Osei, the unfaithful wife, returned from her tryst with her lover around three in the afternoon—precisely when Kakutaro, inside the nagamochi storage chest, clung with desperate tenacity to his last shred of hope, now reduced to faint gasps as he thrashed in death throes. When she left the house, she had been too distracted to spare a thought for her husband’s feelings, but even she could not entirely suppress a twinge of guilt upon returning. When she saw the unusually open entranceway, her heart leapt at the thought that the collapse she had nervously anticipated might have finally arrived today.

“I’m home.”

Anticipating the housemaids’ response, she called out, but no one came to greet her. The thrown-open rooms were devoid of human figures. First and foremost, the absence of that homebody husband struck her as suspicious.

“Is there no one here?”

When she came to the tearoom, she called out once more in a high-pitched voice. Then, from the direction of the maids’ quarters, “Yes, yes.” A shrill reply came, and perhaps having dozed off, one of the housemaids emerged with a puffy face. “Are you the only one here?”

Osei listened while suppressing her rising irritation.

“Ah, Otake-don was doing laundry out back.” “And the master?” “He would be in his room.”

“But he isn’t there, is he?”

“Oh, is that so?” “What is it?” “You were taking a nap, weren’t you?” “This won’t do!” “And where’s—”

“Well, until just now, the young master was playing at home. Ah, the master was also playing hide-and-seek with him.” “Oh, the master—there’s no helping him.” Upon hearing this, she finally regained her usual composure and said, “Then the master must be outside. You go look for him. If he’s there, just leave him be—no need to call out.” After issuing the sharp command, she entered her own living room, stood briefly before the mirror, and then began changing her clothes.

And just as she was about to begin untying her obi— When she suddenly strained her ears, a strange grating noise came from her husband’s room next door. Perhaps some instinct warned her—this sound seemed unlike rats or anything ordinary. Moreover, listening intently, she felt certain she could hear a hoarse human voice.

She stopped untying her obi and, enduring the eerie feeling, slid open the partition door between the rooms to look. Then she realized that the wooden door of the closet—which she hadn't noticed earlier—was open. The noise seemed to be coming from inside there after all. "Help me! It's me!" Though faint and barely audible as a muffled voice, it struck Osei's ear with uncanny clarity. It was unmistakably the husband's voice. "Oh you! What on earth have you done to yourself inside that storage chest?"

Even she was startled and ran to the storage chest. And, while unfastening the latch,

“Ah, you were playing hide-and-seek,” she said. “Really, such silly pranks… But how did this latch get fastened?” If Osei was indeed a born villainess, her essential nature lay not in keeping a secret lover as a married woman, but rather in this very swiftness to conceive wickedness. She unfastened the latch and had barely lifted the lid when—for reasons known only to herself—she pressed it back down with force and reengaged the fastener. At that moment, from inside the chest came what must have been Kakutaro’s utmost effort—though to Osei’s senses, it felt like the feeblest resistance against her hands. As if to crush that resistance, she slammed the lid shut completely. Afterwards, whenever Osei recalled her merciless murder of him, what tormented her most—more than anything else—was not visions of bloodied death throes, but precisely this memory of his pathetically weak struggle when she closed the storage chest. To her mind, that memory seemed infinitely more dreadful than any scene of gory final agonies.

Putting that aside, after restoring the nagamochi chest to its original state, she firmly shut the plank door and hurried back to her room. And yet, even she lacked the boldness to change clothes now. Turning deathly pale, she sat before the chest of drawers and began needlessly opening and closing its compartments—as if to drown out the noises from the neighboring room. “By doing such a thing… Is my own safety truly assured?” She was consumed by a maddening anxiety. But under such circumstances, there was no room to calmly consider things; in some cases, even thinking became utterly impossible. All she could do was alternate between standing and sitting while acutely feeling this impossibility. That being said, even when considered later, there had been not the slightest oversight in her spur-of-the-moment thinking. The latch could be closed with one hand; Kakutaro had been playing hide-and-seek with the children and had accidentally been shut inside the chest—a fact the children and housemaids would surely corroborate; and as for why the noises and cries from within the chest went unheard, one could simply attribute it to the vastness of the house. After all, hadn’t it been to the extent that even the housemaids themselves were completely unaware?

She hadn't thought it through so deeply, but Osei's wickedly sharp intuition whispered, "It's okay, it's okay," without needing to consider reasons.

The housemaid sent to search for the child had not yet returned. The housemaid doing laundry in the back showed no sign of coming inside. If only her husband's groans and those noises would stop now—quickly—that was the only wish consuming her mind. Yet the tenacious sounds from within the closet, though faded to near silence, continued without cease like some spiteful clockwork mechanism. Thinking it might be imagination, she pressed her ear to the wooden door (she couldn't bring herself to open it) and listened—but the awful scraping still hadn't ceased. More than that: through what must have been a bone-dry rigid tongue, she sensed desperate attempts at muttering barely coherent words. That these were terrible curses aimed at Osei left no room for doubt. So great was her terror that she nearly changed course and tried opening the chest—but knew full well this would make her situation irredeemable. Now that he'd recognized her murderous intent—how could she possibly save him?

Even so—what must have been the state of mind of Kakutaro inside the storage chest? Even she, the perpetrator, had wavered to the extent of nearly reversing her decision. However, her imaginings must have been but a thousandth—no, a ten-thousandth part—of the unimaginable agony endured by the man himself. Just when he had nearly given up, his own wife—unexpectedly, even if she was an adulteress—appeared and even unfastened the latch. At that moment, Kakutaro's exultation must have been beyond compare. Even if Osei—whom he had resented daily—were to commit adultery twofold or threefold beyond this, he would still have felt grateful beyond measure and unworthy. Even for one as sickly as he, having tasted death's approach, life was that precious. But from that fleeting joy, he was cast down into an infinite hell beyond what words like despair could express. Even if he had died without rescue, that pain would have been beyond anything of this world—yet layers upon layers, tens upon tens of layers of indescribable agony were inflicted upon him by the adulteress's hand.

Osei could not have imagined such agony, but even within the limits of her comprehension, she could not help but pity her husband’s death throes and regret her own cruelty. But even the villainess herself could do nothing about her fateful feelings of illicit passion. She stood before the now-silent closet and, instead of mourning the victim’s death, was drawing the image of her beloved lover in her mind. A lifetime of leisure funded by her husband’s inheritance, a joyful life with her lover free from prying eyes—merely imagining these was enough to make her forget what little pity she had for the deceased.

With the composure she had thus regained—a calm unimaginable to ordinary people—she withdrew to the next room, even forming a cold, wry smile at the corner of her lips, and then began to untie her obi.

Five

When it reached around eight o’clock that night, the scene of the corpse’s discovery—skillfully orchestrated by Osei—was staged, and the Kitamura household was turned upside down in utter chaos. Relatives, regular visitors, doctors, police officers—all those who had rushed over upon hearing the emergency—filled the spacious tatami room. They could not omit the autopsy formalities, and soon officials stood surrounding Kakutaro’s corpse—left deliberately as it was in the storage chest. Kakujirō, his younger brother grieving from the depths of his soul, and Osei, her face stained with false tears—these two, standing among the officials at the scene—must have appeared to outsiders as equally sorrowful, without a shred of distinction between them.

The storage chest was carried out to the center of the tatami room, and its lid was carelessly opened by a police officer. The fifty-candlepower electric light illuminated the grotesquely contorted figure of Kakutaro in his death throes. The hair he had always kept neatly combed now stood on end in disarray; limbs contorted as if in the throes of death; bulging eyes; a mouth agape beyond any natural capacity—unless a literal demon had been lurking within Osei’s very flesh and blood, anyone who glimpsed this sight should have immediately confessed in remorse. Despite this, she seemed unable to bring herself to look directly at it, yet not only did she offer no confession—she tearfully spun a web of transparent lies. Even she herself could not fathom how she remained so composed; though it was the brazen nerve of one who had killed a person, it was strange enough to make her wonder. Several hours earlier, when she had returned from her illicit outing and approached the entrance, she who had felt such unease now seemed—to herself—like a completely different person (though even then she had undoubtedly been a villainess). Upon seeing this, one might wonder: had a demon to be feared by the world been nesting within her very flesh and blood since birth, only now beginning to reveal its true form? This, as evidenced by the unimaginable calmness she later displayed during a certain crisis, appears to leave no other conclusion.

Before long, the autopsy procedures concluded without any particular issues, and the corpse was moved from the storage chest to another location by relatives. And at that moment, having regained some composure, they were finally able to turn their attention to the claw marks on the underside of the storage chest’s lid.

Even if someone unaware of the circumstances and who had not witnessed Kakutaro’s gruesome corpse were to see them, those claw marks would have undoubtedly appeared monstrously horrifying. There, carved with a vividness surpassing any masterpiece, was the terrifying delusion of the dead man. Anyone who glimpsed it would turn their face away, never to look there again.

Among them, it was none other than Osei and Kakujirō who discovered something astonishing from the array of claw marks. They remained behind after those who had left for another room with the corpse, and from either end of the storage chest, continued fixing their gaze intently upon the shadowy form that had appeared on the underside of the lid. Oh, what on earth was there?

It was faint and phantom-like, as if scrawled by a madman’s trembling hand, but upon closer inspection—amidst countless claw marks—the three characters “Osei” appeared vividly: one large, another small, some slanted, others twisted just enough to be barely legible. “It’s about Sis, isn’t it?” Kakujirō fixed his gaze on Osei and spoke in a low voice. “Yes, that’s right.”

Ah, that such calm words had escaped Osei’s lips at that moment—what an astonishing fact it was! Of course, there was no way she could have been unaware of the meaning of those characters. In his final moments, Kakutaro—with the last of his life’s strength—had barely managed to carve out a curse against Osei: reaching the final stroke of the character “I” in her name, he drew that line and perished in agony, his obsession unyielding. He must have yearned to continue, to write how Osei herself was the perpetrator, but Kakutaro—as though misfortune incarnate—could not even achieve this. Clinging to an eternal grudge, he stiffened into stillness.

However, for Kakujirō—precisely because he himself was a good man—he could not harbor such suspicions to that extent. What the mere three characters “Osei” meant—that they would indicate the perpetrator—lay beyond his imagination. The feeling he derived from this was nothing but a vague suspicion toward Osei and the unrelenting sentiment of his brother who, pitifully unable to forget her even at death’s threshold, had carved her name with his tormented fingertips.

“Oh, did he go to the trouble of worrying about me that much?”

After a while, Osei sighed deeply, imbuing her words with implicit remorse for the affair that the other party must have already sensed. And then, suddenly pressing a handkerchief to her face—(no master actor could have shed such empty tears)—she sobbed bitterly.

Six

After completing Kakutaro’s funeral, Osei’s first performance was—though only superficially—to cut ties with her illicit lover. With unmatched artifice, she focused entirely on dispelling Kakujirō’s doubts. This succeeded to some degree. Though temporary, Kakujirō had fallen perfectly into the femme fatale’s deception.

Thus, Osei—having received an inheritance far exceeding her expectations—sold the family estate she had long resided in and, together with her son Seiichi, moved from one address to the next. With the aid of her adept theatrical skills, she gradually slipped away from the surveillance of her relatives, unnoticed. The storage chest in question was one that Osei had insisted on taking possession of and was then secretly sold off to an antique dealer by her. Into how many hands has that storage chest now passed? Did those scratches and eerie kana characters fail to stimulate the new owner’s curiosity? Did he not suddenly shudder at the terrifying obsession dwelling within those claw marks? And again, what sort of woman would he have imagined from the mysterious three characters spelling “Osei”? At times, it might have been the figure of an innocent maiden yet to know the world’s ugliness—but.