Pathway to Japanese Literature

Chapter 1

Part One: The Woman of the Den of Iniquity

We stopped a one-yen taxi before reaching a dark railroad crossing. "Sir, here for a good time, eh?" smirked the young driver as he handed over the change. "The hell you say?" Suna Koichi snatched those coins as if seizing them. Train tracks crossed over to the other side of the road. An old-style locomotive loomed in the middle of the road, wheezing out white steam like an asthmatic old man. On the city's outskirts—here at the very tail end of the shady outskirts.

Street stalls lined the edge of the sidewalk. They looked like lice clinging in a straight line along a seam. The stalls were enclosed by patchwork cloth full of seams. Perhaps because this street was prone to dry winds, weight stones had been attached beneath the rag-concealing cloth. The stones were bound with hemp rope like that used to restrain prisoners. Smoke from burning pork belly fat billowed thickly up through gaps in the cloth.

Suna and I entered the right-hand alleyway. "This area's the prime location," Suna said. Which meant top-tier women were gathered here. The left side of the road was cheap, but you could get women there. That day, we had money. Money we'd extorted. The prime location women didn't come out to drag customers into alleys. Those stories about men getting their soft hats snatched by women in this den of iniquity, or weeping as prostitutes filched fountain pens from their pockets—those happened in different parts of the same district. "Keeping 'refined'"—Suna's words—"at home,"

“Hey there, hey there.”

From small windows revealing only their faces, they called out to male passersby. “Hey there, big brother.” “Hey, hey, glasses-wearing sir!”

Voices of solicitation called out from both sides. A proposition offering themselves for one yen and fifty sen even just for a quickie. “Hey there, Mr. Suit.” Meaning “the one in Western clothes.” This call meant: “Hey there, sir in the Western suit—” Unlike today, this was when kimono-clad figures still dominated the streets. “C’mon over here for a sec.”

“Hey hey, come on, take a peek in here.”

It was the season when dusk came early, and though nightfall had long since settled, by the clock it remained barely evening. Yet the narrow alleyway was already swarming with people.

Men walking through the alley endured this volley of eyes and voices from small windows on both sides—a trial requiring real nerve. The man striding down the center with steps suggesting other business was one still green to such places. Now and then he'd steal sidelong peeks into the windows. When called out to, he'd jump back theatrically. Seasoned men moved like eaves-huggers in a downpour, inspecting each window as they passed. They browsed for women worth buying. They'd mutter things like "Not bad." This swagger actually betrayed those with no intention to stop. The veteran women shot back retorts—Think you're too good? or Quit clogging up the place—at their remarks.

I was, well, something between a sidelong glancer and an eaves-hugger.

Maybe it was my imagination, but in that alleyway, the stench of semen (toro) and disinfectant seemed to hang thickly in the air. The breath of men starved for women—that feverish stuffiness of crowded bodies—must have permeated the air.

The alleyway continued like a maze, and on the narrow paths between houses—paths barely wide enough for one person to pass—were signs reading, “You can get through here.” It also indicated that women waiting for buyers lurked deeper within the path.

At the edge of the eaves stood something resembling an old hag. Behind her stood a girl in a sailor uniform, her face bowed dejectedly. It was her debut. Or perhaps she was trying to sell herself with the affectation of a debut. The girl wore red-strapped wooden clogs on her dark bare feet.

“How about it?” I said.

I said. “No good.”

Suna said, "It has to be a middle-aged woman." When you got close enough to see her face, the girl in the sailor uniform had a face too old to belong to a girl. The uneven complexion where powder refused to stick made you think she must have been working fields until just yesterday. Yet Suna insisted nothing under thirty was worth discussing. These middle-aged women he spoke of meant women around that age. And those middle-aged women meant brazen women.

All types of women were here. You could purchase a woman to your liking. If one searched thoroughly, one could surely find a woman resembling their favorite movie actress—it was that kind of place. Looking back, it was when the brothel district flourished. The middle-aged woman that Suna spoke of,

“Why don’t you come on over?”

she said from the small window. It was a raspy voice. While most young girls wore Western clothes, this unlicensed prostitute had on a kimono. She’d thrown open the collar of her cheap kimono—its fabric flimsy as rice paper—slathering thick white powder from nape to shoulders, but her face bore no heavy makeup meant to hide her age. “How ’bout some tea?” That she made no attempt to conceal her years seemed to please Suna. “How many girls you got here?”

“You gentlemen with a group?” The woman laughed, tiny wrinkles rippling at the corners of her eyes, “We’ve got four here.”

Beside the small window was an apartment-style door serving as the entrance. Suna said "Oi, let's go in" and kicked the door. I entered behind Suna.

The woman made no move to rise, resting her cigarette-holding hand languidly on her raised knee. “Just the two of you?” She radiated the essence of a brazen harlot. Her eyes held wariness rather than any assessment of our client type. Of course she’d find customers inquiring about girl counts suspicious—we might resemble greenhorn detectives, but no seasoned vice officer would spout such hackneyed lines. “Staying the night?” Angling her emaciated frame that broadcast decades in the flesh trade, she—

“Short-time visit?” Her hand—pallid like a leek left rotting at a stall—showed blue veins. Just her presence alone filled that cramped, stage-prop-like room where ceiling lights had been rigged like theater spotlights. “You get overnight customers this early?”

Suna scoffed. “Oh, they come alright.” “Is that so?” “My mistake.” We were standing on the earthen floor. At the back of the earthen floor was a narrow entryway threshold with no shoji screens installed. Back then, they would cut scraps of stiff silk fabric from futons into thin strips and bundle them to make cleaning brushes—here, similar colorful cloth strips had been cut long and narrow, hung like rope curtains over the threshold. The small bell dangling further ahead—was that meant to serve as their substitute for announcing customers’ comings and goings?

“Since you want to enjoy your fun properly.” “We’ll pay the full all-night rate.”

Suna spat his Shikishima cigarette directly from his mouth onto the earthen floor, grinding it under his shoe tip. “You gentlemen gamblers?” We were being sized up as “win-lose gamblers”—professional risk-takers. “Unlike before, these days you gentlemen all wear three-piece suits, hmm?” Meaning they were wearing business suits rather than kimonos. “How kind of you,” Suna laughed. “How kind of you to see it that way.” With a brazen woman like this, Suna smirked to himself—he could likely provoke her into delivering exactly the amusing game he wanted.

At that moment, I had seen something I shouldn't have. No, it wasn’t that I’d peered beyond her raised knee.

At our feet on the earthen floor lay two ramen bowls stacked directly on the ground. This entered my field of vision. That alone might have been acceptable, but cigarette butts had been tossed into the leftover broth within them. The paper wrappers had split open, their soggy innards spilling out like putrid entrails, with clumps of rolled-up stray hairs plastered flat against the surface. Had they blown in with the wind? Or had someone deliberately discarded them here too? I grimaced at this vile act—but then immediately—

"No, this is fine. This way is better." I told myself. I, stained with filth, had no right to call that dirty. I myself was far filthier. But here, it wasn't about such logic. Filthy as I was, I hesitated before committing this new filth—and this wasn't merely about buying a prostitute. That's why I found it repulsive to have this squalor thrust before my eyes beforehand, so to speak.

We were to go upstairs. Once decided, the woman suddenly moved with brisk efficiency, taking Suna’s hand as if to haul him upward. The bell rang. “Clatter-clatter like a damn horse stable up here.”

Suna said and went up the stairs alone.

As I was taking off my shoes, “You’re green, aren’t you.”

And the woman tapped my shoulder. I was wounded. I wanted to say, "You don't know a damn thing." Did being twenty-two make me look so green? "You're in luck." Putting on a big-sister tone, she stretched out her shriveled hand and took our shoes. "A fresh little thing came in today. That's your girl..." Hanging the shoes from both hands, she stuffed them into the geta box.

“A debutante, eh?” “Miss Clara.”

The woman called. “Right here.”

The response from the back came in an unexpectedly hoarse voice. When I glared at the woman for mocking me, the sliding door of the back room opened, and a young woman in a dress emerged. At first glance, I— "Oh, this ain't good."

I hunched my shoulders. The old woman’s face—a headache plaster stuck to her temple—appeared from behind the long brazier. Just as I realized that raspy “Right here” had come from this hag, the sliding door snapped shut. “You’ll be my regular from now on, won’t you?”

“You’ll be my regular from now on, won’t you?” said the woman. “Please take care of me.”

“Please take care of me,” Clara said shyly. That mouth of hers had the slight underbite I loved. This was really bad—I panicked. Even if I told myself she was just another prostitute, there was something about this Clara that suddenly awakened the purity within me. So this was what they called love at first sight. “Mari-chan’s regular took one look at this girl and got himself all worked up over her.” As if I knew who Mari-chan was, when she said that, the woman lowered her voice,

“He said he wanted to switch to this girl, so there was quite a commotion,” she said, pointing to the second floor. “It finally… well… settled down though.” From that upstairs room came Suna’s shout: “Hey! What’re you doin’ down there?”

Suna barked. “I’m coming now.” I felt guilty as though I’d already betrayed Suna. He was six years older than me. The small second-floor room had only a bed that dominated the space. What seemed large due to the cramped quarters was actually just a single bed. Pushed flush against the wall, its wallpaper bore water stain patterns resembling hanging icicles. They might also have been swords.

At the head of the bed stood a small table that evoked charity hospital wards. The very presence of a flowerless vase only heightened its desolation. Through windows set with garish red and green glass came the din from below. Being a barracks-like structure, it let in drafts along with the noise. When I described it this way, I might have seemed to dwell in some superior room - but that wasn't so. My boarding house differed little. The boarding house, however, existed solely for my solitary sleep.

The room where you sleep with women should at least have some charm, some allure—if not that much, then at least be a bit more decent. Does it really have to be such a dreary, vulgar room? I wanted to say that. But for the men who came here, the room didn’t matter at all. All they needed were women. They were only after women. Clara too was a woman bought by such men.

“Alright, let’s have ’em all out!” On the bed, Suna sat cross-legged with defiant grandeur. “Get every last skank over here now!”

When he deliberately used yakuza slang, “Don’t you be raising your voice like that.”

The woman scolded him with affected authority, putting on airs of a gang matriarch. “We’ve got customers here.” “We’re open for business.”

“So I’m supposed to cool my heels until a room opens up?”

Suna loosened his tie, "Maybe I'll chow down on some o-sato." "Sushi?" The woman didn't know "o-sato." It was underworld slang from the sushi shop scene in Yoshitsune Senbonzakura. "It ain't roasted sweet potatoes. Sushi. Maybe I'll chow down on some sushi." "Sushi." "Maybe I'll chow down on some sushi." "I'll go have this old lady put in the order then." "How many portions?" "Order whatever's appropriate." He said magnanimously,

“I’ll drink beer too!” “You got it.” With that, the woman left. Clara sidled up to me. The pungent smell of cheap perfume stabbed at my nostrils. This told me she was just some low-class prostitute. I was desperately trying to convince myself this woman was nothing but a cheap whore.

“Clara’s quite the stylish name.” Suna’s face twisted as if he wanted to curse—uncharacteristically so. “You take it from Clara Bow? But you ain’t got that ‘It’—that sex appeal she had.” His eyes crawled over Clara’s body like a tongue licking every inch. “Where you from?” “Tokyo.” “Bullshit.” “It’s true, I tell you.” “No accent I can hear. Where in Tokyo?” “Cut it out, Suna-san.”

I said. Suna snorted loudly through his large nose, “If you’re really Tokyo-born, what brought you to a dump like this?”

Clara remained silent. She didn't even appear angry at the humiliation. That Clara's claim of being Tokyo-born didn't seem to be a lie—her build was slender and delicate. "Did a man trick you?" "I don't know…" "How old are you?" "Nineteen."

“You’ve got nice skin.” The woman came back up from downstairs. I stood up from the chair.

“Where you off to?”

“Just a sec.” “Just a sec—what?” “The can.” This meant prison toilets—Mushinin lingo—but we who were joint-hardened used this over sissy terms like “zubachō” washroom. “Sixteen…?” The woman said. Shishi—four-four makes sixteen—prison code for taking a leak. “Kashiwai’s revved up already? Kid’s age—what can you do.”

Suna laughed.

“Shut the hell up.”

I said.

I descended the creaking stairs. That sound seemed like the creaking of my heart.

As I approached the toilet at the back downstairs, “Wait!”

A woman’s voice called out from within. I brought my face close to the narrow mirror in the washroom. “I want to sleep with that Clara.” I said to my reflection in the mirror. “I want to sleep with Clara and only Clara.”

The toilet door was roughly thrown open, and a woman in flannel nightwear emerged. It was immediately clear she'd thrown the nightclothes over her completely naked body. "Move aside," the woman said. Silently, I shifted away from the mirror. "It's free now," she said. "Get in there already." I couldn't place her accent's origin, but it was there. "Mari-chan?" I said. The long-torsoed woman with an equally elongated face let out a shrill yelp and stared at me.

I flew into the toilet. And straddling the toilet seat, I slowly dragged my pants down, muttering to myself: "What a woman - tits right out there, huge as hell." Squatting down, I found a black rubber tube dangling right before my nose - swaying back and forth, threatening to smack me in the face. I traced my gaze along that black rubber tube upward until I discovered a glass container filled with purple liquid there. I nodded vigorously. Then, following the black tube downward with my eyes, I found the end of the rubber tube clamped by a laundry pin - that wooden clothespin with a spring used for drying laundry.

Only a little urine came out. The rubber tube's vibration had already ceased. I touched the rubber. With the tips of my thumb and index finger, I tried clamping the rubber like a clothespin. Squishy and seemingly insubstantial, yet offering a certain resistance against the fingertips.

I stood up. And I confirmed that it wasn’t at all about needing to piss that I’d come here. Of course I hadn’t come here to use the rubber tube washing device. What had I come here for? Did I want to touch the rubber with my hand?

It seemed I had come here to kill that sprouting pure-heartedness awakening within me. I left the toilet. While washing my hands, I tried looking at my face in the mirror again. When viewed from a distance, my reflection in the mirror was horribly distorted. What a godawful cheap mirror. You could say it was a mirror worthy of this low-rent whorehouse. "There's no call to fall for some two-bit whore."

I was about to fall in love. I glared at my own ugly, distorted face in the mirror. I had agreed with Suna's desire to commit some utterly shameless deed - that's why we'd come here, to commit such shamelessness. "As if I'd ever fall for some cheap whore like that."

At that moment, the distorted face in the mirror suddenly revived an unpleasant memory. When that Bol faction university dropout had berated me, I must have worn this same wretched expression. Facing those logic-chopping bastards leaves me defenseless. They'd overwhelmed me until I couldn't muster a grunt. That humiliation came surging back anew. "We act!" I'd roared those words like a cornered animal.

"Action without theory is meaningless." And he spat out. This so-called Bol faction (short for Bolshevik; meaning Communist) we Anarchists had opposed. The bastard pressed further,

“It’s not just meaningless—it’s a major detriment to the class movement.”

and he even had the gall to pass final judgment. The very fact that the Bol faction brought such half-baked students into their ranks made me sick to my core. What good was smooth talk from trust-fund brats sucking their parents dry?

I spat at the mirror. The spit caught on my forehead in the mirror and slimily flowed down the center of my face.

I returned to the second floor. Mari-chan, whom I’d encountered in the bathroom, had also been summoned to the room. “Go call another one already.” Suna said to the woman.

“We need four or this doesn’t go down.” “You want us to pick from these four?” “Make us choose again?” “Not that.” “Ain’t it always me and Clara who get assigned?” “Then you—”

“That ain’t it.”

Suna interrupted. "Not so?" "If you pay up, that's fine." "Money." "Quit yappin' 'bout money, money." "How much you gonna fork over?"

“That depends on your service.” “What kinda service?” “All four of us’ll sleep here.”

“Here?”

“It’s cramped, though.”

“All four?” “We’ll sleep bare.” “You lay us out naked—then what’s the fucking scheme?”

“Don’tcha get it?” Suna said impatiently,

“There must be customers like that.” Mari-chan stood gaping slack-jawed like an imbecile. Clara bit her lower lip. “We could play janken and take turns…” “Don’t you start with jokes now.”

The woman stared fixedly at Suna. "You're not joking," she said. "You're serious." "If you're going to act serious about this," he shot back, "then I'll say it straight. Lewd." "Don't get so worked up." Her voice dripped mockery. "It's amusing, ain't it?" "It might amuse customers," she countered, "but we don't find it amusing at all."

Clicking her teeth sharply, she drew in a breath, "I'm not some pushover." "I'm not making a fool of you." "Just tryin' to have us some decent fun."

“We’re human beings too. We’re not dogs or beasts.” I saw the phrase “veins bulging” was no exaggeration. “Why don’t you all say something instead of keeping quiet?”

The woman flared up. “Hey, Mari!”

A man bellowed from the opposite room. “Let’s go!” “Coming!”

Mari-chan flew out. Clara left the room clinging after her. "We may be bodies bought with money... But no matter how much cash you pile up, we won't become your pathetic playthings." "Get out now!"

The woman declared flatly. There was something imposingly dignified that brooked no refusal. “Since I’ve already ordered the sushi, you’ll have to pay for it… I’ll wrap it up properly for you to take.” “I don’t want it.”

Suna was thoroughly disgusted but spoke gently, "My bad for wasting your time." "I'll leave the ob fee here." "What you give, I'll take."

The woman said with a pale face. She’s fucking mocking me. That brazen whore—talking back like she’s got some fucking nerve—Suna seethed once they were outside. In front of her, he’d been killing bugs after all. “Let’s go to Naka,” Suna said, meaning Yoshiwara. “Whores don’t bitch about shit.”

We were indeed half-dead terrorists. As for us—were I to say "we," Suna would glare at me, demanding what impudence this was. Suna thinks of me as his underling. As a racketeer, he was undoubtedly right about that, but back in our terrorist days we had been comrades. The reason I joined the terrorist group was because I met Suna, but that doesn’t mean I became his underling. Though young in years, I too had been a full-fledged terrorist.

As terrorists, we had ended up half-dead three years prior.

A faction of terrorists (I'll have to recount these details later) had assassinated General Fukui with pistols. That faction had been caught and executed. This was why we had ended up half-dead.

We had made plans to eliminate them with a bomb. To test its destructive power, we had blown up Penchī—the communal toilets—among other targets. That bombing incident too came to be attributed to the sniper faction—or rather, they shouldered all those remaining crimes themselves before ordering us into silence as they marched to their deaths. Our production of happa—dynamite—had fortunately remained undetected. Had it been discovered, we too would have faced execution then.

We had joined General Fukui's assassination plot prepared to face execution, but in reality, from midway onward, it had been decided that having everyone be wiped out here would be problematic, and— "You must survive."

and then we were forcibly expelled from the faction, told to carry on our comrades' will. In that sense, you could say our lives had been saved—but the overwhelming sensation was that of having been left half-dead.

We had been left behind in the lurch, so to speak. Suna, who'd been left half-dead through it all, seemed deflated by this; in truth, he remained collapsed for some time. It was after that Suna turned racketeer. I worked at an anarchist labor union. When that couldn't put food on the table, I became Suna's racketeering underling and lived off that money.—

We got out of the car on the street behind the brothel district built over the reclaimed black-ditch. This brothel district, completely burned down in the earthquake disaster, had been splendidly rebuilt.

"Here should be fine, and I won't let them complain," Suna declared with force. If that was all it took, he should've just come here from the start—but Suna claimed he found private prostitutes more amateurish in feel, and that compelling them to perform shameless acts was more entertaining. That prostitutes being too businesslike made things less interesting—I couldn't say I didn't understand that. "Sir! Sir! We've got a nice girl here!" Ushitaro was soliciting customers.

“Bro, how about a modern girl?”

he called out to me.

When we came here from the dismal private brothel district, this place gave the impression of towering buildings standing in rows. In a gleaming wooden-floored hall reminiscent of a daimyo mansion’s formal entrance, courtesans in full regalia stood like product samples. Originally, they all used to stand shopfront like this—letting customers peek through latticed windows to directly pick and choose their preferences in these display brothels, apparently—but when that had been prohibited, they came to line up photographs as substitutes for the actual women. And they would station the most beautiful courtesan conspicuously to catch passing customers’ eyes, but even if someone climbed upstairs aiming for her, they ended up being assigned one of the lesser women instead.

“Anywhere’s fine. Let’s just get the hell in already.” With that, Suna entered a second-rate—or perhaps lower—Western-style building (Yoodoba). Even Suna had indeed avoided first-class establishments.

Ascending the bridge-like staircase with vermilion-lacquered railings crowned by giboshi ornaments, I saw the figure of a prostitute—a woman of respectable bearing—hurrying toward a customer's room in outdoor felt slippers that flapped noisily against her feet. I felt disillusioned. Perhaps because Clara's face remained seared into my own, refusing to fade.

The shrewd old woman guided us to the "draw-in." To this customer putting on airs—not one who had been summoned by name—the shrewd old woman asked what sort of girl he preferred. "Please state your preference," she said. “One middle-aged woman.” “And for this friend here, one young girl.” “Then call two more.” “Four people?” “Five’s fine too.” “Right now everyone’s busy, so please make it two.” “If you’re not satisfied with them, just say so and I’ll send over other girls.”

“I’m taking four. We’ll all bed down together in someone’s Hombeya.”

Suna stated imperiously. When he said he wanted to engage in some interesting play,

“That won’t do, sir.” “There’s no reason it can’t be done. I’ll make damn sure of that.” Suna tapped his inner pocket. Inside lay an obscenely large sum extorted through shameless racketeering. Did he mean to squander that on depraved amusements? “This is quite a predicament.” The shrewd woman pressed a hand to her breastbone, fiddling with her collar in mock modesty as she continued in worldly tones:

“That would be rather troublesome, sir.” “Troubled? Who’s troubled?” “You’re the one who’s troubled?”

“If it’s me who’s troubled—if it’s just my own trouble—then I don’t mind, you see.” Her face—sallow from years of white powder that marked her as a veteran of the trade—twisted as she spoke. “If you’re saying you can’t negotiate after that talk, I’ll take it up with them directly.” “If you won’t handle the dealings, I’ll lay it out myself.” “Go ahead and try.” “You’ll just get salt thrown at you.”

To Suna, who blustered about wanting salt thrown at him, the shrewd woman firmly fixed her bleary, sleep-deprived eyes—

“Here, we have our own customs.” “Is that sort of amusement prohibited by law?”

“That’s not exactly it, you see. In this establishment, rushed services are strictly prohibited.” “If courtesans sleep with their regular customers’ friends, that’d cause complications, wouldn’t it?” “That’s precisely why we request our customers too—we don’t permit changing partners within the same house.” “Even handling such ordinary matters proves troublesome enough, let alone…”

“Who’s making a fuss?”

Suna knew full well and was provoking. He pressed relentlessly, trying to break her resolve. “The courtesans won’t consent. “Kurwa has its own code of honor, you see. “Let alone something like that…”

She refused not with rough tones, but gently yet clearly.

"However lowly our trade may be, even we wouldn't sink to such disgraceful things..."

“Don’t want to, huh?” “So that’s how it is, huh?” Suna said mockingly. “In this district, such amusements are quite impossible, you see.” “In an unlicensed brothel district, such things might be possible,” the shrewd woman said.

"You claiming this dump has standards?" As clear proof of his flaring anger, Suna's large nostrils flared,

“What’s the difference between common whores and courtesans?” “Aren’t courtesans whores too?” “No? You saying you don’t even let them whore around?”

“I never said such a thing.” "You think your courtesan houses are so high-class?" “What outrageous arrogance.” "You have no idea how much more approachable common whores are." “If you keep mocking common whores like that, I won’t fucking stand for it!” “In that case, why don’t you go over to your precious common whores and have yourself a grand old time?”

We were driven out of this place too. Suna, however, did not give up. Now that it had come to this, he was fired up about going after shadare (geisha) this time.

I was already worn out through and through. We'd been told off by birmal women from the lowest unlicensed brothels—actual prostitutes—then flat-out rejected at the proper courtesan houses too. Geisha ranked higher than those? Useless no matter how much Mizuten we tried. Going would just waste time. Thinking this made me sick of it all—though maybe that sickness came from still clinging to Clara's memory. That the woman I'd fallen for in one glance turned out to be some common whore filled me with grief. Grief wears men down to nothing.

“If it were Maruman, he’d be negotiating this smooth instead of me, but Kashiwai ain’t worth shit.” Suna said.

"Maruman" might sound like a shop’s trade name, but it was no alias—it was his proper family name. He was an anarchist close to Suna and older than him, but in their racketeering activities held the status of a shatei (junior member). Though Maruman had once acted like a loyal servant, Suna still treated him as a junior. “Let’s grab a car and hurry over.”

“Let’s just stop.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” “Hey.” “Kashiwai, come with me.”

―To me, this feels like just the other day, yet many years have flowed by.

This occurred during the early Showa years. Yet it feels as though it were just yesterday.

Speaking of which, I suddenly remembered something I had heard long ago.

From what I’d heard others say—there was this sort of mathematics, apparently—but it was completely different from what I’d learned in middle school. From what I gather, this mathematics isn’t the least bit rare these days, so it would be odd to speak of it as something novel—but having graduated middle school, even someone like me could manage an explanation of that sort.

For example, let's say there are two straight lines here: AB and A'B'. AB is short; A'B' is long. AB is small; A'B' is large. AB could also be viewed as part of A'B'. AB might even be called a portion of A'B'. But the real question is whether AB is actually smaller than A'B'. To the naked eye, it certainly looks smaller.

Let O be the intersection point of AA' and BB'. Drawing a straight line OM' from this O intersects AB at M. If one moves M’ left or right along A’B’, then without fail, M will correspondingly move as well. When M’ moves from A’ toward B’, M similarly moves from A toward B.

Let us consider all points on AB and all points on A’B’ here. If all points on A’B’ are connected to O, then without fail there will exist corresponding points on AB as well. Then, the points on A’B’ and those on AB become equivalent, meaning AB and A’B’ themselves are equivalent. AB cannot be said to be smaller than A’B’.

In truth, this was connected to the concept of infinity—through this very connection, they said the previously nebulous notion of infinity had finally been clarified. I refrained from elaborating here to avoid complications, but my reason for recalling all this now was anything but arbitrary.

If my life had been like this—how interesting it would have been—Suna had claimed that very life as his own. The life I couldn’t live—Suna lived it. And Suna had gone even further. That shameless play—it hadn’t been solely because Suna had invited me; initially, I myself had wanted it too...

Suna told Kaina (the waitress) to call four geisha.

“Four?”

At those words from the waitress with a brown wart at the corner of her eye,

(Here it comes…) I thought that was the first sign of refusal. “You’ll be sending two back, won’t you? It’s so pitiful for them at this hour.”

“I’ll have all four stay overnight.”

“But even so…”

“No, I’ll take all four.” “My, my... such inexhaustible stamina...”

Gesturing like a beckoning cat, "You mean to take two each all by yourself—what peculiar tastes you have."

The plump waitress laughed. It was not a laugh that condemned our shamelessness. Rather than condemning, it was an enticing laugh - one that put Suna in higher spirits,

“You’ve already seen through me, huh?”

“In that case, four would be acceptable, I suppose.” “Won’t be an issue.” “We don’t mind, but…” “Depends how those geisha handle it.” I said. The waitress turned to me. (This one looks to be of student age, but perhaps he’s a laborer?) She flicked her eyes at me with that look, “That’s… sir…” With eyes that regarded Suna as some prosperous factory owner,

“Why don’t you try negotiating with the geisha yourself, sir?” “Even if they refuse us, that’s how it began anyway.” But Suna said that if it were Mizuten serving tea at this hour, she’d likely play along depending on how we pitched it, “The geisha might find it entertaining too… depending on your approach…” “They’d find it entertaining?” “That hinges entirely on your technique, sir.”

“Don’t say that—help me out. Isn’t that what a waitress’s duty is?” With a dutiful nod, the waitress tilted her chin—shaped like the Kao Soap logo—and “Depends on your skill and money…” “Right—let’s throw ourselves into this.”

With this, the matter seemed all but settled. It was almost disappointingly simple.

I looked around the chic parlor once more. Its refined construction naturally brought to mind the term "pleasure quarter." It was as if the very space were declaring that the women frequenting this place were not common prostitutes or streetwalkers, but true geisha of cultivated elegance. "In that case, we'll need an intriguing girl, won't we?"

The waitress muttered geisha names under her breath, gesturing as if counting, "That girl Chame would do nicely, but I wonder if she's free."

Suna sent me a knowing smile and said to the waitress. “They’ll all sleep in one room together. All of them together.” “They’ll all sleep together.”

"Huh?" The waitress widened her eyes in surprise,

“Some people do have peculiar tastes.” “Having two sirs together—that’s quite unusual, isn’t it?” “A customer alone with multiple geisha isn’t unusual?” “That’s still unusual, though.”

the waitress said, but this served to indicate that such games were indeed conducted here.

“Since it’s even more unusual, the geisha would probably find it even more amusing.” “You might be right about that.” I saw the waitress nod in agreement. That even the cheap prostitutes had refused, and even the brothels had turned us down—yet the geisha would find it “amusing”… They’d no doubt end up as pillow-trade yukidaruma, but still—

“How truly amusing,” I muttered.

I muttered, and

"But I'm getting off here. I'm going home." As Suna reached out with a "Wait, wait," I told him: "I've lost interest." "That's exactly your problem, Kashiwai." "Even if it's forbidden—just let me go!"

I rushed off to Clara’s place, and so I did.

Part Two: The Chinese Ronin

I became utterly infatuated with Clara. I had fallen head over heels for this brazen prostitute in the lowest-class district they called a den of iniquity back then. Though no Suna-level playboy myself, I wasn't some naive boy either—hell, I'd cut my teeth on brothel-hopping and harlot-hunting. That I'd come to obsess over Clara stemmed partly from her being what you might call a "hidden gem" (as Suna's underling Maruman put it) among these back-alley discount whores. Now this might sound like lovesick delusion—but in those days, such "hidden gems" did exist in that brothel district. Existed they did.

In other words—how should I put it?—even the first-class geisha of Shinbashi and Akasaka and the cheap prostitutes of Noi (Tamanoi) and Meido (Kameido) were fundamentally the same when you got down to their origins. If a girl met with a competent broker, she could be placed as an apprentice in a first-class geisha’s townhouse—yet through some twist of fate, that very same girl might end up being indentured to a Yoshiwara brothel (a prostitute house). Of course, there’s such a thing as differences in quality among these jewels—a girl who looked like an unsold bamboo rake from the Tori-no-Ichi festivals could never become a first-class geisha—but even those with the finest features might fail to become geisha and end up as courtesans instead, all due to slight variations in their starting points.

If a woman was slightly too old to become an apprentice, "Why don't you sign up for indentured service at a 'reputable sake house'?" Told by the broker that it was a "reputable sake house," the rural woman—who knew nothing of Tokyo—thought this meant she might be serving alcohol to customers. Deeming it far preferable to prostitute service, she leapt at the offer. And she would be forced to serve outrageous clients—sold off to places even worse than brothels. Brothels were called reputable sake houses.

In this brothel district, there were numerous cases of impoverished Tohoku farm girls lured by unscrupulous brokers’ sweet talk, sold off unaware they’d be forced into prostitution. There existed brazen women too—pillow geisha who’d drifted through various lands only to sink here at last—but most were women bought cheap from rural regions. Those like Clara, Tokyo-born, were rare. Why had this woman been sold into such a brothel district? She couldn’t have come here ignorant of what this place was. She must have come knowing full well—but through what circumstances? I wanted to ask her that, yet precisely because I wanted to ask, I couldn’t. And Clara, for her part,

“Bro, what’s your line of work?”

“Bro, what’s your line of work?” she said to me. In broad daylight, this customer who had come nonchalantly to purchase a prostitute—just who was he? Clara wore a puzzled expression. But interpreting this to mean that just as I wanted to know about Clara, she too might want to know about me, I felt somewhat pleased—though, “My line of work…” “Well… how should I put this?” I was at a loss for a reply. I wanted to proudly declare myself an anarchist, but—

“Anarchist—is that one of those ideologues (socialists)?”

I feared Clara would see me as dangerous and grow wary—me being already completely smitten with her. “Our older sister said you might be yakuza, but that’s not true.” Most would’ve said “Isn’t that so?” with a questioning tone, but Clara declared it with certainty. “You know the word ‘yakuza’?” It meant peddlers now. Had they started as gamblers before declining into peddlers? To me, wearing a bitter smile,

“Of course I know that.” Clara smiled with a shadow-laced expression, “You’re not yakuza, but you’re no civilian either.”

“What could I be, I wonder?” I took a sip of the rotgut Clara had brought up from the old woman’s room below, “I’ll tell you once I’ve got some confidence.”

“Confidence?” “Once I get the money...” I flushed terribly and threw my arm around Clara’s shoulder as if to hide it. Yanking her close, I pressed my lips below her ear. “How rough.” I smothered Clara’s protest with my mouth. I sucked greedily at her soft lips.

Clara was not, to me at that moment, some cheap prostitute bought with money. Clara—unlike those cheap prostitutes who’d let any man have them for money—was what I found there.

In places like this，it was common for women to say they hated only kisses． They said they hated it because it was dirty． No matter what other acts they were made to perform，they never permitted kisses． Clara was like that too． At our first meeting，she had firmly refused． The very next day when I went back—meaning a repeat visit after the first meeting—and purchased Clara’s time，she still said no． She kept her mouth tightly shut，saying “Stop，stop．” How many times had I kept coming before Clara permitted a kiss？

“I don’t know.” After our first kiss, Clara said this and fixed me with a glare. “I’m sorry.” I said. I was happy. That a woman who sold her body but not her heart had permitted me to kiss her meant she’d granted me her heart—her chastity. Letting others have her body was nothing more than business. Now I had to feel how the kiss with Clara—the one that had brought me such joy—filled me with an indescribably painful ache. So much had I fallen for Clara. This very ache born of that feeling had, before I knew it, made me—

“Do you let other customers kiss you too, Clara?” The ache had made me say. “How stupid.”

Clara said and, this time, brought her lips to mine herself.

“Clara.” “Call me Teruko.” “Teruko’s my real name…” “Huh?” I reacted to this woman saying atai—huh? she was saying. “Teruko.” “Shiro-san.” "Shiro-san," Clara said. I once again, “Huh?” I said. Why does she know my name? “You gave me your business card the other day, didn’t you?”

“A business card?” I’d never had business cards or anything like that. In fact，I’d never even had any made. But instead of saying so—when I told her I didn’t recall handing over any— “Then did you see your postcard arrive？”

It was a voice that made me feel the carefully nurtured mood was shattered.

“When you took it out from your pocket, did it catch my eye?” And switching back to "atai", “Come on, shall we put on the tokko?”

Teruko, who had casually uttered the local jargon, seemed in an instant to revert back to Clara the cheap prostitute.

“You’ve gotten used to this place too, haven’t you, Clara?” I said. A current of sorrow roared through me. “Bro, that...? “You don’t have one, do you?” Clara fastened the front of her pajamas. “I’ll go get one downstairs.” “I don’t need it.”

I said. “I do have one.”

Clara said. "I don't need any damn rubber," I said.

“No.”

Clara stood up and looked down at me, “Bro, you’re not… some kind of literary man, are you?” “No way?” “You’re not a literary man, are you?” “What’s this ‘no way’ crap?”

Clara remained silent, shifted her feet, and started to go downstairs. I grabbed that bare foot, “I said no, I ain’t diseased.”

Clara’s foot was startlingly cold. Was my hand too hot?

“I’m clean too, but...”

Clara grabbed my hair and shook my head, “If I get pregnant, it’ll be trouble…” I wanted to make this Clara my wife. I wanted to rescue this Clara. The notion of a twenty-two-year-old youngster thinking about redeeming a woman was such an audacious idea that Clara herself would likely have said as much—and moreover, despite being penniless, it was the sort of thing that could easily be dismissed with a derisive laugh as absurd—but this wasn’t merely about how deeply I’d fallen for Clara; it was because I believed that even a broke youngster like me, if resolved, could redeem someone like her.

The exact amount of Clara’s debt wasn’t clear, but it came to about five hundred yen. When redeeming her, that old hag here—what Clara called “Mother”—would probably try padding the bill with all sorts of charges, but since Clara hadn’t been sold here long enough, she shouldn’t be able to make claims about clothing expenses or such, and I wasn’t about to let her try anyway. Still, five hundred yen for just the debt might not cover everything, but—

"If I pull off a ryaku, that much money…"

"It’s not impossible," I muttered aloud. I said to myself. "Screw it—should I go for a big *ryaku*?" In truth, I myself had never considered *ryaku* particularly desirable. My dislike of being treated as Suna’s underling stemmed from that very fact. This *ryaku* resembled what street gangs called *haidashi*—petty shakedowns by punks—or perhaps the larger-scale extortion yakuza termed *katsu*. But we insisted ours was fundamentally different—that our spirit set us apart. The term *ryaku* we’d adopted came from Kropotkin’s *The Conquest of Bread*. "Ryakushu" meant expropriation—condensed into *ryaku*—and that *ryaku* became our chosen word.

This book by Kropotkin—what we might call our scripture—had been translated long ago by Kōtoku Shūsui, but the version I read was a newer retranslation done by anarchist comrades, and that book I still keep carefully preserved to this day. In this *The Conquest of Bread*, there's a passage that says: "—Preaching patience is futile. The people will no longer endure. And if food does not appear, they will plunder the bakeries."

A partial quote might fail to convey the full meaning, but this action—of us carrying out what the people who could no longer endure couldn't do themselves, despite being those very people straining at the limits of endurance—this was our praxis. We called that direct action. Within that direct action lay *ryaku*. However, we didn't consider that plunder. We'd undertaken such actions from the fundamental principle of denying private property. According to that principle, our taking money from those who unjustly hoarded private property—this was *ryaku*—counted as natural course of action. It wasn't plunder, nor robbery, nor extortion—it was perfectly natural course of action. This was *ryaku* born of that ideology.

The reason I, however, had come to dislike such *ryaku* was that while I understood its ideological spirit, I couldn't stomach how its form had gradually grown to resemble yakuza *katsu* extortion or punk *haidashi* shakedowns.

"But maybe I should do *ryaku* after all." By doing *ryaku* to make money, I would redeem Clara. Or should I just go ahead and kidnap Clara? That seemed like the quicker way. That was the so-called "abduction." It’d be simpler to have Clara handle that part.

I went to consult with Maruman. The reason I visited Maruman rather than Suna was that I hated the idea of Suna becoming what you might call the "sole beneficiary" depending on how matters developed.

Maruman, whose given name was Tomekichi, had originally been a skilled lathe worker. Back when he worked at Koto’s large factories, he had made a name for himself as an activist in the anarchist-affiliated machinists’ union. After being kicked out of that factory, he drifted between small workshops, briefly worked as a ryaku operator under Suna’s wing, but eventually became a street vendor. While some dismissed Maruman as having sunk to a *yayakō*—a mere stallkeeper—he himself remained fiercely determined, declaring that soon this Maruman Tomekichi would rally stallkeeper comrades and hoist new union banners come May Day. Pushed back by red flags, they erected fresh black flags to replace those whose numbers had dwindled,

Let the cowards leave if they will! We shall defend our black flags! he declared, determined to make his stallkeeper comrades roar it out. The "cowards" in this song—a parody of the Reds' May Day anthem—were none other than the Bolshevik faction, as we anarchists saw it. Even having become Suna’s underling, Maruman hadn’t lost that anarchist fire in his gut.

I had gone to consult Maruman about Clara, but he was the first to—

“I’ve got something I wanna discuss with you,” he said. Maruman said he’d met an interesting figure at the street vendors’ big boss’s place. “He’s called Kodo-sensei, see.” “Uses the same ‘ko’ character as in Suna-san’s name.” “Then ‘do’.” “Interesting surname.” “Not his real name—it’s a pseudonym.” “Kinda seems he’s some big-shot scholar.”

“What’s his line of work?”

“Well, hard to say...” Maruman made me recall when Clara had asked me about my line of work. “A Chinese ronin.” “Is he right-wing?” I scowled. “That’s not something you can just say outright.” “He was apparently a republican back then.” “Advocated turning Japan into a republic—got thrown in the can, then crossed over to China.” “Aren’t most *tekiya* right-wing?” “The *tekiya* are like that, but...”

“Did you meet someone like that Kodo-sensei at the *tekiya* big boss’s place?” “That’s right.” I was about to say that if that were the case, then this Kodo-sensei must also be right-wing, but in our conversation, it gave the impression as if Maruman himself had become a right-wing *tekiya*. Regarding that matter, some explanation seemed required here. Street stalls were originally only for festival days—those targeting festivals were called *hōhē* in *tekiya* argot—and one couldn’t operate without joining a *tekiya* boss’s such-and-such family. Amateurs couldn’t become *bai-nin*—full-fledged members. Eventually those street stalls became able to operate not just on festival days but on regular days too. As an unemployment measure, weekday street vending came to be permitted, making it something even amateurs could do.

If you went to the jurisdictional police’s traffic department and submitted what was called a temporary street stall permit application, they would issue you a permit. If you took that to a designated street stall area, you could set up shop. Unlike with *hōhē*, there was no *tekiya shobawari*—where seniority determined spot allocation—as stall organizers assigned locations instead. It became possible to operate street stalls without having to become a *tekiya* underling.

In contrast to *hōhē*, they called this *hirabi*. Originally meaning ordinary days as opposed to festival days, this *hirabi* had been repurposed for regular street stalls. Maruman was the *hirabi* organizer. He hadn't joined any tekiya family. But when actually conducting business, troubles inevitably arose unless he paid respects to the *tekiya* boss—what they called an oyakata. His being marked as a Gishu—a socialist—also became an obstacle. So Maruman went alone to forge connections with the tekiya bosses. He plunged into their inner circle, but this Maruman had an uncanny knack for being liked, swiftly winning over the oyakata. Working his way up from boss to bigger bosses, it was at the supreme boss's house that he came to meet Kodo-sensei.

“I’m thinking of introducing this Kodo-sensei to Suna-san—what do you think? The fact they share the same ‘kō’ character—must be some kind of karmic bond.”

I remained silent, arms crossed.

“If things keep going like this, Suna-san might end up as nothing more than a racketeer.” “The reason I want to introduce Kodo-sensei to Suna-san is precisely because of that.” “Suna-san says Japan’s revolution must ultimately be tied to force.”

I don’t agree with that theory at all. “We’ll go our own way, but I think it’s fine to let Suna-san walk the revolutionary path he envisions.”

“So you’re trying to get Suna-san involved with that so-called Kodo-sensei for this?”

“Kodo-sensei wields considerable covert influence among the army’s young officers.” “So what’s your point?”

I shouted before I could stop myself. “It was military men who killed Osugi Sakae!” “In retaliation, my comrades assassinated General Fukui and were executed!”

Military men are our sworn enemies. And you want to tie Suna to them?

That day, from Maruman, I—

“Let’s dig into some beef hot pot.”

I was invited and went to Enko (Asakusa Park). I—who’d rush off to Clara the moment I got money and blow it all on her—found myself savoring maple (beef) for the first time in ages thanks to Maruman’s treat. Letting Maruman’s endless blather about this Kodo-sensei flow through one ear and out the other—knowing full well listening properly would just rile me up—I left him to his rambling while shoveling beef into my mouth alone.

Apparently, Maruman himself seemed somewhat infatuated with Kodo-sensei. I sensed this, but if I got angry about it now, this rare feast would go to waste. Moreover, unlike the Bolsheviks, we detested their beloved "theoretical debates," and since our principle was to respect comrades' "free initiative," I kept my mouth busy eating instead of talking—which was when Maruman's words reached my ears.

“Sun Yat-sen had no connection to the Wuchang Revolution back then—never dreamed he’d be made President,” Maruman lectured between bites of beef. “He’d backed Li Yuanhong for it.” The stall philosopher’s chopsticks hovered over the simmering pot. “Only became President through Zhang Ji’s backroom dealings. That Zhang was an anarchist exiled in Paris.” Anarchist. My chopsticks froze mid-flip. “This Zhang Ji—” Grease sizzled as I turned the meat, Maruman’s words curdling in my gut like bad sukiyaki broth.

"Is he a senior member of Kōsha, like that Chen Chunpei or something?" I said, though I had no personal acquaintance with this Chinese anarchist Chen who'd been expelled from Japan before the earthquake. I'd merely heard the name through others. Among Chinese exchange students there was an anarchist group, and from them I'd learned Chen Chunpei's name as their pioneer. He'd founded an anarchist society called Kōsha in Japan, which led the authorities to deport him.

“Far from being just some senior member—Zhang Ji’s heavyweight league.” Maruman leaned forward, “Miss! Another round here.” “Make it quick.”

“I’d rather have more meat than leeks.” “That’s what I’d been saying,” I told him.

This was the place poet Takamura Kōtarō had described in his verse thus: Before rows of crammed hot pot stations making their nest—the coziest in this world— the crowd now reveled through honest hunger and chatter as if bathing their souls communally Baring hearts without shame they laid bare every shadowed corner they’d concealed—

the crowd drinking, devouring, shouting, laughing, and occasionally raging, causing flowers to bloom in the infinite shadows of society’s inner walls, At least tonight, the crowd merrily partook in their cups, forgetting tomorrow when they must toil until blackened the crowd showing generosity to old people and young wives by emptying their bowl-shaped purses, Not being with old people or young wives, I stuffed my stomach with beef,

“Let’s go get some women.”

I said to Maruman. I couldn’t find the right way to bring up Clara’s redemption. I thought I might as well show her to him before bringing up the matter. “These days, you’re passing as Shiro the Lecher.”

Maruman laughed, baring his black gums. “What’s this ‘Lecher’ business?”

“That’s what being a total lecher means.” “Total lecher, huh?” With a booming laugh, I chuckled cheerfully as though Maruman had paid me a compliment. Though I laughed and didn’t object to being called a total lecher, what I wanted Maruman to understand was this: that I wasn’t some indiscriminate lecher chasing after every woman, but rather a man utterly consumed by passion for one particular woman. Just because I said that didn’t mean I was trying to boast about my pure intentions. My rebellion against society had been rebellion against established morals too, so I’d dismissed so-called pure intentions with a scornful laugh—but the passion I was now pouring into this one woman, that I wanted Maruman to know about. Just as I was about to say this, Maruman—

“You’re smitten—head over heels—with some dame across the river and gone mad over her, ain’t ya?” “That’s about right.” I slapped the knees of my corduroys,

“I want you to see her.” “Won’t you take a look?”

“Tch. If I let you keep talking... what a fucking terrible obsession.”

Maruman glared at me, but in his eyes— “She’s got her charms.” If put into words, I saw in his eyes a light that would have said, “She’s got her charms.” With my eyes filled with affection and trust,

“I want you to see my woman—by all means.”

I said.

Among us, buying whores was never considered shameful. We rather despised those dropout Bolshevik youths with their smugly pious faces—these pretentious truth-seekers who viewed such acts as abominable decadence. While they went creeping around seducing Marx-obsessed college girls in back alleys, we detested their hypocrisy—posturing as martyrs in public. Whether you call it yachimoro or whatever (though yachimoro implies true debauchery rather than mere lechery), passionate indulgence—to borrow the title of Osugi Sakae’s essay—was “The Expansion of Life.” Even if the woman were some brazen slut, pouring fervor into patronizing whores meant expanding one’s very being. I never once thought it a disgraceful act.

Even those wanton escapades of Suna's might appear utterly depraved through the lens of conventional morality, but I could not side with that morality to condemn them. In Suna's case especially, I understood well how he must have wanted to vent the pent-up emotions in his heart through such acts. Though I understood this—and I'm not reciting some florid line from a hanafuda play here—the reason I'd sunk to this level was, when it came down to it, my own youth. Of course there'd been that love-at-first-sight business with Clara too, but that itself was ultimately youth.

That Suna—who appeared to everyone as nothing more than a mere racketeer destined to remain on this path even without Maruman’s observation—must have keenly felt this truth himself. He must have been utterly frustrated. That was likely why he couldn’t help but squander the tainted money extorted from major corporations on tawdry indulgences. But Suna’s inner turmoil stemmed from more than that alone. In the parlance of those days, that very Suna had styled himself a “pure anarchist.”

Unlike me, who had been involved with anarchist-affiliated unions, this "pure anarchist" persistently championed unadulterated free associationism, condemning organizational activities and union movements resembling Bolshevik factions as impurities—yet in practice, this very stance drove him deeper into isolation. The free dispersal-ism Suna preached bred a tendency where each man became his own faction—or rather, each turned into self-styled lords of petty hills—until it left Suna straining alone as an isolated figure, all puffed-up bravado with nowhere to channel it.

The "realist faction" anarchists—who while adhering to free associationism had adopted practical class struggle as their tactic—referred to those like Suna as the "idealist faction." As someone who belonged to the "realist faction," I should have parted ways with Suna of the "idealist faction"—yet as failed terrorist comrades who'd narrowly escaped death, we still maintained an unbreakable bond. But I wanted no part of becoming some racketeer’s lackey under Suna. Suna could no longer be called an idealist anarchist—in reality, he was nothing more than a racketeer.

Maruman and I took the city tram to Asakusa, then boarded the Tobu Railway from there. Along the way, Maruman mentioned he’d been steadily finding comrades among his fellow street vendors, saying, “One of ’em’s a guy who used to be in the Pioneer Alliance.”

He said this as if I already knew all about the alliance. I knew nothing about that National Street Vendors Pioneer Alliance. From what I later heard from Maruman, socialists had formed such an organization among street vendors before the earthquake, but it had fizzled out without success. “How’s it going on your end?” “The union?” “How's it going?” This Maruman was an anarchist who occupied something of a middle ground between the “realist faction” and the “idealist faction.” The reason he had become Suna’s subordinate was that he had become enamored with Suna the man. Maruman did have a tendency to become infatuated with men, but Suna certainly possessed a charm that drew people in.

“The Bolsheviks’ night raids are so relentless I can’t stand it.” I said to Maruman. I had been doing work for a certain union affiliated with the Kantō Regional Labor Union Free Federation. It wasn’t as if I was idly passing my days through visits to the den of iniquity. “I beat those night-raiding bastards to a pulp whenever I find them, but damn new ones keep showing up one after another.” I said. This term “night raids” comes from Osugi Sakae having dubbed a certain Bolshevik fighter a “master of night raids.”

This "master" would sneak into places like the Tsukishima Labor Hall at night, badmouth the anarchists, and pull workers over to the Bolshevik side. We’d ridiculed it as “night raids,” but now those Bolshevik bastards were all using this method—going on “raids” to anarchist-affiliated unions and endlessly coaxing workers over to their side. “To counter their night raids, I’m planning to organize study groups with the factory workers.”

“Study groups? You teaching the workers?”

Maruman twisted his unshaven mouth. Though his beard wasn’t thick, that’s precisely why his scraggly stubble stood out so oddly. The conspicuous stubble rendered the scorn equally conspicuous. A guy like you—some uneducated fool—Maruman looked down on me. At the same time, Maruman—a man of worker origins—also scorned the very notion of trying to enlighten people through something like study groups as insufferably pretentious. “I hate to admit it’s copying their methods, but...”

Being younger, I defended myself. "Well, since those night raiders keep spouting off about anarchists being theoryless, I figure I should re-study anarchist free associationism’s theories myself—together with them." "Study?" Maruman sneered, "Do you think you can make a revolution with book learning?" "Well, that’s true, but..." "You’ve barely scraped through middle school, ain’t ya? So you’re gettin’ pretty big on playin’ the intellectual."

When Maruman said "intere" instead of "intellectual," it wasn’t some dialect affectation—that was simply how people commonly referred to intellectuals back then. “Are you calling this compromising? Are you saying my revolutionary spirit’s gone soft?” I retorted defiantly,

"I'm someone who once tried to throw away my life. Even now, when push comes to shove…"

“Alright, got it. Don’t go ranting so damn loud.”

“Even with union work, I’m putting my body on the line.” “If terrorists wanna call something that trivial... working with unions, then fine by me.”

“My bad,” “I just—it’s ’cause you went talking about ‘study groups’ or whatever.” “It’s just so damn laughable.” “So study groups are no good?” “I ain’t sayin’ it’s no good,” “As long as I’m risking my neck in this work, I don’t want to lose to those Bolshevik bastards.” “So you don’t wanna lose on logical grounds?” “That’s not it. If we just keep shouting ‘Action! Action!’ like that, the factory workers won’t follow us.” “They won’t follow?” My phrasing that seemed to belittle the workers appeared to have offended Maruman again. This was simply a term the factory workers themselves used—in other words, well, I’d just carelessly brought it into our discussion here—but there was indeed something in this phrasing that made it feel like we were looking down on workers as a class.

“We’re being encroached upon by the Bolsheviks.”

I rephrased it. Then I realized my previous wording had carried the unmistakable stench of Bolshevik terminology—this was exactly how those factionalists would phrase things. Authoritarian communism laid bare its true view of workers here, revealing how it looked down upon them through such language. Our opposition to the Bolsheviks stemmed precisely from this detestation of the authoritarianism laid bare in their rhetoric. Yet anarchist union workers were now employing these Bolshevik-tinged terms themselves. So-called awakened workers used this phrasing toward their unawakened comrades—clear proof that Bolshevik influence had seeped into our ranks without our realizing it. The infuriating truth was this showed just how deeply they'd infiltrated us. All the more reason we needed to combat them more vigorously—but Maruman—

“So what if we’re being encroached upon? Ain’t no problem.” “Numbers don’t mean shit.” “Ten thousand enemies could come at us—that rabble’s not worth pissing on.” He spat the words like tobacco juice.

“Quality over quantity?”

I was no longer backing down. "For that quality you mentioned, I think studying anarchist theory matters too." "So now you're playin' professor...?" "I'm just handling the study group logistics. I'll research with everyone—planning to bring in Tamatsuka Hidenobu." "Tamatsuka?" "Oh, that dime-store poet."

“As a poet, he might be third-rate, but...”

While defending Tamatsuka internally, I said this in a tone that superficially echoed Maruman’s vitriol. “As an anarchist, he’s more about spinning theories.” “He’s got a sharp pen and a silver tongue.” “Well, of course he would be.” “That guy’s college-educated, for sure.” In a tone that laid bare his anti-intellectual disdain, “Why’s some college-educated bastard wanna join our lot anyway?” “The Bolsheviks’ night raids have more college-educated types.” “Gotta make sure we don’t breed smooth-talkers like the Bolsheviks.”

The Bolsheviks’ eloquent critiques of anarchism—take Plekhanov’s *Anarchism and Socialism* for instance—since this translated work served as one of their source materials for attacking anarchists, contained far more sophisticated reasoning than their usual rhetoric; in other words, their model was laid out here. What we called “Purekanov” was actually Plekhanov, but since French translations and such spelled it as Plekhanov, the Japanese translator who worked from those retranslations rendered the name as Purekanov. This led to “Purekanov” becoming the established form, though even Bukharin had once been called “Bukarin” for a time.

Now, what actually infuriated us most about the Bolsheviks’ attacks on anarchists wasn’t their logical arguments—even those directly inherited from Purekanov—but their utterly baseless insults hurled straight from the gut. According to the Bolsheviks, these insults were merely retaliatory measures against our own theory-less attacks on them—they’d claim we anarchists were the ones who’d first showered them with utterly baseless, violent abuse, forcing this tit-for-tat escalation.

This became an endless circular argument, but to demonstrate precisely what form these Bolshevik denunciations took—the manifesto I present below, evident from its antiquated style in any case, had been distributed during the National Labor Union Federation Conference held the year before the Great Kantō Earthquake. Though these were Bolshevik declarations from several years prior, the fundamental nature of their vilification remained unchanged at its core. Given that their espoused doctrines stayed identical both then and years afterward, I shall now set down here this manifesto penned by those Bolshevik bastards.

"Anarchism is utopian; it is destructive; it is a heretical faction obstructing social movements! When we seek unity, they immediately hinder and dismantle it. The stagnation of our nation's social movements stems solely from this anarchist party's existence! Verily, they stand as socialism's archenemy—humanity's archenemy! We hereby declare: The anarchist party constitutes a den of iniquity! Moreover, these scoundrels warrant greater fear and loathing than even ultranationalist labor marauders! Ah! The anarchist party is socialism's foe—humanity's foe! Comrades! Brothers and sisters steadfast to our cause! We implore you: Expel the anarchist party from every corner of Japan! Banish them from all reaches of this world! And thus charge forth into the sacred crusade for societal transformation!"

“September 26, 1922 – Japan Labor Association”

We anarchists were reviled, mocked, scorned, and cursed by the Bolsheviks in this manner—torn away from the workers, driven off, hounded like "archenemies." As a result, we—uncertain how to wield our revolutionary energy—descended into becoming a "den of iniquity." While this wasn’t entirely without our own doing, it was equally born from being hounded relentlessly by the Bolsheviks.

Even now, as I write this, a fresh surge of anger wells up in my chest—I can scarcely contain it. With the Bolsheviks’ victory in the labor movement becoming decisive, anarchists came to be viewed as if they had been ‘ruffians’ from the very outset. In this present where only Bolshevik propaganda thrives unopposed, all memory of how we once ignited revolutionary fervor in workers’ hearts has been utterly erased—nowadays, when people speak of anarchists, it’s as if we were always ‘enemies of socialism.’

This half-dead failure of a man—we who revered Russian terrorists as our pioneers—those very terrorists said to have driven the Russian Revolution, those countless nameless comrades of the Nihilist Party who marched to their deaths clutching bombs—were even they branded “enemies of socialism”? Were they deemed “enemies of humanity”? Were those terrorists—their bodies vanishing like dew beneath the guillotine even as they ignited revolutionary spirit in oppressed hearts—truly “enemies of the people”?

Were even our comrades who assassinated General Fukui and were executed also deemed "archenemies" of the revolutionary spirit? That was not merely retaliation—it was direct action by terrorists seeking to rouse the slumbering hearts of the people. These somewhat reckless extremist acts—born from being hounded by Bolsheviks—might appear so in hindsight, but I'll never suffer those Bolshevik bastards saying such things. Unlike impulsive suicide, they were—if you will—methodically planning assassinations to send themselves to the gallows. Against such tragic resolve, I absolutely refuse to tolerate those Bolshevik bastards—lolling atop their so-called organization—spouting blasphemies.

It was direct defiance against authoritarian power. Simultaneously, we sought to eradicate from the hearts of the people—who remained slavishly obedient to that power—their very dread of its authority. This dread and obedience stemmed from the power’s own coercion—yet through such direct defiance against authority, we sought to awaken the people’s hearts. We sought to rouse human self-awareness in those subjected to slave-like subjugation.

Since Osugi Sakae kept recurring in this account, if I were to quote him here as well, what we envisioned as the labor movement was "a workers' self-attainment movement, an autonomous livelihood attainment movement. A human movement. "A movement of character." Workers compelled into slave-like existences by the ruling class were stripped of autonomous lives and robbed of their free human self-awareness. The attainment of self, the attainment of autonomous lives—that was our struggle.

To possess self-awareness as a free human being—that was precisely the first step toward revolutionary awakening. The very act of striving for autonomous living constituted nothing less than a revolutionary movement to liberate ourselves from authoritarian power. From our perspective, the Bolsheviks’ movement amounted to mere worker mobilization for class warfare—conscripting them into power seizures and enforcing absolute obedience as infantrymen in communism’s authoritarian class war.

The reason the Bolshevik manifesto states, “When we attempt to unite, they immediately obstruct and destroy it,” was because we could not endure watching workers become slaves to new authoritarian power. That was why we opposed authoritarian communism. We valued workers’ freedom above all else. We desired above all else the freedom not to be compelled to submit to any authoritarian power. We affirmed Bakunin’s following words as truth.

“Marx may perhaps theoretically position himself upon a more rational organization concerning freedom than Proudhon.” “But he lacks the instinct for freedom.” “He is an authoritarian through and through.”

Part Three: Yellow Blood

We got off at Hikifune Station. The story continues from earlier. The grimy, cluttered town in the shady outskirts was enveloped in faint dusklight. And it seemed to cast some amiable greeting toward me. A bittersweet emotion welled up in my chest.

The twilight wasn’t hiding the squalor of this cluttered town from my eyes—if anything, it amplified the melancholy seeping from every crowded corner. That’s why I wanted to face this town with arms spread wide and shout something—no, words felt inadequate. I wanted to throw myself against it, clutch its grime to my chest.

The narrow road was already dimming, yet overhead the sky still held remnants of blue brightness as black bats flitted between the dark earth and undarkened heavens. The eerie bat flights too made this place feel unmistakably like the shady outskirts. This had to be the shady outskirts. And however filthy this town might be, people were living within that clutter. Even dwelling in such filth didn’t make them less human. That people—unchanged in their humanity—lived within these cluttered squalid alleys pressed heavily upon my heart.

Clara too lived amid filth. Even if that Clara was a prostitute, she remained no less human.

I felt my chest pound with boyish excitement. Not only was I happy to be able to meet Clara—it felt more like the very joy of being alive. A half-dead failure like me never imagined I would be granted such joy. That was the nature of such joy.

I snatched the misshapen soft hat from my head, gripped its brim with my left hand, and gave it a sharp tug with my right. It wasn’t that I meant to do anything with it, nor was there any meaning behind the act. I simply couldn’t stop myself from impulsively doing something—anything—like that. Switching the hat to my right hand, I smacked it against my left palm—once, twice. Still unsatisfied, I suddenly hurled skyward this hat that now resembled a furled umbrella.

Midair, the hat billowed out and came slanting down. I reached out my hand but failed to catch it, and the hat fell to the ground. “What the hell are you doing?” Maruman said. To Maruman, who was wearing a hunting cap, I “I was messing with the bats.” I said, trying to brush it off. “The bats?”

To the exasperated Maruman, “If you do this, those bats come down along with the hat,” I said earnestly.

“If you do this, those bats come down along with the hat,” I said earnestly. “They didn’t come down, did they?”

“They didn’t come down, did they?” Maruman said. “It’s because there aren’t any bats,” I said. “But if they’re not here, why would you…”

“They were here earlier. They were here, weren’t they?” “Did you think flinging your hat would bring the bats back out?”

“Not exactly.” “What’re you yappin’ about?” “Never caught bats before?” “Dunno.”

Maruman wore a sullen expression. "That's how you catch bats." "Hmm," he grunted. He looked like he'd been forced to swallow the explanation. "That's how they used to catch them." I said this, though truthfully I'd never caught one myself. I'd never caught any, but as a boy I would pick up discarded straw sandals or oxen's clogs from the road and hurl them into bat-filled twilight skies. When I did that, the bats would come swooping down with the sandals. This wasn't some rural tale. In old Tokyo too, you'd constantly see farmers from the outskirts making oxen pull vegetable carts through the streets, their straw clogs littering the roads.

It took two people working together to catch bats. One person would be in charge of throwing something into the air to lure the bats, while the other held a bamboo pole with a bag used for catching cicadas, swiftly covering the bats that descended to the ground with the bag.

They were hard to catch, but catch them we could. But even when caught, they amounted to nothing. You couldn't keep them caged like birds. Even when put in a cage, the bats would shrink down unbelievably small and end up dying just like that.

I didn’t refrain from catching bats out of pity; I was always just teasing them alone. I was playing with the bats all by myself. As a boy, I would play with bats in place of friends.

When I went to the brothel where Clara was，Mari-chan’s face was peeking through the small glass window. Her ample breasts，however，could not be seen through this small solicitation window—commonly called the “eyes-only window.” Mari-chan had on such garish greasepaint makeup that her already large face looked even bigger，making her seem almost like a different person—but then Mari-chan herself had momentarily mistaken me for someone else， “Care for a good time? Open up.”

After saying that, she seemed to realize it was me—Clara’s regular—and, “My, how careless!” she said to herself.

Hearing that behind me, I rushed past the hidden wall and peered into the small window across. I thought Clara might be there, but instead, that middle-aged woman who had once snapped at Suna was present. I pushed the side door open so as not to interfere with business and went inside,

“Where’s Clara?”

I asked the middle-aged Tomie. It was plain, but this was her professional name. Tomie remained silent and jerked her chin toward the back. “Is there a customer?”

“She’s in the back.”

"Go on up to the second floor," Tomie said. "It's the room on the left side, this side of the second floor," she added.

I called Maruman. Maruman entered from Mari-chan's door. Between me—who had come through Tomie's door—and him stood a plank partition on the earthen floor; we couldn't see each other. This layout ensured patrons coming and going couldn't recognize one another's faces.

Right, the entrance area of those "reputable sake houses" back then was hard to describe adequately in words, so I decided to draw a diagram here.

It was as shown in the diagram on the following page. Not all "reputable sake houses" here followed this layout—they varied from house to house—but now that these private brothel districts had vanished and such peculiar contraptions could no longer be found, I would at least preserve the diagram here. Maruman went around the back of the plank door and came over here.

Tomie, with dark purple shadows beneath her eyes, fixed Maruman’s disheveled appearance with a sharp glare while maintaining her customary languid posture. Maruman wore Western-style trousers paired not with shoes but with “senbei” – setta sandals.

As I, wearing shoes, moved my foot toward the entryway threshold, “Wait…” Tomie called out to me in a hushed voice. With a look that seemed to want to say something, she clicked the dried hōzuki pod in her mouth rhythmically. “What?” “You see…” She seemed to want to speak yet found it difficult, “What became of that person from before?” I sensed she was saying something clearly different from what she’d meant to ask. While also wondering if she’d been trying to inquire about Maruman—who so clearly bore that tekiya street vendor look—

“Shall I bring him over?” When I said that, “Stop it—that…lewd—” Tomie scratched her scalp with a hairpin, “Was just asking.”

We went upstairs. “Know my way around another man’s yasa (house)…”

“Not much to look at, eh?” Maruman grinned, surveying the room as I flipped over the floor cushion and sat down. “I want to make Clara here my wife.” “As your bashita (wife)?” “I want to redeem her contract.” “How much is the ransom?”

Maruman said while looking away. "—Five hundred yen." I answered. "Five hundred yen? That's some sum you scraped together." "Must be one helluva dame."

“Take one look and you’ll know.” I said curtly, “Won’t you give me your advice?”

Maruman remained silent. "Hey, I'm begging you." "How do you plan to get that kind of money?" "That's why I need to borrow your wisdom on what to do." Maruman stroked his unkempt beard with thick, stubby fingers. "I'm so in love it's killing me." I said. I nearly added that this was the first love I'd ever known.

Just then came the clattering sound of footsteps racing up the stairs, “Welcome.”

Clara appeared wearing a dress that made her look like she'd just come back from an outing. Oh? Thinking this, I felt pleased to show Maruman—who was seeing Clara for the first time—her appearance not in her usual work clothes but in civilian attire. And for my part too, envisioning what Clara would look like as my wife, I blinked rapidly, "I'm crazy about this girl." "She's a good one, right?"

I said to Maruman. “Oh, now.” Clara did a spot-on imitation of me. “I’m not a good girl at all.”

That manner of speaking struck my besotted eyes as utterly innocent and adorable. "I wasn’t talking to you, Teru-chan."

I said that to Clara, “Hey, she’s a good kid, right?” I said to Maruman again. “Yeah. She’s a good kid. Menmabu—a real face-dazzler.” Maruman nodded earnestly—what they call o-itaku in tekiya slang, that back-channeling agreement. This wasn’t coerced consent or empty flattery—I thought. As if to say How’s that for you? I smirked smugly, “And this customer here…” Clara asked me about Maruman in the disillusioned voice of a seasoned prostitute.

“Mari-chan? Or Miss Tomie?” “It’s fine. Don’t need to call anyone,” Maruman said with exaggerated seriousness. “Just have a drink or somethin’. I’m headin’ out.” “Okay—” Clara replied flatly. Her abruptness made me add: “Maybe I’ll call Miss Tomie and we can all drink together.”

When I said, “All right.” Whether because senior Tomie was too overbearing, Clara made a restraining motion with her hand, “I’ll bring the drinks.” and stood up. I fixed my devouring gaze on her retreating figure—no, let’s not mince words—on Clara’s cute buttocks, staring intently. Just fixing my eyes summoned the sensation of that smooth skin there—the firm flesh neither too rigid nor too yielding, that indescribable, no, utterly overwhelming texture—pressing against me with the same raw immediacy as if I’d reached around from the front to embrace her. Through the skirt, I was already x-raying those buttocks with lecherous eyes.

As her buttocks were about to disappear from the room, Maruman whispered to me in tekiya argot (chōfu): “For a gasebiri [fake prostitute], she’s a hakui [good] nago [woman].”

he whispered to me. Though his voice was low, it must have reached Clara’s ears—she whirled around and shot me a fierce look that said *I know what you’re talking about*. “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.” I hunched my shoulders. Clara clattered down the stairs. Never before had I heard Clara make such footsteps. "What could this mean?" I wondered, listening intently to those footsteps, “She’s a good kid.”

I said to Maruman again. "Why would a good girl like her end up a fake prostitute?" With that, Maruman smoothly ran his hand over his greasy face,

“I wonder if she’s got a gigolo attached to her.”

“A gigolo? So what if she did? I don’t give a damn.” I blustered, “She’s a sweet-natured girl, I tell ya. I don’t think she’s the type to have a gigolo attached to her.” “That’s what stinks about it. It’s precisely those kinds of girls who end up getting devoured by men.” “You picking faults with my woman now?” “Have your eyes gone full of holes?” “No matter what it takes, I’ll make that woman mine.” I clenched my fist and pounded the low table.

After drinking tea, Maruman said he had to set up his stall—what they called semi in their tekiya argot—pulled out a one-yen drink fee with a flourish, and left alone. Clara and I entered the room with the bed. I gazed outside through the colored glass window. Though I’d wanted to embrace Clara the instant Maruman vanished, here I was instead acting like someone avoiding approaching the bed altogether. To put it plainly—I’d grown terribly sentimental.

Through the window, I could see men who'd come for yachibarashi shuffling along with their lewd faces. Was I making that same lustful face too? I might especially have been sporting an even filthier expression, my nose dripping like some drooling degenerate. Yachibarashi meant buying women. But this tekiya slang "chōfu" had been used when ascending to brothels to purchase licensed prostitutes. The original meaning was likely just buying women, but customarily it had come to mean buying courtesans. So calling this private whorehouse trade yachibarashi missed the mark slightly—to put it anthropomorphically, yachibarashi itself might take offense.

That is to say, Maruman had called Clara a gasebiri in tekiya slang - chōfu meaning street vendor jargon. Here, "biri" meant prostitutes while "gase" signified counterfeit. Gase-na referred to aliases, gase-neta to shoddy counterfeits meant to deceive the eye. They called selling shunga *gase-mitsu*, though originally this didn't mean peddling real erotic art - it meant hawking mundane photographs deceptively presented as shunga. Following that logic, *gasebiri* would mean counterfeit prostitutes - women all show and no substance. It likely carried connotations of amateurs versus professionals too, but was chiefly a derogatory term for private prostitutes contrasted with licensed ones. I had fallen completely for that despicable gasebiri.

I thought this must be my first true love. That first love of mine was a fake prostitute. Even a worthless wretch like me couldn't help getting sentimental about it. But this wasn't because I mourned having some lowly fake prostitute as my first love. I didn't see Clara that way at all. Yet the very fact she was a fake prostitute contained elements that made me sentimental—even if I refused to view Clara herself as some base streetwalker. Like how...

“Teru-chan, you’ve lost a bit of weight.”

I put my arm around Clara's shoulder as she came to my side and said. What had made Clara—Teruko—lose weight? It was those kinds of things that made me sentimental. "Do you think so?"

Clara pressed against me. Her body was slender-boned and supple—precisely why I'd fallen for her—yet despite that softness, when I tried pinching her arms or thighs between my fingers, the flesh resisted with a springy tautness that slipped from my grasp. That resilient firmness had made me desire her all the more. Now even this cherished tautness had begun fading of late. When I said you'd grown thinner, this was what I meant.

“What’s wrong?” “What’re you doing?” Clara seemed puzzled that I wasn’t rushing things as usual. Clara appeared to be the one in a hurry today. “What’s this—you’re wearing bloomers?” From outside her one-piece dress, I fumbled for that telltale elastic band, tugged it from beneath the fabric, and snapped it— “Did you go somewhere?” “Just home for a bit…”

Clara evaded the question with vague words. "Home? Where's this home of yours, Teru-chan?" "I don't have a home." Clara looked directly at my face—not turning away as one might when speaking such words—and said them while maintaining eye contact. "I ran away from home." "So you went back today? To that home you fled?" "As if I'd go there!" Clara glared at me with adorable intensity. Standing bewildered by this unexplained reproach—

“Where’s your place, Shiro-san?” “It’s Hongo.”

“Where’s Hongo?” She kept pressing me with questions.

"I'm at a boarding house in Sendagimachi."

“At a boarding house? How nice,” Clara said in that manner, then asked: “Can I come visit?”

“Sure thing.” I thought that if I were to set up house with Clara, I’d have to leave that boarding house and rent some small place—even just a single room— “It’s a filthy place, but come on over.” “I’ll bring sushi when I come.” Clara said brightly, “Well then, shall we get to it?” “Don’t say it like that.” “You don’t like it?” “I don’t like how you phrase it.” “Then—hold me.”

Clara pulled my hand, sat me down on the bed, and while eagerly untying my necktie, “Today… Brother… we don’t need that.” “Huh?” After she said this, I realized it was that thing Clara always went downstairs to retrieve at times like this.

“I don’t need that thing today.” Clara said something unusual. Usually, even if I said we didn’t need it, Clara—fearing pregnancy—wouldn’t listen, but “Stop that,” she said.

Was today a day when precautions weren't necessary? It must have shown on my face—she looked ready to say that wasn't why— "I hate those things." peering into my eyes,

“It seems I’ve fallen for you, Brother.” “What do you mean ‘seems like’?” When I got carried away, Clara allowed it, “I love you.” she rephrased sincerely, as if to prove her words,

“This time… Brother… why don’t you take off my kimono…” “You got it.” I was overjoyed,

"I'm madly in love with Teru-chan." My voice cracked. "I know." Clara said, "That tickles. Don't do unnecessary things." "I hate unnecessary things." Twisting her body coquettishly, "I love you too, Brother." "But I shouldn't have fallen for you." "Is that wrong?" "When I'm in this trade..." "What are you talking about? "I want to marry Teru-chan." "I can't get married."

“Teru-chan’s debt, I’ll—” Without letting me finish, “We’ll talk about that later…” Clara threw herself against me and sought my lips. I wrapped my arm around her back and kissed her. Her skin was cold. As always when I held her, it quickly grew warm and damp with sweat. Not from my body’s heat—Clara burned hot at her core. Yet before being embraced, her skin stayed chilled to the touch. These very contradictions of hers kept me enthralled.

That day especially found Clara making me all the more obsessed with her. Prostitutes never permitted clients sasikomi (kissing—a slang term cruder than "sashimi"), though I'd mentioned before how Clara had allowed me this intimacy. Yet one act she still withheld. She feigned allowance through theatrical gasps and clumsy contortions—performances I recognized as hollow artifice—but knowing she serviced countless men daily, I held my tongue. To criticize her crude techniques would have been cruelty itself.

Today, she had truly allowed it. I was deeply moved that Clara had truly meant it when she said she loved me.

“Teru-chan, marry me.” Clara swiftly covered her naked body with a blanket and silently hid her face beneath it. I pressed my face against the fabric,

“Marry me.”

The blanket shifted restlessly, offering no reassurance. I tore off the blanket, "Aren't you going to say anything?" "I'm happy." Though Clara said this, her eyes stared off into space. I was about to say this was my first love when suddenly Maruman's words about being a gigolo came rushing back. I wanted to ask but held myself back, thinking such questions weren't for a man to voice, "Do you think they'd allow it at your home?"

“Our marriage? It’ll be fine.” I started to say “There’s nothing to allow or not allow…” when “Is your real home in the countryside, Shiro?” “The countryside? Why?” “But you said you’re boarding in Hongo…” “Do I look like a student?” You didn’t take me for some country bumpkin, did you? I grinned slyly, “It’s Tokyo.” “So it’s Tokyo?” “Azabu’s Yon no Hashi.” As I remembered my father and mother, “My old man runs a small casting factory.”

“How lovely...” Clara said, “My father was a ronin...” “Ronin?” “Was my father one of those China ronin types?” “A comrade.” Comrade? Clara parroted back, “My father was a China ronin...”

“Huh?” As I involuntarily raised my voice,

“Clara—” The hag called from downstairs. She’d always been detestable, but never had I hated her more than in that moment. Clara was hurriedly buttoning her dress when, “Leaving already, Bro?” She’d switched back from Shiro to Bro, “What now?”

She said this but seemed intent on sending me away. To me—determined to stay—Clara gave immediate voice to that intention. “It’s too painful… Go home.” She meant the agony of having me witness her taking other clients so vividly. Clara twisted her bloomers into a tight roll and stuffed them beneath the bed, “There now, off you go.” she said, pressing a farewell kiss upon me, “I won’t forget what you said.” “That you’d care for me so…”

“I’ll get the money soon and come back for Teru-chan.”

The malicious old hag downstairs hounded me again.

“Clara—” “Coming—”

To secure Clara's redemption money, I went to meet Suna—though truth be told, when it came to money matters, meeting Suna was unavoidable—but now, more than that, there's something I must say here as soon as possible.

It was precisely three days after that aforementioned day—that morning. This was precisely the time to put my syphilis to use. They call a woman’s parts yachi and a man’s parts yoshiko, but when I awoke in my boarding house’s wafer-thin futon, I found my yoshiko’s tip stuck fast to the monkey fur (monkey meaning pubic hair), feeling somehow immobilized—huh? I thought, rubbing my bleary eyes over and over, then sat up and peered down,

"Got you!" I shouted. My eyes flew open all at once. The yellow stain on my monkey fur announced I'd contracted syphilis. While I slept unaware of anything wrong with me - pus had erupted from my penis tip. Dried by body heat like paste - gluing my cockhead fast to that matted pubic hair. No need dwelling on such filth - but for me this wasn't just waking bleary-eyed. The world went black before me - shock like a hammerblow between my temples.

It was an era devoid of convenient medicines like penicillin. Once contracted, curing it was an ordeal, so contracting syphilis itself had been a shock, but the fact that I'd received this syphilis from none other than Clara—for me, this wasn't just darkness before my eyes but a shock that plunged the entire world into blackness. The woman who had been my first love had neatly infected me with syphilis. I gnashed my teeth with a grating grind.

That Clara—the one I'd obsessed over to the point of wanting to make her my wife—knew exactly what kind of man I was, knew the state of my heart, yet went and infected me with her diseased cunt anyway? Come to think of it, she always made me use a condom when we fucked—did she know full well she was rotting down there? Why, of all days, did she choose that day to give me the clap? Why the hell did she go out of her way to stick me with her syphilis?

I rushed to Clara’s place. The private prostitution quarter wore a hollow expression in the morning light.

I kicked open the door and barged inside—

“Hey, Clara!” I barked. Instead of Clara, Tomie appeared. “She’s not here.” Her makeup-less face bore a spectral bluish pallor. “Where’d she go?” “Quit the trade.” Ugh! I sucked in breath.

“Poor thing had some no-good man latch onto her and took Clara off somewhere else.” Tomie clicked her teeth with a tsk,

“Just the other day, that man came by,” “I’d thought about whispering that in your ear, but...” “Where did Clara go?” “How should I know?” I felt the world go dark before my eyes once more.

“Damn it!”

The door had colored glass set into its upper panel. I clenched my fist and smashed the glass.

Tomie screamed. The old woman came rushing out from the back and hurled abuse at me, but it didn’t register. Seeing my blood-dripping fist, I came to my senses with a start and lumbered outside, but the old woman followed and began badgering me about paying for the glass. "Shut the hell up!" I shook off the clinging crone. The old woman staggered, "Hey! Everyone—youngsters! Get over here!"

The old woman shrieked. Then suddenly—though it was morning—young men began materializing from nowhere in ones and twos. “You bastard!” One of them seized me by the collar. I drove my blood-smeared fist into his face. At the same instant, another youth landed a vicious blow to my solar plexus. My breath caught—and as I doubled over, a hailstorm of iron fists rained down on my crouching form. “Pull another stunt like that in our district, and we won’t let it slide.”

While being showered with such abuse, I was ganged up on—beaten, kicked, and trampled—until I was left hovering between life and death.

I'll never forget—around that very time, the poet Tamazuka Eishin—that same Tamazuka I'd considered asking to lecture at our anarchist-affiliated union's study group—published the following grotesque poem in some magazine. Grotesque it was, yet for me it became an unforgettable poem. I thought Tamazuka must have contracted syphilis too, and resolved that I too would "wash away this pus-filled society with blood" as his poem exhorted. That was why I determined to devote myself to our anarchist-affiliated union's work—but...

Having lost my first love, a second blow awaited me. Just as I resolved to devote myself to union work, every worker who had belonged to that very anarchist union defected en masse and joined the Bolshevik faction's union without exception.

Part Four: The Liquid in the Glass

“I’d thought about faking it with patent medicines,” Maruman glared, “but try that half-assed shit and you’ll wind up with gonococcal urethritis. That flophouse room of yours—if someone walks down the hallway outside, it’s like they’re tiptoeing past your pillow while you sleep. Their footsteps’ll throb straight through your balls—” (He contorted his face in mock agony) “—and forget the hallway! Even second-floor noises—hell, your room’s that sunless north corner, right? Sounds from upstairs punch right through the ceiling. Get some college brats stomping around up there? Doesn’t matter if they’re just creaking across the floor—your nuts’ll jolt like they’ve been zapped. ‘It hurts! It hurts!’—you’ll bawl like a baby. Gonococcal urethritis’s no joke.” Having sufficiently terrorized me, Maruman offered to introduce me to the Settlement clinic in Honjo he’d frequented back when he worked as a lathe operator. “Town doctors’ll fleece you, so obviously they’re out,” he said, “and even cheap hospitals—syphilis treatment takes ages and eats through your cash—so I’ll point you somewhere decent.”

“What’s this ‘Settlement’?” I asked. I’d later learn it stood for “settlement house,” but back then Maruman explained it as Tokyo Imperial University bigshots bringing students into yojishi—the slums—to give legal advice from ritsu (lawyers) and medical diagnoses from shaji (doctors) for hikawa folks too poor to visit proper practitioners. This was part of the settlement movement, but at that moment I sneered—it seemed absurd coming from Maruman, who hated intellectuals—thinking he’d gone soft on charity work. “Keep your hypocritical do-goodery,” I refused. There were other reasons too.

In truth, I hadn't yet told Maruman about this—it felt like exposing my shame—but having had all the factory workers from our anarchist-affiliated union poached wholesale, I was so furious, so utterly furious, that I wanted to storm into the Koto branch of the Bolshevik faction's union and smash them to pieces. But going alone, I'd likely end up repeating that beating I took in the brothel—and while I wouldn't mind getting ganged up on by myself, in this case, it'd bring shame upon all anarchists. So while I wanted to ask our "realist" anarchist comrades for support to avoid defeat, if I phrased it poorly, they might turn on me—"Yachimoro Shiro here got distracted by some fake prostitute, that's why this happened!" So I decided—to ambush and dekkiru (beat up) the Bolshevik faction's union organizers who seemed directly involved in this matter. Let me make this clear here: while it was actually the factory workers who betrayed me, I didn't lay a hand on any of them. I beat up the union organizers who made them betray me.

Among them was a young man who looked like a college dropout. That guy's university had been Tokyo Imperial University. I didn't want to be indebted to any Settlement associated with that imperial university. I couldn't tell Maruman that. Though Maruman soon discovered I'd lost the union anyway, I kept silent about my reasons for avoiding the Settlement—I couldn't bear him hearing it from my own mouth. So Maruman dragged me there by force. The place everyone called the Settlement turned out to be a grimy house behind Seikosha. This Settlement movement meant intellectuals settling in slums to uplift workers—their institution offered legal advice, daycare, and medical consultations.

When we went to that clinic, they said they didn’t have a dermatology department. I threw a mocking laugh at Maruman—"See?"—but it was then I first learned that what back-alley quack doctors called the "venereology department" on their signs was layman’s talk, while academics called it dermatology. "So syphilis’s a skin disease? Huh, really?" I marveled with feigned awe. They said they treated skin conditions like ringworm and baldness, but syphilis and bai poison weren’t handled at this clinic. They made it clear they wouldn’t touch such immoral diseases—their tone dripping with disdain.

"Couldn't there be some doctor...?" persisted Maruman, his dignity in tatters. Children with trachoma, women who looked consumptive, and bloated old men overflowed from the cramped examination room into the hallway. The doctor Maruman had apparently once been treated by—this so-called Dr. Something—had been transferred to a provincial hospital, announced a young physician wearing a white lab coat—a staff member slightly older than typical students (I later learned he wasn’t a student but a medical graduate working in the affiliated hospital’s department).

When I asked Maruman if he’d had Dr. Something treat his gonococcal urethritis, he made a bitter face and replied, “No, it wasn’t like that.” I’d been certain that Maruman’s gonococcal urethritis—the one he’d so proudly boasted to me about—had definitely been treated there. As I turned to leave, muttering “This is no joke,” a gentleman who looked every inch a university professor happened down the hallway—“Oh?”— and fixed Maruman with that gaze no sooner than

“If it isn’t Mr. Maruman from the craft union?” “Dr. Hoizumi…”

Maruman bowed in deep reverence and said nostalgically, "It's been a while," then asked, "Are you still overseeing matters here, Professor?"

“Still?” The professor responded with a kind expression, forcing a wry smile, “Are you still clinging to anarchism?” “Of course.” “Anarchism’s completely lost its appeal.” Maruman squared his shoulders defiantly and declared, “This young man is my comrade,” introducing me. This gentleman was the renowned Dr. Hoizumi, a professor at Tokyo Imperial University’s Faculty of Law. From the daycare across the way came the clamor of snot-nosed, scrawny brats with their green mucus dangling. Dr. Hoizumi, as a sincere adherent of the Settlement movement, would set aside his busy schedule to come to this slum.

I ended up receiving special treatment here. It was good that I did—but those treatments were utterly primitive, or rather... Not that this place was uniquely primitive—everywhere was like that back then... They would fill a thick tube resembling a horse syringe with copious purple liquid, then inject it into the tip of my penis. Exposing myself to others' eyes was shameful—even for a man, even to a doctor. Having that liquid poured backward through the hole where my penis released urine felt repulsive both psychologically and physiologically. To make matters worse, this liquid was identical to the disinfectant I'd seen in the toilet when first meeting Clara—a realization that made everything utterly infuriating. They pumped me full of it—though technically it matched an intravenous dose of Salsolbrocanon (I only knew that obscure drug name from when they treated my ruined lungs, but that's another story). But when they poured those copious amounts into my penis, the doctor would—

“Hold it here,” the doctor said to me. There, I pressed down on the tip of my own penis with my own fingers. To prevent the liquid injected into my penis from immediately escaping—or rather, to stop the liquid itself, as if finding its presence unbearable, from rushing out—I pressed down with my own fingers. Enduring the stinging sensation, I kept pressing for a set amount of time until the young doctor said, “Alright, that’s enough.”

If it were a proper venereal disease hospital that prioritized customer service over extortion, they'd have prepared a private room shielded from prying eyes—but this place operated differently. Those clinics would have proper tools to clamp a penis tip, but here there were none. Though I'd turned my back to the room, my exposed shoulders in the clinic corner—gripping that shameful part with my own hand while glaring at the wall—made for an utterly undignified spectacle. It felt like I was conditioning myself toward shamelessness through this very act. Like I was systematically cultivating indecency within by publicly displaying such disgrace.

Nowadays, syphilis would probably be cured in no time with injections or oral medication, but back then, I had to keep coming here every single day, putting myself through this humiliating spectacle as if that were its sole purpose. The pus soon stopped, and the urine—cloudy while discharging pus—gradually began to clear, but they would check daily just how clear it had become. This too was an awkward affair. Before injecting the disinfectant solution, I had to collect urine in a cup—this too being done right there, in the corner of the room.

I would do it in the manner of public urination, but public urination naturally has its appropriate places. One instinctively chooses such places for oneself, but being forced to do it in a room under public scrutiny—even if I hid my penis from view—meant that positioning a cup at its tip to urinate felt less like fecal obstruction and more like urinary retention; nothing would come out. Even I—who’d committed my fair share of violent acts with full resolve—found this particular brand of awkwardness exceptional: meekly urinating into a cup without any intention of violence. Though my urine initially refused to flow due to nervousness, I eventually grew accustomed enough to release it freely with audible gushing. But presenting this beer-colored urine in a glass identical to a beer stein—offering up my own bodily fluid for others' inspection—remained excruciatingly awkward.

By the time I'd grown accustomed to this, there came a moment when I was walking to catch the Katamachi streetcar for my clinic visit and thought, "I need to piss." But if I did it here, there wouldn't be enough urine stored up for the examination—that would be trouble. Thinking this, I boarded the streetcar as planned. Inside that rattling car, I kept muttering under my breath: "Gotta piss... Ah, gotta drain the lizard." Fixating on it only made things worse. So I tried distracting myself with other thoughts, but that just tightened the obsession's grip.

'I'll do it when I transfer,' I thought. I'd resolved myself, yet when transfer time came, I'd inexplicably feel I could hold out longer. I endured and boarded the streetcar again. When I finally disembarked at the terminal, I needed to piss so desperately I could barely stand. But if I were to relieve myself here now, I should've done it before boarding - having held out this long, that approach made no sense. I rushed to the clinic.

This might sound like some stupid bullshit story, but I guess my particular brand of idiocy shows itself most clearly in moments like these.

When I arrived at the clinic, I immediately borrowed a cup. The built-up urine rapidly filled the cup—this was bad, it would overflow. I felt it might unexpectedly stop right at the brim. I had secretly hoped for that, but even when the cup was completely full, it still didn't stop.

“Cup! Another cup!” “Another cup!” I shouted and tried desperately to stop the flow, but it was already too late—the foul liquid overflowed the cup and streamed across the floor. One such day, as I pinched the tip of my penis and glared at the wall, this thought struck me: Clara—who’d given me this syphilis—might not have known she carried it herself. Yes—Clara herself mustn’t have realized she had syphilis. The conviction hardened within me.

I, who had been hating Clara with every fiber of my being, suddenly arrived at this realization—Sorry, Teru—and instead of voicing it aloud, I squeezed my penis tightly between my fingers as if making them speak the apology for me, (Oh no)

At this moment,

“Alright, that’s enough now.”

From behind me, the nurse—unfortunately on duty that day—announced something and produced a brass tray. When she saw my erect penis, the nurse turned her face away.

Outside, dusk had darkened into night. I kept thinking about Clara.

Why hadn't I realized until now? That Clara had transmitted syphilis to me without knowing it herself. In other words, she'd contracted it from someone else unknowingly. But then that meant Clara had been with a man before me—one who'd taken her in the same way she'd allowed me to. My chest burned with jealousy. The jealousy spawned by my own conjectures tormented me.

Was that man the "bad man" Tomie had mentioned? The one who'd transferred Clara somewhere... That bastard must have been diseased. Knowing full well he was infected, he'd taken Clara to bed. Suddenly I pitied her again. Clara likely hadn't known the man carried sickness. She'd never have dreamed of passing this plague to me. Clara being forced to transfer brothels by that man - having to part from me - must've been why she allowed that final embrace. Perhaps Clara had loved me.

Even so, when I thought that the syphilis bacteria clinging to my penis were the same ones that had lurked in the penis of Clara's man, I felt utterly overwhelmed. I was overcome with an overpowering urge to drink. Being forbidden to drink only made me want it more. They had strictly forbidden alcohol, saying it would undo all my hard-won treatment, but I wanted to drink so desperately I could barely stand it. I endured it. Just as I'd held back my urine, I endured. I endured to test my endurance.

I went out to Ueno and wandered aimlessly around Shinobazu Pond. In the woods of Ueno, a full moon hung serenely.

The moon came out, came out—I found myself humming that nursery rhyme. Round, round, perfectly round—a moon like a festival tray...

I missed Clara. More than Clara, it was Teruko—Sera Teruko. This was Clara's real name. I repeated the same song several times, but eventually,

Out came—out came— The sea— I messed up. I corrected myself from “Out came—out came—the sea—” to “Out came—out came—the moon—,” but with a frustrated click of my tongue— Yellow Yellow Makkīroi Like the sea— The moon— I found myself desperately wanting to see Clara—Sera Teruko—one more time. Driven by that thought, I went to meet Suna.

Regarding the redemption money, I had previously gone to consult Suna,

“Alright, I’ll think about it for you.”

I received a gallant reply from Suna, but just two days later, I—

“I’ve given up on that.” I had to say something disgraceful. I was covered in red bruises from the beating I’d taken—my face a disgraceful mess. “What the hell’s with that face?” “Some pimps latched onto me.” When I spoke, the muscles in my face ached. Suna asked if I’d been beaten by pimps. “No—that’s not it,” I said, trying to hide my bandaged hands. “Flew into a rage and lashed out. But being outnumbered...”

“You’re such an idiot, Kashiwai.” Suna laughed—not a sneer.

To that Suna, I said. “Mr. Suna—have you met Kodo-sensei?”

My voice sounded as if I had reverted to a boy. Suna remained silent.

To Suna, who didn’t deny it, I said. “Mr. Suna—could you ask Kodo-sensei?”

Whether there was a Chinese rōnin named Sera. If he existed, where did that Sera live? “Mr. Suna.” “Just listen.” I thought my voice sounded whiny. Suna—left leg crossed over his knee—kept glaring at me while rubbing his sole with a thumb. “The woman I love is that Chinese rōnin Sera’s daughter.” I’d heard that surname from Clara—Teruko.

“The woman told you that?” Suna gathered the grime from his foot, rolled it into a black ball, then pinched it and flicked it into the garden with his fingernail. With his free right hand, he smoked an Asahi while— “A Chinese rōnin’s daughter working at a high-class sake house?” “She said her old man was a Chinese rōnin.” “You actually believe some sake-house whore’s stories, Kashiwai?”

“You could at least listen—you should’ve listened!” “Are you telling me to ask Kodo-sensei—that Chinese rōnin—whether some comrade’s daughter’s whoring herself out?” At first I’d considered asking Maruman about this, but after hearing from Maruman that he’d introduced Suna to Kodo-sensei, I changed tack and decided to approach Suna instead. Part of why I came here was pure curiosity—to see how Suna would react when I dropped Kodo-sensei’s name.

Suna looked as though he were questioning whether one could even ask such an impertinent thing of Kodo-sensei—but then immediately continued,

“That’s interesting,” Suna said to me. “I’ll ask.” At that moment, a man in a black suit peered into the room from beyond the hedge. I immediately knew he was a detective. “The damn cop was spying,” I said. Suna brushed it off,

“Let’s go ask now—together.” With that, “Might as well bring the cop along too.” Then in a voice loud enough for the detective to hear, he barked “Hey!” at his subordinate, ordered him to call Saito Kodo’s residence, and told him to ask if they could visit immediately. The subordinate went to borrow a phone from the liquor store. At Suna’s house—where no wife resided—young men who were neither proper subordinates nor true comrades always lounged about.

“Weird old man.” Suna said that about Kodo, “I’d heard his name before, but we’d never met.” “Apparently, he had connections with Mr. Ōsugi back in the day.” When Ōsugi Sakae’s name came up and I raised my eyebrows in question, Suna said that he had also been acquainted with Kōtoku Shūsui at one time, “That’s why Saitō Kōdō was arrested during the High Treason Incident too.” I groaned “Hmm,” and— “He was arrested, yet managed to get out in one piece.”

"I said. 'In Ōsugi Sakae's case, he was in Chiba Prison during the Red Flag Incident, so he was away when the High Treason Incident happened,' Suna said. 'Must've been too busy running around with China's revolution instead of Japan's.' 'He survived because he had right-wing connections too.' 'Does that old man have a foot in both camps?' 'Not just connections—the old man's ideology's got two faces from the ground up.' 'Not someone you handle with conventional methods.'"

In a tone neither quite contemptuous nor respectful, Suna said, "He's one of a quartet of Chinese rōnin called Kido, Kado, Kodo, and Gaito." “A case of lamenting the times with passionate outrage?” “All four were apparently liberal democratic rights advocates. After the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement failed, they tried to redirect their ambitions toward the continent—or so he himself claimed.” The subordinate who had gone to make the call informed us that Kodo was home.

I was led by Suna and met Saitō Kōdō for the first time. The first time I visited Kōdō’s house, its shabbiness differed little from Suna’s. The sole distinction lay in the gate’s unusually imposing structure. We were ushered upstairs. Kōdō—his back to an alcove stacked with Chinese classics—proved less elderly than Suna’s “old codger” remarks had led me to expect. Yet his diminutive, emaciated frame exuded senility, his entire bearing hinting at a man harboring multiple eccentricities.

“You resemble Zhang Ji-kun.” Kodo stared intently at my face and muttered as if to himself. To speak of a “piercing gaze” might sound antiquated, yet it fit perfectly—Kodo resembled an old samurai warrior. I had already heard Zhang Ji’s name from Maruman at the gyunabe restaurant, so “He was an anarchist.” As he spoke, this Kodo—though it felt rude to think so—struck me as resembling perfectly cured, glossy kusaya dried fish.

"Indeed, he was an anarchist—though if I don't clarify that he was an anarchist, you might take offense—but Mr. Zhang Ji stood alongside Huang Xing and Song Jiaoren as both a driving force and leader of the Chinese revolution." "And it was we Japanese who supported these revolutionaries, both openly and covertly." Kodo said that Zhang Ji was a graduate of Nihon University, "When he was in Japan, he became engrossed in Kropotkin together with Zhang Taiyan." "He kept urging me to read The Conquest of Bread too."

That this "old man" would mention Kropotkin struck me as stylishly modern for someone with his samurai-like bearing, I thought. “After being expelled from Japan, Zhang Ji went to France, but when departing he kept urging us to become Japan’s Lafayettes.” “Ōsugi Sakae must have heard this too.” “That Meiji incident occurred during the Rooftop Speech Affair – the forty-first year.” “Zhang Ji was expelled over that incident, while Ōsugi got arrested and indicted.” “Ōsugi was about your age back then.”

“You resemble Zhang Ji-kun,” Kodo-sensei said to me. “That was before the Red Flag Incident, right?” Suna said. In June of Meiji 41 (1908), when they attempted to hold a welcome party for released comrades at Kanda Kinkikan but were met with a dissolution order, they took to the streets waving red flags in demonstration. This was the “Red Flag Incident,” and before that, in January of the same year, there had been what was called the “Rooftop Speech Incident.” When the Kōtoku Shūsui faction’s Friday Association lecture meeting was ordered to disband by the authorities, the people expelled from the venue gathered in the streets while singing revolutionary songs. To the crowd gathered outside, Sakai Karekawa and Ōsugi Sakae delivered speeches from the second floor, which led to their prosecution under the designation “Rooftop Speech Incident.”

“Zhang Ji-kun was also arrested at the scene of that Rooftop Speech Incident, but his Chinese comrades managed to rescue him.” “So he fled to Kyoto, but was caught there and ended up being expelled from Japan.” “When fleeing to Kyoto, he must have already steeled himself for exile abroad—he told us to ‘become Lafayettes.’” “Lafayette?”

“He was a French general and revolutionary,” “who crossed from France to America and contributed greatly to their independence revolution.” “When he returned home, Lafayette guided France’s revolution using methods already proven in America.” “When Mr. Zhang spoke of this Lafayette, he meant we should assist China’s revolution and use it as reference for Japan’s own.” “The Chinese Revolution has succeeded, but…” Suna—who privately called him “old man”—now addressed Kodo with utmost deference,

“Japan’s revolution…” “Has it still not been achieved?” Kodo smiled knowingly, “In the Chinese Revolution, the military had participated. That’s how the revolution was achieved.” Marking this as the crucial point, he fixed his gaze on Suna.

"There are two types of revolutionaries," Kodo-sensei declared. "Ōsugi-kun too changed somewhat between his days of issuing that manifesto 'To the New Recruits' and his later years." The manifesto had been a translation of an anti-militarist treatise. For this, Ōsugi Sakae was charged with violating the imperial constitution and thrown into Sugamo Prison. He was twenty-three at the time. "To confront the state's overwhelming power," Kodo continued, fixing Suna with an intense stare, "a revolutionary army must possess equivalent strength." His voice hardened like forged steel. "One fights power with power."

Kodo said this, but I remembered how Bakunin had opposed communism, condemning it as authoritarianism. "State-centric," Bakunin had called it communism too. "Not through appeals to power's methods—not top-down," Bakunin had stressed, "but through free association—bottom-up." In Kodo's words, I detected the reek of authoritarianism, "Do you support communism, Sensei?" I asked. Suna glared sideways at me, wordlessly commanding me to stop this recklessness.

“Communism is my enemy.” “It would be yours as well...” The fact that Kodo had said “I” rather than “we” struck me. “My apologies.” I apologized to end the ideological sparring and asked if he knew a Chinese ronin named Sera. This was my true purpose for visiting. I kept silent about the girl’s connection to the sake shop— “Sera? “Don’t know him.”

Kodo said irritably,

"This young man has remarkable vigor." "You're exactly like I was in my youth." "Let me stand you to liquor."

—That day, I finally gulped down the kiss (liquor) I'd been restraining myself from for so long. Perhaps it was because the middle-aged maid who brought up the sake bottle from below—not only her facial features but even her fidgety mannerisms—vividly reminded me of my dead mother.

Part Five: Burrowing Through Sand

The reason I turned my steps toward my father’s house at Yotsu no Hashi—a place I had long ceased to visit—was perhaps because the memory of my dead mother had summoned me there. Facing the main street stood a casting foundry, and beyond it by the riverbank was the house. To reach the house, one could take the alley alongside the foundry—piled with zuku scrap iron and coke—or pass straight through the workshop itself. When I peered into the foundry, that day happened to coincide with Blowing Day. A nostalgic stench of "molten metal" pierced my nose. They called melted scrap iron "yu"—"molten metal." Having grown up amidst this stench of “molten metal,” it made me feel sentimental—ah, this is the smell of home; I’ve come back. And that damned thing made me think of my father before my mother.

My father had been running this foundry since my childhood, toiling away literally drenched in sweat, yet never managing to rise in station. The foundry's squalor remained unchanged from my childhood days. Of course, part of it was that my father indulged fully in all three vices - drink, women, and gambling - but then again, you might say that's inevitable when running a foundry business. Damn me - how could I face my mother like this?

Bare-chested, my father was working while yelling at the laborers—manual workers. It was a figure I had grown accustomed to since childhood, a figure that hadn't changed one bit from when I was a child. Unlike machine factories and such, my foundryman father worked at the forefront himself. It was also that he couldn't rest unless he did it himself.

As I peered into the factory, a thick blast of hot air assaulted my face. The heat was suffocating. This was because in the melting furnace they called Koshiki at the factory, they were smelting cast metal ingots. They transported the ingots melted in Koshiki—this being what they called “yu”—using a ladle and poured them into molds. That heat became trapped within the factory, until the entire structure had become like a melting furnace itself. I was standing outside without entering the factory, but when my father noticed me,

“What the hell are you doing here at a time like this?...” I thought he’d yelled at me like that—but no, it was just his perpetual scowl making it seem so. Yet I genuinely felt chastised. Then Father barked: “Salt! Bring me salt!”

And this time, he truly roared. The young laborer presented Father with a salt container identical to those fastened to sumo ring pillars. It truly appeared to have been offered with trembling hesitation. His face flushed crimson from the heat—not to mention his bare torso—Father looked like an asura as he fiercely gripped the salt, then scattered most of it across the factory’s earthen floor with a sumo wrestler’s ceremonial flourish, tossing the meager remnants left in his hand into his mouth.

Father, his bare upper body dripping sweat as if he’d been doused with water, licked salt again and again as he worked. After licking salt, he gulped down water from the spout of a Seto-style kettle. On Blowing Days, if you didn’t work like this—licking salt again and again—your body would waste away. His body sweated so profusely that even when droplets of "molten metal" splashed onto his bare skin, they would slide right off thanks to the sweat, miraculously avoiding burns. It was sweat of such intensity. If he didn’t lick salt, he’d collapse.

Yet at that moment, it appeared to me as though father—enraged that my presence had defiled this sacred workspace—was attempting to purify it through salt. Indeed, now that I thought of it, I was a syphilitic with a defiled body. Indeed, by gulping down liquor at Kodo’s house that day, I had in one fell swoop squandered all the temperance I’d painstakingly maintained until then. I considered this an inexcusable act toward the young Settlement doctor who was treating me out of special goodwill. My urine had finally started to clear up, but now it was getting cloudy again—I couldn’t face the Settlement doctor like this. I had to find some way to deceive him here.

More than fearing they might refuse further treatment, my true resolve was that I wouldn't care if they did—but trampling on the doctor's goodwill was what I couldn't stomach. Thinking 'This is bad,' I then devised a brilliant idea. A brilliant idea? No—a foolish notion, but this was precisely the sort of idiocy I specialized in. I was a fool through and through. Like Father during Blowing Days—though without licking salt—I guzzled water instead. From dawn onward I drank until I was pissing hourly, at which point I smirked in grim satisfaction. This was my brilliant scheme.

Incidentally I should note that on Blowing Days，even if you guzzled water along with salt，once you'd pissed in the morning，you wouldn't need to again until night．That he sweated so tremendously—this too served as proof．

When I went to the clinic, right before urinating into that cup used to check urine cloudiness, I made sure to urinate beforehand. Having thus—so to speak—cleansed my urethra, I then collected urine into the cup.

The urethra had been flushed by constant urination, but even so, it remained slightly cloudy— "Oh…"

The young doctor said this, looked at my face, and smirked. I too remained silent and smirked. The doctor said nothing, but I too said nothing.

My name being Shiro, people tend to think I'm the fourth son, but I'm actually the second. The third son—born to a different mother—bears the fitting name Saburo, meaning 'third son.' Now, as for my elder brother's firstborn son—what name do you suppose he carries? It's Goro. Father's name was Rokuro. This same father named his first son Goro and his second son—me—Shiro. Father had been named Rokuro as he was the sixth child. Bestowing reverse numerical names like Goro, Shiro, and Saburo upon his own children carried a certain contrived cleverness—a kind of bitter admiration one might savor—but no, Father once confessed he'd simply found it too troublesome to devise proper names.

Now I may speak of admiring its bitter cleverness, but as a child, I detested my own name. "Hey, Shiro!" Whenever I heard dogs being scolded with that name, I shrank back as if the reprimand were meant for me. "You're such a fool, Shiro."

Even when convincing myself that "Shiro" referred to the dog and not me, it still filled me with visceral disgust. Father used to call me not “Shirō” but “Shiro.” “Go Shiro! Go Aka!”—that cheer from the school sports day tug-of-war—it was fine if Shiro won, but if Shiro lost...! Then my classmates would, “Shiro lost!” “Shiro, Shiro, weak Shiro”

They looked at my face and jeered. “I hate being called Shiro! I don’t want to be Shiro!”

And at home, I threw tantrums over this. Mother sympathized and said to Father, "Shall we add something to Shiro’s name?" but—

“Shiro’s fine.” Father dismissed this outright with a single word. Had a girl been born after me, would Father have named her Sanko or something like that? No girl was ever born. Had I possessed a sister, she would surely have lamented—unable to marry anywhere due to her brother being a “person under surveillance” even when she came of age. Father’s business suffered an immediate severe blow, and he made rounds to wholesalers and business partners, apologizing while declaring, “That wretch has been disowned.” Among them,

“That’s what they call a devil child, huh?” “Mr. Kashiwai, what an awful misfortune you’ve suffered.” On the contrary, there were apparently even people who comforted Father. It was considered such an unthinkable crime. I was sent to middle school, but the eldest son Goro only went as far as elementary school before Father dragged him by the hand and stood him at the foundry. To inherit Father’s business—no, rather, to be made to inherit it—he was put to work at the factory alongside Father. Father’s opinion had been that unless you started training them from childhood, they couldn’t become skilled foundry workers, and he also seemed to feel that if you sent them to higher schools, they’d come to hate the trade.

Father, who had trained in Kawaguchi—the heartland of metal casting—took no pride in his trade as a foundryman, derisively called 'sand rats,' but he had wanted to pass down his craftsmanship to his son. He took pride in his own craft. The reason Father sent me to middle school was likely this: as the second son, if I loathed becoming a 'sand rat,' I should pursue another trade—but reflecting now, I realize I am the one who so wantonly betrayed Father’s benevolence.

Peering into the factory, I saw my brother Goro performing *sendome*—regulating the flow—beside the crucible alongside old Sumitaki, the melter who’d been a familiar face since my childhood. Regulating the flow of molten metal pouring from the smelting furnace was the role of *sendome*. My brother, who saw my face—unlike Father—

(Oh, there he was.) He gave me a wistful smile. Let me take a moment here to explain the process of creating cast metalwork. In modern terms—the production process—this was divided into four stages. Katagome—the making of sand molds—formed the first stage: placing the casting prototype inside the kanawaku frame, packing sand around it, then removing the prototype to leave the completed mold. The *yu*—molten metal from smelted ingots—would be poured into this mold; but first came the second stage: the smelting process to produce that very *yu*.

The melter was commonly called Sumitaki, and our factory had long employed artisans who specialized in that work. So distinct was this role from regular foundry workers that Sumitaki’s work required such specialized skill it earned practitioners the separate title of melter. The *katagome* mold-making was difficult work too for foundry workers, and Father handled this himself. This was called *namagata*, where molds were made using sand containing moisture. Since they worked covered in sand, this was where the epithet “sand rats” originated.

This mold-making process—from how moisture was added to the way sand was compacted (Father would press it down by stomping with his feet while wearing jikatabi work boots)—each step required subtle techniques and demanded years of disciplined practice. The quality of metal castings was even said to depend entirely on how well this mold was made.

Now, after the third stage of pouring the *yu* into that mold came the fourth stage: finishing work. The sand removal from cast products, polishing, and their assembly and painting were also included in this stage, but these tasks were not performed on *Fuki* days. The days when they performed katagome—mold-making work—the smelting process to create *yu*, and the pouring process of filling molds with *yu* were called *Fuki* days. Since they didn’t perform these tasks daily, they specifically called them *Fuki* days—

“Alright, tomorrow’s Fuki.” When that happened, the entire household would grow tense.

Creating prototypes wasn’t the foundry’s job—they outsourced that to specialized wood pattern workshops—but once those were ready, “Alright, Fuki time.” is how it came to be declared. Where did this term *Fuki* come from? Using bellows to blow air—that “Fuki” came from this act of blowing, I once heard from Father. In my childhood, I seem to recall they certainly used something called charcoal katazumi when melting ingots in the *koshiki*, but eventually that gave way to coke. They would burn this to generate enough heat to melt the ingots, using bellows to blow air. Even after switching to coke, they continued using the same tatara foot bellows as in the days of charcoal.

Speaking of which, the *koshiki* too was an extremely outdated device. While smelting furnaces might conjure images of miniature blast furnaces, this thing—crudely made like an oversized stove in appearance—was such that one marveled iron actually melted in it at all. It could be disassembled into three parts—apparently for easier maintenance later—but even in those days, that *koshiki* crucible with its top, middle, and base sections stacked like building blocks felt hopelessly antiquated, though I hear they still use it today.

I heard they started calling it *Fuki* from blowing air into this *koshiki* crucible with bellows. Strictly speaking, only the smelting should be *Fuki*, but they used the term for the whole process—pouring molten “yu” into molds to make castings. They still call it that today. *Fuki* demanded serious money—materials, fuel, everything. My father was a spendthrift craftsman who never kept cash overnight—whatever came in vanished instantly, leaving him broke. For *Fuki* costs, he’d always borrow upfront from wholesalers taking our castings. It became endless borrowing—once trapped, they’d slash prices on deliveries however they liked, so even our sweat-soaked work brought in wages barely worth earning.

Despite this, he loved taking his factory workers out on extravagant drinking sprees, and when he came home in the morning, a horse would often follow him all the way to the house. I lost count of how many times I saw my dead mother, pushing back the hair at her nape with her hand as she quietly hurried off to the pawnshop. Drenched in household struggles, womanly trials, every hardship imaginable—Mother died that way. Moreover, on her deathbed, Mother— “Papa, forgive me.” she apologized to Father as if she herself had been wholly inadequate. It was infuriating beyond measure.

Father was weeping with heaving sobs, Why…?

I thought. I loved Mother.

Mother died when I was in third grade. Less than a year later came the stepmother who would become Saburo's mother. That's when I became the sort of boy who played with bats in dusk-lit streets. My brother Goro got forced by Father to learn foundry tricks, working factory jobs like any common laborer.

Even though I was sent to middle school unlike my older brother, the reason things took such a strange turn was also due to being parted from Mother by death. But my becoming a terrorist did not stem from such sentimentality, so to speak.

I read Ōsugi Sakae's books in my fourth year of middle school. The books of Ōsugi Sakae—a man spoken of as fearsome, his works branded as terrifying tomes—I read them precisely because those very rumors of terror drew me in. To claim I felt nothing frightening would be a lie, but it's equally true that the impact of being confronted with terrifying truths struck me more profoundly.

As a fourth-year middle school student, there were many parts I couldn’t fully grasp even after reading, but those I did comprehend set my young blood ablaze. The exhilaration I felt when reading Ōsugi Sakae’s translation of Kropotkin’s *An Appeal to the Young* remains vividly etched in my memory to this day. That text riddled with redacted characters contained these words: “Alas. Must you still continue living the same miserable existence as your parents for thirty or forty more years? Must you toil your entire lives so others may gain every pleasure of happiness, knowledge, and art, while living in eternal anxiety over whether you can obtain even a single piece of bread? Must you forever abandon everything that could beautify your own existence just to let a handful of idle loafers indulge in all luxuries? And worn down by toil, once a depression—that tragic depression—arrives, they starve to death as recompense. Can this truly be your life’s aspiration?”

I didn’t consider my father’s life particularly miserable—and even if it were, I thought it his own doing—yet all around me brimmed with what Kropotkin called a "miserable existence." Compared to that squalor, I didn’t see Father’s life as wretched—but precisely this blindness meant I knew misery’s true depths. Had I never read those books, I’d have remained ignorant that this suffering sprang from society’s warped machinery—convinced instead those wretches were merely lazy. Yes, I would’ve clung to that belief.

“The ‘idlers’ are, conversely, the small minority who can lounge about comfortably by plunging the working poor—those who labor endlessly yet cannot make ends meet—into lives of misery.” That terrifying truth—I came to know through reading books. Father used to say going to school would lead nowhere good—now that it had come to this, those words seemed to hold some truth.

At that time, I nurtured a pale shadow of romantic feelings toward a poor yet beautiful girl in our neighborhood. Of course, this amounted to nothing but my own unrequited longing.

The father, with his pallid face that suggested tuberculosis, would clutch a lunchbox wrapped in newspaper and commute every morning to some factory on discount trains—but according to the girl’s mother, he was a “good-for-nothing,” and she herself worked at a tobacco factory in Akabane Bridge. The girl who had been looking after her younger brothers in place of their mother eventually went into service as a maid at some grand house to reduce the number of mouths to feed. There was such a thing as a housemaid—and that’s what she became. Perhaps due to her good looks, the girl became a parlor maid rather than a kitchen maid. When she returned home on her days off, transformed into such striking beauty that it made my heart race—but soon the young master took liberties with her, and she was sent back to her family. The young master who seduced the girl wasn’t blamed—rather, it was the girl herself who faced condemnation. It was because of poverty.

She went to an employment agency herself this time, found a place of service, and left home. The workplace didn't seem particularly reputable, but nonetheless, she vanished from my eyes. The following passage from *An Appeal to the Young* was precisely the reality of Japan. I hesitate to dredge up Ōsugi Sakae's antiquated translation here, but as it connects to my memories—and was such a profound shock to me—I feel compelled to reprint it nonetheless.

“One day again, you will hear of that lovely girl—the one whose nimble gait you so adored and praised, whose unadorned bearing, whose cheerful way of speaking.” For years upon years she had battled poverty before leaving her hometown for the capital. She knew full well how fierce the struggle for survival would prove there. Still, she had believed she might at least live honestly. And what became of her fate? You now know it all too well. When approached by a capitalist’s son, she was deceived by his honeyed words. She devoted herself to that man with all the blazing passion of her youth. And as sole reward for this devotion, she found herself cast aside still clutching her infant. She fought on courageously always. Yet in the end she succumbed to that unequal battle against cold and starvation. “And so she ended her days within some hospital’s walls.”

Rather than saying the translation was antiquated, it would be more accurate to say the content itself—this very approach—was what felt dated. And rather than claiming such ideas had become common sense, one might argue that reducing capitalists to mere villains was misguided. Yet for me back then, this was what first opened my eyes to society.

What am I to do? Kropotkin had shown me that answer.

“There are two paths you must take. You must choose between two paths: either declare, ‘Even if I must bend my conscience, so long as I can secure my own comfort and ease—and so long as people allow it—humanity is none of my concern,’ or else cast yourself among the socialists and devote yourself to the reformation of all society. This is the logical conclusion that must inevitably be reached.”

I wanted to cast myself among the socialists. What must I do to achieve that? It was at this time that I met Suna Koichi—

My elder brother Goro came to my side, slipping past Father’s eyes, and pulled me into the alley. “What do you want?” “Nah, I just came by to visit.” “Go wait inside.” “Umm,” I gave a vague response. Meeting Father’s second wife felt oppressive. “Shiro, still not settled down yet?” “Settled down?” “How about taking a wife and settling down properly?”

Even you, Brother—the one saying such things—didn’t have a wife because you were a ‘room-dweller.’ So I—though there had been a woman I wanted to marry—was too hesitant to voice it aloud, and when I said those words in my heart, “The other day, a woman came looking for you, Shiro.” Brother said she was a ‘modern girl,’ and— “She asked me to tell her your whereabouts…” It must be Teruko, I thought. Did Teruko come all this way because she wanted to see me? Since I’d only mentioned it was a boarding house in Sendagi, she must have had no way to track me down there—so she came all this way to search for me at the Yotsu no Hashi foundry?

“And…?” “I didn’t know whether I should tell you or not, so I fobbed her off. If I should tell you, I’ll let her know next time she comes around.”

Brother had kindly told me this, but I thought it was hopeless—she probably wouldn't come again. Now that I understood her heart's desire to see me, I felt with inexplicable clarity that Teruko and I would never meet again. —

From Kodo through Suna,

"We've learned about the man named Sera." The words reached me when my syphilis treatment had entered its final stage—during the bougie treatments. The final stage might sound straightforward enough, but this bougie therapy was in truth the most loathsome part of the entire treatment process—the worst still awaited at the end. It was like some vicious form of torture. That business of pinching the tip of your own dick with your fingers while glaring off into space had been psychologically repulsive enough, but compared to the physical agony of this bougie treatment, it didn't even register. The agony of it all was this—if only it had been sharp, definitive pain, that would have been bearable. But this dull torment crept in with an indescribably repulsive sensation, forcing you to endure its gradual intensification for a set amount of time. One might call it downright malicious.

Bougie is translated into Japanese as "shōsokushi." What exactly is this "bougie" in medical terms? When I looked it up in the dictionary, it said: "a rod used for dilating the urethra and bladder, and for exploration." These rods come in several varieties ranging from thin to thick. First starting with the thin ones, bougies resembling those skewers used for grilled meat would be inserted into the urethra. The bougie therapy aimed to dilate the urethra—once dilated, they would inject antiseptic fluid. Though hopelessly antiquated (so antiquated it would make a foundryman blush), they’d shove that absurd rod into a man’s penis like a skewer and leave it there for minutes on end. For those left skewered, the torment became unbearable. This was what made it outdated in the truest sense—outdatedness incarnate. Perhaps because the tip of the bougie was stimulating my bladder, though I’d just urinated moments before, it made me feel an intensely urgent need to piss—but with the rod jammed into my urethra, I couldn’t urinate at all. Like a goldfish gasping in stagnant water, I opened my mouth wide and panted, greasy sweat oozing stickily across my forehead.

If it were just once or twice, that would have been bearable—but they started with thin rods and gradually moved to thicker ones. Every day this torture was relentlessly repeated. They said this would eradicate the syphilis bacteria lurking in my urethral canals, but it felt like divine punishment for my womanizing—no, like they were deliberately meting out retribution. I was being tormented on purpose. It was during this bougie therapy that I received word from Kodo—on the very day before visiting his house. I had previously described ambushing Bolshevik faction organizers on the streets and beating them one by one; there in the clinic hallway, I came face to face with one of those former student radicals.

“Hey.” I called out like a street thug. “Oh.” He replied, forcing a wry smile.

(What the hell is this bastard?! Should I hit him again?) I glared at him. As I lay sprawled on the bed with a rod jammed into my penis, he unexpectedly entered and addressed my attending young doctor: "Hey," he said. "Oh," said the doctor. The two were friends.

Part Six: Ideological Backwardness From that day on, I never returned to the Settlement clinic. There was no way in hell I could go back. What face could I possibly show to go back there? My syphilis—now at this critical juncture—was it all reversing in one fell swoop? Would all my long-endured patience turn to ashes in an instant? Did I give a damn? Might as well return to square one and let that vile pus come gushing out again. Better yet, have it erupt in all its glory. That's what I thought. Serves you right—that's what they'd say. I wanted to laugh at myself like that. The thought of those Bolshevik bastards treating my syphilis made my guts churn. I ground my teeth.

At that moment, I was utterly crushed by an indescribable sense of humiliation. I was shocked to discover that friend of the Bolshevik faction organizer—that dropout student who’d stolen our anarchist union members en masse—[was here]. If he was friends with the bastard who’d made my entire union betray me in one fell swoop, then that doctor was my enemy too. I’d fallen under the enemy’s care. At that moment, if I hadn’t been skewered through my dick with that bougie, I would’ve leapt from the bed right then and there, slapped that dropout student full across the face with all my might, then gone after that doctor of his ilk—though of course you can’t just slap a doctor—so for him I’d—

"Screw this!" I wanted to snarl something vicious, spit on the floor with a wet ptui, and storm out right then with a "to hell with this place!"—but given my current predicament, "Goddamn it!" Just thinking that sent a sharp clench through my bladder, "Agh…" I couldn't help but groan aloud. I lay there collapsed on the bed, crushed under the weight of humiliation. Looking back, I should've been more wary when Maruman recommended this place—though that bastard Maruman being Maruman, what else could I expect—but it was too late now. Even as I ground my teeth, the conversation I'd been trying to ignore kept needling into my ears, sharp and insistent. The low voices only made it worse—each word pricking like a needle's point.

“This recent panic must have hit hard.”

said the doctor. “That’s dire.” “Layoffs and wage cuts have made things dire.” “Even production cuts aren’t enough to weather this—factories are shutting down everywhere.” said the college dropout. “The organization must have grown too.”

said the doctor. "For a doctor to say such things was declaring to me that he was birds of a feather with that Bolshevik college dropout—denizens of the same filthy hole." “Public sentiment’s turning hostile,” “Public sentiment’s turning hostile,” added the doctor.

“To divert that outward, this cabinet will likely meddle in China.” said the college dropout. Just as I cursed under my breath—“What damned cheek”—the doctor continued: “Under the non-intervention slogan, proletarian parties have begun joint struggles—but slogans and manifestos alone won’t do.” “We must build it into mass struggle…” So that’s their angle. “We’ve been driving Agitprop hard on our side too, but…” “Given current conditions—how can we hold back a saber-rattling cabinet?”

“Under the pretext of protecting expatriates—a military deployment?” “If they stop at that pretext, it would be fine…” “Oh, come on,” the nurse interjected—even she adopting that Bolshevik tone— “So they’re trying to solve the economic slump through foreign invasion?” “The natural method of imperialism.” While saying this, the doctor came over to remove the bougie from me. Blathering on with their nonsense, these chatterboxes—I couldn’t contain my rage. They’re all talk, spouting grandiose nonsense. If they’re going to blather on like that, why don’t they just assassinate the Prime Minister? It was precisely those good-for-nothings who kept blathering on that I bitterly resented—but all this resentment ultimately stemmed from the humiliation of me, of all people, having fallen under the care of these Bolshevik windbags.

Finally freed from the bougie, I got down from the bed, spat toward the wall, and pulled on my pants. Then I fastened my belt, turned around lightly, and— “Yo.” said the college dropout. “Hey,”

I said—and damn, I realized—this was the opposite of earlier. Earlier I'd said "Yo" challengingly, and the other guy answered with "Hey." The roles were reversed. Already at this point, the signs of defeat were clear. "Do you know each other?"

“Do you know each other?” said the doctor. The college dropout nodded silently, his face serious, “In age, we’re a bit older, but when it comes to revolutionary experience, he’s a veteran by far.” Yeah, he had to go spouting that crap. What made it worse was how he wasn’t even mocking me. This just about finished me.

If I had been that college dropout, I would have surely turned to the doctor then and said: "There's no need to cure this bastard's syphilis." That's exactly what I would have declared. As for the doctor—true to his role—

“Do you know each other?”

he said again, “From Dr. Hozumi—he said that since this Mr. Kashiwai here is a man prepared for the gallows, as a special request...” “I was told to give him special treatment.” This doctor had been treating me knowing full well I was an enemy of the Bolshevik faction. I was completely crushed and left the place. —Do they say birds of a feather flock together? This humiliation summoned yet another humiliation into my heart. That was about Teruko. When Brother informed me Teruko had come to visit the factory at Shino Bridge, I’d wondered for a moment if that girl had actually fallen for me after all. But if she’d truly loved me, she would’ve left that man standing between us and come running sooner—back when I was still visiting her regularly. But I couldn’t separate her from him. She never tried to escape him either. Maybe he was one of those “bad men” you can’t escape—Tomie’s favorite phrase—but even so, if she’d really loved me, she should’ve said something about being trapped like that. Not that I could blame her for staying silent—the failure was mine for never pushing her to speak, never reaching the point where she would’ve confided in me. She never breathed a word about it. The realization hit me now with fresh humiliation—it never happened at all. Did that mean I was still in love with Teruko?

What kind of man was this keeping hold of Teruko? It was that bastard who gave Teruko the syphilis that infected me too—yet even being such scum, Teruko still couldn’t break free from him. What manner of man was he? There’d been a time when Teruko “Brother—you’re not… one of those literary types, are you?” she’d said. “What’s this ‘not’ business?” I’d retorted. Was the man who’d made Sera Teruko change her name to Clara a writer?

The next day, I went alone to Saita Kodo’s house.

When I was shown upstairs, there was already a guest—a young army officer with rosy cheeks and a boyish face. "Lieutenant Kitaizumi..." Kodo introduced him to me with that, but I—being one who detested military men—deliberately turned my sullen face away and grunted, "Hah." What the hell? This greenhorn's a lieutenant? I thought, though the two stars on his shoulder straps had told me from the start he was indeed a lieutenant. My contempt for him burned fresh. "This here's Shiro Kashiwai—one hell of a hellraiser."

Having introduced me that way, Kodo seemed amused by my irritation—as if deliberately trying to provoke me further, knowing my hatred for military men extended equally to Bolsheviks— "This Lieutenant Kitaizumi here is a Lenin researcher." "Sensei." the lieutenant said in a low but forceful voice— (You really shouldn't say such things about me to this man of unclear standing, sir)

as if to protest.

“I only said you were researching it—didn’t say you were putting it into practice.” Already having clearly been drinking and in high spirits, Kodo now spoke as if mocking the lieutenant, “This Kashiwai-kun here runs with the nihilists who tried to assassinate General Fukui.” “Hmph.” The lieutenant who’d glared at me now wore a combative look that seemed ready to grab the military sword he’d removed from his belt and placed on the tatami. Oh, this is rich! ‘Go ahead—try cutting me down,’ I thought, squaring my shoulders and glaring back at him.

Kodo-sensei said in a tone that egged them on like coaxing dogs into a fight,

“This hot-blooded ruffian here—who knows what he’ll do next,” he said about me. “Lieutenant Kitaizumi too is quite the passionate soul.” “But Sensei—” “I myself am a man who kept company with Ōsugi Sakae.” “You, Sensei?” To the lieutenant whose boyish face had twisted into an ugly scowl: “Why, even Lieutenant Kitaizumi here keeps company with Lenin.”

Kodo bellowed with laughter, "In time I'll make sworn enemies like you get along." "You're alike in fretting over this nation." "The nation...?"

“I said. “No—” I started to object when a question came to me: What exactly was I so concerned about?”

“Mr. Suna too, in the end, is the same.”

Kodo said that and, with sharp eyes, stared at me, “At the time of that sniper incident, how old were you exactly?” “Nineteen.” “Nineteen?” That such a youngster would dare something so audacious—Kodo was appalled, but “Though mind you, even I was already raising plenty of hell at that age.” At this moment, seeing Lieutenant Kitaizumi sitting stiff as a schoolboy being lectured before Kodo-sensei, I—with a what-the-hell sort of feeling—deliberately acted overly familiar toward Kodo,

"Sensei, I hear you were involved in the Freedom and People's Rights Movement." Before he could finish, "I see—you're still young after all."

Kodo once again bellowed with laughter,

"That was back when I was still a child," Kodo-sensei said. "In my own country too, civil rights activists had stirred up riots—even as a child I remember it—but that was Meiji 17... or was it 17?" "But Suna-san said you were a Freedom and People’s Rights activist..." "That would be my senior Hido-sensei and others." Though he himself had been taught Freedom and People’s Rights ideology by Hido-sensei, he added: "How old do you think I am? Three years ago, when your comrades attacked General Fukui, I was exactly fifty."

"Huh, younger than I thought. Though looking at you, you've aged like hell..." I said jokingly. Given how ancient he looked—no wonder Suna called him "old man"—it made sense people mistook him for a Freedom and People's Rights activist from the bygone era. Then Lieutenant Kitaizumi addressed Kodo-sensei in an excessively polite tone that seemed to chide my rudeness: "Given Sensei's hardships in China, you must surely appear older than..." "Cut the flattery."

Though I'd meant to keep it to myself, I ended up saying it out loud.

“What the hell did you say?”

The lieutenant flared up.

“This is troublesome.” “We can’t share drinks like this,” Kodo said, “Very well—let us speak of China. This ruffian here bears an uncanny resemblance to young Mr. Zhang Ji we mentioned earlier.” he told the lieutenant in mollifying tones,

“Mr. Zhang Ji may have been killed.” Hearing of the tragic fate of this old anarchist I supposedly resembled, I involuntarily— “Why is that, Sensei?”

I too became markedly polite. “Just now, I was speaking with Lieutenant Kitaizumi about China. "Sun Yat-sen died in March of the fourteenth year of the Republic, but by year’s end, Mr. Zhang Ji and his group had presented a resolution to the Kuomintang demanding a clean break with the Communist Party and the Third International." “From the perspective of Mr. Zhang Ji’s Old Kuomintang faction, they could foresee that if the Kuomintang kept this up, they’d soon be devoured by the Communist Party.”

Sun Yat-sen had long maintained a cooperative policy toward the Communist Party. The idea was that communism constituted a part of the Three Principles of the People, and that implementing communism would directly lead to their realization. Kodo-sensei stated that therein lay the fundamental error, “Chiang Kai-shek, who succeeded Sun Yat-sen—perhaps out of obligation for having received Third International funds for his military academy—carried out a coup that summer and drove out the anti-communist factions. Naturally, the Western Hills faction—Mr. Zhang Ji and his group—wouldn’t heed a word they said.” “They didn’t deign to consider resolutions calling to sever ties with the Communist Party.” “As for Chiang Kai-shek, he probably intended to manipulate the Communist Party.” “In fact, he manipulated both the Kuomintang and the Communist Party to seize power.” “But what was the result?” “The worms within the lion’s body have turned to bite the Kuomintang instead.” “In Wuhan, a Communist Party government has now been established.” “Panicked, Chiang Kai-shek is now belatedly calling for an anti-communist purge—such is the outcome.” “They had intended to use the Communist Party but ended up being used by them instead.” “It’s a ridiculous affair.”

“What do you think?” “The Communist Party’s influence appears rather substantial.”

The lieutenant furrowed his brow with a vertical crease. "Nah, even if the Reds run wild for a spell, there's no way they'll ever take power." "But it's only been a few years since Sun Yat-sen opened the door to communists, and now even the villages are turning red..." "The villages? Hell yes they'll go red quick. Land reform's manna from heaven for those dirt-poor peasants." "So even if the Nationalists start hollerin' about purging commies now—" I cut in with deliberate provocation,

“Given your connections with Lenin, you must have considerable sympathy for communism.” I said to the lieutenant.

There was an air of him trying to avenge yesterday’s humiliation. “Enough!”

After roaring out a thunderous rebuke, Kodo-sensei declared: “I support land reform. “I support revolution. “Japan absolutely requires land reform. “In the current state of affairs, farmers live in utter wretchedness. “You being from the countryside yourself, Lieutenant Kitaizumi, would understand this.” “I understand perfectly,” the lieutenant responded.

“Japan too absolutely requires a revolution.” “However, the revolution I envision is not a Red Revolution.”

Kodo abruptly relaxed his stern expression. “Shall I tell you an amusing story about China’s Communist Party? They’re not just liberating land—they’re liberating everything. In Wuhan, I hear they’ve popularized a revolutionary slogan called ‘Suuxiang Laohuo.’ Written in Chinese characters, it means ‘Ideological Backwardness.’ When a man courts a woman and gets rejected, he just needs to say: ‘You’re ideologically backward.’ For women who fancy themselves modern progressives, there’s no greater insult. Being labeled backward amounts to being branded counter-revolutionary. So they immediately surrender their virtue... What do you think? Doesn’t that leave anarchism in the dust?”

I was at a loss for words and floundered. Kodo said cheerfully, "The Communist Party is doing something utterly absurd." "In Wuhan, they apparently pulled off an outrageous spectacle called a 'nude women parade.'" "It was a women’s liberation demonstration." "Stripping completely naked and parading through the streets—they intended to stage a demonstration." “Even so, I hear only eight foolhardy women actually came out naked—good grief! When you’ve got this kind of utter chaos—terror politics on one hand and idiotic stunts like this on the other—there’s no way the Communist Party could ever last.”

“Aren’t they doing any nude male parades?” When I interjected, “You asked me about that girl—Sera something-or-other.” The other day, I had asked this Kodo whether he knew a China rōnin named Sera. Suna must have talked about Sera Teruko. Suna had told me he certainly couldn’t have asked Kodo-sensei—a fellow comrade—about whether he knew any China rōnin whose daughter worked at a high-class sake house. But judging by this, had Suna and Kodo-sensei grown so close after all?

“No, it’s regarding the China rōnin named Sera.” When I said this, “It’s because you called her Sera that I didn’t catch on.” “That man is Inosawa.”

“Inosawa…?” “That’s the surname of the father of the girl you’re searching for.” “Then Sera is her mother’s surname?”

With a face that seemed to say “Don’t ask such obvious questions,” Kodo declared: “Inosawa Ichitaro is our old comrade.” “He went to Wuhan with me during the first Xinhai Revolution.” “That was the year after the High Treason Incident. When the police came to my house during that affair, Inosawa Ichitaro happened to be there—we were just discussing news of a girl being born.” “That must be the daughter he had with the woman named Sera.” I bit my finger and nodded in confirmation that this was indeed Sera Teruko,

“After that during the Third Revolution too—when we were aiding the Northeast Revolutionary Army—Inosawa and I worked together.” Lieutenant Kitaizumi said to Kodo: “Was that when you mustered troops to overthrow Yuan Shikai?”

“That’s correct.” “The Xinhai Revolution, which we Japanese comrades risked our lives to support, achieved its long-standing goal of overthrowing the Qing dynasty—yet its outcome ended up lending strength to Yuan Shikai’s ambitions.” “Realizing this wouldn’t do, in the second year of Taisho [1913], Li Liejun ignited the fuse of the Second Revolution, and anti-Yuan forces rose up in revolt across the land—but Yuan Shikai’s suppression crushed this too.” “As a result, Sun Yat-sen, Huang Xing, and others were compelled to flee into exile in Japan for a time.”

Kodo dispassionately narrated the turbulent history—the past history in which he himself had participated.

“Yuan Shikai, drunk on victory, sought to crown himself emperor.” “Had imperial rule taken root there, the Republic of China would’ve dissolved like morning mist—we couldn’t allow that. So we crossed over to China and joined the anti-Yuan revolutionary forces.” “I went to Qingdao with Kajikawa Hido—the man I mentioned earlier.” “The Northeast Revolutionary Army?” Lieutenant Kitaizumi’s apple-round cheeks deepened to crimson. “Weapons and ammunition—the lifeblood of any revolutionary army.” “We Japanese took responsibility for procuring them.” “Secured them in Japan, tried shipping them to our Chinese comrades.” “Feels like yesterday... Yes—I’d just turned forty then.”

“As for procuring weapons, Sensei—without military disposals, it would’ve been impossible.” Lieutenant Kitaizumi lowered his voice. “I can’t name names, but we had sympathizers in key military positions.” “Even so, the procurement nearly broke us.” “When we finally tried loading the shipment at Moji Port, the Water Police seized everything.” “This left us stranded.” “Firearms export was strictly forbidden.” “The military couldn’t intervene—too politically sensitive.” “We were at an impasse.” “After cabling Qingdao about our troubles, Senior Hido rushed back to Japan.” “He went straight to Count Itagaki Taisuke—that old Freedom Party firebrand.” “We begged him to find some high official who’d pull strings.” “The Count declared: ‘I’ll take this straight to the Prime Minister himself.’”

The Prime Minister at the time was Ōkuma Shigenobu. Carrying Count Itagaki’s letter of introduction, Hido and Kodo met with Prime Minister Ōkuma and requested the release of the impounded weapons. They had explained the circumstances in detail and asked for special dispensation. In response, the Prime Minister replied as follows: “Qingdao is an international port under the surveillance of foreign powers. Should it become known that Japan facilitated arms for the Chinese Revolution, this would instantly escalate into an international dispute. Britain, America, and France would undoubtedly lodge formal protests with Japan.”

“If that happens, it will become an issue in parliament, and I will be held responsible as Prime Minister.” “What do you suppose would happen then?” “Even meeting with you like this is an intolerable nuisance.” He had brushed them off curtly, leaving them no foothold for negotiation. But fearing that retreating now would— “Then may we inquire about the next matter?” “We can infer Your Excellency’s position is that Japan must absolutely not assist the Chinese Revolution—but then, what would happen if China were to come to Japan to purchase weapons?”

Hido and Kodo took turns pressing the Prime Minister. "Your Excellency would find it troublesome if Japan were seen as actively aiding the Chinese Revolution—but does this mean the Japanese government's policy is to absolutely prohibit even commercial sales to China, on grounds that such transactions would indirectly assist their revolution?"

“Whatever China itself does is a domestic matter, so the Japanese government has no business interfering.” “Therefore, you as individuals are free to exert yourselves for China—but it becomes a nuisance if even the Japanese government is made to play a role in this.” “In any case, I’ll act as though I never heard today’s discussion.” Thus having their conversation cut short, they had no choice but to take their leave without obtaining approval for the weapons shipment. At the moment of their departure,

“When will you return to Qingdao?” When asked by the Prime Minister, “In about a week…”

“In about a week…” Hido answered. With matters having reached this point, Hido and Kodo concluded there was no choice but to have someone sent from the Chinese side, and thus decided to cross over to Qingdao for that operation. Yuan Shikai had already proclaimed himself emperor and ascended the throne; the Chinese Revolution was on the verge of collapse. Moreover, the weapons that were the Northeast Revolutionary Army’s lifeline remained seized in Moji. When they crossed over to Qingdao, a summons immediately came from the local Japanese military commander ordering them to present themselves.

Japan, which had entered World War I, seized Qingdao from Germany and stationed an occupying force there. It was a summons from that military commander. Assuming it was surely an expulsion order, they went prepared, but the commander’s words were: “You may rest assured—there’s a confidential order from the Prime Minister to grant you assistance.” “This is what they mean by a sudden reversal.” “The weapons arrived from Moji to Qingdao, and with everything proceeding smoothly, the Northeast Revolutionary Army advanced its anti-Yuan forces.”

"Hmm," I groaned. Kodo-sensei's tale truly deserved the description "blood-pumping and flesh-tingling," but that wasn't why I'd made the sound. This was the same Kodo-sensei who'd once confronted Prime Minister Ōkuma himself in negotiations, yet now casually invited a greenhorn like me for chats—no wonder Lieutenant Kitaizumi bowed like a willow branch in his presence, I realized. "There were Japanese soldiers back then—active-duty military men—who spared no effort aiding that revolutionary army." "The regimental commander stationed at Bōshi risked his position to support them." "They shared our conviction that China's true independence—a nation being devoured by the Powers—was essential for Oriental peace." "China needed revolution to achieve that independence." "It needed to establish itself anew as the Republic of China." "And there were military men who helped make it happen, uniform be damned." "But in Japan today, you'll find wretched souls clinging to the Powers' coattails—those who see China as a colony and scheme to grab scraps from their masters' table." "There were also soldiers who refused to become lackeys in China's invasion."

“Hah!” Lieutenant Kitaizumi let out a grunt like he’d been reprimanded. “Even among the trading companies of that era, there were men of remarkable principle,” Kodo-sensei continued. “The Qingdao branch manager of one firm actually lent military funds to the revolutionary army. But this Northeast Revolutionary Army too fell victim to unfavorable tides and met regrettable defeat. The grand enterprise of revolution isn’t achieved in a day.” As for me, my mind turned to the revolution I envisioned. “Inosawa Ichitaro was in Qingdao managing recruits from Manchuria,” Kodo-sensei went on. “The Northeast Revolutionary Army drew its soldiers from those regions. He handled provisions for men barely worth their mess tins—though Inosawa did well enough at the time. Up until then he’d been my comrade, but gradually warped into what you’d call a China rōnin, Mr. Kashiwai. Degenerated into a China-exploiting wretch.”

I, who had even called this Kodo a China rōnin, cringed and ducked my head. Then Kodo asked, "What about your military service?" "I dodged the draft," I said. But it was clear that I had been avoided. I too had intended to dodge the draft, but they too had avoided me.

“How is Hido-sensei faring these days?” said Lieutenant Kitaizumi. “He’s running a Chinese restaurant.”

“Oh?” “It’s rather a splendid Chinese restaurant, I tell you.” “Even so...” “Indeed. Senior Hido staked his very body—no, his entire life—for China and devoted himself completely. Yet today, that same China is consumed by anti-Japanese sentiment and overthrowing Japanese imperialism... Though mind you—it’s not China alone that bears fault. Still, this must be unbearable for Kajikawa Hido—a man who dedicated his life to China.”

Kodo-sensei clapped his hands twice. He summoned a maid who closely resembled my deceased mother and ordered sake, “Kajikawa Hido was a radical champion of the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement—a man who envisioned revolution in Japan.” “Your...”

[he] glared daggers at Lieutenant Kitaizumi and, “The revolution of direct imperial rule you envision is quite different, but since revolution in Japan is exceedingly difficult, we thought to first pursue revolution in China instead.” “A dress rehearsal, you might call it.” “That’s how I joined the Chinese Revolutionary Party and threw myself into the Shina Revolution.” “The intention was to then pursue revolution in Japan, but our ambitions were shattered, and I ended up becoming a Chinese restaurant owner.” For some reason, he roared with laughter,

“How’s street vendor Mr. Maruman doing these days?”

Suddenly glaring at me this time, he said, "That guy wasn't just some street vendor—seems he was a revolutionary after all." "Comrade."

And I glared back at Kodo-sensei. It was as if even I had now been told I’d quit being a revolutionary, “Even now, he remains a revolutionary.” “It’s been some time since I last saw him. Is he well?” I hadn’t seen Maruman in ages either. Though Maruman had been the one to introduce Suna to Kodo-sensei, from Kodo’s manner of speaking, while Suna was rapidly growing closer to him, Maruman himself seemed to be deliberately maintaining distance. The day when that speculation would be confirmed as fact—May First—was fast approaching.

VII. Impotence of Youth

Maruman had long boasted he'd get his stall comrades to plant black flags and crash May Day to make a statement. Was he trying to show me that boast made real? "Come out to May Day," Maruman had told me. But I didn't go. With my union stolen outright by the Bolsheviks, I was too disgraced to dare show my face before anarchist comrades. For Bolsheviks in such cases—not that their unions ever got snatched by Anarchists—an organizer like me would've been shipped elsewhere. They had that system rigged. But we freedom-cherishing types didn't play those bureaucratic games. A union you built yourself was yours to see through till the bitter end—collapse it, and no sweet reassignment mercy for you. You started fresh or not at all. I hadn't started fresh. Had Yachimoro's Shiro turned into such a gutless wonder after getting dumped by that gasebiri tramp he'd been mooning over?

I watched the May Day demonstration from the street. When I saw the black flags raised by printing workers—just a few scattered among that swarm of red—my chest tightened painfully. Goddamn it! I screamed inside my head.

That's right, damn it! Then it occurred to me—my syphilis, though I'd stopped going to the clinic by that point, had already been in its final stages of treatment, which meant it was cured. Even left untreated after that, the deterioration I had hoped for—no, precisely because I feared it, had hoped for—never came. In that case, I thought, even if that dropout quack irritated me to no end, I really ought to go thank that doctor who'd cured my syphilis like this. I thought about it, but I didn't go—

“Ah!” I shouted.

Maruman's crew came marching up, triumphantly hoisting a massive new black flag they'd made while leading their comrades. Though they numbered only five or six—a pitiful showing compared to the endless serpentine procession of red flags—their very insignificance made their bold advance before my eyes all the more striking. I raised my hands to face level, intending to applaud them. But immediately lowered them limply. I felt ashamed to reveal myself as a mere bystander to Maruman.

As it is now, I’ve completely given up being a revolutionary. Goddamn it, I gritted my teeth until they creaked.

Maruman’s figure vanished from before my eyes. My vision was filled with red flags. There was a time when I tried inviting Tamazuka Hidenobu—a university graduate—to organize study sessions, but Maruman sneered that it looked like we were copying the Bolsheviks (those were my own words, but I only voiced them because Maruman’s contemptuous expression had told me so). That Maruman had inserted a black flag among the red flags—wasn’t he imitating the Bolsheviks now?

Maruman’s figure appeared both tragically heroic and absurdly comical. It felt farcical yet wretchedly pitiful. He looked exactly like some street performer clown. They were completely divorced from the masses. I—who reject the Bolshevik faction’s revolutionary methods—don’t view the masses through any Bolshevik lens. Still, with things like this, even our envisioned revolution was doomed. Maybe I should just set off another bomb with a good bang. Revolutionary energy doesn’t get fired up through endless organizing like those Bolsheviks do.

What should I do—I thought I'd meet Tamazuka Hidenobu and discuss it properly. While at it, I figured I'd ask about that writer who'd transferred Teruko too. I went to the publishing house where Tamazuka worked. When we met, he was acting jumpy from the start—though I only realized later he'd been defecting to the Bolsheviks. Had I known, I wouldn't have bothered with niceties—would've socked him right off. But clueless as I was—

“I didn’t come to borrow money,” he preempted. “There must be some young literary man—don’t you know anyone like that?” I ended up blurting out first after all. (So Teruko really was the critical issue for me after all.)

As he wallowed in self-loathing, "He must be some no-name penny-ante writer, so someone like Tamazuka-san might not know him. He’s got a mistress from Tamanoi—recently had her transferred elsewhere—but you haven’t heard any rumors about a writer like that, have you?" “Who knows?”

He pressed his hand against the thick temple of his strong prescription glasses, as if to shield his entire face from my gaze, "So you came to see me—just for that matter? Just to ask about that?" Tamazuka did translations alongside writing poetry, but even so, they reeked of translationese. First, that alone churned my stomach, and with self-loathing compounding it, my irritation only intensified— "What’s that supposed to mean?"

"Don't go saying I've quit being a revolutionary." That's what I'd meant, but Tamazuka flinched at my angry shout and knocked over an empty chair beside him, "Cut the violence." "What the hell're you on about?" "Shiro-san, I've been meaning to meet you properly and have a real talk."

Whether out of earnestness or solemnity—or perhaps both—I found myself drawn in,

“What’s this about?” I said, though my words rang hollow. “You still haven’t answered about the crucial matter.” “The writer business?”

Tamazuka shook his head as if annoyed.

“If you don’t know, then it’s better that way.” “I’d heard you were infatuated with some woman across the river and kept visiting her…” “Is that so.” “After all, the one I fall for is just some whore.” “I see you haven’t heard any rumors about the writer.”

he said, changing his tone, “Shiro-san, haven’t you heard any rumors about me?” “Did you fall for some woman too, Tama-san?” “That would be nice if it were true.”

He peered at my expression from behind his glasses, “There’s a rumor going around that I’ve defected to the Bolshevik faction.”

This was news to me. That alone was proof I’d grown distant from my comrades. It could also be said they had cast me aside. In that state, the thought of letting him know I hadn’t heard the rumors about Tamazuka galled me, so without confirming or denying it, I remained silent— “I’m studying dialectics now.”

“Materialist dialectics…?” “Just because I’m studying that doesn’t mean I’ve quit being an anarchist.” “Don’t go saying you’ve retired.” “I’m not retiring or anything.” “I’m telling you not to use words like ‘retire’.” “I’m trying to study dialectics as an anarchist.”

“You graduated from university and you’re still studying?” The important thing was action. That’s what I had wanted to say. Action was everything. That was our creed. "I want to develop what I call dialectical anarchism." “Think…? You should be thinking about action!”

“I think we need a more solid theoretical foundation for our actions. That’s why I’m studying dialectical materialism.” “Do you think you can start a revolution by studying?”

I barked. Consulting this guy was pointless!

I met Suna.

“Let’s get some catfish hot pot and booze.”

Having been invited, I went to a loach restaurant in Asakusa. Zū-nabe refers to catfish hot pot, but since there are no dedicated catfish restaurants, they serve it at loach establishments instead. Pushing through an indigo curtain embroidered with white hiragana reading "dozeu," I entered to find the packed-earth floor crowded with customers—this being peak hours. Every patron looked like rickshaw pullers or stable hands. That was always loach restaurants' clientele. It used to be where craftsmen would gather after work to share a hot pot and drinks with comrades. But nowadays people treat loach cuisine as some exotic rarity. Pretentious young salarymen drag girls there like they're offering fine dining—convinced it's some authentic Edo-style delicacy. One such girl who'd clearly come more from curiosity than appetite stared at the whole loaches arranged in the pot and grimaced. "Aah! How gross!" she shrieked.

“Aah! Disgusting!”

[She] let out something between a scream and a gasp. It struck me as absurd that customers from what we used to call Yamanote now came here wearing expressions of culinary adventurism, as if sampling some regional specialty. But then again, Yamanote itself had become an anachronism—a term from another era that no longer held meaning. Technically speaking, Yamanote meant the uplands opposite shitamachi's low city. Come to think of it, even that filthy riverside stretch around Yotsu Bridge where my father's factory stood technically belonged to Yamanote. But when people spoke of Yamanote proper, they meant those mansion-lined neighborhoods that conjured images of affluent residential districts. Yet factories had begun sprouting in those very Yamanote areas during my elementary school years—I remember it clearly. From that time onward, even our riverside quarter rapidly transformed into a landscape as cluttered and chaotic as Honjo-Fukagawa.

World War I—called the European War at the time—saw Japan participate in the conflict, successfully capture Qingdao and occupy the South Sea Islands, rapidly expand its industrial power during this period, and become a modern industrial nation. Across Japan, throughout Tokyo, factories sprang up. Around Yotsu Bridge too, numerous subcontracting factories for the large plants near Shibaura had sprung up. Along the riverbanks, dirty little factories spread like scabies. This was the reality that met my eyes. The fact that Japan had become a modern industrial nation—the concrete form this reality took through my eyes was this.

Vacant lots saw tenement houses built. No sooner had they risen than residents began gathering from nowhere. These were factory workers. A workers' residential district took shape, utterly divorced from Yamanote's genteel image.

In one of the tenement houses in such a residential area that had sprung up on Furukawa Bridge between Yotsu Bridge and Mitsu Bridge, Suna Koichi had lived with young factory workers during his days as a laborer. When I first met Suna, he had already quit his job as a laborer, grew his hair long like a painter’s, and despite his youth, carried himself in the tenement with the intimidating air of a jailhouse boss. It might be more accurate to say he was feared.

The first time I met Suna was when I was in my fifth year of middle school. From that moment onward, my fate began its derailment. Though already a socialism-bitten youth devouring Ōsugi Sakae's works, I might have lived another life entirely had I never crossed paths with him. We passed through the loach restaurant's dirt-floored entryway into the tatami area. I removed my shoes while Suna slipped off his zōri sandals—Suna wore traditional Japanese dress that day. Having supposedly returned from department store errands, he sported a haori over hakama like some right-wing zealot. We claimed a corner booth in one of those partitioned private rooms found in sukiyaki joints.

“Zū-nabe and sake!” Suna ordered. Next to us sat an old man who looked straight out of a rakugo alleyway tale—the sort of retired neighborhood gentleman—alone before his loach hot pot, sipping sake in tiny increments. After an initial cursory glance our way, he proceeded to ignore not just us but everyone in the tatami room, wholly absorbed in his solitary drinking ritual. Holding his cup at arm’s length like someone performing a ceremonial toast, he poured with his right hand, slowly set down the flask, then brought the cup to his mouth with both hands for a delicate sip. After carefully placing the cup down, he’d take up his chopsticks to flip simmering loaches in the pot or grab thick clumps of green onions from a brazier-like container to toss into the broth—keeping himself thoroughly busy with these tasks. Then abruptly he’d sit upright in formal seiza posture, hands stacked on knees, back hunched forward to stare fixedly at the bubbling pot—a figure that seemed lonely at first glance but radiated profound contentment.

Facing Suna, I seated him in the seat by the wall, treating him as my senior. Behind me—though out of my view—sat a young couple with two children, seemingly unable to take their eyes off their mischievous little ones. “At Mr. Saita’s place, Kashiwai seems to have made quite a stir.” “Because Taihei (the soldier) didn’t like it.”

“Soldier…?” “Someone named Kitaizumi or something...” “He’s not a soldier—he’s an officer.” “Oh, right.” I gave a wry smile. “Either way, I hate them.” “What’d you go there for?” “Whenever I go to that house, there’s always a kiss.” “Must be quite the lucrative spot.” “Always? You go that often?” “Only twice so far.” “One time was with Suna-san.” “Let’s try going together again sometime.” “She’s always sitting in front of the tokonoma like some ornament—how’s she even making money?”

"Instead of worrying about others' business—how's your own life going?" Lately I hadn't been serving as Suna's racketeering partner.

“If I stay at the boarding house, I can at least get meals.” “What about the doyabin (boarding fees)?” “I haven’t paid.”

“Then the landlord must be complaining.” With a soft chuckle, I laughed, formed a small circle with my clenched fist, and swung it fiercely despite its size. Something ferocious thrashing about in my blood had made me act that way. So it was a meaningless gesture, but “I see. If you go on a rampage like that, Mr. Kashiwai Shiro, there’s just no keeping up with you.” “No, I won’t rampage. “I’m a quiet one.”

That was no lie. When the boarding house landlord declared he wouldn’t serve meals unless I paid the rent, I said, “Fine.” I was perfectly docile. And instead of the lousy rice at my cheap boarding house, I started ordering tempura bowls, cutlet rice, and all sorts of fancy tempura shop fare one after another. I told the delivery boy to put it all on the landlord’s tab—since I’d be adding it to my boarding fees anyway—and have him collect from the old man.

The landlord, shocked, strictly ordered our regular soba joints and nearby Western-food places not to accept any more orders from me. I calmly ordered premium kabayaki-style eel from a distant eel restaurant, demanding they include an innards soup too. Ordering such extravagant dishes meant they'd deliver even from afar. Since the mounting charges kept piling up, it dealt an even heavier blow to the landlord. Finally, the landlord bowed his head and begged me for mercy. Rather than being unable to collect boarding fees, being forced to pay out actual cash was even more unbearable.

“I’m not saying I won’t pay the boarding fees,” I told the landlord. “Once money comes in, I’ll pay you back with interest.” I wasn’t out to torment the cheap boarding house. When there’s no money, there’s no money—nothing to be done about it. When I don’t want money, I have none. What I want now isn’t money. So I have no money—

The maid brought a small brazier with burning coals. Next, she brought over the simmering pot and placed it atop the brazier. "Hurry up with the sake."

Suna said. “Yes, yes.” The childlike mountain-bred maid was working frantically. The catfish in the pot still twitched. Until moments ago alive in the tank, it had been hacked apart on the cutting board, minced into pieces, and now sat over the flames. I picked up a bloodied fragment with my chopsticks and brought it to my nose. “What’re you doin’?” Suna glared in disgust.

"This place doesn’t serve dead catfish or any such thing." I silently returned the catfish to the pot, smirked, and murmured in a low voice, "I’m starved for the scent of blood." Suna furrowed his brow deeply and grimaced, but "I get it."

he said. "What the hell are you talking about?" I thought. If I felt that way, I shouldn't have met someone like Suna—yet I was lonely. Despite my increasingly violent mood—or perhaps because of it—I was unbearably lonely. That was what had driven me to seek out Suna.

“What’s that girl want to do now?”

To that Suna, I— “It’s not like that.” I said, but Suna brushed it off, “Wasn’t it to ask about that girl that you went to Mr. Saita’s place?” It was Suna who had earlier asked what I’d gone to Saita Kodo’s place to do. “Well, yeah,” I said. “If that’s not why…”

I found my current state—like some washed-up revolutionary—utterly unbearable to myself. But I couldn't bring myself to say that to Suna the racketeer.

Then Suna himself,

“Got it, got it.” He said again. To me—wanting to scream “Stop talking like you’re handling a festering wound!”— “It’s not about women for either of us. “You know, I once went around unlicensed brothel districts, brothels, and meeting houses with Kashiwai too. “Back then, I didn’t know what to throw myself at, so I turned reckless. “Kashiwai now must be just like I was back then. “That’s right—it was back then that I first met that girl.”

The sake arrived. Suna promptly reached for the sake bottle,

“Damn, that’s hot!” He clamped his fingers to his ears, “This’s boilin’ hot sake!” I seized the flask, teeth gritted against the searing heat threatening to blister my palm, and poured him a drink, “So you’ve found somethin’ worth throwin’ yourself at now—unlike back then?” “Can’t... exactly say I’ve grabbed hold of it proper yet.” I lifted my cup and grunted a hollow toast,

“Mr. Suna, are you close with that Lieutenant Kitaizumi?” “Why?” “Mr. Saita said he’d make that lieutenant and me get along eventually. ‘Even if we’re enemies now,’ he said, ‘we share the same concern for the nation.’” “Kashiwai, how did you respond to that?” “Nothing really…”

I kept drinking the hot sake, "He’s a military man, but don’t you think he’s a bit Bolshevik-leaning?"

“That’s not it. No, that’s not it.” “But you said he’s studying Lenin or something…” “He’s probably using it as reference. That Lieutenant Kitaizumi told me this: ‘As a soldier, I’ll gladly lay down my life for Japan—but not for these profit-obsessed capitalists running things now. Being their errand boy sticks in my craw.’ He says this stuff, but get this—he’s a dirt-poor peasant’s son like me. These days, farmers got it rough. If peasants getting milked dry by landlords ain’t bad enough, workers getting squeezed by capitalists is just as rotten. He says we gotta smash their chains and rebuild society proper. We military men need to make this a country worth dying for. The way things are? Makes me sick telling soldiers to die for the nation. Can’t stomach marching men off to get slaughtered for nothing…”

“I see. That makes sense.” “Though these aren’t your own words.” “What’s with that sarcastic tone?”

Suna took the box of green onions, tilted the entire box, and dumped them into the pot with a rustle, as if sprinkling pepper.

“What Lieutenant Kitaizumi says aligns with us up to that point, but…” “Lieutenant Kitaizumi wants to raise the imperial banner for revolution.” “Not black flags or red flags…” Dangerous talk flowed easily among such company. “That’s where we diverge slightly.” Suna said cautiously, chopsticks hovering over the pot, “We’ll never ally with the Bolshies, but…” His tone implied an imperial-black flag coalition might yet exist—

“Mr. Suna. That’s not just slightly different—it’s fundamentally different.” “But if you can bring the military into your fold—they’d make you strong.” “Even so, to uphold the Tsar as your central figure… Even in Russia, the terrorists’ ultimate enemy was the Tsar.”

“No, this isn’t the Tsar’s Russia. The catfish should be about done by now.” He served himself first onto a small plate, “Speaking of Russian terrorists—didn’t Mr. Saita tell you about Gershuni?” “What I heard was mainly about the Chinese Revolution. What does Gershuni have to do with Mr. Saita?” Gershuni was a great leader of Russian terrorists. After being captured and sent to Siberia, where he was imprisoned for life, he successfully escaped by hiding in a cabbage barrel. That audacity was held up as our exemplar.

“Mr. Saita has met Gershuni.”

When Suna said this so casually—huh? I nearly dropped the catfish from my chopsticks.

"I was floored too when I first heard that story from Mr. Saita." After escaping prison, Gershuni fled to Vladivostok, where he boarded a ship and slipped into Japan before crossing over to America.

“When Gershuni came to Japan, Sun Yat-sen was also there at the time—and Kajikawa Hido secretly arranged a meeting between them.” “At that time, Kodo-sensei was also there.”

Suna had previously referred to him as Mr. Saita but now called him Kodo-sensei, and this no longer sounded unnatural.

“The reason Kodo-sensei looks out for us is because he himself was once a terrorist.” “Now that he’s thinking of a different kind of revolution, he doesn’t breathe a word about those old days…”

"Hmm," I grunted thoughtfully, "So Kodo-sensei really is quite a remarkable man after all."

I too had naturally come to say "Kodo-sensei." At this moment, Suna— “I’ve been thinking of going to China.” It seemed he had abruptly changed the subject, but that wasn’t the case— “Kodo-sensei told me it’s fine for me to go.” That night, we ventured into Yoshiwara. No, being hinshike—broke—I had Suna bankroll my entry into the brothel. That was how much I’d opened up to Suna. Or rather, I’d thought Suna had retired from being a revolutionary, but upon learning this wasn’t the case, I found myself drawn to that version of him. In other words, this also meant I’d become completely captivated by Saita Kodo.

“Gershuni… huh?”

Drunk, I kept muttering this like a belch.

“Gershuni… huh?”

I had heard his name but had never met him in person. Precisely because of that, he had become something like an idol in my mind. The fact that Kodo personally knew this terrorist I so revered exerted such a powerful influence on me that it compelled me to respect Kodo in turn. Kodo suddenly began to appear to me as a man possessed of an irresistible force—one that compelled me to obey whatever he might say.

It was my first time visiting a brothel with Suna since that incident. That refers to the night when Suna tried to propose an "interesting game" in Yoshiwara but was refused and driven out. For me, it was the night I met Clara—Sera Teruko. Unlike last time, it was an upper second-class establishment, but Suna was treated as a regular. This would do, I thought with relief. Suna’s regular young woman came out, and they settled on drinks first.

“Get this brother here a good girl.” Suna said to the madam. “Yes, yes. What kind of girl would you like? Since he’s young, I suppose a young one would be best.”

Without consulting me, the madam asked Suna. Drunk as I was, “Since I’m young… maybe someone not so young would be better—a kind prostitute would be good.”

I said. What a stupid thing to have said. Perhaps they took me for a lover of older women—for my companion turned out to be a prostitute not young in the slightest, a middle-aged woman well past her prime. “Come on, Brother,” “Yeah.” Clara said, “Let’s get started on that thing,” but—that night, I was utterly unable to perform. In Clara’s case, my member—which would usually be ready to go just from seeing her face—was utterly useless. The courtesan stroked my member with practiced hands, but not only was there no effect—it rather had the opposite result. Despite being a middle-aged woman, she had gone and worn a bright red yachikakushi waistcloth—which only made things worse.

“Brother, you’re so young—what’s wrong?”

When she said that, I panicked even more, and it was hopeless. Thinking how wrong it would be to embarrass her only made it worse. She was kind enough for a prostitute, but her servicing me made things even more impossible. The duplicate key just wouldn’t turn.

“What’s wrong with me? Did I drink too much?” “Brother, this is how you become a real adult.”

The woman said in a comforting tone. "I'm already an adult!" “You’ll become a true adult now—they say this sort of thing happens to everyone at least once.”

“I see. So this is how you become a real adult?”

From that night onward, my fate began to spiral into madness once more.

Chapter Two

Part One: The Bomb Thrower

Lieutenant Kitaizumi, whom I had met at Kodo-sensei's house, and I began a comradely association. It went without saying that Kodo-sensei had acted as the mediator.

Kodo-sensei had long vowed to "show how well Lieutenant Kitaizumi and I could get along." That things had ultimately unfolded exactly as he predicted stuck in my craw, though I told myself I was engaging with them while clinging to my own revolutionary designs. I—once derided as an ideologue and denounced as a racketeer—now found myself hailed as a patriot and perceived as a loyalist. Not that I'd gulped down Kodo-sensei and Lieutenant Kitaizumi's so-called national renovation plans wholesale. Their refusal to impose any uniform ideology like the Bolsheviks proved convenient enough.

The Bolshevik faction had been suffering severe suppression. I heard through the grapevine that that dropout student I’d met at the Settlement had also gone underground. They had once collectively referred to them all as the Bolshevik faction, but now they had split into Communists and Social Democrats, and it was the Communist faction that was bearing the brunt of the suppression. The Social Democrats had settled into becoming the bosses of the proletarian party. The May Day that followed the year of mass arrests—recurring annually on March 15 and April 16—was so pitiful it might as well have been a funeral procession, something to be mocked. Against the fifteen thousand workers participating in May Day, twelve thousand police officers were mobilized. In such conditions, organizing workers to launch a revolution was nothing but a pipe dream.

Moreover, bourgeois politics had reached the height of corruption. Scandals kept erupting one after another, political parties were busy pursuing their own interests, engrossed in nothing but political strife. When it came to elections, donations from the zaibatsu were distributed as eight thousand yen to official candidates and five thousand yen to military funds; bribery was conducted openly, and Diet members were no longer representatives of the people but mere spokesmen for the zaibatsu. Moreover, elected Diet members would immediately start scrambling for personal gain, and the public had grown utterly disgusted with such parliamentary politics. Voices desiring revolution—unvoiced voices—filled the streets.

In October of that year, active-duty Army officers gathered and formed an organization called the Sakurakai. Outwardly, it was presented as a social club for military personnel, but in reality, it was a kind of revolutionary organization. I heard from Lieutenant Kitaizumi that their first meeting had been held at Fujimiken in Kudan.

“The current state of affairs can no longer be overlooked...” Lieutenant Kitaizumi made the distinctive preservative oil smell characteristic of unit-attached officers sting my nostrils as he declared: “The military will rise up and finally undertake the rebuilding of the nation.” I scowled. The smell of preservative oil was something I detested. Yet all military men reeked of it. That I’d grimaced at the stench might have meant I was grimacing at military men themselves. Their self-righteous conviction—that national restoration depended entirely on their uprising, that they alone shouldered Japan’s fate—this arrogance had indeed twisted my face into a scowl.

How Lieutenant Kitaizumi interpreted my scowl,

“The military’s upper echelons don’t seem to view this group favorably, but on that point, there’s no need to worry…” he said to me.

This group was primarily composed of lieutenant colonels and majors, with young officers like Lieutenant Kitaizumi positioned in the lower seats. However, Lieutenant Kitaizumi believed that it was the driving force of their innovative zeal as young officers that had set these field-grade officers into motion.

“Given that staff officers from the military’s central command have gathered in this organization, even the upper echelons cannot suppress it.” “Not only that—we can certainly compel even the upper echelons to act. Moreover, those of conscience among them already resonate with our resolve.” With that, the lieutenant said, and showed me the document clearly stating their resolve. In it were written these words as the organization’s purpose: “With national renovation as our ultimate objective, we will not hesitate to employ military force if necessary for this purpose.”

“The use of armed force?” With a rush of exhilaration coursing through me, I pressed the lieutenant. “I don’t pretend to understand military protocols—but can you truly deploy violence at will like this?”

“Arbitrarily?” “How does the chain of command work? Is the use of military force permitted without orders?”

"The Combat Manual explicitly permits independent decision-making and autonomous action." Proudly, the Lieutenant said: "In critical moments, one need not wait for orders—independent decision-making and autonomous action are permitted." "If it ultimately aligns with our superiors' intentions and serves His Majesty the Emperor's divine will, then independent decision-making and autonomous action are permitted." "Rather than saying it's permissible—if we young officers don't light the fuse, nothing will ignite." "If you wait for orders, things will never start moving."

It was exactly around that time that Maruman confronted me about my ideological betrayal. "Has money blinded you?" Frustration burned through me until I thought flames might shoot from my eyes. Though I'd quit being a lowlife racketeer, I wasn't living some money-drunk existence. The humiliation grew so intense that— "Quit spouting lines like Kan’ichi from The Golden Demon." I laughed—a harsh bark that only enraged Maruman further. "You're suckling at the same tit as those military bastards who killed Ōsugi Sakae... What the hell's wrong with you?"

“Rubbing tits? What a weird line to go spouting.” “Don’t you feel any damn shame toward Mr. Ōsugi?” “That’s the line I wanted to say. "Wasn't it you, Maru-san, who introduced Suna-san to Kodo-sensei in the first place?" “That’s also why I came to know Kodo-sensei.” “If Suna-san had continued like that, he’d have ended up a racketeer—that’s what I thought back then.” “How’s Suna-san doing?” “He went to China.”

“What’s he doing in China?” “It seems he infiltrated from China into Manchuria.” Carrying a letter of introduction from Kodo-sensei and establishing connections with Manchurian bandits, Suna went to Jilin Province in northern Manchuria. He had entered the area around Dongning and Mulin, known as opium country. “It seems Suna-san has his own way of thinking.” I didn’t know why Suna had slipped into that secret opium cultivation area or what his intentions were. “I wanted you, Shiro-san—if no one else—to protect the black flag together with us.”

“Maru-san. Even if I associate with soldiers, I’ve got the black flag planted right here in my chest.” “Even if I’m left all alone, I’ll keep protecting the black flag.”

Maruman clenched his fist and pressed it to his eye, then burst into loud sobs, scattering tears as he wept with the raw abandon of a man. "Maru-san." "I don't believe I've betrayed you and the others—not in my own heart." "Just give me a little more time."

When the new year began, an army coup d'état—colloquially known as the "March Incident"—was plotted. It was a plot to seize power through a coup d'état and establish a military dictatorship. The plan proposal was as follows.

1. In February, hold a large rally by the three proletarian factions' alliance in Hibiya to denounce the cabinet, raise momentum for its overthrow, conduct demonstrations toward the Diet, and carry out preparatory reconnaissance for when full-scale execution becomes necessary.

2. In March, on the day designated for presenting the Labor Bill to the Diet, carry out acts of sabotage and seize political power. On this day, bomb both the Prime Minister's Official Residence and headquarters of Seiyukai and Minseito parties. However, use bombs producing loud explosions without lethal effectiveness.

3. Mobilize 10,000 members of the masses according to Dr. Ogawa’s plan. From all directions, conduct demonstrations toward the Diet, assigning cadres who understood the plan to the front of each column to maintain control. Furthermore, each column was equipped with a drawn-sword squad to eliminate any anticipated police interference. 4. The military conducted an emergency assembly and, under the pretext of protecting parliament, surrounded it while blocking all internal and external traffic. Furthermore, officers (primarily Sakurakai members) were stationed at each road in advance to demand that columns entrust all matters to the military’s efforts to fulfill the national populace’s demands and maintain order. (The cadres assigned to each column carried this out.)

5. Under these circumstances, a certain lieutenant general (whose name remained concealed until the end and remains unknown to this day) would lead one of Major Generals K or T along with several other officers into the parliament hall. There, they would declare to the cabinet ministers: “The people no longer trust the current cabinet, placing faith solely in an administration led by General Ogaki as Prime Minister. The nation now faces a critical juncture—we demand you act appropriately.” This would compel the cabinet’s collective resignation. 6. Acting Prime Minister S and his cabinet were compelled to submit their resignations, then maneuvers were conducted in accordance with prearranged preparations to ensure the imperial mandate descended upon General Ogaki.

I was added to the bombing unit. Or rather, I volunteered myself. Lieutenant Kitaizumi and his young officers reeked equally of conservative-reformist grease and military stench, carrying themselves with an air of disdain toward us local people—civilians. They seemed convinced revolution ultimately couldn’t be achieved without passing through military hands. I staked our pride as local people and fought to claim that bomb-throwing duty. The bombing unit was actually meant for civilian hands. They’d decided members from Dr. Ogawa Akiaki’s right-wing group—the one in the plan—would handle the bombs. I strong-armed my way into their ranks. My past as part of the terrorist cell that tried assassinating General Fukui made those right-wing bastards eye me sideways. This was my chance to scrub that stain clean.

But my volunteering as a bomber wasn't solely for that reason. The thrill of bomb-throwing set my blood coursing. The device was a spherical bomb roughly an inch and a half in diameter—four dummy artillery shells linked together. When detonated, it would roar like four cannons firing in rapid succession. Though non-lethal, they said its powder smoke would plume skyward. During my terrorist days, how I'd struggled to manufacture bombs! Sneaking into mountain worksites disguised as a laborer to filch dynamite for blasts—compared to those hardships, how absurdly simple it felt now that the military provided everything ready-made. Kodo-sensei had been right—I finally understood viscerally why co-opting the army mattered.

But I didn’t deeply consider what would happen once this coup succeeded. It could also be said that I was deliberately avoiding thinking about it. It seemed the very act of bomb-throwing itself was making my heart race.

March arrived, yet the cold persisted.

One cold day, I visited Kodo’s house. In this coup plan, the civilian participant was Dr. Ogawa; Kodo had not taken part, yet he seemed to know its inner workings. “I just hope you don’t end up being used by General Ogaki’s ambition for power.”

he uttered with icy criticism. "General Ogaki isn't acting on his own initiative—it's more that everyone's propping him up as their figurehead." I said.

General Ogaki was the Army Minister in the cabinet at the time. "It was Ogawa Akiaki who elevated him, no doubt." Kodo added charcoal to the brazier as he spoke. "He accuses me of socialist leanings, yet that very master manipulates the Proletarian Party mob to make the masses dance." "That's socialist handiwork through and through—but I suspect it'll be piping with no one to follow." The demonstrations conducted as "reconnaissance preparation" in late February and early March had only managed to mobilize three or four thousand people. Just as Kodo predicted, this deepening sense of futile piping made Ogawa Akiaki's ten-thousand-strong mobilization plan grow increasingly suspect.

As the day of execution drew near, Lieutenant Kitaizumi too began voicing skeptical words to me. An agreement had long been established among field-grade officers that captains and below would not participate in this uprising; Lieutenant Kitaizumi and his group had demanded its withdrawal, but their pleas went unheeded. The reasoning was that when things failed and punishment followed, providing for the bereaved families’ livelihoods would prove difficult; thus, they had decided to limit participation to field-grade officers and above.

“The logic holds up on paper, but shutting out us junior officers like this is preposterous.” “Expecting us to just play support roles? That’s downright laughable.”

It was as though the senior officers were attempting to discuss everything among themselves, giving rise to the suspicion that their revolutionary vision might differ from what the junior officers had envisioned. They were even suspected of finding the pure-hearted junior officers bothersome and trying to hinder them. Meanwhile, the senior officers themselves, acting as if their mission were already accomplished, had thrown a night-long banquet at a traditional restaurant with Ogawa Akiaki also in attendance. At this gathering, Lieutenant Kitaizumi and his group had also been invited, but they were left feeling nothing but discomfort.

“They’re even talking about needing to consider a medal system.” “They make us help them, then plan to hand out medals for that service.” “They’re looking down on us.” “Do they think we’re helping because we want medals?”

Lieutenant Kitaizumi had worried whether such methods could truly spark action, but sure enough, this "March Incident" ended in failure.

I had the bomb I’d so painstakingly clutched to my chest taken away with absurd ease. The bomb I’d obtained with such absurd ease was taken away just as easily. Though aborted, this coup plan should clearly have been charged as conspiracy to commit insurrection. However, this incident was buried in obscurity, and not a single victim emerged.

This too was bizarre. It was only natural that Lieutenant Kitaizumi and his group harbored suspicions that political dealings had been conducted.

The reason it ended in failure was said to be that the military upper echelons had deemed it premature. However, what was initially reported as the military’s change of heart soon came to be conveyed as General Ogaki’s own change of heart. As Kodo-sensei had said, General Ogaki might indeed be a man harboring political ambitions. I thought. Since Saitō Kodou and Ogawa Akiaki were at odds, I had taken Kodou’s words as something that conflict had compelled him to say—

"No, that’s not it." I reconsidered.

“General Ogaki might have aborted it due to his own political ambitions.”

This was, so to speak, also the perspective of Lieutenant Kitaizumi and others in the Kodo faction.

Enraged by the incident’s failure, Lieutenant Kitaizumi and his group held a frustration meeting at a Western-style restaurant near their regiment.

To that gathering, even I—who wasn’t part of Ogawa Akiaki’s faction—had been invited and attended. “We should still take decisive action through our own hands.” “The military brass can’t be trusted.”

Such discussions turned into distrust toward General Ogaki. General Ogaki was a man of commanding influence within the military and formidable presence in political circles, but precisely because of this, he posed a threat of distorting the true Imperial Standard Revolution. “Should we take him out?”

Such a shout emerged from within the gathering. “Who will do it?” “I’ll do it.”

I said to Lieutenant Kitaizumi in a low voice. "You...?" In the lieutenant's eyes - which glared like he was picking a fight - shone the supreme arrogance unique to military men.

“I’ll do it.” I said calmly. “You people still have crucial work that must be done.” “You’re talking like a seasoned old man despite your youth.”

Lieutenant Kitaizumi laughed. “No no, I’m a man already half-dead. I’m a man who’s ready to die at any time.” I thought that by assassinating General Ogaki here, I could uphold my beliefs as a terrorist. “Well, since there’s amnesty—even if you get ten years, serve them out and come back with your head held high.” Among the right-wing youths at that time, such talk was being voiced semi-openly. They had no qualms saying such things even in front of me. The more prominent the target you killed, they claimed, the more prestige you gained—allowing you to walk tall after leaving prison (penitentiary). And that was indeed the case.

While they preached grand ideals of state and nation yet killed for personal gain and fame, I considered such mentality worthy of contempt. But from Lieutenant Kitaizumi and his men's perspective, even I—the one who had volunteered to assassinate General Ogaki—might have been seen as seeking prestige. In fragments of their words, I sensed this possibility. Yet I neither shared my true feelings with them nor could bring myself to do so.

If I killed General Ogaki, I couldn't imagine my life being spared. Even if they didn't shoot me dead on the spot, I'd inevitably get a death sentence anyway. Unlike military men or right-wingers, I was a terrorist - and I meant to declare that when the time came - so I had to resign myself to execution. Could you muster this kind of resolve just for cheap notoriety? This was something I could've confessed even to Lieutenant Kitaizumi until now, and there'd been no need to keep silent about it so far. But if they pressed me on why I had this determination, things would get messy, so I'd decided from the start to say nothing at all.

By assassinating General Ogaki, I thought I could exact revenge—yes, revenge—against the military men who had massacred Ōsugi Sakae. I had secretly anchored my righteous cause there. In the courtroom, I intended to state this clearly. I want to clarify this point and die. This was not something that could be said to Lieutenant Kitaizumi, a military man. Moreover, since Lieutenant Kitaizumi was supposed to secretly arrange the acquisition of pistols for assassinating General Ogaki, this made it all the more impossible.

The fact that I had to obtain through military men the pistol I would use to take revenge on military men was an ironic twist. Or perhaps not irony, but contradiction? There was a reason I turned a blind eye to that. The attempted assassination of General Fukui had ended in failure, saddled with the disgraceful label of a "sniper incident," and further sensationalized by bourgeois newspapers claiming they had merely fired blanks for self-aggrandizement—all because the pistol used had been defective. The lotus root-style pistol that comrades had gone to the trouble of covertly infiltrating all the way to Shanghai and painstakingly acquired had proven useless when the crucial moment came. Was that hopelessly outdated firearm simply shoddy? Or had they been stuck with counterfeit bullets? Or had the gunpowder deteriorated with age? The exact reason remained unclear, but that bullet—fired at such close range that it should have blown straight through General Fukui’s heart from behind—ended up failing to even pierce his skin, merely inflicting minor burns on his back. The frustration was beyond description. And yet, because of this, two comrades had been executed.

At that time, homemade bombs had also been prepared. They had been carrying them in their pockets, but with the pistols proving utterly useless like that, they were swiftly apprehended before reaching the point of deploying the bombs. I had initially been involved in that bomb manufacturing plan but was excluded midway. Suna and I were removed from the assassination group. Because I was particularly young, they told me not to die here—to survive and protect the fading flame of terrorist spirit.

"I pleaded through tears, 'Don't say that—let me join,' but as a middle school graduate deemed an intellectual, I was convinced that Suna and I must protect to the death the magazine we were publishing at the time to propagate our ideals and principles. What's more, they even orchestrated a fake falling-out to shield us from being implicated under collective punishment laws."

The comrades carried out the assassination. It was frustrating that it ended in mere sniping, but we upheld our spirit. The comrades met their deaths with unshaken composure. I couldn’t erase from my heart the gnawing sense that I was already half-dead.

Suna was the same. Though we had avoided implication through association, the magazine had been crushed. We couldn't bring ourselves to halfheartedly keep running some magazine either. If an opportunity arose, I still wanted to die as a terrorist—that thought persisted within me. For that, weapons were crucial. A pistol so shoddy it only burned the target you aimed for was utterly useless. I was waiting for Lieutenant Kitaizumi to bring me the military pistol.

However, Lieutenant Kitaizumi and his men might have truly intended to carry it out themselves. They were terribly reluctant to hand over the pistol. I could understand their disinclination to entrust such a critical mission to a civilian.

But eventually, a situation arose where they had no choice but to leave it to me—whether I wanted it or not.

General Ogaki resigned as Army Minister. And then he became Governor-General of Korea and was assigned to Keijo.

For active-duty military men, going all the way to Keijo and stalking him there would have been impossible. First off, with their close-cropped military haircuts, no amount of disguise would prevent them from standing out.

The assassin had to be a civilian—there was no alternative. Here, for the first time, they handed me the pistol.

"Serves you right!" I screamed inside my head. I slept clutching the icy pistol to my chest. When preparing to leave Tokyo, I wanted to meet my anarchist comrades, but fearing drunken slips of dangerous words, I held back. An aching loneliness gnawed at me.

I stroked the pistol, trying to dispel the ache. I never let go of the pistol for a moment.

Lieutenant Kitaizumi held a farewell party for me. To call it that, only three young officers came besides the lieutenant.

It was a private room in a crab restaurant in Ōmori. A cool breeze blew in through the wide-open window, but with heat that already felt like summer had arrived, the sea wind made my sweaty skin cling unpleasantly. Perhaps it was also because I was somewhat in a foul mood.

The room stood directly above the sea, and the briny stench of the rocky shore assaulted my nostrils. The smell brought freshly to mind that I was to cross the sea and journey all the way to Korea. I wished I'd gotten the pistol a bit sooner. I wanted to tell Lieutenant Kitaizumi that. General Ogaki, having resigned as Army Minister, had immediately gone to Izu-Nagaoka and remained there ever since. I had secretly gone to Nagaoka to reconnoiter, intending to take down the General as soon as I obtained the pistol. Military police, not to mention regular police, had been mobilized, and security was tight, but compared to the difficulty of stalking the General who had gone to Keijo, this mainland was still easier by comparison.

Why didn't they send over the pistol sooner? That made me—despite this well-meant farewell party—remain sullen. While urging my brooding self to drink, Lieutenant Kitaizumi was conducting a nashi (clandestine discussion) with only himself and the young officers. Suddenly inserting this gresansho (criminal argot) into narrative prose—though perhaps strange when not in dialogue (not that this was my first time)—was terminology that had arisen naturally from my mental state.

Whether by nature or necessity—though Lieutenant Kitaizumi and the others had thrown this farewell party for my sake—I couldn’t shake the feeling that they soldiers and I were fundamentally different entities. Such feelings made me inwardly mutter at that moment that they were holding a nashi. That naturally found its way into the narrative prose. In the past, and from now on as well, there may be instances where jargon suddenly appears, but for me, there is always a sense of inevitability—that its emergence was natural. If I were to suddenly—abruptly—refer to women’s tabi as yokobira, then in that moment, those very tabi had left me with an extraordinarily intense impression. It wasn’t tabi—it simply had to be yokobira.

But some might find such jargon pretentious. They might view it as showing off. Refined people would undoubtedly take offense. Take these modern armchair leftists—no, wait, that's outdated phrasing—these progressive intellectuals, I suppose you'd call them now—who've never been bitten by lice (meaning never jailed) or even set foot in a pigpen (detention cell). My criminal jargon must stick in their craw as they hold forth from their safe zones.

I didn't just pick up this criminal jargon from Maruman after he became a boss—it also came naturally from living in cells with yakuza and thieves. That's why I knew not just street vendors' slang but thieves' argot too. I don't care if people think using such jargon's pretentious or just me bluffing, but I can't have us anarchists being seen as the same ilk as thieves just because I use their criminal lingo. For anarchists' honor, that's downright unacceptable.

I really shouldn't be using this jargon. Yet knowing this, why did the underworld lingo keep slipping from my lips? All that remained to me now was this criminal argot. A life of storms and drama—though it shames me to say it—all my turbulent past had left me was this thieves' cant. As I half-listened to Lieutenant Kitaizumi and the others, I gathered the military's upper ranks were split into factions engaged in ugly power struggles. A turf war. No—I should phrase this properly. Even within the so-called reformist faction, similar cliques existed, and this conflict—one might call it mutual annihilation—had sown division even among young officers equally committed to realizing the Kinki Revolution.

Amid these discussions, General Maki’s name kept surfacing repeatedly, and Lieutenant Kitaizumi spoke in a tone of deep reverence for this general. “Which faction does Kodo-sensei belong to?” I asked while poking the meat out from the crab leg with my chopsticks. “Sensei trusts General Maki. That’s probably also because he’s close with Minami Ikko.” Minami Ikko was one of the right-wing’s leading figures, and I knew his name as well.

I shifted the conversation to my own affairs, “I intend to keep this matter from Kodo-sensei—to proceed without telling him.” When Lieutenant Kitaizumi silently nodded deeply at my words, several customers clomped up the stairs with heavy footsteps and tromped down the hallway as though stamping on it,

“Is this the place?” At the sound of them boldly peering around the tatami room, “They’re here.” Lieutenant Kitaizumi stiffened and, “Hide!”

he said to me.

The commanding tone grated on me. I wasn't the Lieutenant's subordinate, wasn't some lackey who jumped at his orders. I kept my ass planted right where it was. "Cops?" If it were police, the military could suppress them—ought to suppress them. The Lieutenant told me otherwise with a curt "No," then barked: "Get out of this seat." "Why...?" "I won't have you caught in our faction's crossfire."

He said hurriedly and pointed at the window, “From there, quickly…” He made me read “Escape!” in his eyes and thrust a large shoe tag at me, “Here…” and held it out.

“Well, ain’t this something.” With a parting line thrown out, I nimbly leapt onto the windowsill. Though the waves lapping at the shore weren’t particularly strong, their white crests crumbled in the dark offshore before ever reaching land. At the window’s edge, a short drop below, a roof lay visible. Just as I thought “Got it!” and tried to leap across, the pistol hidden in my groin clanged against the boardwork—a cold shock shooting through me. I’d tied the pistol’s barrel to my loincloth and slung it beside my balls. Even if they stopped me for questioning and searched my body, they’d never lay hands on my stones.

Like a thief (one who sneaks in from the roof), I fled along the rooftops, found the tin gutter hanging from roof to ground, and used it as a handhold to climb down. I pretended to be a kisugure (drunkard) while circling barefoot toward the entrance,

“Hey—gimme my sukes (footwear).” “I’m headin’ back alone first.”

The shoe clerk eyed me suspiciously, alternating his gaze between the shoe tag and my face. “Hurry it up, will ya?” I barked, “Tch, this ain’t funny.”

After hailing a car, I said to the driver, “Torogen.” “Huh?” “Yoshiwara. Just get us there fast.” The fact that underworld slang like “Torogen” rolled off my tongue so naturally showed just how entrenched my visits to Yoshiwara had become. From buying whores, I’d graduated to purchasing proper courtesans. No—the women of Torogen were oiran courtesans, not jorou prostitutes. In other districts they’re called jorou, but in Yoshiwara they’re known as oiran. Oiran courtesans exist only in Yoshiwara. But when it came down to it—whether oiran courtesans, jorou prostitutes, or gasebiri streetwalkers—there was no real difference in the flesh trade.

The oiran who went by the professional name Wakamurasaki was my regular courtesan, and being a regular customer, I was shown to the main parlor. This wasn't the woman who'd told me to become an adult, nor was it her establishment. "Oh, you've acquired quite a lovely doll."

A Fujimusume doll encased in a large glass box was imposingly displayed atop a small tea cabinet. “Ah, yes.” Wakamurasaki evaded the question and served me tea. “Those things must cost more than you’d think.” Someone must have bought it for her. As I watched, thinking she must have landed a generous patron, “Yes, Brother.” Spreading out a stylish yukata, the woman told me to change clothes.

“Yeah. “Nah, I’m good.” I thought about how to hide the pistol without the woman noticing. Even as it was, the crotch of my trousers bulged as if that thing were massively erect. Because it looked suspicious, I was at a loss. “What’s wrong, Brother?”

The woman who looked about my age said uneasily to me as I sat there uncharacteristically restrained. “Nothing’s wrong.” I clenched the filter of Enta’s “Asahi” cigarette between my teeth. “I’m going away for a bit. Won’t be seeing you for a while.” I said this, though we might never meet again after all. “Where are you going on this trip?” “Somewhere far.” Whether my desperate look showed plainly on my face, “Far?”

The woman said uneasily, “Brother, there’s something I want to talk about with you, but later…” Beside the laid-out aburage futon, she tried to change into her nagajuban underrobe. “Not yet,” I said. “Let’s talk. What’s this thing you wanted to discuss?” The woman who must have worked here for years looked every bit the Yoshiwara oiran in her kimono, but when I held her in bed, her body had the firm, tightly muscled build of someone who’d been toiling in rice paddies until just recently—that wildness appealed to me. She was nothing like Teruko. The only similarity was her underbite—

“Let’s talk while we lie down.” Though her speech read as Tokyo dialect on paper, remnants of provincial inflection still clung to her words. She slid into the futon first with practiced ease, “I’d been thinking... once my contract expires, I’d want to make a home with Brother.” “Huh? Got options lined up?”

“It’s true. “If only Brother would agree… But you’d never take a prostitute for your wife, would you?” “That’s not true.” “Really?” I was the one who wanted to ask if she really meant it, but the woman’s face was serious.

“If it’s someone like Brother… I thought you’d surely take me as your wife…”

My occupation was that of a literary man—I had presented myself as a third-rate writer. "What do you mean by 'someone like'?" "I'm sorry."

The woman put her hand on the wooden pillow, "I've received an offer from a tatami shop owner to become his second wife." "Tatami shop...?" "What should I do?" I'm a dead man walking—but unable to say so, I was searching for words when the shrewd old woman called out from outside the room. A customer had arrived. (There, see? I told you so.)

With that look on her face, the woman sat up, “Brother...”

She shook my knee. I was bouncing vigorously on the bedding, but I couldn't tell her to stop her work. Since a customer who'd come for Wakamurasaki by name had ascended to the room, following the establishment's custom meant I couldn't avoid making an appearance. I had no choice but to say, "Go on ahead."

“Brother. Hurry—” “Hurry…” The woman’s hand urging me to hurry slid from my knee to my groin and struck the pistol. The woman, startled, yanked her hand back as though scalded,

“What’s... that?”

“It’s nothing.” “Go on ahead.” “Later… we’ll take our time…”

I waved my hand as if to shoo the woman away. Left alone, I still felt an aching loneliness. I wasn’t so infatuated with Wakamurasaki doing her work that I’d turn into some lovesick fool, but her words about wanting to start a household with me lingered stubbornly in my ears. It would be pitiful to dismiss this as mere courtesan’s artifice. Starting a household with a courtesan and running a penny candy store or something wouldn’t be so bad. I think a life lived modestly in humble backstreets wouldn’t be so bad—but it’s too late now to start dreaming of such a self.

From somewhere drifted the tinny strains of "Asakusa March" on a record. "The lamp of love burns crimson—how scarlet stains this apron at my breast"—I knew that verse by rote, but not what followed. Though I powder my face for none to see, If this life lasts but one night's span— Asakusa of dreams, rain of tears. The third verse's unknown lyrics—trash though I thought them—pierced me tonight like broken glass. If this life lasts but one night's span—this won't fucking do. (Goddamn it all!)

I quietly slipped my hand beneath the futon mattress. Seeking the cool metallic feel of the pistol hidden there, I let my fingers wander through the bedding. What had become of that Teruko? How was her syphilis progressing? Would she end up with advanced symptoms—her nose caving in, voice turning hoarse? Even as I cursed her to rot down to her bones, I grew sorrowful remembering how I'd truly wanted to build a life with Teruko.

—Wakamurasaki returned. Wakamurasaki, who had softly slid open the shoji screen and entered, held the straw sandals tucked under her arm. Though courtesans would typically walk down corridors slapping their felt sandals noisily, Wakamurasaki stealthily made her way back without a sound. When I raised my head like a viper’s strike,Wakamurasaki swiftly flipped up the futon mattress—trying to hide the straw sandals beneath it—when she apparently caught sight of the pistol, “Ah!” she cried out and flinched back.

“Brother, you’ve got something like this…” “Shh!”

I pressed my index finger to my mouth. A fierce desire blazed up within me.

Part Two: The Cat of Keijo

If I had actually assassinated General Ogaki here, I would have long since bid farewell to this world and couldn’t possibly be leisurely recounting such old memories now. In other words, I had once again failed to die properly.

Having failed to die properly, I survived in disgrace until today—though my body escaped death then, perhaps my heart had already died at that moment. However momentous this was for me personally, as a story it's so anticlimactic it can be brushed off as just another botched death—so without ceremony, I should get straight to recounting my second failure to die right. There are still tales before the Korea trip, but let's just get me on that train.

I went to Shimonoseki by steam train. I had enough money for a blue ticket (second class)—back then, trains had first, second, and third classes—but riding an unfamiliar second-class carriage would risk standing out, so I went with a red ticket (third class). Leaving Tokyo was, for me, an act of departing from life while aiming for death. Though I wanted to charge headlong into death's realm in one go, the journey to Shimonoseki took an excruciatingly long time back then—nothing like today. Taking time to slowly detach myself from life still felt repulsive to me as a living human being. I didn't want to think myself a coward, but I couldn't deny that facing death alone was agonizing. In the Shimokuten (third-class car), I drank alone. And so, to distract myself from the pain, I stirred up a sense of tragic heroism within myself.

Alone—I was trying to die. I was trying to handle this alone.

This must be the true calling of a terrorist—yet I myself, who had scorned military men's self-righteousness, now found myself drunk on the same brand of arrogant heroism as those soldiers.

Speaking of military men, the reason I carried a hefty sum in my pocket was that I’d received it from Lieutenant Kitaizumi as military funds. That money must have been procured by the lieutenant from somewhere—there was no way Lieutenant Kitaizumi himself could have possessed such funds. Where he had procured it from, the lieutenant didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. Did they procure it through the same schemes as us? No, those military bastards couldn’t pull off such a savvy scheme. Then, it could also be considered that there was a hidden supporter somewhere.

That supporter—unless they were considerably wealthy—wouldn’t be able to casually hand over money like what was in my pocket, so they must undoubtedly be bourgeois. The bourgeoisie were our enemies. Using the enemy’s money... well, that was acceptable. Using poison to counteract poison—that was all well and good—but when the bourgeoisie handed over money, they wouldn’t do it unless it somehow benefited them or they fully understood it did. Not in a million years. If that was the case, did that mean my life would ultimately be offered up for the bourgeoisie’s self-serving interests? This too was an unpleasant feeling.

Am I a puppet dancing to the enemy’s money? "No—that’s wrong," I shook my head. I’ll die for my own convictions. (I just need to die.)

To tell the truth, I can no longer accurately recall my state of mind from that time. It’s true there were all sorts of unpleasant feelings, but on the other hand, I also have this feeling that I pictured myself standing on the gallows and cheered myself on with a "That’s it!" I will die splendidly as a terrorist. Convinced of this myself, I was applauding my own execution. But now that I think about it—did I truly believe I was dying for my convictions?

Can humans truly die for their beliefs, for their ideology? Even if one convinces themselves it’s for their beliefs, isn’t it merely self-deception—and only when intoxicated by the delusion of martyrdom can one finally die? That seems different from dying for one’s beliefs or ideology. Even I—who had convinced myself I would die for my beliefs—couldn’t help nursing this naive notion that among the public, there would surely be those who’d mourn my death. Given that, I should have realized even then that one cannot die purely for the sake of beliefs alone. Here, the one thing I can still clearly recall is the following. In truth, I hoped that Teruko alone would weep for me rather than the public mourning my death.

I didn't know whether she'd cry for me. That's why I hoped she would cry for me. Exactly—it wasn't Teruko herself I wanted, but any woman who'd shed tears for me. For me, there existed no woman who would weep for my sake—

While telling myself I'd make this quick, I was dawdling. I arrived in Shimonoseki, boarded the Kanpu Ferry from there, and crossed the Genkai Sea—but about that time...

The midsummer sun blazed mercilessly—on either side of passengers queuing to board the ferry stood keen-eyed detectives screening those deemed suspicious or dubious. "Hey! You there. Come here." They conducted their business with practiced efficiency. With an arrogant wave of the hand, they forced targets out of line. The one who'd been barked at would glance sideways—surely it couldn't be him, maybe the guy behind—when...

“You there!”

Yelled at by detectives, they shrank their necks and, burdened with heavy luggage in both hands, stumbled out in a panic. I had heard about this beforehand, but the strictness exceeded what I had been told. Since this was a time when the outbreak of the Manchurian Incident was just two months away, security must have been even stricter. A column of soldiers, their backpacks strapped on and drenched in sweat, were boarding a military vessel from another pier, creating an eerie sense of urgency. Given that the South Manchuria Railway bombing incident at Liutiaogou had been orchestrated by the Japanese side, it was only natural that one could already sense an air of public unrest there.

A few people ahead of me was a college student who got called out by the detectives with a "Hey, come here." He was unmistakably Korean at a glance. Koreans were all being targeted. Every Korean without exception was regarded as a rebellious Korean. Korean university students especially—whether because they provoked resentment from detectives lacking academic backgrounds ("How dare these Koreans attend university!"), or because all students were suspected of harboring rebellious ideologies—were treated as criminals from the outset. The student, likely returning home for summer break, must have given some discourteous reply to the detectives' insolent questioning, for suddenly—in full view of the crowd—he was slapped hard across the face and dragged off amid shouts of "You bastard! Think you're tough?!" Another detective kicked the unresisting student with his boot from the side.

"What a fucking terrible thing they're doing," I thought indignantly. During the Great Kantō Earthquake when Osugi Sakae and others had been massacred by the military police, I recalled how Koreans too had been slaughtered in great numbers in the streets. From this shared fate of having been killed at the same time, my longstanding sympathy toward Koreans grew even stronger here. If I was going to kill General Ogaki anyway, I should have done it while he was still in Japan, I thought—

"I see—this idea of doing it in Korea isn't half bad." When I'd had to chase after him all the way to Korea, I'd clicked my tongue in annoyance—but now my feelings had changed. To snipe the Japanese Governor-General of Korea right before Korean eyes—this is brilliant, I thought again. Even so, if security was already this tight at Korea's threshold, General Ogaki's personal guard must have been extraordinarily vigilant. The difficulty of stalking and targeting him became all too apparent. But just as I told myself that greater difficulties would only fuel my fighting spirit—that very self of mine,

“Hey, you there. Come here.” I was called out by the detective. Startled, I nonetheless put on a tough front—I’m not Asa-chan (a Korean), you can’t mistake me for one—or so I blustered. While sympathizing with Koreans, he had inadvertently exposed his true nature of despising them. Was this sympathy born of a sense of superiority?

“Where are you going?” “Keijo…” The reason I spoke curtly wasn’t from any sense of Japanese superiority. I’d decided boldness worked best with this type. “What’re you going there for?” When questioned, I answered at once. “Official business…” It was a line I’d rehearsed beforehand. Though truthfully, I’d never expected to get pulled aside here. “Official business…?”

A shadow crossed the detective's face, but in a tone that sneered 'What's this whelp...' "What sort of official business?" "I can't discuss that here." Being young, I answered in a strained voice aping Kodo's mannerisms. I wasn't just some terrorist - the knowledge that military power backed me colored every inflection. "Can't discuss...?"

The detective glared. I blustered with feigned importance, deliberately lowering my voice, “Military business…” “Military…?” Seeing that the detective flinched, I immediately, “Are you military police?” The reason I asked if he was plainclothes military police was because I had judged he wasn’t one—knowing how police cower before the military, I took the offensive. This was slightly overdone and ill-advised. The detective seemed to take offense, “If you’re not military police, you won’t answer the interrogation? Shall I call the military police?”

“You can have them called.” "This guy’s onto me," I thought, grabbing my Shimonoseki—no, wait, that’s backward—the bag. As I shifted it around, I scrambled to come up with some deceptive words. “This is your jurisdiction, isn’t it?” As I spoke, I slowly began opening my bag with all the appearance of someone about to produce identification— “No need for that.”

The detective waved his hand as if to say it wasn't necessary to show anything, "That won't be required." When I behaved meekly, he too relented, swallowing my pretense of being from the special service agency whole— "My apologies."

He suddenly adopted a submissive attitude. "No need for that, officer." I said magnanimously. I felt pleased with my flawless deception, but even in this satisfaction, I couldn't help feeling a twinge of shame deep within. The fox who borrows the tiger's might—that was exactly me. Here I was trying to die as a pure terrorist, yet hiding behind military authority. Since associating with Lieutenant Kitaizumi, I'd learned these methods—military men used this word 'methods' like a mantra—but I too had gradually come to affect the airs of a right-wing patriot. The police force—so cowed by military and right-wing factions—had also taught me these techniques.

“Hey, you Korean! Get over here!” I heard such a voice from behind me. The detective who had just bowed to me now spoke in a tone of venting frustration, “Open the trunk.” I crossed to Busan by boat and boarded the train bound for Keijo. The scenery from the window appeared utterly novel to me, leaving my country for the first time. What particularly caught my eye were the endless bald mountains unseen in the mainland—they called Japan “the mainland” here. Not a single tree remained, the red earth’s surface laid bare. Was this what Korean mountains were like? I’d hastily assumed so, unaware these barren peaks resulted from reckless deforestation.

The low hills visible right outside the train window were nothing but exposed red earth without a blade of grass, their eerie undulations—more sinister than gentle—spreading out beneath clusters of Korean peasant houses that clung to the slopes like grotesque mushrooms sprouting from the barren soil. On a white parched road where the wind whipped up billowing clouds of dust, a Korean woman in a soiled underskirt could be seen walking with an emaciated half-naked child. My chest tightened. It was partly because I’d been reminded of my dead mother, but that wasn’t all.

Is it right for me, about to go kill someone, to wallow in such maudlin sentimentality? Like hell it will. Even as I thought this, the image of the child burned into my retina did not fade. When that brat grows up, he won't be able to make a living in these bald mountains of Korea and will drift over to the mainland to struggle?

In the streets of Tokyo, "Candy, candy, Korean candy!" A Korean vendor came to mind—one who spoke broken Japanese while peddling ginseng candy to children from a makeshift stall slung over his shoulder. How much could he possibly earn roaming the streets with that shoddy homemade contraption? "Fresh brown rice bread, still warm..." There were others too—Koreans hawking cheap loaves with those same plaintive calls. When I'd plotted to assassinate General Fukui, I'd sneaked into labor camps to get dynamite. The Korean navvies there had been even more pitiful.

Those Koreans must have all come from rural areas like this. Though scorned as mere Chōsenjin, they must have truly wanted to live in their hometowns like this rather than struggle in a foreign land... I nearly caught myself thinking that instead of sniping at General Ogaki and his ilk, I should be working to liberate these wretched Koreans—but I never quite reached that conclusion. Or rather, I was someone who actively resented those Bolshevik bastards for their colonial liberation drivel. Such being my state, I'd vaguely envisioned a revolution encompassing all Japan—Korea included. Meaning I'd decided from the start Korea was but another Japanese prefecture.

Even I, upon arriving in Keijo, found myself confronted at every turn by phenomena and circumstances that made me feel Korea was not so much a part of Japan as indeed its colony—though I would rather not have witnessed them. Yet my mind remained wholly occupied with the question of how to assassinate General Ogaki here in Keijo. I entered a shabby Japanese inn in Keijo’s so-called mainlander district—I believe it was called Meiji-chō—in some numbered block there, the kind of place that felt like a merchant’s lodging. This was Kohata (a porters' inn) that I had learned about in advance from Lieutenant Kitaizumi as being suitable. The lieutenant had also heard from a colleague assigned to the Twentieth Division Headquarters in Keijo that this place would be cheap and adequate for a long-term stay.

I promptly went to see the Government-General building, but damn—its grandeur made my eyes go round just like some country bumpkin from Gyeongsangbuk-do (there was someone like that beside me). It was a grandeur meant to intimidate through displays of Japan's power. Though its imposing grandeur was also partly due to the magnificence of its surroundings, since this was the site of the former royal palace of the Joseon Dynasty, such splendor came naturally.

Gyeongbokgung was the royal palace, its main gate called Gwanghwamun. When erecting this imposing modern Government-General building behind Gwanghwamun Gate, they had relocated that main gate of Gyeongbokgung Palace to the eastern side. Through clever planning, by positioning the Government-General imposingly at the front, all traces of the ancient palace became hidden in its shadow, effectively relegated behind the new structure. Heading south along the broad Gwanghwamun Street before the Government-General brought one to Jongno Street intersecting it perpendicularly. A river flowed parallel to Jongno Street, with the northern bank forming the Korean district and the southern side the mainlander quarter.

Behind the mainlander district rose Namsan Mountain, and unlike Tokyo—where mountains were never visible beyond the rooftops of houses—this sight reminded me of Kyoto. At the foot of Namsan Mountain had stood the Government-General originally, or so I’d heard, and the Governor-General’s Official Residence remained there to this day. This too—not merely imposing, but appearing through my eyes as a formidable stronghold.

Through the sweltering streets I trudged, mopping sweat and drifting without purpose. Though being cast into this unknown land didn't particularly daunt me, the understanding that my long-pursued target here—unlike back in the mainland—couldn't be reached through half-hearted efforts inevitably unsettled me.

A despair-like impatience had already seized me, but it made me think that those conditions during the imperial era—when Russian terrorists had successively thrown away their lives—were probably much like this. They had likely fought against even harsher, more difficult conditions. Remember Gershuni. Exactly—hadn’t even a woman managed it alone? Remember Maria Spiridonova—a mere young woman who assassinated a heavily guarded high-ranking official. Maria was twenty-one years old at that time.

“Don’t rush. Seize your chance.” Tonight I’d restore my strength—that’s what I decided. “Kaku—where’s the pleasure quarter?” I asked the serving maid. The young dōyabiri they called Namiko stared wordlessly at my face. No trace of warmth or slyness in her expression. My own brusque tone and features might have provoked this. “Since we’re in Korea now—shouldn’t I try a Korean brothel?” I said with a leering grin,

“Then you should go to Shinmachi.” “Shinmachi, you say?” I had assumed it was near Jongno, but it turned out to be at the edge of Honmachi Street in the Japanese district. “No, thank you.” I said, averting my gaze. At that moment, a cat’s meow pierced startlingly close. It sounded as if Namiko herself had cried out; instinctively turning, “Do you like cats, sir?”

“Ah…” I looked at Namiko’s face. (Oh—so this was what her face looked like.) Since arriving at this inn three days prior, Namiko had been diligently attending to my every need as my assigned maid, but I now realized I hadn’t once properly looked at her face until this moment. Perhaps because my mind had been adrift. Though this was partly because her features weren’t particularly striking, I found myself properly looking at Namiko’s face for the first time,

(Cat-like in her friendliness... that’s the impression.)

That Namiko, "So you like cats, sir?"

"Not really." "No, you do like them." "Look, it's clinging to you so affectionately..."

“Huh?” In the hallway, an unnervingly large cat appeared without warning, its eerily massive frame—utterly mismatched to its demeanor—rubbing against a pillar in affection; but the moment I noticed this, I was simultaneously struck head-on by the intense glare reflecting off the neighboring tin roof, and everything went dizzy. In an instant, the room plunged into darkness, and Namiko vanished; the cat that had been masquerading as her seemed to revert to its original form.

“Cats can tell. People who like cats…” Namiko’s voice reached my ears through closed eyelids, sounding exactly like a cat’s speech. “Meow” The cat—or was it Namiko?—made the sound. “There, there.”

With my eyes still closed, I said.

“You’re from Tokyo, aren’t you, sir?” Namiko’s voice—or rather, a human voice—sounded as if coming from afar. “Yeah.” When I nodded, “Meow” And Namiko meowed—no, that couldn’t be—and then,

“Are you going back to Tokyo again?” “Yeah.” “Tokyo’s a nice place, isn’t it?” “Yeah.” “Could you take me with you?” With a cat-like presumptuousness, “When you go back, together...” “What did you say?” When I opened my eyes, Namiko was standing before me, and the cat had vanished. “Where did that cat go?” “What brings you to Keijo, sir...?” “That’s a creepy cat. Is it this house’s cat?”

“No, it’s not.” “A stray cat?” “I was called to Keijo by my sister, but I hate it—this Korea place—” She was around nineteen years old, yet resembled a perfectly ripe—overripe—fruit. Not just her face but her entire body gave that impression; though not exactly fat, there was something stifling about her appearance. “What about your sister—what does she do?”

“She works at a restaurant.” “If I’m going to work anyway, I want to work in Tokyo.” “Don’t ask a youngster like me—go bother other customers.” “I see.” “Then I won’t ask,” she said flatly—but Namiko puffed out her cheeks indignantly. There was something oddly endearing about it. Just as I registered this thought, Namiko— “Don’t you have anything you want to ask me?”

“From me…?” “Don’t you have anything you want from me?” “Nope.” “Then that’s fine.”

That night, I headed out to the brothel district in Shinmachi Ura Koji that Namiko had told me about. I was astonished not only by the sheer density—no, the overwhelming concentration—of brothels crammed together beyond what I’d imagined, but also by the incongruously brutal atmosphere that hung over the red-light district. It wasn’t because of the Koreans—it was the Japanese acting like they owned the place. “Catch that Korean! Jabara—catch him! Jabara!” Drunken Japanese men were shouting. “Noara (Let go)! “Noara (Let go)!”

The one shouting "Aigo" was a Korean youth. Had there been some quarrel over a woman? The only word I understood then was "Aigo," but the brutality of the Japanese—shouting "Jabara!" at the slightest provocation to abuse Koreans—came through crystal clear. I, a Japanese who had come to buy a Korean woman, had my mood thoroughly ruined. Thinking to grab a quick drink of cheap sake at a standing bar, I stepped into a garlic-stinking alley—and froze.

At my feet lay a dead cat. Moreover, the cat I’d seen during the day—or so I first thought—lay before me as a gruesome corpse. The blood soaking thickly into its fur was unsettling too. Had it just been beaten to death by someone? The blood was still fresh and vivid, but flies were already swarming. (Ugh—saw something awful.) In both size and fur color, it was identical to the cat I’d seen at the inn—but there was no way that cat would be prowling around a place like this. I told myself this as I hurriedly left that spot,

(But even I'm prowling around a place like this.) I couldn’t definitively say it wasn’t the cat from daytime. With eyes drawn like those craving gruesome sights, I quickly turned my head—and drew a sharp breath. The cat’s corpse had vanished. Not a shadow or shape remained.

Had someone disposed of it? Or perhaps the cat I’d taken for a corpse was actually still alive, mustering every ounce of courage to drag itself away from that spot? I was breaking out in sweat all over my face (maybe oily sweat). Somehow, I no longer felt like buying women or anything like that. (Back to square one.)

When I returned to the inn, a telegram from Tokyo had been waiting for me. It was a telegram from Kodo.

Part Three: The Drill Ground Dog

"RETURN AT ONCE"—the words loomed large before my eyes. I tore open the telegram from the clerk right there in the genkan entranceway and let out a low hum. The clerk kept staring at me—that insistent gaze. What vile eyes he had.

“Do you need something?”

“No.”

The clerk said this, but he wasn't the only one casting unpleasant looks my way. The mistress here—who seemed to have risen from dubious origins, no, more precisely risen from this colony's Yukidaruma (pillow geishas)—stretched her back without getting up from the accounts desk, her powder-burned face wearing a frightened expression as she stared at me. Behind her, even some hag who looked like she'd spent her life tending cooking fires had thrust out just her head, eyes gleaming with that particular morbid curiosity.

Did they see the telegram? That alone seemed too bizarre. There had to be something else. Every person in the house had turned out in full force to bombard me with a synchronized volley of suspicious glances. Namiko was nowhere to be seen. Had something happened? The image of a blood-soaked cat floated into my mind. Where had Namiko gone? I made to ask but instead cleared my throat, my eyes darting to the entranceway I'd just come through. Could there be some visitor lying in wait in my room—someone making the whole inn tremble? But I saw no shoes that matched such a presence. Had they hidden them in the shoe cupboard?

“A guest—someone—”

Had they come to arrest me? "No... nothing."

The clerk rubbed his hands together.

Am I being paranoid? I climbed the stairs with measured steps toward my second-floor room. "Return at once"? I hadn't told Kodo about this inn—how did he know to send a telegram here? I hadn't even informed him about entering Keijo. After I left Tokyo, had he heard from Lieutenant Kitaizumi? There was no other explanation—which meant this "RETURN AT ONCE" from Kodo must incorporate the Lieutenant's views too.

"Return at once"—even if told that, I couldn't just shamelessly turn back now. It seemed a new plan had been hatched back home, some collective endeavor summoning me... but...

When a cat dies, it dies alone—the thought struck me suddenly. Even if you tell a cat bound for death to come back, it won’t return. Leaving the home where it had been kept, the cat goes off to die alone. Even if told to return at once, the cat won’t go back home to die there. Lonely and alone—no, content and alone—a cat dies. Humans too die alone when their time comes. In later years, when I contracted tuberculosis and lay bedridden, I wrote this poem—though whether it was truly a poem or something else, I cannot say—addressed to myself. This I wrote while recalling the cats of Keijo, imbued with scorn for myself who ended up dying in Keijo.

You who loved me, oh farewell And parted from those I loved I go to the forest to die Keeping faith with the forest beasts' pact I shall die alone. The blood of the forest beasts—oh—at that moment It will revive within me As a wild beast before being trained into human ways Sticking out my tongue at those domesticated humans Licking off the humiliation of domestication with my tongue With a faint smile, I shall die. I approached the room like a cat, stealthily muffling my footsteps. I remained cautious, still suspecting someone might be there, but when I found none other than Namiko in that room, I couldn't help but—

“You’re alive!”

Namiko’s eyes glinted like a cat’s as she hastily pressed a finger to her lips. Informing me not to speak loudly with that gesture, “What do you mean?” she said in a low voice. “What became of the cat from earlier?” I said. Namiko’s flushed face glistened with sweat. Her lips were wet like after a kiss, unnervingly provocative. Having failed to enter the brothel, I now found myself flaring up, feeling like lunging at Namiko. Then Namiko,

“You really aren’t just some rat after all.” She sneered. The young woman spat out words with the defiance of a seasoned veteran. “The hell you say?” As I tried to grab Namiko—who had entered my room and spoken these words—the strange sensation from the entrance revived itself, while simultaneously making me notice something in the room that screamed at me: This isn’t right. At first glance, it wasn’t so violently ransacked that one would immediately recognize it as a house search—gasa—but the shifted positions of objects made something feel off.

“Someone’s been here.” The hand I’d thrust toward Namiko, I pressed against my own face. As I dragged my palm downward, a slimy mucus—not sweat but something repulsive, like an eel’s viscous secretion—clung thick to my fingers. Peering through the gaps between those fingers, I saw Namiko nod in silence. “They came?” “Yes.”

Lowering her voice, “But…it’s okay…” “What’s okay…” Damn it! I bit my lip. The pistol I’d kept close to my body without ever parting with it for a moment until now—I’d hidden it in the floor cabinet next to the alcove. Back in the mainland, maybe—but here, when going to visit brothels, I thought it’d be bad news to carry something like that around. Though truth be told, yesterday when I went out to scout the Governor-General’s residence, I’d hidden the pistol in the floor cabinet just in case I got stopped for questioning.

Surely they wouldn't take that thing. I needed to confirm it immediately. Holding back my racing thoughts for Namiko's sake,

“It’s not here.” With that, Namiko jerked her chin toward the floor cabinet, “Go ahead and open it.” “What…”

I scrambled over and opened the small floor cabinet,

“It’s gone!”

Falling on my ass like that was, even to myself, a disgraceful spectacle. “Of course it’s gone.” Namiko said with amusement in her voice. Seeing Namiko’s faint smirk made me flare up.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

I lunged at Namiko and realized I was choking her neck with both hands. I felt terror at my own actions, but Namiko’s face showed no fear. As I involuntarily loosened my grip, Namiko spoke these words into my ear: "I hid it properly, so it’s safe." "Where did you hide it?" My hand was gripping Namiko’s upper arm. "It was a close call." While letting me keep hold of her arm, Namiko turned her eyes to the half-open floor cabinet,

“When I was cleaning this room yesterday, I found something strange there, so I wondered what it was?” “Did you open it?” Of course, I hadn’t left the pistol out in the open. “I was shocked.” Namiko’s eyes glittered fiercely, “So that’s why I asked you during the day if there was anything you wanted me to do, right?” Putting her hands on my knees and shaking them, “If you’d asked me back then, I would’ve properly kept it safe for you beforehand…” “Even though I asked if you wanted me to keep it safe for you, you said there was nothing you needed, so I thought I’d just leave it alone.” “But when the military police came…”

“What? The military police came?”

I sat with Namiko, our knees pressed together.

“That’s right. There was this man asking where your room was. They were talking about it at the front desk. When that happened, even though you hadn’t asked me anything and I felt like I was sticking my nose where it didn’t belong, I thought it’d be awful if they took that thing. So before the military police reached the room, I rushed up here and got it out before they could find anything.”

“I see.” “I’m sorry about that.” I gave a quick bow,

“Thank you.”

I thanked her. And when I reached out my hand to ask for the pistol back, “They’ll come again. They told everyone—the household people—to keep quiet about their coming. You should return to Tokyo soon.”

To ensure I could depart at any moment, Namiko had apparently taken over and packed my personal effects into the trunk.

“So then… that thing is in the trunk…?” “No. It’s dangerous for you to keep it.”

Namiko adjusted her disheveled collar,

“I want to go to Tokyo. Take me with you…” “You want to go to Tokyo… with a wanted man like me?” “You’re not some ordinary fugitive.” “So I’m a master thief now?” “You’re no thief.” For some reason, I sighed. She had guts for a young girl. When I told myself it was an admiring sigh,

“It’s safer if I keep that.”

Namiko said. She declared.

At this moment, I saw myself in that bloodied cat. I myself was none other than that dying cat. “Alright, I’ll take you with me.” I then rephrased it: “Let’s go together.” It was galling to be caught here without a fight. But with military police likely stationed at the station too, would we really be able to escape from Keijo? “I’ll get us on the train smoothly. If we make it just one station ahead, no one will spot us for sure…”

Under the guise of a young couple, we smoothly managed to return to Tokyo.

The lodging in Hongo undoubtedly had military police lying in wait, so returning there would be dangerous. Moreover, since Namiko was with me, we checked into a different high-class kohai (inn). And immediately, when I went alone to visit Kodo,

“You fool!” With that opening salvo, I was thoroughly rebuked. That killing a single Ogaki would achieve nothing. Kodo lambasted me. He said he’d also given Lieutenant Kitaizumi a severe dressing-down for his recklessness. But the recall order hadn’t been issued solely for that purpose. In the botched March Incident, Ogawa Akiaki and his civilian faction had participated, but this time even Minami Ikko—who’d been at odds with Ogawa’s group—joined in. Thus Saeda Kodo too became involved as they formulated a new plan. That was precisely why Kodo had summoned me back. This would later become known as the October Incident.

“Suna will be returning soon too.” Kodo said he’d apparently had a hard time of it, but his face looked oddly shadowed.

That night, after leaving Kodo's house, I immediately headed for Yoshiwara. I went to meet Wakamurasaki, but she'd already quit, they told me. Had seeing my pistol scared her off?

“Did she get snatched up by some tatami maker?”

To that question, the shrewd madam evaded with a noncommittal "Well, who can say?" “Call someone over.”

“Yes, yes. “I’ll bring out a good girl for you, so please treat her well.” Here, it wasn’t out of some stubborn pride—the kind where a man’s dignity would crumble if he returned home defeated just because Wakamurasaki was gone—that I summoned another prostitute. Rather, I wanted to avoid spending my first night back in Tokyo with Namiko, who waited at the inn. Tonight would be the worst possible time, I thought. By “worst possible,” I meant this—though Namiko and I had kept up this pretense of being husband and wife throughout our journey, our relationship had stayed chaste. Even I marveled at how I’d never once touched her. It wasn’t that I lacked desire—more that I’d sworn not to lay hands on amateur girls. As for Namiko, I believed her participation in this marital charade sprang purely from her desperate wish to reach the capital, not from any romantic notions. Keeping my hands to myself was my paltry way of repaying Namiko for saving me from peril—or so I’d convinced myself.—

A young prostitute appeared as my replacement companion. She was long-torsoed with an unnaturally large face. She had slapped pure white makeup onto her large face, making it appear all the larger for it. She said in a honeyed voice, “How about favoring me instead of her?” she said. On my part, I didn’t recognize this woman’s face, but she knew I had been Wakamurasaki’s regular. She sidled up to me, “I’m so happy.”

“What’s there to be happy about?”

“Because I’ve liked you all along,” she said in that honeyed voice, sidling closer until I could feel her breath. “But with her around, I never got my chance.” What rotten lies, I thought, bile rising at her transparent act. “It’s boiling in here—keep your distance.” “How cruel you are!”

“I’m saying it’s hot because it’s hot.” “Oh my, what a scary face...” “The real terror starts now.” I roughly thrust my hand into the woman’s crotch. “No! How rough!” “Don’t talk like some damn amateur.” “You’re hateful! You’re doing this rough stuff on purpose…” “Roughness is my territory.” “Even though it’s our first time together, hey, big brother, don’t be so rough. I just can’t get into it.” “I don’t give a damn about mood or whatever. All I want is your ----.”

I’d censored it with dashes for decency’s sake, but I wanted to make myself as vulgar as humanly possible. Not content with merely vulgar behavior, I made my words vulgar too, blurting out ever more despicable things as I— “What the—you’re bald down there?”

“I’m sorry.”

Her meek compliance only irritated me further. I'm no stockbroker—I don't avoid her just because she's a blank slate. If anything,

“Bald pussy’s a riot.” The woman—a prostitute yet demurely ashamed of her hairlessness, her large face flushed crimson—I suddenly knocked down and roughly flipped up her long underrobe, whereupon she swiftly turned face-down to hide her front. So like someone hiding their head but leaving their ass exposed, I gave her now-bare buttocks a sharp smack with my hand,

“I’d heard the talk, but this was my first time getting a real look at it.” “Hey—show me properly.”

“No-o, no-o,” the woman struggled, “I’m not some spectacle!” “What the hell are you talking about? If you hate being looked at, then why don’t you refuse to show your cunt too?” Did I need something this cruel to erase from my heart the resolve to kill that I had committed myself to? “If you don’t wanna show it, I’ll take a look with my hands. What a high-class ass you’ve got.” Perhaps because she was bare, I pressed down on the strangely sweaty “bowl” of her crotch with my hand and roughly forced my fingers in—

“You’re insufferable! What am I supposed to do if you mess up my important equipment?”

The woman finally bristled. The way she said it was so absurd, I nearly burst out laughing, but—

“You’re bitching about every little thing. “The whore I paid for—I can do whatever the hell I want with her.” By acting despicably, I felt a pleasure that could almost be called physiological. “Are you trying to make a spectacle out of me?” “You think this is rough? “It’s ’cause you don’t listen.” “You’re the first customer I’ve ever had who’s this despicable.” “You’re my first whore like this too.” If men derive pleasure from sadism, do women find theirs in masochism? Even after I’d pinned her down, that whore kept calling me despicable,

“Still? You’re wearing out the edges.” As she kept muttering such complaints, she suddenly grew serious, and when she let out a scream utterly unlike her work moans, even I was stunned. It was an earsplitting scream—as if I were murdering someone.

After that—whether she was embarrassed or resentful— “You’re despicable.”

“You’re despicable,” said the woman. “Ah! Heave-ho! Hand over the damn paper!” Like a victory chant, I sang the Asakusa Yasugi-bushi folk tune across her belly. In those Asakusa flophouses back then, patrons would chorus certain words during this “Essassa” part—words I’ll blushingly omit here.

The next day, I returned around noon to the inn where I had left Namiko alone. Namiko was nowhere to be seen. I immediately thought she’d gone out sightseeing in Tokyo or something, but that wasn't it. There was a farewell note, and in it—"I’ll let you know once I’ve found a live-in position"—written in neater handwriting than I’d expected.

“Huh. Is that so?”

I felt pain in my heart, so instead I sneered coldly, “She’s a strong-willed woman.”

She hadn’t written anything superfluous. That very fact made the single sheet of paper feel unnaturally heavy in my hand. "Do whatever you want."

I left the inn, intending to return the pistol to Lieutenant Kitaizumi as soon as possible. I figured if the military police tailing me got their hands on it, they’d make a fuss, but I still felt resentful about simply handing it back to the lieutenant as-is. A strong light blazed down. I felt like blasting a pistol bullet into my own head. Just because I’d spent a single night with a prostitute didn’t mean my mind would calm down so easily.

I went to Roppongi by train. When I transferred there, the next stop was Regiment Front. There was a tram stop right in front of the regiment where Lieutenant Kitaizumi was stationed, but since it was a mere block away, I got off at Roppongi and walked the rest of the way. Some time ago, I had gone to visit him at that regiment's officers' quarters demanding he hand over the pistol quickly. The dormitory for unmarried officers stood in a hollow that descended to the left after passing through the barracks gate - a gloomy single-story building where young officers dreaming of the Kinki Revolution had once radiated rainbow-like fervor.

I tried to go to that dormitory and requested a meeting with the sentry. Then came the reply that Lieutenant Kitaizumi was at the training field. During daytime hours, there was no reason for officers to be in the dormitory. Even knowing that, had the heat left me dazed? Tsking at my own carelessness, I exited the barracks gate and trudged along a roundabout path toward the training field. Because I was hungry, I bought some bread at a bakery I spotted along the way.

Perhaps from walking beneath the scorching sky, my head burned fiercely. Yet within that burning head lay only hollow emptiness. This void might explain my carelessness. We anarchists had been sneered at as 'mindless' by those Bolshevik dogs, but now I clearly felt that very mindlessness within myself.

Having come to the training field, I sat down in the shade of a tree and wiped my sweat. The sound of shooting practice reached me. I couldn't tell where Lieutenant Kitaizumi was.

The bread's paper bag rustled annoyingly around my hands. "Maybe I should eat here," I thought. I began tearing into the crumbling jam bread. Then a black dog materialized from nowhere, fixing its gaze on me from a distance as I ate. "You hungry too? Mosa koke—starving, huh?" Even I—who'd shown prostitutes nothing but cruelty—found myself softening toward this animal. A filthy stray all skin and bones. It kept its hindquarters angled away from me, ready to bolt at any moment, while craning its neck in my direction. Those watchful eyes tracked me sideways from their sockets. The whole posture struck me as both ridiculous and pitiful—

“Alright, I’ll give you some too.” When I tore off some bread and threw it to him, the dog tucked his tail as if struck by a stone and fled in panic. Stupid mutt. But that stupid mutt, though having initially fled, lumbered back and pressed its nose to the ground to search for the bread. “Not there. It’s over here.” When I spoke, the dog flinched and began to flee. I stopped giving unnecessary directions.

The dog took the bread it had found into its mouth. No sooner had it gulped than it had nearly swallowed it whole.

“Well? Was it good?”

At that moment, I had not a shred of murderous intent—so it was. The dog looked at me with suspicious eyes. Not eyes grateful to me for giving bread, but eyes filled with suspicion—wondering why I’d thrown it—so it was. Wanting to make the dog aware of my goodwill, I threw another piece of bread to it.

The dog flinched and started to flee but this time only made a show of it without actually running away. It found the bread right away and gulped it down in an instant. I tossed a new piece of bread toward the dog with a light flick into the air. The dog caught it in its mouth. “Nice one!”

I praised it, but the dog kept watching me warily. Once again, I tossed the bread. I adjusted my throw to make it land closer than before. The wary dog, afraid to approach me, didn't catch it in its mouth. “What a cowardly mutt.” I continued throwing bread. Gradually shortening the throwing distance, I attempted to draw the dog closer to my side. It succeeded. The dog started coming very close. Even so, the dog’s demeanor showed clearly that it still didn’t trust me. That really grated on my nerves.

“Disgusting mutt.”

Suddenly, murderous intent flashed through my mind.

"I'll kill this damn mutt." I took out my pistol. The dog leapt back in shock. Had my murderous intent reached the dog?

“Hey, here you go.” I threw the bread right there. With a servile lowering of its head that seemed to say, "I don't like being threatened," the dog approached the bread. I pressed the pistol to my hip and held bread in my left hand, “Here...” I extended my hand and lured the dog closer. The dog wagged its tail for the first time and moved its mouth toward my hand. Now, of all times, the damn thing started wagging its tail. For a moment, I hesitated. But my finger had already pulled the trigger. Aiming for the heart—no, I didn't know where a dog's heart was located—but I judged that the area behind its front legs, unlike its gauntly hollowed belly, would give me better odds of hitting something vital.

It seemed like a perfect hit. With a piercing yelp, the damn dog leapt up from the ground. Then it thudded back down, lay fallen on its side, and scraped at the dirt with all four legs.

“Serves you right!” I didn’t know what I meant by “serves you right,” but I stood up straight and went to the dog’s side. When I tried to kick it, the dog raised its head and lunged to bite my leg. “What the...”

Into its snarling mouth, I fired a bullet. Twitching and convulsing its body, the pitiable dog—though I didn't see it as pitiable; on the contrary, I felt intense hatred—spewed a torrent of blood from its half-open mouth.

At the sound of the pistol shot, I saw people already rushing toward me. “So long.” With that, I withdrew from the spot. I bolted at full tilt.

Instead of assassinating General Ogaki, I had been killing stray dogs.

Part Four: Edamame-Smelling Fingers

At my Hongō boarding house, I received a letter from Namiko informing me she’d become a live-in maid at a small eatery. After returning the pistol to Lieutenant Kitaizumi, I went back to my old boarding house. While I was away, the boarding house landlord—who’d had Military Police stationed outside and even his place searched—had probably wanted to use this as a pretext to kick me out. But when I departed for Korea, I’d threatened him: “If you dare dispose of my room without permission while I’m gone—especially to keep my Korea trip secret—I won’t fucking stand for it.” Therefore, convinced that my room had surely been kept secure, I had informed Namiko about this place.

Upon returning to the boarding house, I immediately went to the Military Police headquarters myself, arrogantly leaned back and told them to do their worst. Even though I'd gone to Korea on official business, to have them tail me like a common criminal—what was the meaning of this? I roared back in protest: persecuting patriots was an outrage! Could becoming a 'nationalist' really make someone act this boldly? Compared to my anarchist days when I'd been treated like a traitor and denied basic human dignity, this was a world of difference. The military police treated me like a festering boil.

When I had made myself able to walk openly, fortunately Namiko’s letter arrived, and I promptly set out for her live-in workplace. I was anxious. It was an era where seeing a sign for "hostess recruitment" would make you think it meant waitressing—only to find the place was actually some disreputable brothel. This wasn't how it was supposed to be—this wasn't what we'd discussed—this was catastrophic! Even if she panicked and tried to run away now that things had come to this, it would already be too late. A botched Keian—if you got involved with a shady labor broker, who knew what might happen to some green girl fresh off the boat. That hairless courtesan who'd likely been snared in such a trap to become Yoshiwara's "caged bird"—though it reeked of hypocrisy for me, who'd treated her with outright cruelty rather than mere coarseness, to now worry over Namiko like this—had I really believed that once a woman fell into prostitution, she became equivalent to vermin?

In her letter, Namiko had written that at the small eatery, she went by the name Teruko. Though coincidental, this being identical to Clara's real name left me unsettled. The eatery's address on the envelope's back was in Nihonbashi—an area where even I, Tokyo-born, had never set foot, a place wholly disconnected from my world. That a shop coercing maids into clandestine prostitution could exist there seemed improbable, yet my very anxiety might prove how I—without conscious acknowledgment—had come to regard Namiko as precious and worth protecting.

The shop stood at a corner of the wholesale district. Confectioners, ice sellers, and Western-style restaurants catering to wholesale house employees formed one block of the area, and this small eatery seemed like the sort of place where clerks might stop for a drink after work. So while it looked more like a tavern than a proper restaurant, it maintained an air of sophistication by serving small dishes—though unfortunately, its second floor parlor for entertaining guests now lay exposed to the blazing western sun. Seeing no signs of illicit business, I felt temporary relief.

The storefront, cooled by freshly sprinkled water, already displayed an ornamental salt arrangement at its entrance, the wide-open doorway hung with a short indigo noren curtain. Though the shop had opened, no customers seemed to have entered yet at this hour. The absence of patrons made meeting Namiko here convenient, but the thought of abruptly playing customer filled me with such discomfort and embarrassment that I quietly circled around to the back alley.

Having entered the narrow alley while stealthily avoiding detection, I felt a certain sentimentality in my chest akin to that of a man visiting his beloved mistress. It wasn't half bad. This act of likening myself to such a figure carried a sweet melancholy, momentarily imparting a pleasant dampness to the dusty aridity of my heart—like a parched road. The main street lay as parched as my heart, yet this alley remained damp and humid, its planks spanning a ditch teeming with bush mosquitoes rotting away beneath precarious footing. At that moment, none of this registered as concern.

When I went to the back entrance, I noticed a woman who appeared to be Namiko's colleague—though much older—using a toothpick as she happened to be passing through, and I called out to her.

“Teruko—is she here?” I started to say “Teruko-san” but dropped the honorific. In that moment of omission and hesitation, I interjected my own thoughts. Written out, it would be: “Teruko. What a stupid name they’d given her. Is she here?”—it would end up like this. The woman paid no attention to me, a visitor from the back entrance, and with her mouth still holding a toothpick, “Teru-chan.” “Someone’s here!”

she said in an annoyed tone. “I wonder who?” The voice of Teruko—that is, Namiko—reached me from right nearby. When I peered in, Namiko herself was right there in the shadow of some objects. Perched solidly on an empty soy sauce barrel, she used hefty pruning shears to snip edamame from their stems with crisp snaps. Although wearing an apron, she had her legs spread boldly like a man, wedging a sieve between her thighs and dropping edamame into it. That indecent posture—something an inexperienced girl shouldn’t be capable of (or perhaps precisely because she’s inexperienced, she could?)—made me,

(Hmm, this girl...?) Just as something jolted me, "Oh, big brother."

Namiko blurted out. It was less that she said it and more that she blurted it out. Unlike a courtesan’s “big brother,” this “big brother” meant an actual blood-related brother. How dare she be so brazen—yet there was a refreshing clarity in how effortlessly she’d uttered those words, blowing away all my fretting over how that Namiko was getting along. To this woman suddenly thrown into Tokyo’s murky currents—to whom I’d offered no helping hand—it felt as though I were seeing an unexpectedly vibrant Namiko pop her head up from the swirling waters right there, as if to say, *"Look at me now!"*

Namiko’s face glistened with sweat as though she’d been doused with water. It was a valiant gleam. Not working reluctantly, she was enjoying working proactively of her own accord. It was a healthy gleam that declared as much.

Namiko stood up smoothly on the wet wooden floor; after just a week in Tokyo, her height seemed to have stretched upward instantly, leaving both the older woman and me flustered. She wore high-toothed *suige-so* clogs. Wiping her hands on her apron, “Miss. About ten minutes—please cover for me.”

After saying this, she removed her apron, rolled it up neatly, and briskly set it aside. She then briskly tried to straighten her disheveled yukata by tugging vigorously at the front panel, but pulled too hard, causing the side seam to shift forward. “Go home quickly. The madam will scold me if...” To Namiko’s retreating back—her clogs creaking as she headed deeper into the shop—and to the woman who had spoken those words,

"I'm sorry." This was what I had said. It felt like humility from another self—this self who had brutally killed an innocent stray dog devoid of sin or blame. One could say this humility was born from that cruelty, or that through that cruelty I'd regained some semblance of decency. Namiko emerged having swapped her high-toothed geta for low wooden clogs. At the alley's mouth where I waited, she came hurrying toward me with what looked like eager steps—only to thud her shoulder against my chest. She hadn't been running so breathlessly that she couldn't stop. Her face showed not eagerness but sullen displeasure. Simultaneously, I saw that female colleague poke her head from the back door, casting a prying stare our way. Whatever shattered her indifference must have been in Namiko's bearing.

“What do you want?” As we exited the alley, I said to Namiko words open to multiple interpretations. “For now I’m still doing menial work…” Namiko replied immediately in a cheerful voice. Having said this as if it were the first thing she needed to report,

“I have to work hard and make a kimono...” This was a murmur directed at herself. Without a kimono, she couldn’t work in the shop? “Alright, how about I buy you a kimono as thanks?” “Thanks for what?” It was a snapping voice. “It’s hot—how about we get something iced to drink?” “Let’s walk.” We couldn’t talk at the ice shop with people around. Having said that, Namiko avoided the main street where wholesale workers were packing goods by the roadside and led me into an inconspicuous alley. Getting out of the blazing sun and into the shade came as a relief.

While watching the hollow at the nape of Namiko's neck as she walked ahead, I found myself recalling stems of summer weeds growing in wasteland—hardy yet pitifully resilient wild grass. That she'd come to Tokyo with a complete stranger—a wanted man like me—meant she must have been a woman of fortitude, yet here she was already putting down roots alone in this city. When I inadvertently let slip an admiring hum, "Whaaat?" "Well now—you never cease to surprise me." "Then what should I call you?"

She was nitpicking every little thing. "I have a proper name. "Kashiwai Shiro. "Commonly known as Mr. Shiro." "Mr. Shiro, you're a good person, aren't you?" "What's that supposed to mean? Did you think I was a bad man?" "If I thought you were a bad person, I wouldn't have come to Tokyo with you." "I returned the pistol."

I wanted to say something else. It wasn't like that courtesan's practiced line, but I'd wanted to say something that might set a mood. Yet here I was saying things that only wrecked it.

Then Namiko—it was Namiko who said something that shattered the mood even further.

“That night—the night we arrived in Tokyo—you went to a brothel, didn’t you?…”

“How did you know?” “You like brothels, don’t you.”

“Not really.” “You went straight to a brothel even in Keijo, didn’t you?” “I’m a man.” “Do all men like brothels?” “Let’s talk about something else.” I said, “You found a decent place here.” “Your shop?” “That’s good. Did you find it yourself?” “I do have acquaintances in Tokyo myself.” I jolted. A discomfort crept in. It was an odd sort of jealousy.

Namiko interposed as if to mediate, “May I come visit your house?”

“It’s a crappy boarding house.” “So I can’t come?” “You can’t come. But it’s just too filthy… I’ll be moving to a cleaner boarding house soon. Just wait a bit longer.”

There was another reason I had said that. As someone who was supposed to participate in the uprising, I didn't want to drag Namiko into any potential crossfire should things go wrong.

In front of the window of a small rented house, morning glory leaves grew thick like a sunshade. Unglazed pots stood lined up beneath thin bamboo poles that leaned toward the eaves, yet each morning glory strained its vines upward in competition. Though one could imagine how glorious their many blooms must have been at dawn, they now hung shriveled like clenched fists. A child was plucking those flowers. To keep the later blooms from growing stunted. Having dragged out a stepping stool, the child now stood atop it meticulously harvesting blossoms that had opened high above.

I took hold of Namiko’s hand and walked, swinging our clasped hands widely like schoolchildren on their way home. Namiko kept her hand in mine,

“I wrote to my sister asking about the luggage I left behind—you must’ve been surprised.” “My sister must be furious.” “Rather than getting angry, she’s probably more worried about you.” “Hmm.” “But that might not really be the case.” “You’re steady enough to be fine—or so I think.”

“I’m not blood-related to my sister.” “So she’s not your real sister?” “I’m Mom’s child from her previous marriage.” As we had this conversation—not that I wasn’t listening intently to Namiko’s story, but rather the opposite—I was struck by something stronger than an illusion: the conviction that I had long been a dead person. To put it that way would differ from what I truly felt at the time. This wasn’t mere fancy—it came to me as absolute certainty. Even though I was dead, here I stood breathing. How strange—that’s how it felt. It defied reason—a corpse walking the earth in blissful ignorance of its own decay. This was my true sensation. In other words, being alive felt like the illusion.

If I had used that pistol in Keijo back then, I likely would have been shot dead on the spot instead, and by now I would be a dead man. It did not stem from such an assumption. It existed independently of any premise. Suddenly, I felt a corpse within myself. I should have felt it much sooner, yet now I felt it with clarity. Through this manner of perception, I lost something akin to the tangible reality of being alive. And that loss filled my interior with something entirely different from emptiness—it would be better called a sense of fullness. By becoming aware of the dead within myself, I was instead alive.

I gripped Namiko's hand tight. It wasn't that I was trying to verify I was alive. Rather the reverse—through that act, I became inversely aware that I existed as a living human being of flesh and blood. This sensation of being alive struck me as somehow ill-fitting, discordant—something I perceived as fundamentally incompatible with myself. It left me peculiarly unsettled. Suddenly I brought Namiko's hand near my mouth—this odd act likely stemming from that restlessness—then pressed not to my lips but to my nose the dimpled hand where fingers met palm.

“You smell like edamame,” I said. Namiko stayed silent and wrenched her hand free. “Shiro-san.” “What?” Without warning, Namiko shoved me violently forward. I nearly crashed into an oncoming bicycle.

“What’re you doing?” “Shiro-san, go straight.” “Sounds like some cheap melodrama.” I’d joked like that because her earnestness had thrown me off balance.

“Well, fine then.”

“Well, fine then,” Namiko said and briskly walked away from me. “Hey, Nami-chan!” Namiko quickened her pace, then broke into a run and left me behind. “Hey, Nami-chan!”

I had been recalled for what would later be called the October Incident uprising plan, which had been devised in response to the Manchurian Incident that broke out in September.

Just before that incident, Suna had drifted back to Tokyo. His sun-blackened face evoked the hardships of his Manchuria sojourn, yet precisely for that reason appeared to have acquired an audaciously defiant countenance.

“I met Inosawa Ichitaro.” “That Teruko’s...? Where?” “He’s holed up at a hotel in Fengtian—living in luxury, I tell ya.” “Pimping out his own daughter as gasebiri and...” When I bristled, Suna inexplicably roared with laughter, “The old bastard doesn’t know a thing about that.” “What’s so damn funny?” “Irresponsible piece of shit.” “Same old Kashiwai.” his face practically shouting I hadn’t grown an inch,

“Of course I couldn’t tell the old man straight up that his daughter’s working in a brothel now, so I just said something like, ‘My comrade Kashiwai Shiro here was sweet on your daughter.’” “Sweet on her...?” “Thanks to that story, I got close to Mr. Inosawa and received a helluva lot of help. Maybe thanks to you, Kashiwai?” He guffawed again with his booming laugh—both his manner of laughing and that mocking way of talking now fully embodying the swagger of a continental ronin—yet as I stood there dumbfounded,

"I even met Kajikawa Hido-sensei."

“So you’re saying this Manchuria trip was on secret orders from Kodo-sensei...?” To that psychologically loaded question of mine, Suna didn’t answer, “While I was in Manchuria, seems you started cozying up to Lieutenant Kitaizumi’s crew as ‘comrades,’ eh?” “Well... From my side of things—” When I tried to explain myself defensively, “Save it. What I’m gettin’ at is—you really gonna play some third-rate gofer’s role? A man of your caliber treated like common muscle—it shames us all. How ’bout it? Wanna do real work with me?”

“Did you infiltrate the clandestine opium plantations?” “It was too dangerous to get into the interior.” As if physically dodging the question, Suna changed the subject.

“Kajikawa Hido-sensei’s one hell of an old man, I’m tellin’ ya.” “Met him comin’ back from China—got invited there as a state-guest and all.” “The Nationalist Government called him a benefactor of their revolution, had him attend Sun Yat-sen’s burial ceremony.” “Damn remarkable, I tell ya.” “But what really got me—he didn’t strut around like no fancy state-guest at all.” “Looked just like some old Chinatown cook runnin’ a noodle joint.” “Played it real humble too—‘Tasted proper local grub after ages,’ he says, ‘learned a thing or two.’ Like that meant somethin’.”

Despite Suna’s acrid words, Kajikawa Hido’s unflappable demeanor was clearly evident there. “I wonder if he’s truly withdrawn from state affairs altogether by now.” “State affairs...?” Suna wore a faint smile at my having come to use such words, “That’s why he was invited in the first place, I suppose.” “So he plunged right into the thick of the anti-Japanese movement?” Suna poured me a drink and, “When you hear Kajikawa Hido-sensei’s stories, most of today’s right-wing bigwigs turn out to have been supporters of the Chinese Revolution.” “Funny how things turn out, huh?”

“Interesting...?” “The Freedom and People’s Rights advocates have turned into nationalists.” “That’s Japan for you.” “Just wait—next it’ll be the socialists becoming nationalists.”

“Are you talking about me?” Suna brushed it off,

“Kajikawa Hido-sensei was thwarted in the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement and threw himself into the Chinese Revolution." "He tried to apply his own ideals within the Chinese Revolution." "When you think that Chinese Revolution finally achieved success and took its present form, it’s all ‘Down with Japan’ and ‘Overthrow Japanese imperialism’..."

“So they turned those earnest supporters of the Chinese Revolution into nationalists after all? Are you claiming China forced the champions of Greater Asianism into right-wing nationalism?” “Kajikawa Hido-sensei didn’t become a nationalist—he opened a Chinese diner instead.”

“Then what about Kodo-sensei…?” What kind of -ist was he, I wondered? Suna, however, seemed reluctant to discuss Kodo-sensei, “Saw some foreign broads doing naked dances in Harbin." "They’d strip bare-ass naked and dance." "That bush of theirs was all fuzzy-like, glowing goddamn golden." “Something else, I tell ya.” Leaning in conspiratorially, “Price’ll knock your socks off though." “Ten measly minutes—two girls per group—standard rate’s thirteen yen." “White Russkies with their mangled Japanese demanded a two-yen ‘tip,’ then screwed me outta fifteen.”

“When you say ‘two in a group’...?” “When you get there, about ten women come out and line up, and from that lineup, we’d pick two we wanted to see stark naked. Those two would then perform a naked dance in a separate room…”

This manner of Suna’s storytelling suggested he had faced no hardships whatsoever in Manchuria, yet one could also perceive it as him deliberately avoiding tales of struggle. “When the dance ended, the Russian guide had the nerve to say ‘Five yen for jorokai.’” “He said ‘jorokai’ in Japanese.” “The nude dancers do whoring too, you see.” “Watching costs fifteen yen and sleeping with them costs five yen—it’s strange that the latter’s cheaper, but apparently it’s bundled with the nude dance show for a total of twenty yen.” “So the jorokai is with both of them together?”

"That's for one person." "How'd that go?"

Glaring at me, Suna said he hadn't slept with them. "You're lying!" "It's true. When I saw such a blatant naked dance, I somehow felt sick to my stomach—it turned me right off. Besides, even if they said five yen for a jorokai, when it came down to it they'd probably swindle me again, and I didn't have that kind of cash anyway..."

“Even so, how’d you come up with that kind of cash…?”

I was dumbfounded that such money even existed. “When you’re over there, money just flows in naturally. Even without scheming, you won’t lack for money. That’s what makes the colonies so damn intriguing.”

Suna, who had made this bold declaration, was quite drunk.

Whether it was due to drunkenness or feigned intoxication meant to draw me into his circle through intimate confession, Suna began speaking about opium. Though strict prohibition orders had been publicly issued regarding opium - meaning of course that collecting it from poppy pods or openly cultivating those poppies in fields was forbidden. They were secretly cultivating it deep in Manchuria's hinterlands. Suna - who had earlier denied visiting those secret cultivation sites - now described to me an opium harvesting method in such vivid detail it seemed he'd witnessed it firsthand.

“Putting it into words makes it sound simple enough. Right after the poppy flowers drop, you take a sharp knife and score shallow cuts into those pods—just light scratches.”

First, Suna said to start at the base, then demonstrated with hand gestures how to make a half-circumference cut. “White sap immediately oozes out from these cuts.” “Hurry and collect that with your fingertips into a can.” “One makes the cuts; the other collects the sap.” “This too is done in pairs like the naked dance—this team is called an ippatō.” “Payments and everything else—it’s all based on this ippatō as the unit.” “By the next day, you make similar wounds on the poppy bulb’s opposite side.” “They do that once daily for two weeks.” “Starting from the poppy bulb’s base, gradually working their way up to the top…”

While this makes it sound simple, Suna added that actually making those cuts was quite difficult for amateurs. If you cut too deeply into the epidermis, the sap flows inward and doesn’t come out. Getting the sap to ooze out properly requires a certain knack. Moreover, if rain falls even once during sap collection, water gets into the wounds and rots the poppy bulbs. Once that happens, the sap can no longer be collected. Even if the pod doesn’t rot, once it hardens, the sap flow becomes poor.

“The sap collected this way gets poured onto oilpaper spread with bean oil, prepared to a depth of about an inch, then exposed to direct sunlight for two days.” “As you dry it while stirring constantly, it hardens into something like candy.” “This is opium.” “The hotter the sun—meaning the more times you stir—the higher quality opium you get.” “This pure stuff’s what they call ‘great smoke’ over there—but regular opium’s cut with additives called ryaozi till it’s only a quarter strength.” “For this opium crop, they sow poppy seeds around late April, start harvesting from mid-July, and by August the new product’s circulating through the markets...”

"That period lines up perfectly with when you were away, Mr. Suna." "Poppies come in red and white flowers, but it's the white ones they use for opium." "Deep in the woods, there's this gaping white poppy field - so damn beautiful it hurts your eyes." "What made you go after opium of all things, Mr. Suna? The money?" "Just the money?" "It's not only that." "The profits? They're obscene." "Don't breathe a word of this to anyone." "Got me?" "Not even Kodo-sensei gets to hear this."

Suna drove the point home with a stern expression.

Part Five: Uprising Plan

This Suna had not participated in the uprising plan. Even during the previous March Incident, he had been away in mainland Japan and remained unrelated to it. Was that why he couldn’t join this time either? Since Kodo-sensei himself was involved in this uprising plan, Suna could naturally have participated had he wished to. Yet Suna himself had made no attempt to do so. When I met Kodo-sensei and asked, “Why isn’t Suna participating?”—

“That man is quite shrewd.” Kodo-sensei said bitterly, "He might be of the same stripe as Inosawa Ichitaro." "I heard he met Inosawa in Harbin." “Oh? Is that so?” “Then has he already joined Inosawa’s ranks?” “I heard he also met Mr. Kajikawa Hido.” “That I heard from Kajikawa Hido himself.” “Though he did call Mr. Suna an interesting man...” This Kodo—according to Suna’s account—had been urged by Kajikawa to accompany him when invited by the Nationalist Government, but refused. Both had devoted themselves equally to the Chinese revolution, yet only senior member Kajikawa received an invitation—none came for Kodo. Thereupon Kajikawa declared that if Kodo wished to join him, he would petition their hosts to extend a joint invitation. He had even vowed to Kodo-sensei that should their consent prove unforthcoming, he himself would decline to go.

Kodo-sensei refused this. He refused not so much the act of accompanying as the trip to China itself. He did not deem it acceptable to go to China, which was vocally anti-Japanese. Moreover, the reason for his refusal was not only that but also because those on the other side perceived that Kodo-sensei, unlike in the past, had now become a nationalist, and thus deemed it appropriate to invite only Kajikawa Hido.

“Mr. Suna respected Mr. Kajikawa Hido too.” “He might’ve felt closer to Mr. Kajikawa Hido.” I’d tried defending my old comrade Suna, but Kodo-sensei—as if replying to me—snapped his palm-fiber fly swatter sharply. “Why’re there so damn many flies this year?” He said it like I was to blame, “It’s nearly autumn, yet look at these pests. They write ‘May fly’ but make you read it as ‘nuisance,’ but with these September flies around, they ought to rewrite it as ‘September fly.’”

After muttering such things,

“It would be better not to force Mr. Suna.” “Right...” “It would be better not to say anything to Mr. Suna.” He said as if admonishing me for my loose lips and swatted another fly. Though in less than a month, an upheaval that would turn the world upside down was set to occur, Kodo-sensei—one of its masterminds—acted as though he had no connection whatsoever to this grand affair. As if swatting flies were his sole occupation, he diligently, yet leisurely wielded his fly swatter. I was even made to feel a bewildering sense that something was off.

That a colossal event would soon occur—I was thrumming with anticipation. My nerves were alight. I let it spill carelessly across my face and tongue. Of course this wasn’t how I comported myself before just anyone—it was precisely because I stood before Kodo-sensei himself. Yet seeing me thus, he wore an expression both disappointed and artfully blank, as though placing little stock in our scheme—or rather, as one already tasting the bitter dregs of disillusionment.

Did he appear that way because Kodo-sensei—having thrown himself into the Chinese Revolution and wandered death's edge multiple times—unlike someone like me, possessed unshakable composure? With that calm yet somewhat altered expression, "You'd do well to watch your back too." When Kodo-sensei said "you too"—including himself in that—I thought he was referring to the current plan, but... "Your intention to go to Korea seems to have been found out." "To Kurobii—no—uh, to the Military Police?"

“It’s the Ogaki faction’s people.” “Are the Ogaki faction’s people targeting me?” “At present, there’s no sign of that.”

Kodo-sensei swatted another fly and said, “Even though we had you come all the way back from Keijo, we haven’t entrusted you with any particularly important work. You must be quite disappointed.” His words felt like cold water dashed over my excitement. “No, not at all.” “I see.” Kodo-sensei replied curtly. Suna had also asked me, “Are you content being a lowly henchman?” I hadn’t tried pressuring Suna to join us either—perhaps his refusal came from that same unwillingness to stoop to such a role.

"Sanshita"—that's what Suna had called it, though he'd arbitrarily shortened "sanshita yakko" to just "sanshita." I doubted "sanshita" was even a proper term—but by Suna's phrasing, I'd joined the coup plot as a lowly henchman. Being a lowly henchman suited me well enough—not that it fully defined my role—but the plan itself thrilled me to no end. Compared to the March Incident, this scheme burned far more violently. Since the last attempt had fizzled out, our resolve to strike decisively this time must have stoked that ferocity.

In the case of the March Incident—which I had been scheduled to participate in as a bomber—though it involved throwing explosives at targets like the Prime Minister’s official residence and party headquarters, they had only used bombs with minimal lethality for intimidation purposes. Even the assault on the Diet building amounted to nothing more than an attempt to forcibly extract mass resignations from cabinet ministers on the spot. However, in this new plan, they intended to storm into the cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister’s official residence and slaughter every last one of them—the Prime Minister and all his ministers—right then and there. They meant to cut them down without giving them a chance to utter a word.

It was utterly exhilarating. This was the very definition of blood boiling and flesh dancing! Just sniping General Ogaki alone would have made me leap for joy, but slaughtering all those ministers instead of a single assassination—how delightful! Could anything be more gratifying? What true colors would those ministers—so snug in their seats of power—show when faced with naked blades? Protected by their status, those bastards arrogantly sprawled in their ministerial chairs would surely—no, *undoubtedly*—crumble pathetically when cornered. Utterly spineless—that much was certain.

“If you’d just hear me out—” Their whimpering would still be the better reaction, “Have mercy!” they might even grovel on their knees. Just imagining it made my heart race. I’d never met them in person, but I’d seen their newspaper photos—those bastards in gaudy gold-braided formal attire, sporting ridiculous catfish mustaches meant to intimidate, chests puffed out self-importantly. What blubbering faces would those bugsquashers make?

“P-p-please… At least spare my life…” They’d no doubt make such a disgraceful spectacle of themselves. Just imagining it was enough to soothe my burning indignation. This wasn’t about stealthily sniping General Ogaki alone in the heavily guarded streets of Keijo—this time, soldiers would march out in force and spectacularly slaughter those ministers. Even a modest sniping mission had me burning with fighting spirit—how could I possibly resist such grand-scale terrorism?

Not only would we bring down the sword of retribution upon the ministers who lorded over politics, but we would simultaneously strike at the financial bosses as well. Lieutenant Kitaizumi and his men claimed this was unavoidable to sever the moneyed roots of plutocratic rule, but I saw it as natural recompense for their accumulated evils. The young officers framed it as an undesirable last resort to purge political corruption—but to me, this was eminently desirable. The perfect method of vengeance. Peasants crawled through dirt yet starved, laborers wallowed in grease while wearing rags, yet capitalists lived in comfort and excess—never sweating their brows, never soiling their hands—raked in mountains of gold, amassing wealth for its own sake. How could such lawlessness stand? Against such lawlessness, lawless retaliation became justice itself. When faced with decades of lawlessness, how dare they call one lawless act unlawful?

Politics that uphold lawlessness must be destroyed. Such a contradictory society must be overthrown. We must incite riots and crush those who suck the people's lifeblood like flies. Those politicians—badgers from the same filthy hole—must be cut down and wiped out without mercy. No—to hell with reason—I burned for riots, craved slaughter, hungered for bloodshed. Logic be damned—my veins throbbed with bloodlust.

We would also storm the Metropolitan Police Headquarters—if they resisted this coup launched in the people's name, the plan called for immediately unleashing machine gun fire to seize control by force. This audacious scheme thrilled me to the core. Not merely bloodthirsty, but ruthlessly efficient. A revolution must be exactly like this. I yearned to embrace the coming bloodbath. Even playing some lackey's role would suffice.

A lowly henchman like me wasn't given any detailed prior explanation about such coup plans. I'd casually heard the general outline from Lieutenant Kitaizumi and his men, but precisely because it remained an outline, its ferocity stood out all the more vividly in my imagination, stirring my blood even further.

Lieutenant Kitaizumi and the other young officers were mere underlings themselves. The ones who would actually mobilize the coup's most vital and indispensable military force were these unit-attached officers—the soldiers they deployed from their regiments were meant to become the driving force when executing the uprising. Yet above these young officers sat senior officers comprising a leadership body, immovably entrenched. These field-grade staff officers considered themselves the true driving force.

The young officers who had failed in the March Incident concluded that the fundamental flaw lay in the military leadership's involvement in the plan, and resolved to execute their next attempt entirely through their own hands. Yet when implementing their patriotic ambitions, they still sought understanding and support from staff officers sharing their ideals. Having learned their lesson from prior failures, they avoided generals and selected field-grade officers instead. This was indeed necessary to resolve post-uprising complications. From this perspective, they essentially co-opted what they considered progressive staff officers—only to find reality inverted. It became akin to being eagerly embraced by those who had long awaited such an opening. In a military rigidly obsessed with hierarchy, senior officers instead seized leadership authority, relegating the young officers to lowly henchmen's roles.

But those young officers believed that it was they who truly commanded the troops. No matter how much the staff officers put on airs as leaders, without unit-attached officers who could mobilize troops when the time came, they could accomplish nothing. Out of such self-assurance, they resigned themselves to being lowly henchmen—but the senior officers, for their part, believed that if they simply issued orders to the unit-attached officers, a single command could mobilize the troops. These senior officers were in collusion with the Kwantung Army in Manchuria and had instigated the Manchurian Incident. This had been planned since the failure of the March Incident—one could even say the Kwantung Army instigated the affair by relying on central backing—but they were equally aiming to establish a military dictatorship. The unit-attached officers in their role as lowly henchmen could also be seen as having been exploited for those ambitions.

One night, I met with the staff officers of the leadership at a geisha house in Akasaka. Lieutenant Kitaizumi had taken me there, but I had always hated these high-class geisha houses. I didn’t dislike common brothels and whorehouses—no, I loved them—but I hated how these places were no different in essence yet put on such sophisticated airs. Maybe it was resentment toward how the bourgeoisie monopolized them. “I’ll introduce you to the leadership. You should meet them.”

Since Lieutenant Kitaizumi insisted, I went to that kisuba banquet. If it weren't for that, I wouldn't have gone.

It was my first time in Akasaka. It was utterly different from the cheap geisha houses of Kagurazaka. Nothing like the geisha parties with Kagurazaka entertainers I knew. I felt self-conscious about my scuffed shoes. All the more reason I— “So this is their den of operations?”

I said to the lieutenant in a tone dripping with outrage. Were they emulating Ōishi Kuranosuke carousing in Gion, trying to blind the public's eyes? This Akasaka district thrived on military patronage—a place where soldiers swaggered unchecked. I hadn't known that history. A lavish banquet sprawled across the spacious tatami hall. Here we were preparing to crush the bourgeois vermin, yet they aped their very manners. What madness is this? I thought, watching senior officers pass sake to junior ones under the guise of morale-boosting. Where did they get funds for such extravagance? Lieutenant Kitaizumi showed no particular gratitude for their liberally poured hospitality.

When they had the geishas leave to discuss matters privately—perhaps because the alcohol had taken effect—the conversation turned to topics like the lineup for the post-coup cabinet organization. It seemed they had already drawn up a cabinet list, acting as if everything were settled. The Prime Minister and all ministers were military personnel. Most were generals. And the Minister of Finance was a civilian, with Ogawa Akiaki’s name listed.

"I have a question," I said. "What cabinet position does Kodo-sensei hold?" I hadn't meant it seriously. "What? Kodo?"

The one who spat out these words was the central figure among the staff officers. At the time a lieutenant colonel, he was a man who would later create a fascist political group. With a look of contempt that said, "What does this meddler think he's doing?" "What about Minami Ikko-sensei?"

Continuing, I said from the lowest seat,

“Those behind-the-scenes types can’t be brought out into the open.” This was the reply. The ministerial candidates were mostly among the generals, and this lieutenant colonel was being slated for Home Minister. “Even Kodo-sensei wouldn’t want to become some minister.” “Even if you ordered him to become one, he wouldn’t.” Since I wasn’t a military man and had no obligation to worry about being deemed disrespectful to superiors, I laid it out straight. “Kodo-sensei isn’t the type to act for his own personal advancement.”

“Is that so?” The lieutenant colonel dismissed me with a contemptuous snort. At that moment, Lieutenant Kitaizumi—

“We are of the same mind,” he said, declaring their most ardent desire was to restore all things unto His August Majesty with due reverence. “When our cause triumphs, in humble atonement for having presumed to disturb His August Majesty’s divine contemplation, we must perform seppuku at Nijubashi Bridge—such is our solemn resolve.” I felt remorse toward the lieutenant who had brought me there, for my words had seemingly provoked him into making this drunkenly confrontational declaration to his superior.

“We must also consider the crimes of disrupting military regulations and violating national law.”

he said in a serious voice. To my ears, moved by how noble it all sounded,

“That I understand.” A voice came from the upper seats. “I understand perfectly well—but how exactly do you intend to clean up this mess? Irresponsibly abandoning everything and trying to act like the good boy all by yourself—what kind of behavior is that?”

“I have no intention of playing the good child.” “You can die whenever you please.”

After the reprimand, he changed his tone and said that the leadership was considering appropriate rewards for you all. This was just like during the March Incident.

“Call in the geishas. “Hey, you women! “Get in here.” Lieutenant Kitaizumi and his group had begun showing passive attitudes toward the coup plan. Due to distrust in the leadership, some unit-attached officers started declaring they would withdraw. I was growing sick of it all.

Rumors had reached me that if the coup were to succeed, parts of the military would assassinate Kodo-sensei. The reason was his influence over the young officers. He’d become a nuisance—stirring up those meddlesome lieutenants. The military’s factional strife fed into this too. They weren’t targeting Kodo directly, but their infighting seemed to have birthed a plot to eliminate him as collateral damage. The concrete reality of these factions within the army had crystallized for me—the Seigun-ha, Control Faction, Imperial Way Faction, Kokutai Genri-ha, names that would later stick. I’ll spare you the tangled details of their ideologies, but their petty squabbles ate away at my soul.

Should I withdraw too? There were times I thought that way, but withdrawing from such an exhilarating plan felt utterly regrettable. Given what I'd witnessed with my own eyes at that Akasaka meeting place—how things were progressing—there was a fear it might end in failure again, yet I couldn't bear to let this plan fizzle out. Perhaps fueled by wishful thinking, I grew convinced this time wouldn't end in failure. The reason being—ugly ambitions and lust for power entangled within this scheme would surely prove more potent driving forces than any pure, childlike sense of justice. Ambition would compel them to execute this plan recklessly. I became certain of it. Not every unit-attached officer had turned away entirely.

Hurriedly, I went to see Maruman. Having laid out the general plan to Maruman, I argued that now was the time for anarchists to rise up in coordination with the uprising.

“I’ll bring the weapons and explosives from the military.”

“Yamaarashi (riot)?” “If those Bolshie bastards try to meddle, we’ll grab ’em and line ’em up for a firing squad.” “That’s exhilarating!” Maruman clapped his hands— “Shiro-san, that’s undoubtedly exhilarating, but if we dawdle around, won’t we just end up helping the fascists?” “We’ll turn it around and use them instead.” “Are you saying we’ll turn this Brokered Revolution into a Black Flag Revolution?” Maruman scowled at this evidence of their still-weak strength,

“What did Suna-san say?” “I’ve only told you about this, Maru-san. If you inform everyone and it gets leaked beforehand, we’re finished. I need you to gather the tekiya comrades and have them ready to scatter in all directions at a moment’s notice.”

“Alright, I’m in.” “Got it.” “So then…?” “With the military’s uprising, Tokyo’ll plunge into chaos.” “At that time, we’ll set fire to key locations throughout Tokyo—ignite conflagrations.” “We’ll have Maru-san’s comrades handle this.” “It’s a job that can be done with just one hontorashi (match).” “No need to fret ’bout things like insufficient manpower.” “I see—so we’re the firestarters. The instigators of the Yamaarashi (riot).” “The firestarters of the Yamaarashi (riot), huh?” “Even during the Rice Riots, just a single housewife shoutin’ ‘Smash the rice merchants!’ was all it took to ignite those massive arson attacks.” “If you set a spark to the people’s hearts—hearts filled with daily grievances—they’ll erupt all at once.” “Immediately becomes a riot.”

I grew excited by my own words. I told Maruman here the thing I most wanted to do.

“For years—those bastards who’ve tormented the people—one by one, I’ll string ’em up by the neck from Ginza Street lampposts like in foreign revolutions.” “How’s that? Exhilarating, ain’t it?” “Damn, that’s brutal!”

Two or three years ago, one of our anarchist comrades had gone down Ginza smashing every show window along the street. He had vented his rage against society that way, but got hauled in by the cops and beaten so badly his eyeballs were nearly crushed.

“I’ll track down that cop too and string him up by the neck.” “What’ll happen to the cops then?” “The cops will come under the command of the uprising forces. They won’t get to bitch about it.” I asserted forcefully, “Yamaarashi isn’t our only objective. While inciting riots in the city, we must seize control of the factories with our own hands and establish revolutionary committees in each one.” “Then the Bolshies will show up.” “Why are you being so timid, Maru-san? Those Bolshie bastards may chant their high-sounding slogans day in and day out, but have they ever managed to actually start a riot? They go on about ‘the people’s revolutionary energy this’ and ‘transitioning from economic struggle to political struggle that’—all smooth talk—but who’s actually capable of channeling that revolutionary energy into real riots? It’s not those Bolshie bastards—it’s us. When they see that, all the workers will come rushing to follow us—the ones with real drive. First of all, we have weapons. Revolutionary committees will be formed among the soldiers too, and they’ll swiftly supply weapons to the factory committees.”

I had grown drunk on my own words.

“After the coup, the military will form a cabinet of military men. And we’ll present the workers’ demands. At last—it’s the showdown between the Brokered Revolution and the Black Flag Revolution. The military has soldiers, but we’ve got the people. Soldiers are people too. So then—which side’ll win? Come on, Maru-san—let’s do this.”

Part Six: The Jailhouse Arhat

October 17, 1931—the uprising was to be carried out on this day of the Kannamesai Festival.

On this day, over a dozen bombers from the Kasumigaura Air Corps and several aircraft from the Shimoshizu Air Corps were scheduled to sortie in support of the ground uprising forces. Depending on how events unfolded, they would "implement" (a military term of the time) intimidation bombing runs to cover the ground forces.

This plan differed from the March Incident in its grand scale. Lieutenant Kitaizumi and his group withdrew from participation, but naval officers from Yokosuka Naval District joined instead. Yet ultimately, several battalions of infantry regiments led by army officers formed its core force.

I coordinated our riot plans with Maruman. It wasn’t just about setting fires at key locations in the city. We would seize substations and such with our own hands. Separate from the attacks to be carried out by the military, it was necessary to create massive chaos within the city. The occupation of substations was also a means for that purpose. As for the broadcasting station occupation—not included in the uprising forces' plan—how were we to handle that?

A coup d'état aimed at seizing power would be satisfied with eliminating the ruling class's upper echelons, but we needed a mass uprising. The uprising forces would likely mobilize to suppress it, but forcing them to disperse their military strength was our opening. Taking advantage of that gap, we had to carry out our revolution.

Maruman and I looked down at the nighttime city from the high ground. Here and there, small lights were lit in the windows of houses. The distant lights twinkled as if whispering something to us. The modest happiness of the petit bourgeois was quietly twinkling.

This city would transform into a hellish battlefield overnight. It was a pity that citizens would suffer the revolution’s collateral damage, but (They’ve wallowed in their complacency…)

There was no need for sympathy. I faced the lights that whispered to me and muttered these words.

The cold night wind felt pleasant against my flushed cheeks. I hated complacency. I might have been envious of their tranquil happiness. Yet in this peaceful nighttime city, Namiko—Namiko too lived here. Amidst the night's modestly glowing lights, Namiko too was living. Namiko, who lived bravely and modestly—how could I hate her? In that moment, I discovered within myself that I loved Namiko.

When I went to visit Namiko, I suddenly sensed a corpse inside me on the road. Am I trying to turn others into corpses like myself? Is that why I’m trying to transform this peaceful city into a city of death? These thoughts came to me. Is it because I am a corpse that I crave bloodshed and am drawn to cruelty?

“In the event of failure, I will take responsibility.”

"In our showdown with the Brokered Revolution—if the Black Flag Revolution is defeated—I'll kill myself with dignity." With that, "Talking about dying alone—don't go spouting that right-wing fanatic nonsense, Shiro." "Then I'll die together with you right under their gunfire."

Maruman bared his black gums and laughed,

“It’s not like things will go smoothly in one go anyway.”

“What the hell?” “Success ain’t the goal. The riot itself—that’s our purpose.” “Hmm.”

"Riots themselves are 'indispensable to fostering revolutionary spirit among oppressed masses.'" Bakunin had long declared this paramount. "That's right—destruction." "Destrurm!"

I said.

“Destroy to build.” *(destrurm et aedificabo)*—a phrase from *Figaro*, though Proudhon had quoted it to emphasize destruction. Anarchism’s banner bore these words in “letters of blood and flames”: “a free organization from the bottom up through voluntary association—an organization of working masses liberated from all constraints...an organization of liberated humanity, the creation of a new human world” (Bakunin). For this organization and creation, destruction was necessary above all else. For our ideals’ construction, riot came first.

“What’s important is the riot. To start a riot.” Maruman repeated. I found myself being provoked by him instead. “Stick with it, Shiro. Butter up those military men—flatter them with agetsugi sweet talk, trick them good, and make sure they pull this off clean.”

“What’s that?”

In the dark grass, something glinted. "It's just a stray cat." When Maruman said that, I'd already realized as much myself, but this realization only made me feel all the more repulsed.

That Oshama (cat), while making me recall the cats of Keijo, lumbered past. With only its eyeballs gleaming—but through those shining eyes—it glared at me as it went by. "If we end up swallowing 'kara'—failure—we'll just hightail it to Manchuria and wait for the next chance," said Maruman. To this tenacious urging, I retorted: "So we'll flee to Manchuria and become second-generation Tengu bandits?" This referenced the tanja leaders of Manchurian bandits—Japanese bandit chiefs—whose names Suna had told me about. Maruman too had heard these stories from Suna.

“Am I the second coming of Hakuryu?” Whether these were truly bandits remained unclear—they might have been posing as bandits to extort *hin* (gold) from Japanese in Manchuria—but according to Suna’s accounts, they were legendary figures.

“Wish the 17th would hurry up and get here.”

Maruman said like a child awaiting New Year’s. In the night city’s darkness, the sky-scorching flames I’d secretly envisioned were already blazing within Maruman’s eyes.

On the eve of the operation, I stayed at a cheap meeting house in Yotsuya with the civilian participants. Lodging houses would attract attention—that's why this meeting place had been chosen. I wanted to be alone to contact Maruman, but acting independently wasn't permitted. Since we couldn't risk exposing our plans for another Black Flag Revolution riot, I had to avoid solitary movements. I drank myself to sleep, but rest wouldn't come. The meeting house futon reeked of feminine scent. This stench dragged brothels into my memory, then Wakamurasaki. No—to speak truthfully—I who'd recalled Teruko and thought of Namiko, trying not to dwell on either, had summoned Wakamurasaki to mind instead. No—to speak the real truth—I wanted a woman.

I desperately wanted a woman. When I reached for my crotch, my cock stood rigid. I gripped the iron-hot rod with my hand. I used my hands to pin down my thrashing cock that begged for Yachi. That business with women—what Maruman’s street vendor crew called “fucking Yachi” or “humping Yachi” in their jargon. Through fucking Yachi I’d met Teruko and fallen for her. Not that I’d fallen first then fucked—whether I loved them or not never mattered. From when I first knew myself, I’d go straight to fucking Yachi. Not because I loved the woman—fucking Yachi was the whole point. Afterward I’d walk away clean. But with Teruko—fucking her made me love her.

I hadn't slept with Namiko. Yet now I clearly realized I'd fallen completely for this Namiko I hadn't slept with. This wasn't like how I'd fallen for Teruko. This wasn't like how I'd come to know Teruko. Why did I long for such a Namiko? Was it because I still didn't know what Namiko truly was? I realized one could fall for women they didn't know. Just as one could love women known through the body, so too could they love women unknown. Or rather, it was with unknown women that one might love even more intensely. This was what I'd been made to understand.

I still didn't know what riots were like. Yet I felt drawn to riots. I was intensely in love. Was it the same as with Namiko—because I didn't know? Teruko, I knew through the body. Through that way of knowing, I didn't know riots. Was it because such riots were theory and ideology not known through the body that I was in love with them? Ideology, by being ideology not known through the body—and perhaps precisely because it was such ideology—might be all the more alluring, just as with women.

Is Namiko an ideology to me? ——

I had just mentioned three names—Wakamurasaki, Teruko, and Namiko—but the courtesan Wakamurasaki was someone I'd become acquainted with through sleeping with Yachi, same as Teruko. But unlike with Teruko, I hadn't fallen in love. Rather than Teruko, whom I'd loved, or Namiko, whom I was loving, it was Wakamurasaki—the one I hadn't loved—that I found myself picturing. It was for the sake of my rod-like cock that I'd been doing this. That's how it seemed to be. To calm my thrashing Yoshiko, any woman's Yachi would do—anyone's at all. A woman without all that lovey-dovey nonsense—without such complicated feelings—was better. I kept trying to think that way.

But that Yachi had not been realistically provided. There was no Yachi—all I had was my own hand. I was taking care of Yoshiko with my own hand. Just as Toro was about to spurt out, the sliding door rattled open,

“Oh, wrong room.” “This ain’t no joke,” I shouted silently. Startled, I let go of Yoshiko.

The square-jawed man said "Excuse me" and started to close the sliding door, “Um… You know Mr. Yahagi, don’t you?” he said, as if to hide his embarrassment. It was a name I was hearing for the first time. "I don't know," I said. In a voice that said You don’t need to hide it, the man, “What does it feel like when you kill someone, I wonder.” “Before you kill them?”

“Just as I thought.” “What exactly are you talking about?” “How refined of you,” he sneered. “Just as I thought—you’re into it.”

The square-jawed man made a stabbing gesture with his dagger. “Unfortunately, I have yet to tear anyone apart.”

"To be honest, I

“Then you shouldn’t have been able to join our group.” “Are all your members people who’ve torn others apart? If that’s the case,” I said, “then there’s no need to ask about the feeling of killing.” “That spirit of yours—not boasting at all—it’s truly admirable.” He narrowed his eyes. “I heard you’re from an ideological group, but…” The trailing implication grated on me. Something tightened in my chest. “I wanna go ‘split-and-tear’—you know, visit some prostitutes.” I played dumb, though it wasn’t entirely an act. “Wanna go pay my respects to the Buddha of Lapis Lazuli Radiance—same difference.”

It was also called Amida Nyorai, or simply Nyorai. It referred to a woman’s cunt. I had said that with the feeling of wanting to worship Namiko’s sacred gate. Wakamurasaki’s slit wasn’t some holy Buddha—a copper pot would do. An aka pot heats up quick. Hence this copper cauldron—but a whore’s hole’s more like an earthenware jar. The front entrance was plenty. “Rurikō...?”

“Rurikō...?” said the square-jawed man. It was an old piece of slang—no wonder he didn’t recognize it. This was terminology I’d used between myself and Maruman too. “The First Valley.” I said it, but it still didn’t click for him. I cringed at my own pretentiousness, then tried again: “Hairy bun.” I knew the right-wingers bunking here had gone for misogi purification rites before the uprising. Whether Square-jaw here had joined them or not, I couldn’t say. Me? I’d skipped that nonsense. Yet even while sneering at their earnest scrubbing of body and soul, I found myself reaching for prison jargon rather than crude terms when speaking to these true believers.

“Keman?” This was prisoners’ jargon. “Never done time, have you? Kemanju – hairy buns.” “Hairy buns.” “Buns with hair.” The square-jawed man left in disgust. A dog’s distant howl reached me. It sounded desolate – a death-rattle groan of a cry, utterly vile.

I was just drifting off when the sliding door opened again and the square-jawed man came in. With that thought, “Shut the hell up.” When I pulled the futon over myself, it was violently ripped away. "What the hell're you doing?" What appeared through my sleep-blurred eyes wasn’t the square-jawed man. A dick had thrust his pistol against my chest. Behind him stood a cop wearing a chin strap, frozen in that half-drawn sword stance they use to keep their sabers from clattering.

We had been ambushed in our sleep by the bastards from Headquarters. I, Square-jaw—all of us had been rounded up in one fell swoop. Surrounded by armed police, we were rats trapped in a sack. I was first taken to the Metropolitan Police Headquarters, then transported to my so-called home precinct. This wasn't Headquarters detention. In other words, they were treating me as a low-ranking thug. Handcuffed—what we called kai—I was loaded into a car.

The city in the early dawn wore an utterly peaceful expression. A mist hung over the streets still not yet awakened from slumber as a newspaper deliveryman ran through them. A milk deliveryman rattled along while pulling his cart. No one so much as glanced my way.

Upon arriving at the police, "What's the reason?" When I asked again about the grounds for arrest, they said it was vagrancy—no fixed address. They're treating people like fools. Though my boarding house was shabby, I did have a proper address. "Even so, you're currently without fixed residence." With these non-reasons masquerading as reasons, they were hauling in ideological suspects—mostly leftists—left and right back then. The Police Offenses Law states that "those falling under any of the items listed on the left may be detained for less than thirty days," with "those lacking fixed residence or occupation who wander about" qualifying under this provision. I'd been caught by this too. Since the actual charge was nebulous, they'd likely used this vagrancy pretext as a temporary measure.

“Call the station chief!”

And I shouted. “Understood. Understood. Just behave and take a little nap.” I was thrown into the slammer. As the new inmate, made to sit at the entrance of the zashiki prison cell, I howled like a beast. While sensing the captured beast within myself, I let out a groan of humiliation.

“Shut up.” Pinpiku (prison guard) said. “Shut up!” And I shouted back.

“You bastard, putting on such airs...”

The man in the cell bristled,

“Boss. Shall I silence him?” He intended to administer punishment to me in place of the guard.

“Wait.”

The prison guard stood up from his chair and came over,

“Hey! Quiet down!” he said to me in a calming tone.

“Shut up!” With a thunderous bellow passed down from Kodo, I glared at the guard. The patrol officer had been glaring at me through the iron bars too, but with a tch of his tongue, “There’s no handling him…” he muttered and walked away. It was deference - they saw me as right-wing. My cellmates stared at me with dumbfounded eyes. If a newcomer like me acted tough in the holding cell, things wouldn’t normally end quietly. Before guards could beat you, your cellmates would gang up on you first. But when the guard they called “Boss” showed me respect, everyone suddenly shrank back.

When the cell fell silent,

“Psst, psst.” A man who looked every bit a beggar—who until then had been clinging to the wall like a gecko—suddenly called out to me. The man who had stayed silent and cowered when everyone was worked up now that those around him had cowered, conversely, “That’s not good for you.”

He said in a haughty voice. I glared, “What the hell, you bastard?” “You’ve got something haunting you.” Pitifully, the man said. “Feeling lucky?” “It’s a possessing spirit,” another inmate interjected. He was a man with a pitch-black tan, like a venerable arhat. His forehead in particular had a greasy black sheen, surrounded by tangled hair like the thorns of Christ’s crown.

“A possessing spirit…?” “That’s why you’re moaning so much.” "Ain’t no way I’m moaning, you bastard!" I waved my hand as if to shoo away a haunting presence. At this, “He’s a radio”—dine-and-dasher.” The man beside me sneered. To get hauled in here over some penny-ante crime like radio—dine-and-dashing—was downright pitiful. “Poor thing.” Whether he meant himself or me, the arhat-like man said this,

“Is it a cat that’s haunting you?”

“Cat…?” “A dog.” The Croton Thief (as I later learned he was called—a midnight thief also known as a shinkoushi) who sat next to the arhat-like man put a finger to his own temple, twirled it in circles, and informed me that this holy man was insane. A lunatic? Even so, he was spouting off some unsettling nonsense.

“Is it a dog that’s haunting you?” “You’re not a Dog year, are you?” “Horse, then?” “Shouldn’t go falling for Dog-year women.” “Not your damn business.” The guy really was cracked. I turned my back,

“Woof!” When I let out a loud bark, “Psst, psst.”

The arhat-like man came over to my side, "Oh, stop that."

A foul stench assaulted my nostrils. It was the stench of sweat and grime, but even in this stinking pigpen, it stood out as particularly foul. It was a stench that turned the stomach. He brought his stinking head close to my ear,

“You’ve got to shake off that possessing spirit…” “I’ve got a death god haunting me.” “That’s… that person…” I looked toward the back. At the back, that “cell boss” was making bean-sized straw sandals from toilet paper remnants. This too I learned later—this man had gone to commit a robbery and ended up killing someone. Because the family members made a commotion, he ended up making them face west (killing them). “Unlike him, you—you’ve got strong luck.”

“Bad luck? Flattering me won’t do any good.” “Psst, psst.” The arhat-like man brought his face close to mine, “Your eyes are shining like a cat’s.” “Must be because a cat’s possessing me.”

I tried to joke around, but he kept a grave expression,

“The reason a cat’s eyes glow at night isn’t because light comes from the cat’s eyes themselves.” “It’s outside light that makes them shine.” “In the same way, your eyes are shining because…” “Wait.” “Cat’s eyes shine even in pitch-black darkness.” “They don’t shine in total darkness.” “They must be catching light from somewhere…”

“No, they were shining in total darkness. I saw it with these eyes.” “That must’ve been your own eyes glowing. The cat’s eyes just reflected your light.” “You’re definitely insane.” “You’re not exactly sane yourself.” “Fine.” “Dogs only latch onto those who’re clinging to something.”

The arhat-like man narrowed his eyes as if he'd said something amusing. In those eyes lay a stillness like a mountain lake. Just as I noticed this, he bared his jagged, filthy teeth. "If you quit doing that, the possessing spirit will leave you." "Sounds like a line I've heard before..." "Your eyes shine like a cat's—that's proof you've got a possessing spirit on you. That's why they glow."

“What the hell are you?” “Don’t you recognize me?” “Why the fuck would I?”

He was an arhat-like man of indeterminable age. “I know you. I know you well.” “Bullshit!” “I don’t have any dealings with you, but I’m good friends with your possessing spirit.” “You’re a genuine madman.” “I’m not a madman. I’m Abiru of Hyoutan Pond.” He emphasized the “A” when he said it— “A bath?” “It’s ‘Duck’ of the pond.” Kurotonbi sneered. After that, the man next to me,

“Is he a cop? This old man? Cut it out.” “Cut it out!” I hadn’t known that “duck” was police slang. “Ducks and cops both walk around slow-like, see.” said the man next to me.

The day’s lunch had red brick (salted salmon) as the side dish. The arhat-like man ate that boxed meal as if it were a grand feast, smacking his lips with relish. It was a way of eating that seemed to lay bare all his grubbiness. The reason I found this somewhat disillusioning was because I had felt slightly drawn to this "just a bit, just a bit" arhat-like man.

As a test—with that thought—I offered my leftovers. “Huh... Much obliged.” He extended his mummy-like hand and made as if to reverently receive my boxed meal. Unlike now, salmon—salted salmon—was the worst side dish back then. Right, why don’t I nonchalantly talk about boxed meal side dishes here? Red brick meant salmon, and white brick meant tofu. Grilled tofu was stylishly called castella. In the more endearing jargon, pork and potato stew was called Gakutai. It was Gakutai (“band”) because it was tonjaga (“pork and potatoes”). Daikon and bean stew was called children’s toys. I wonder if that came from bean shooters. Vegetable stew was called Akita. It was Akita because we’d grown sick of eating it. Shredded daikon was called Nankin soba or Gojōbashi—the latter being prison jargon derived from the legend of Benkei seizing a thousand swords at Gojō Bridge.

The slang for side dishes was newspaper,

“What’s today’s newspaper?” “Kōso-in.” Nishin referred to the second trial. The second trial had formerly been handled by the Kōso-in appellate court, but such jargon from honmushi prisons was also used in karimushi detention cells. Thrown into karimushi, I—I whose dreams of riots and bloodshed had been extinguished—was in a state of mind diametrically opposed to such carefree talk. I felt such self-destructive despair that I wanted to bash my own head against the detention cell wall until I was covered in blood—and yet, for someone in such despair, this idiotic talk about side dishes might actually be just the thing.

Vegetable leaves were called *mejiro*. Yes, that was called *mejiro* feed—and even this had a kind of reckless desperation to it, don’t you think? *Tenjiku oiran*—that’s what they called broad beans. *Yanagimame* was kizami kombu (this being yanagi) stewed with beans. *Red pigeon* meant quail beans. When it comes to vegetable slang, carrots are *yakehibashi*. Burdock is *tetsuhibashi*. It was also called *kuromansu*. Daikon was *Mansui* or *Mansu*. Lotus root is *hachinosu*, eggplant is *kurodori*, and salted eggplant is *kumanoi*.

Beef was something you rarely ever saw. When you’d think it had made a rare appearance, it turned out to be some rock-hard thing you couldn’t get your teeth into—that’s why beef was called *setta* leather. The most common side dish was hijiki seaweed, commonly known as Yami. Ridiculous. I should stop. Right, takuan pickles were koban. Red bean rice was Genpei Bō—because the azuki beans were red (Genji) and the rice white (Heike). In this Ryūko detention cell, I never ate red bean rice. I’d learned most of this jargon back when they’d thrown me in during the assassination attempt on General Fukui.

It was on the afternoon of a certain day.

A Tokkō detective, “Please.”

He opened the small window in the detention cell door and said to the guard.

That small window reminded me of the one Teruko had been sitting at, but there was a world of difference between a detention cell and an unlicensed brothel. The detective had brought a customer—a newcomer. That was an unexpected customer. It was that former university student turned Bol faction organizer. He’d entered this pigsty now. The guy I’d last seen at Settsu and hadn’t met since had cheeks so gaunt they looked scraped thin, his face aged about ten years—but I recognized him at a glance. He was no longer some low-level organizer now—probably a union executive or something.

“Then, I’ll leave Shigeno in your care.”

The detective handed him over to the guard and left. I learned here that his name was Shigeno. The guard took Shigeno to a corner table and made him remove his tie and belt. All long items were confiscated. “Where’ve they transferred you from?” “Tomisaka…” In response to that reply, I realized—ah, it was the tub rotation scheme. When the maximum detention period (twenty-nine days) expired, they would transfer you to another police station, make you undergo another full term, then transfer you elsewhere again—executing these detention extensions. Due to regulations prohibiting detention beyond twenty-nine days, this tub rotation scheme had been devised; eventually, they began formally taking detainees out through the police station’s front entrance only to immediately toss them back into the same pigsty. They soon stopped doing this as well, fudging something in the paperwork to extend detentions while keeping people locked up.

The guard rattled his large keys and peered around the cells, trying to decide where to put Shigeno, but—

“Everywhere’s full. Put him in here.” The guard unlocked my cell with his key. With an unsteady gait that suggested he’d been severely tortured, Shigeno passed through the iron-barred door, “I beg your indulgence.” Shigeno gave the existing inmates a routine detention-center greeting. Just as I was about to call out to Shigeno, “Clear some space there.”

Then the "cell boss" pointed toward the middle of the narrow room and ordered the guys sitting cross-legged there to make space.

The cell boss had placed him in a seat above mine. That seemed his meager retaliation against me for putting on such a defiant front. “Hey.” While making my presence known to Shigeno—who hadn’t noticed me—I pushed my way in beside him. The cell boss didn’t try to stop me as I did this, but—

“Well, it’s been a while…” Shigeno, who had shown me an unexpectedly nostalgic smile— “Looks like they grilled you pretty good,” the cell boss interjected with honeyed words, cutting into our conversation. “You’re a Red.” Having said this, the cell boss gestured toward me, “This your buddy?” he asked Shigeno. “I’m guilty,” I declared. “Guilty…?”

“Guilty ain’t wrong,” said Fukkeshi.

Then, from somewhere, “Then what does that make you—a Black Kite...” “Sorry ’bout that. If I’m guilty here, then you’re a Red Dog (arson)...”

When he retorted, again from somewhere came: "A Red's a Red, but there's also Reds with blades and Akade robbers..." "Three Reds... Red Tanzaku cards," Fukkeshi shot back, referencing the Hanafuda gambling slips used as arson code. This meant Red Dog—their slang for fire-starters. Since private talk was banned in the pigsty, they kept their voices low: "That ain't how it works," countered Black Kite.

Then Kurotonbi interjected.

“In the pigsty’s tanzaku slips, a ‘tan’ might be a ‘tan,’ but it’s a boar’s tongue!” This required no explanation—it referenced Hanafuda cards well-known to Ryuko’s crew. In this cell where actual card games were forbidden, such wordplay puns became their sole diversion. “Hold it right there!” The cell boss cut in with an authoritative growl, “Plum Red’s already among us.” “You mean yourself? “Aka-kiri (lockpick)...?”

“It ain’t about me. I ain’t got syphilis.” “Who’s Ume…?” “I don’t care if it’s the Ume mark—I just wanna eat some cunt (pussy).” “Not cunt—we’ll be meetin’ the Red Demon (prosecutor) real soon.” “Then comes Red Drop (prison time)…” “Red Obebe (cunt), huh?” As they were all talking over each other, “Better than getting a red paper (conscription notice), don’t you think?” said Abiru.

At that time, such lines were precisely the sort of thing only a madman would dare utter. Abiru, who would say such things openly—this, on the contrary, made me think he must be insane.

When everyone jolted and fell silent for an instant, “Did you graduate from Akamon?”

“Did you graduate from Akamon?” the cell boss asked Shigeno. “Everyone’s born from the Red Gate (cunt),” I interjected. Shigeno turned to me—

“I met Mr. Tamazuka. In the pigsty.” “In the pigsty.” “Can’t you keep it down?” The Shirihiki guard, having reached his limit, shouted. Shirihiki—that’s what they called the lenient guards—and during one such Shirihiki’s shift (though not this particular guard), everyone pooled their money to buy sweets they’d eat before lights-out at night. In the detention center, such things were strictly prohibited, of course, but they secretly asked a Shirihiki guard (they’d skim a cut off the top anyway) to have a lunchbox shop deliver them. When time in detention drags on, you start craving sweets something fierce.

Shigeno had no money. Radio Arhat was also penniless, and when I said I'd pay for both of them, "Much obliged." Arhat obediently expressed his gratitude, but Shigeno— "I don't need any. No thank you."

With that, he fell stubbornly silent. "What the hell are you saying?" Here in this place—not that I'm Kropotkin—there's a code of mutual aid: those without money naturally have those with it cover for them. That night, there was a delivery of amashari—though we'd bought it ourselves, we still called it a delivery—and the janitor (though he was just another guy serving time like us, working as a janitor) eagerly went around distributing it.

“Here, eat.”

When I urged Shigeno, "I don't want it." Shigeno resolutely refused to eat. "You bastard." _I can't stand this bastard._ I clenched my fist to punch him and raised it when— "Hey now, hey now." Arhat said in a voice oddly filled with authority, "That won't do." Radio should've been out by now, but Arhat was still in the pigsty—apparently there were more charges against him. "Stop that. You must stop that." At a loss where to direct my fist, I—

“Oh yeah?” Having said that, I struck Arhat’s head with a thwack— “Ow! That hurt! “What a rock-hard skull!”

Abiru chuckled hoarsely, “As payment for getting punched, I’ll take another one.” He smoothly reached out, took my mochi, and popped it into his mouth with a big bite.

Part Seven: Spiritual Vertigo

After serving the full twenty-nine days, I was released from the pigsty. After just one investigation from the main office, I was ultimately released back to the streets with everything swept under the rug. The cover-up wasn’t limited to my case alone. It was not only I—a lowly underling—who walked away acquitted; even the masterminds who had planned and prepared that fearsome coup d’état faced no punishment whatsoever, just as with the March Incident. Strange indeed. Even that lieutenant colonel staff officer who had been a central figure received nothing more than a twenty-day strict confinement—a purely formal punishment. If the Bolshevik faction had planned something like this, there would have been a huge uproar. The leaders would undoubtedly have been sentenced to death.

The leaders of the October Incident received a "visit" from the military police at the same time we were arrested. It had been discovered beforehand. There were two theories: one that it was because Ogawa Akiaki leaked the plan to officials at the Imperial Household Ministry, and another that it was because Minami Ikko leaked it to the Rikken Seiyūkai. It was impossible to tell which was true. The real cause was likely neither of those. The Ogawa faction and the Minami faction had likely spread such theories with the aim of slandering each other. When I thought about that time I had gone to the Akasaka geisha house, it was no wonder the plan had been exposed…

The story had gotten ahead of itself. After getting out of detention, I immediately rushed into a haberdashery and bought a full set of undergarments—tari (shirt) and tamabira (loincloth). The haberdashery clerk who eyed my bearded, disheveled, bandit-like appearance with suspicion,

“Where’s the bathhouse around here? I need to wash off the clink grime. Oh right—a mizubira too, and a hand towel.” Before heading to Tenkariya the barber, I first had to visit Zunburi the bathhouse. In detention I’d been crawling with Bodhisattva lice until the itching drove me mad. The hato bedbugs left their mark too—two glaring red bites on my wrist that anyone could spot at a glance. Unlike lice, bedbugs don’t cling to your skin, but you never knew if some dim-witted straggler hadn’t hitched a ride in my shirt.

I went to the bathhouse, got naked, and bundled up my filthy amahada undergarments. The lice that should have been white—now with bellies blackened from gorging on my blood—were lined up along the seams of the amahada. I rolled them into a tight bundle and handed it to the bathhouse attendant: “Get rid of this thing, will you? It’s crawling with bugs…” “Bugs?” “I’m not talking about you.” It might have seemed like I was spouting harassment, but in truth, I wanted to hurl far more vicious abuse at myself.

In this daytime bathhouse, there was only a single leisurely retired old man. Fresh bathwater filled the tub to the brim, sunlight streaming through the glass—a refreshing sight. The old man sat submerged up to his neck in the water, a hand towel draped over his head, humming naniwa-bushi ballads with carefree abandon. I sank into the bath and involuntarily muttered, "Ah, this feels good"—yet even as I relished the comfort, I couldn't escape my simmering irritation. The world outside remained as utterly tranquil as this midday bathhouse. The first impression greeting me upon release from detention proved infuriating beyond measure. The October Incident had been completely erased from public consciousness. Though I'd believed ours was precisely the kind of society destined for such upheavals, here it sat basking in undisturbed complacency. I felt like I'd swallowed some grotesque lump of false reality.

When I climbed out of the bath and set my feet down in the washing area, I felt a wave of dizziness. Despite being detained for only twenty-nine days, my body had grown completely soft. The dizziness made me squat down helplessly right there. It was humiliating. Speaking of dizziness—when I got out of the bath and smoked a cigarette, I felt that same wave of dizziness again. I had completely shaken off the tobacco habit. Even in the detention center where smoking was strictly prohibited, there were guys who sneaked in tobacco, stealing glances past the guards to take a puff now and then—but their way of smoking was nothing like how people did on the outside. When I smoked like a normal person, a wave of dizziness hit me.

Physical dizziness—that woozy sensation resembled mental disarray. There must also exist such a thing as spiritual vertigo—a dizziness of the mind akin to confusion. Perhaps that was why I had gotten involved in the October Incident and such. Perhaps I had been wrestling alone and fallen into a state of confusion that might be called spiritual vertigo.

But true delirium—that dizziness where the mind itself spins—still lay ahead. And soon enough, it struck me down. I needed to meet Maruman, but couldn't face him. I wanted to see Kodo-sensei too, yet found myself unable to go. The one I truly longed to see was Namiko. But before meeting her, I had to sort through my own tangled feelings. As I lingered in this indecision—

“Where did you take my daughter?” Teruko’s father Inosawa Ichitaro confronted me with a shout. The man wore an ostentatious three-piece suit that gave him the appearance of a gentleman, yet his speech reeked of vulgarity. He threatened that if I didn’t tell the truth, there’d be hell to pay. “If she’s such a precious daughter, why the hell did you make her a whore?” You turned your own daughter into a whore, I thought defiantly, yet here you are acting high and mighty—well, I wasn’t about to back down either.

“Whore…?” “Whore, the hell.” “As if you don’t know.” “Knowing full well and still making your daughter a whore—what a bastard of a father you are.” “I didn’t know about that either.” “When I met your daughter, she was already a whore. Poor thing...” “I didn’t know a damn thing. That’s why I left Manchuria to look for my daughter. Where did you take her?” “The hell should I know. It’s too late now.”

As I spoke, I felt Teruko slipping away from my heart—whether due to this father’s sudden appearance. “She’s already been sold off to god-knows-where by someone.” “Wasn’t it you who sold her?” “Don’t you fuckin’ joke around. No matter how down-and-out I’ve gotten, I ain’t the sorta bastard who sells off women.”

Had Suna told this Inosawa Ichitaro that I'd sold off his daughter Teruko somewhere? I said I'd meet Suna. If we met, it'd prove my innocence—so Inosawa and I went to Suna's place, where some guest I didn't know was waiting. Inosawa seemed familiar with him though— "Hey."

He greeted us with a face twisted in bitterness. The guest too remained sullen, making them seem like sworn enemies. "You’ve had it rough," said Suna, taunting me about the October Incident. "We were just discussing that." Then the guest squared his jaw as if lecturing us: "Everything traces back to General Ogaki’s disarmament. Ogaki’s the root of it all."

Solemnly—in that tone—he declared: "When General Ogaki served as Army Minister, he implemented what they call the 'Taisho Disarmament.' Because of this, resentment had been festering among military men. The truth is, thanks to disarmament, career soldiers ended up retiring at best as field officers—their promotions blocked entirely. Ambitious officers formed factions and started scheming ways to protect their positions and climb higher." The guest concluded that both the March and October Incidents had merely sprung from these factional power struggles.

Because it was an internal factional struggle, the military had kept the incident secret from the public. If it leaked, they reasoned, it would damage military prestige. That was why no real punishment had been meted out, he explained. "What's your take, Inosawa-kun?" The guest pressed with surgical precision. "As an old advocate of weak diplomacy?" "That's ancient history," Suna cut in before Inosawa could respond. "Mr. Inosawa's a China hardliner these days."

To Inosawa, who sat silent with his mouth shut, the guest pressed like he was delivering a coup de grâce: "Did you turn into that for business reasons?" "When it comes to you, Mr. Yahagi, you really do shred people to pieces."

Inosawa laughed. Yahagi...? I raised my eyebrows. It was a name I’d heard from that right-wing bastard at a meeting place in Yotsuya. He had viewed me as part of Yahagi’s gang and said that since I was part of it, I must have experience killing people. I fixed my eyes on Yahagi again. When I looked closely, his face was terribly ghastly. Though his mouth moved with self-assertive bravado, dark thoughts had taken root within him, seeping through to the surface. While Yahagi could be seen putting on a blustering front, Inosawa—being torn apart yet laughing—seemed to hold the upper hand.

“Hey, Kashiwai.” As if to divert my gaze and shift the topic elsewhere, Suna said. “Why don’t you go take a rest at Senba (hot spring resort) or somewhere? After you’ve rested up—how about working with me?”

“Should we withdraw from the military factional struggles......?”

I was still staring fixedly at Yahagi, "What kind of work...? Killing people? Work involving killing people?"

“What the hell kind of line is that?” Suna shouted angrily. “I want to kill people too.”

“Kashiwai!” Yahagi quietly turned his face toward Suna, who had shouted. So you talked, huh? His glittering eyes seemed to say as much. Suna must have looked at Inosawa, “What were you and Kashiwai talking about?” Suna was implicitly suggesting that Inosawa had talked.

“I ain’t talked ’bout no killin’.”

The way Inosawa thrust out his lower lip made the area around his mouth resemble Teruko’s in some way. Teruko came to mind, and I felt unpleasant. In an unpleasant tone, I said.

“Mr. Suna made it sound like I did something to Mr. Inosawa’s daughter. “How crude.” “Inosawa-kun’s daughter…?”

Yahagi asked back. "That Kashiwai bastard’s blabbering indiscriminately…" Being reprimanded by Suna, I— "I want to kill people, you know." I said in a desperate voice. "Kill Ogaki!" Yahagi said in a commanding tone. I snapped. I don’t have to take orders from some guy I don’t even know. "Then you do it."

“Kashiwai, quit it already. You’re getting all worked up.”

To that Suna, Inosawa— “No, I’ll take this one.” His tone sounded less like he was shielding me and more like he actually wanted to buy me as merchandise. Suna responded bitterly, “Kashiwai’s been my comrade for years. Regrettably for you, Mr. Inosawa—” “Can’t you sell him off?” I said aloud, muttering under my breath, “This isn’t a fucking joke.”

That night, I wandered off alone to Hyoutan Pond in Asakusa. No, to tell the truth—suddenly, I found myself standing by Hyoutan Pond. In Rokku's movie theater district, discount bells were ringing, and the clamor of bustling footsteps was noisy. The clamor of that crowd sounded like distant waves to my ears as I stood at the edge of the dark pond. The man I'd met in the clink—the one who'd called himself Abiru—had told me to meet him again at Hyoutan Pond. I remembered that, and that was what had led me here.

Under the wisteria trellis—its leaves fallen, leaving only branches that twisted like snakes—stood a man who looked like nothing but a gatako (beggar), exposed to the cold wind as he held a candle in one hand. He had made a handmade enclosure with cardboard and was further shielding the candle flame from the wind with his body to prevent it from being blown out. Peering at the face illuminated by the flickering flame, I saw it was Abiru. It was the same grime-covered face as in the clink.

“What are you doing standing around in a place like this?” When he abruptly voiced his question, “I’m in business.” Abiru didn’t so much as smile as he said this, casting a scrutinizing gaze behind me. “What? You see something again?” “Can you see possessing spirits or something?” “What’d you come here for?” “What a greeting. I came to see you.” “I see. My apologies for that, Kashiwai Shiro-san.” “Oh, aren’t you getting familiar.”

“If I were to speak even more familiarly, I thought you might have come to ask me a favor.” “So you’re carrying it now, huh?” “You’re carrying the Grim Reaper, Shiro-san.” "Is that so?" I bluffed.

“You’re being targeted by someone.” Abiru said. Was the Ogaki faction still after me?

“How do you know?” Abiru did not answer that. “There’s someone who wants to kill you.”

He said it plainly, without any threatening inflection. Though his voice might have been mistaken for a lunatic's ravings, "Is there really someone that virtuous?" "Where?"

I was being somewhat facetious.

“There...” Abiru said immediately and cast his eyes behind me. I turned around.

“There’s no one here. No, there’s a whole crowd.”

People were walking in great numbers. "Now, please don't interfere with my business."

When he suddenly spoke politely, Abiru waved his hand dismissively, shooing me away. “What business?”

“I am a prophet…” Thrusting the candle flame into my face and peering at my features, “There’s no mistake in what Abiru says.” “I want to meet later. “Let’s grab a drink somewhere. “Where’s good, I wonder?”

Abiru told me about a shochu bar behind a park that seemed to be his regular haunt. “Well then, let’s meet there,” I promised, and

“Is your home in Hongo?” “Nah, that’s not it.” “I heard you were caught in Hongo…” “I wasn’t caught.” “What’s ‘Abiru’ anyway? “I’d rather be Rakan.” “David’s warrior Abiru…”

A thunderous roar—such a voice could only be thought to belong to a madman.

In a dirty shochu bar, I tilted a thick glass. Every customer looked Lumpen-like, bellowing loudly inside the cramped space. I ignored those bastards. If this kept up, I would end up going to Yoshiwara. Resolving not to, I uncharacteristically restrained myself and gulped down Onigisu shochu. That Yahagi truly was a man with murder on his rap sheet—a prior offense. I'd concluded that much. Was he running with Manchurian bandits now?

“Hey there, hey there~”

A voice identical to Abiru's yet unnervingly feminine whispered by my ear. Beside me now sat a repulsive man who'd appeared without warning. "You're doing an Abiru impression."

I said and glared at the man with the unnaturally pale face. The stubble on his jaw showed a bluish tinge. He struck a feminine pose, "Huh? Who—?" "Who's imitating me?" As he spoke, he pressed his leg against mine. This guy's a cross-dresser, I thought, recoiling, "Get lost." "What a scary face..."

The man looked delighted, “Splendid. My eyes didn’t deceive me.” “What the hell’re you talkin’ about? Homosexuality ain’t my thing.” “That’s not what I meant.”

The man brought his face closer, “Hey there, big brother.” “Cut it out.” “Oh really? If you don’t want it, I’ll stop—but hearing this’ll do you good for sure, big brother.” “What’re you on about?”

“An important matter... A matter of great importance to you, big brother.” The man brought his mouth close to my ear. “Big brother, you want to kill someone right now, don’t you?” He said the opposite of what Abiru had said. I started in spite of myself. “That face... it’s the face of someone who wants to kill.” “That’s a line I’ve heard before…” A sudden fury welled up inside me. I wanted to land a joten—a blow to the head—on him. “Was I wrong?” There was an irresistible quality to his voice as well,

“You saw right through me, huh?” My anger was growing fiercer by the moment, so I—

“You’re right. Isn’t there someone… who ain’t around?”

"A target I can kill—" I said.

The narrow shop was filled with the loud voices of drunken customers, and our voices were drowned out. “Anyone?”

The man stared at me and said. “Then kill me.” “You?” “You can kill me. Won’t you kill me?” The rapturous words might have carried a meaning different from murder, but, “Interesting. This’s real interesting.” In that instant, I resolved to truly kill this cross-dresser. I, who had killed stray dogs before, didn’t want some mangy mutt this time—I wanted to kill a human being. “Alright, I’ll kill you.”

A spiritual vertigo struck me at that moment. “Hold on, hold on.”

This was Abiru’s voice, “I just got curious and came to check on things,”

Before I knew it, Abiru was standing behind me.

“Tomorrow night, let’s meet here.” As I stood up after saying this, Abiru said in an exasperated voice, “Taking Death with you—where to…?” When we stepped outside, the cross-dresser raised his hand to a one-yen taxi that immediately approached as if he’d had it waiting in advance; though his movements wriggled like a woman’s, they were terribly brisk, “Come on, let’s get in.”

After saying that to me, he told the driver the destination in a low voice. Where the hell are we going?—Asking galled me; I got into the car in silence. That Abiru fellow was watching me leave with a grimace. In the dark, his expression seemed to pity me so vividly, but perhaps that was just him grimacing from the cold.

The wind was fierce. As we left Asakusa, dark towns stretched endlessly beyond the car window. Take me wherever the hell you want. Slumping sullenly, I dropped my hips and leaned back against the seat like a sprawled corpse. The cross-dresser kept his hand on my thigh. He pressed closer as if tending to an invalid—me. Looking up at his face from below, I sensed layers of complexity hidden beneath that manufactured smile.

“You know about me, don’t you.” I started with that probe. I’d expected him to panic, but he— “Well now, what should I say?” —brazenly tossed out those words. Instead I was the one flustered, grunting as I shifted upright. That’s when I glimpsed it in the rearview mirror—the driver’s fierce eyes fixed on me. Our gazes collided in that small glass like sparks striking flint, but by the time I registered it, his eyes had already darted away. The instant I noticed this, another spark shot from the mirror toward my eyes—as if a gun muzzle had spat fire with terrifying force.

It wasn't that our gazes had met again. Dazzled, when I finally opened my eyes and looked in the mirror, all I saw were the driver's ordinary forehead wrinkles. Why the hell had this bastard fixed such a weird stare on me? Did he just think me some freak for being with a man anyone could instantly tell was a cross-dresser? I said to the pansy loud enough for the driver to catch: "Wasting someone like you wouldn't mean shit." "Well, maybe I'll grab forty winks."

“Well now,” I thought about telling you to go on and sleep— “No can do.” “We’re almost there…” With that, the cross-dresser said and shook my thigh.

In truth, it wasn’t that soon. The passage of that time made me realize that the second spark had been some intense outside light piercing into the car and glinting off the rearview mirror. It was nothing more than me taking a trivial phenomenon abnormally. As I scorned myself like that, “I was quite pretty when I was young too, you know.” The cross-dresser suddenly—as if he too were scorning himself—said. The stubble that had been bluish at the shochu shop now suddenly looked dark, as if his beard had rapidly grown in.

"So, you switched trades?" I asked casually.

“Do you know about me?” Immediately, I— “Well, I don’t know what to say.” “It’s fine.” The cross-dresser moved away, “Even now, there are people who care for me...” “Is it someone I know?” “A real person… has loved me all along.” “Are you talking about Abiru?” “Abiru…?”

The car emerged at what appeared to be a riverside area near the Sumida River,

“Stop.” The cross-dresser said. The naked lightbulbs coldly illuminated the gray walls of the warehouses standing in rows, and there was no one around.

After getting out of the car, we emerged from between the warehouses to the riverbank. The dark canal was full of boats moored close together as if rubbing against each other to escape the wind. There were even some fairly large barrel-shaped boats. The cross-dresser went first across the plank connecting the shore to a boat. Moving with a dancer-like posture—provocatively swaying his hips yet skillfully navigating the bending plank's precarious footing—he crossed onto that boat and then hopped to others. Some cabins near Tomo showed lamplight leaking through their windows.

“Where are we going?”

For the first time, I spoke up. This situation was truly abnormal after all. "Slaughterhouse..." The cross-dresser said mockingly. "Is that so? Your room?" Perhaps my voice came across as bravado. "Killing ground..." Though pigeon-toed in his gait, his footwork remained swift. "Someone's killing ground..." Chuckling, the cross-dresser moved from boat to boat like the Hare of Inaba leaping over crocodile sharks' backs, finally boarding a small fishing boat.

“Hey. I’m counting on you.”

Though feminine, it was a voice that carried a threatening edge. From inside the boat, a black mass heaved itself up. What had appeared to be a mass was a person; throwing off the blanket that had been draped over their head, they remained silent but made only their eyes gleam (it reminded me of that cat from before), then grabbed the oar and lifted it with ease.

Suddenly, from somewhere came the sound of a baby crying. The blazing wail—startling me through its combination with the strangeness of an infant being in such a place—turned out to be nothing more than the daruma boatman's brat nearby. Even so, that should have stirred some emotion within me, but I was in no state for such things.

With a creak-creak of the squeaking oar, the Nefu (boat) moved across the jet-black water. There's an expression about moving with stealthy footsteps, but here it was precisely about moving with stealthy oar strokes as the boat set out. In this situation, I was exactly like a character from one of Kuroiwa Ruikou's detective novels I'd read as a child. I looked just like some pitiful victim being kidnapped by a villain—though this thought wasn't born solely from fear. That children's detective novel came to mind because even the foolishness of such child's play could be felt here.

“What the hell are you?” I said to the cross-dresser crouched with hunched back. Why don’t you cut out this blustering intimidation—I was about to retort when—

“Did you get scared?” “Are you saying that even if I wanted to run, it’s already too late?” “Nice nerve. How lovely.” “Brr, it’s cold,” the cross-dresser said, snugly adjusting his suit collar like a kimono, holding the base of the collar with just his left hand while freeing his right hand. “This one here.”

With that, he flicked his right index finger against the tip of his own nose. It was a reference to a Hanafuda gambling term. "Hana...?" Was he saying we were going to play Hana wherever this boat was headed next? "I'm the customer lure—"

“So you’re the lure?” “I want to be taken—” “So I’ve been marked as a sucker? I don’t have any money.”

“The sucker’s over there, waiting with leeks on their back.” “Unfortunately for you, while I’m sharp with flower cards, my nose isn’t so keen.” “If only your flower card skills were strong enough…” “Even so, things have taken quite a different turn.” “Not really, you know.”

The boat rocked violently, and the smell of the shore reached us. It seemed we had emerged into Tokyo Bay. The black water’s surface, as if oil were flowing, glowed bluish-white.

This was getting weird. Well, might as well see it through to the end. The destination was a boat about the size of the Sumida River's pom-pom steamers. "Are we transferring to this one?"

“Yes.” Not on the open sea, the boat lay moored as though hiding in the shadow of evergreen branches that hung thickly from a stone wall above. The wind grew fiercely strong, the incoming waves rose higher, and the boat rocked as if rejecting me. A faint light leaked from the sealed cabin’s door; though people seemed to be inside, it was utterly silent.

“Hey, hey.” The cross-dresser grabbed my upper arm. With my foot planted on the higher gunwale of this boat compared to the other one, I felt like I might be blown away by the wind.

“Oh dear,” Roku cooed dramatically, pressing a hand to his cheek. “I’ve gone and fallen for you! Whatever shall I do?” I shook off his grip and climbed onto the boat. Hesitation would have left me straddling two vessels as they drifted apart—a sure plunge into the dark water below. My body shuddered violently. Blaming it on the chill, I nearly missed the muffled groan seeping from the ukabi’s cabin. That shudder had been prescient—the moan carried an unearthly quality that clung to my spine like cold oil.

Part Eight: Floundering Toward Life

―To Namiko, who had answered the phone, I― “Nami-chan. Nami-chan.” “Shiro-san?” “Nami-chan. Nami-chan.”

In that voice that seemed to be trying to draw Namiko closer from afar, I had poured all my affection—but perhaps she had sensed something amiss after all. "What's wrong, Shiro-san?" "Nami-chan." "Yes?" "Namiko..." "Yes?" "I want to see you." When we meet, I'll flee to Manchuria. I'll go with Maruman and become one of those bandits we'd always talked about. I want to see you one last time before I go.

“Something’s happened, hasn’t it, Shiro-san?” “Let’s meet and talk. Will you come?” From a public phone near Namiko’s shop, I was placing the call. Having left Namiko alone for so long, I had no confidence at all in what response I might get from her,

“I’ll come right away.”

When Namiko said that, I leapt for joy. Even through Namiko's voice, I felt something unnatural.

But when we met, Namiko— "I've started working up front at the shop now," she said cheerfully, (So you see—my hands aren't chapped anymore) and extended her hands as if to show them off. I took those hands. Namiko's hands—one was warm, the other was cold. "That's good for you." Namiko wasn't wearing everyday clothes but had properly put on a formal kimono. Perhaps because of this, over these past few months she appeared to have completely shed her provincial air. While noting how her physique too had matured into womanhood, I—

"But then we can't take our time." "It's fine," Namiko said, "I might've asked the madam to let me take today off." Overwhelmed with joy— "Why?" Before I knew it, I'd blurted that out and bit my lip, realizing my mistake. "But..." Namiko stared at me with an accusatory expression, "A strange person came to my place today. About Shiro-san..."

“Is it the cops—the police bastards?”

“No,” Namiko said, “Am I being chased by the cops again? “Shiro-san doesn’t come to me unless it’s times like this…” “Come to think of it—last time too—when I was about to get caught—you helped me out then too, didn’t you Nami-chan?”

It had turned into a self-serving way of speaking that practically begged her to help me again this time. When I tried to correct myself,

“Do you want to run away somewhere again? But I don’t want to help you anymore.” Suddenly she said this decisively. Having gotten carried away only to be shut down abruptly—not that I’d come here to ask for help in the first place—I felt a pang of irritation at her brusque refusal. But I didn’t voice that, nor could I. “I asked you to go straight, but you never listen to what I say.”

Namiko said in a low voice. “Sorry.” In front of Namiko, I became timid, as if I were a different person.

“Do you plan to keep me walking these cold streets forever?” This Namiko—perhaps growing bolder in my presence—spat out her words with such force she might’ve been hurling stones, then brought her hands to the shawl on her shoulders and buried her face in it, “Shall we go to your lodging, Shiro-san?”

“The lodging’s no good.” The whiteness of Namiko’s small tabi socks seared into my eyes.

"Are you still at your old lodging?" "Yeah." The reason I'd said no wasn't because of that. I still hadn't returned to my lodging since last night. I'd hesitated to go back. "Let's go somewhere." Buffeted by the cold wind, I found myself fixated on Namiko's lips - unnervingly vivid lips that looked hot to the touch, lips I wanted to sink my teeth into. "Where should we go?" The violent urge to take her to a love hotel surged through me, but-

“Who came to your place, Nami-chan?”

“That person said they’d hide you... Shiro-san...”

It was a sudden statement without explanation—but precisely because of that, it grated on my nerves all the more,

“That’s none of your damn business. “I…” Catch a cold and take to the road—escape. Abscond to Manchuria. I kept that secret,

"I'll settle my own affairs myself. Alone..." "Alone? Where?" "I came to say goodbye to you, Nami." "Oh please. Like some yakuza film..." Namiko mocked my solemn words as if they were a joke, "Should I come along too? You can't go straight without me around, can you?"

Now, of all times, I couldn’t possibly become the upstanding citizen Namiko kept talking about. As I made a bitter face, “Let’s go to a house I know and have a meal.”

“Yeah.” “A quiet place would be good.”

“Yeah. Let’s go.” I said casually, never imagining that the place Namiko knew would turn out to be a love hotel in Omori. Unlike the cheap hotels in the city, this place—with its sukiya-style gate and architecture—was nominally a traditional inn with dining, but there was no mistaking it for anything but a love hotel. When Namiko boldly had the car stop there—huh? I was shocked. With practiced hands, Namiko pressed the bell, and the middle-aged maid—her face concealing swift observation beneath professional impassivity—

“Welcome.” Guided by her, even Namiko’s footsteps as she stepped across the stepping stones appeared to my eyes as those of someone accustomed to the place. Into the love hotel I had hesitated to invite her to myself, I was taken by Namiko. I was led to a detached cottage facing the sea, "I'll have a beer. “As for the meal, a bit later…” Namiko smoothly said to the maid. In her composed demeanor that made it hard to believe she was the same young girl who had crisply cut edamame with scissors, I felt Tokyo—this thing that could transform a girl so completely in such a short span of days—vividly showing me its terrifying nature. Even if I thought that Namiko—who had boldly hidden my pistol at the inn in Keijo—had always possessed this kind of audacity, I couldn't escape a sense of eerie dread.

Utterly overwhelmed, I remained silent until the maid withdrew. "Do you know places like this, Nami-chan?" Even I resented how resentful my voice sounded.

“I came with a customer.” While loosening the fasteners on the side flap of her tabi, Namiko blithely retorted. With a—customer—? I held my breath. Had she been brought here by a customer, or had she brought one herself? I flared up. The fact that Namiko kept her composure only made me flare up even more.

“Actually, Nami-chan, I killed someone.”

By talking about last night’s events, I wanted to hurt Namiko.

That eerie moan had come from the ship’s cabin. The cross-dresser had heard it too, “Oh my, what’s going on here?” As if heading off to see something amusing, he moved toward the cabin and opened its door.

“Roku?”

From inside came such a voice, “Not tonight.” From behind the cross-dresser called Roku, when I peered inside, I saw a man bound with his hands behind his back lying on the floor scattered with hanafuda cards. A metal gag had also been tightly fitted.

“Oh my, that’s intense!” To the cross-dresser who had exclaimed this, a man standing imposingly in the room with a ferocious expression said they’d pinned him down because he’d been cheating. Then another man roared about throwing the bastard into the sea. Ignoring me, their customer, “Gotta finish ’im off before we dump ’im—if he somehow survives, he’ll be a real pain later.”

The cross-dresser turned around to me, “Instead of tatamu (killing) little ol’ me—if you take out that man over there…”

Grinning slyly, [he] incited me,

“Come on, show me what you’ve got, darling.” “What the hell are you talking about? I don’t wanna.” “I don’t wanna.”

The bound man was squirming like a caterpillar. "What were you whispering about over there?"

The man in the room glared at the cross-dresser, “Roku, help out now that it’s come to this.” “Yes.” The cross-dresser threw me a meaningful glance. I snorted and turned away,

“To pin him down and then kill him…”

“What? You got some nerve talkin’ all high-and-mighty like that, ain’t ya?” The man, having latched onto my throwaway remark,

“Alright then, should we get the rope? Or maybe you’ll do it instead?” “I ain’t said I’ll do it.” “See? You don’t even have the guts for that.” “Shut the hell up. I came here to kill this cross-dresser.” The man on the floor turned his bloodshot eyes toward me, pleadingly. From deep within the metal gag, he let out an inarticulate groan, pleading with me to save him. That had a strange effect on me. “Cut the crap!” I kicked the man on the floor with my shoe. Instead of feeling pity for this wretched man, I wanted to twist and crush this maggot-like bastard right then and there. A violent, purposeless murderous intent blazed up inside me.

With a putt-putt-putt from the engine, the boat pulled away from the shore. I had launched into this story wanting to hurt Namiko, but halfway through I began feeling like a complete brain-addled fool. The previous night, I hadn't been myself. Why hadn't I gone to see this Namiko before doing such an idiotic thing? "Could one of those men have come looking for me?" Namiko said.

"That can't be—there's no way they know you, Nami-chan."

Just then, the maid brought beer, and the conversation was interrupted.

When they were alone again, “What did you come here with a customer for, Nami-chan?” “Mahjong.” “Is that all?”

A lead-gray sea was visible through the window. "I like you, Nami-chan." "Shiro-san... did you really kill someone?" Namiko poured beer into my glass. Because it was a refill, the beer overflowed from the glass. "Why did I end up falling for someone like you?" With a loud thud, she set down the beer bottle. Namiko silently stood up, retrieved a change of clothes from the disheveled basket in the corner of the tatami room, and went alone to the bath.

Damn it all! What had I become?—I gulped down the beer. From the bathroom came the sound of Namiko pouring water over herself—each splash striking my ears with raw intensity. The noise that should have been swallowed by the waves instead echoed thunderously through my skull. Then silence fell as she must have sunk into the bathwater. I sighed. Unable to endure sitting any longer, I stood and stripped off my Western clothes to change. Telling myself I was just moving since I'd already risen, I slid open the shoji screen to find a seductively arranged futon in the small room. Here I was—a man who'd never lacked confidence with prostitutes—reduced to some blundering novice. Like a caged animal, I paced heavily across the tatami room.

“What are you doing?” Namiko, having exited the bathroom, looked at me in exasperation,

“You’re such a strange person.”

And facing the dressing table, "I thought Shiro-san would come take a bath after me..." "Were you disappointed when I didn't come?" Namiko had her leg stretched out sideways by her hip like a shellfish sticking out its tongue. Rather than seeming ill-mannered, she looked adorable like that—but, "You've become thoroughly corrupted." "Why?" "The fact you'd say such things proves your corruption." From behind Namiko—her tanzen winter coat snagged—I didn't embrace her. I attacked.

“You’re being rough.”

“Yes, I’m being rough!” I had no idea how to handle an inexperienced girl. “I’ve treated Namiko with care until now, but I’m done with that. Have you been coming to places like this with customers from the shop and bathing together?” “Don’t be absurd.” She denied in an adult-like tone, “It hurts. Don’t squeeze so hard… No, no!”

The scent of her post-bath skin thickly enveloped my face. I suddenly knocked Namiko sideways and shoved my hand between her knees. "No, don't..."

Suddenly in a childish voice, "Don't do such naughty things!" "Naughty?" Telling her not to talk nonsense, I pinned down the struggling Namiko.

“You’re wearing this sort of thing?” I too fell into a mischievous mood and pinched her bloomers, “Quite the sturdy fortress.”

"I don't know."

Namiko pushed me away,

“Please… be gentler with me…” “You brought this on yourself by resisting.” “Then I won’t resist anymore.”

Namiko said with an odd sadness,

“Let’s run away somewhere together.” “I could ask the person who came to my place, couldn’t I?” “I believe it was someone called Yahagi-san.” “Yahagi...?”

I said loudly. How did he find out about Namiko? “Kiss me.” Namiko closed her eyes and whispered. Namiko’s body was trembling in tiny tremors. “Even if I’ve come here with customers to play mahjong, I’ve absolutely… never done something like this before.” “With a man… something like this…” Namiko was a kochijiro (virgin). I, who had only known Birinau (prostitutes), came to know a virgin for the first time. What this brought to my heart was not so much joy as bewilderment. I had assumed Namiko had already known men, yet this bewilderment that she hadn't? My bewilderment was not that kind of bewilderment. I’m not the kind of man to be bewildered by something like that.

Toshibarashi (murderer) had never bewildered me like this. The thing that bewildered me like this—I had actually been secretly seeking it myself. And now it had been given to me. This bewilderment told me this. Through this bewilderment, I was made aware of such things. However, objectively speaking, it was simply the utterly trivial fact that Namiko was a kochijiro (virgin)—too trivial to warrant joy?—something perfectly ordinary to others (hence abnormal for someone like me?)—a matter not particularly rare at all—that had completely bewildered me. Did I subjectively interpret this so-called trivial bewilderment in such grandiose terms, as if it were precisely the bewilderment I had been seeking? But this seemed like trivial bewilderment, yet to me, it bestowed something akin to what despair gives me. That bewilderment was inflicting intense pain upon my heart.

While causing me such bewilderment, Namiko told me she wanted to run away somewhere with me. She said she’d go anywhere. This wasn’t resolve born from her having given me her body—in truth, it was the exact opposite. Namiko had been saying that even before she ever bewildered me. But for me, precisely because she was that kind of person—the more she became that way—the more I didn’t want to drag my beloved Namiko into my deranged fate. Yet even so, my desire not to let go of Namiko was equally intense. What should I do? Though this confusion seemed to generate more bewilderment, in reality—just like Namiko’s resolve—the bewilderment had come first; this confusion existed solely because of that bewilderment.

"I'll go to the shop and come out after gathering my belongings." After parting with Namiko who had said this, I went to meet Abiru. Had I remembered my promise with Abiru? Bewilderment had driven me to Abiru. What did I intend to do by meeting him? That was something I myself didn't understand in the slightest. This too might serve as proof of how utterly bewildered I had been.

I had promised to meet at the shochu shop, but first, when I went to Hyoutan Pond to check, Abiru was standing there with a candle as usual. The beggar-like figure of Abiru—Rokuma (the street fortune-teller)—appeared to me as something filled with mystery and dignity, whether due to my own state of mind or not. It was utterly different from his buffoonish impression in the detention cell. Before I could approach him, a drunkard stood before Abiru with a gait that seemed half-teasing. He was examining the client’s palm and physiognomy by candlelight and telling them something with a solemn expression—I observed this from the shadows. The customer, who appeared to be a downtown shop employee, recounted how he had gradually been drawn into this prophet’s words as his entire body took on a reverent expression. Eventually, when this customer respectfully offered money, Abiru received it with his head held high and unflinching dignity.

When Abiru saw me—what was this now?—he too seemed flustered and hastily blew out the candlelight. He moved with a flurry of panic as if struck by the same bewilderment that had gripped me, yet with that same hurriedness—which left me somewhat disheartened—he led me to a dark bench beneath the wisteria trellis. I wondered if his bewilderment stemmed from me having witnessed the scene of what he called his “business,” but that didn’t seem to be the case.

In summer, this place was a haven for vagrants, but in winter, with no one around, it reeked even more strongly of urine. In place of the vagrants, their dogs were loitering about, sniffing around the area. "I’d like to have my fortune told too."

Abiru dismissed my words and, “When you see dogs like this, do you feel sorry for them? Or… do you want to slaughter them?”

“So you’re going to divine my fate with that?” “Which one are you?” I asked. “Being killed is also fate. “Starving while living is also fate…”

Abiru said. In that voice, there was no longer any trace of bewilderment; rather, I could even sense dignity. “Is killing also fate…?”

As I was saying that, “You did it, didn’t you? Better than being killed yourself, I suppose.” Fate hadn’t permitted me to commit purposeful murder—it had forced me into meaningless killing instead. Though the man was a swindler, he’d undoubtedly killed someone. “That dog always watches my face, but tonight it’s watching yours.” Abiru spoke with anger. The dog cocked its head slightly, as if intrigued by our exchange.

“Is it because I’m possessed by a dog?” “You’re strangely loved by everyone.” “Yet I’m a person unworthy of love.” “You decide that yourself… and kill it.” “People…?” “Love…”

That voice was filled with mystery. "That's why... yourself..."

A dog lifted its leg against the post of the wisteria trellis. When I glared to stop it from urinating, nothing came out. With a look of shame, the dog slunk away.

“You’re not a madman—you’re one hell of an intellectual.” When I said this, Abiru responded: “Calling me an intellectual—that’s no compliment at all.” “Intellectuals are useless in this day and age…” The fact that he said that proved he was an intellectual. “For an intellectual, you sure spout nonsense about dogs possessing people…” “That was just a bluff.”

He said, looking as embarrassed as a dog that had failed to urinate.

“No, perhaps a dog really is possessing you.” “I slaughtered the dog.” “You saw through that.” “You’ve also seen through what comes after the dog.”

“That was my bluff.”

The fact that he wasn’t bluffing now felt even more unsettling. No, never before had Abiru appeared so resolute as he did at this moment. Abiru was radiant with mystery and dignity.

A newly vivid panic assailed me. The panic accompanied by considerable intense pain—that pain had grown stronger than before. This panic—which had finally intensified, accompanied by what could truly be called pain—now vividly declared to me that I, who had until now felt a dead person within myself, was at last attempting to crawl out toward life. The dead me was trying to live. That was what had brought me panic, and learning about Namiko of Kochijiro had given me precisely that same kind of panic. And that panic once again made me realize: I was trying to live. While I had dimly sensed it myself, this awareness—still sunken in twilight—was now being illuminated, albeit gradually yet distinctly, by panic.

I was trying to live. The act of trying to live was bringing pain along with panic. Hope was a torment to me. It was a pain akin to despair. It might have been even more tormenting than despair.

I was trying to live. I wanted to live. It was giving me something akin to what despair would give me. Was it because the hope of wanting to live was itself despair to me? "So, what’re you gonna do?" Abiru said.

“What should I do...” I said. “What should I do...” Abiru said what I’d wanted to say,

“Is there really no way out?” “That’s not true!” I said sharply. “Then what’re you planning?” “I need to do something.” “But you don’t know what?” “I know that already.” “Want to clear out somewhere?” “That’s right. Let’s clear out.” “You might as well make a clean break and escape far away.”

Abiru put his hand into his pocket, "Thinking you'd definitely come, I went ahead and wrote a sasa (letter) in advance." "This isn't a bluff." "I'd be in trouble if you took this as a bluff, but I prepared a letter of introduction."

From his pocket came a white, pristine envelope. Though merely a sheep envelope (封筒), contrasted against his shabby appearance, it looked unnervingly impressive.

“Take this and go to Hokkaido.” “Hokkaido?” A letter of introduction to a labor camp? When I said this, Abiru’s tone turned stern, “Go to my brother’s house in Nemuro. If you show this letter, my brother will surely take care of you.” “Is your brother yakuza?” “He’s just an ordinary fisherman, but taking care of someone like you should be nothing for my brother.” “Will he shelter me?” “No need to worry.” “If I, a complete stranger, suddenly show up there—is that really okay?”

“I’ll send a binpi (telegram) from my end too.” Because the whole thing was so absurd I wanted to spit, I said in a joking tone, “Can I take a naon (woman) with me?” “Sure thing.”

Abiru's voice was also joking. "I really do want to go with a woman."

“That’s better. Better than going alone.” “Why on earth are you being so kind to me?” As I said this, I had to confront the fact that my struggle to live was precisely an attempt to live against the death closing in from outside. I wanted to escape from the death closing in on me. Since that was indeed the factual truth, was it an illusion that I had felt this as an escape from my corpse self? The escape from the death closing in on me had also been an escape from the death within myself. If it hadn’t been an escape from my corpse self, I wouldn’t have tried to flee from the death closing in on me.

Because the escape to Hokkaido that Abiru was urging upon me meant an escape from myself, I gladly accepted the envelope, “To someone like me, who has no connection or ties whatsoever to you—why are you being so kind?” “Mr. Kashiwai,” Abiru said my name,

“I was an anarchist once myself,” “A country anarchist, but one who’d fallen completely under Stirner’s spell.” “That’s how I know about you.” “I don’t know who you are now, but I’ve always respected the courage and passion you showed during your terrorist days.” “At least… let me do this much for you…” I felt violently ashamed. It was as if I’d suffered some undeserved humiliation. To receive unearned kindness like this—it truly was both mortifying and degrading.

In a voice that saw through me, Abiru said: “For my part, I want to ask you this: Why did you specifically choose me? If you’re going to ask why I’m being kind to you, then I want to ask why you placed your trust in me and came here. That makes me happy—I’m grateful for it. That we met at Karimushi was a strange twist of fate.”

I nodded silently. Though I suspected something dubious about Abiru's kindness for a moment, I didn't harbor any deep suspicion that this might be another trap like last night. I couldn't bring myself to. That was for the best, and that was fine, I told myself as I hung my head. "At that time, the reason Ryuko's story on the radio dragged on like that was because my past from when I used to run wild was exposed."

“You seem to know not just my past, but who I am now too.” “The you of today—with nowhere left to direct your passion—probably killing dogs, killing cats…” “Hikobee—I didn’t kill him.” “No—wait, did I kill him?” “No—I didn’t kill him, but it feels like I did.” “But I definitely smashed that dog.” “After all that dog-bludgeoning mess, you’re joining the ranks of murderers…?” “I’d rather you didn’t do that.”

“You’re supposed to be a nihilist…” “No—I can’t fully become one, so I do things like this and deceive myself. “Covering it up. “It’s half-hearted concealment.” “Half-hearted?” That spiritual vertigo of mine was not a stagger toward death, but a struggle toward life. Half-hearted struggle—when I felt that from Abiru’s words, “You should cut ties with those right-wing murderers. “I’d really like you to cut them off.”

For some reason, Abiru said this with an embarrassed look.

The movie theaters in Rokku had let out, and people came streaming out. The black shadows of people who had been satisfied by the tragedy on screen moved like a zoetrope against the bright lights and seemed like a world apart from us, but,

“Alright, business, business,” Abiru said in a self-urging tone. “I may be like this, but my brother—go see for yourself and you’ll understand—unlike me, he’s a proper member of society. He’ll take you in without fail. Please believe me. You should go to Nemuro for a while and live among ordinary people, Mr. Kashiwai.” Having convinced me, Abiru seemed to exhaust his strength—or rather, by giving me hope, he transformed into something like an empty fool’s shell—as he slumped his shoulders heavily,

“I’ve been thinking it’s about time I run away from this self of mine too.” “But what kind of self I’d be escaping to…”

I should have remembered these final words. Had I done so, then years later when encountering an unexpected Abiru in an unexpected place, I surely would have escaped what could be called the shock—or rather astonishment—and the resulting spiritual vertigo... but...

“The goddamn Grim Reaper’s here.”

When I followed Abiru’s gaze, there stood the loathsome figure of Roku the cross-dresser. With an evening paper in hand, he was beckoning me. “That man tonight—he’s acting a bit off—but Mr. Kashiwai, don’t engage with him. Hurry and go.” “Thank you.”

For the first time, I expressed my gratitude. The sincere words of thanks left my mouth. I thought I’d vanished into the crowd, but Roku the cross-dresser doggedly pursued me, “Hey! Hey!”

Roku clung to me. Even I couldn't help but marvel at his skillful tracking. At the same time, I already sensed there was some connection between Roku's appearance last night and this skillful tracking.

“Kashiwai-san. Forgive me. I was wrong.” “Shut up. Stop following me around.” “That’s right. Last night was my fault.” “If you think you were wrong, then get lost.” “No, I must confess everything to you…”

Prefaced with "because I fell in love with you," Roku’s confession went like this.

“Someone asked me to, so last night I followed you again and approached you at that shochu bar like it was a chance meeting. And I’m sorry for taking you to such a place. Even so, I never imagined you’d actually take matters into your own hands and try to do such a thing. But you were so cool back then. You were so cool, and I got all worked up. It’s embarrassing, but I came. Oh, the conversation’s gone off track. The con artist isn’t that person—the one who framed that person is the real con artist. Surprised? But even if you hadn’t done it yourself, those people would’ve ended up doing the same thing right in front of you anyway. As long as you were there, it would’ve been the same even if you hadn’t done it yourself. So I was told to bring you to that place. What for, you ask? Couldn’t it be they wanted to bring you into the fold? I don’t know about that part. I was just told to guide you to the boat. Wondering if it’s in this evening’s paper? I was curious too and bought it to check, but those people aren’t the type to make such blunders. But now that things have come to this, wouldn’t you be safer with them after all? You don’t want to?”

“If you were with us, you’d be completely safe though.” “No, that’s not why I came.” “I just came to confess everything to you because I couldn’t clear my conscience.” “I wanted to have a heart-to-heart with you—” “A heart-to-heart? What kinda ridiculous fabrication… I ain’t falling for that trick.”

I said. Though I suspected his story wasn’t entirely fabricated and had deliberately rebuffed him as such, the fact remained undeniable—that I’d wrapped a rope around that writhing man’s neck and strangled him like vermin. I strangled him with a rope. Not with my hands. Yet it felt as if I’d used my bare hands—had that sensation traveled up the rope into my palms? The tactile memory of the man’s neck now crawled back with visceral unease. Yet what haunted me more was that piling post crusted with barnacles—the scab-like clusters I’d glimpsed boarding the boat. Its hard, calcified ugliness unsettled me deeper than any fleeting touch.

“A fabrication? My fabrication…?”

The cross-dresser Roku stood blankly for a moment, then after a pause uttered this strange remark: "I'm hopeless. "This isn't working. "My made-up stories get found out so easily, don't they?"

In that voice, not a trace remained of his characteristic darkness, and having said this cheerfully, “With things like this, it’s no wonder I can’t hold a stage—but even I was once an onnagata who made a bit of a name for myself at the Miyato-za.”

“So Yahagi-san and his lot were your patrons? Tell your patron this: If you wanna drag me into your gang, you oughta come up with a smarter plan than this. You too—quit loitering around and tailing me. If you don’t quit it, your life’s gonna be in danger too. Got it, you ham actor?”

I decided to flee to Hokkaido.

In any case, I’d settled on where to run. That was good enough. I didn’t know what power Abiru’s letter held, but just having a place to run to was enough for me.

“Will you come with me?”

I said to Namiko.

“I’ll go.”

Namiko declared flatly.

“I’m not trying to act noble here, but since it worked last time too, being with you means we’ll slip away clean.” “So you’re taking me along?” It wasn’t an objection. I too spoke in a voice that didn’t match what I felt,

“If we go, we’ll have to become husband and wife.” “We’re already husband and wife.”

“I see.” “Don’t you want to?” “The hell you sayin’?” “Listen… I’m a new commoner.”

"Even so, will you marry me?" he asks.

“Aren’t you saying new commoners aren’t human?” “Shiro-san. Thank you.” “Namiko’s zodiac year… what is it?” “Year of the Dog… but why?”

When it came to fleeing to Hokkaido, I couldn't help but meet with Maruman. I went to meet Maruman—the man I couldn't face. It was to make amends (apologize) that I had gone. It was a *sui-bare* (rainy day). It was a day when Maruman couldn't go out for business.

Maruman was renting a room on the second floor of a small, dilapidated tenement in Matsuba-cho, Asakusa. Throughout this entire area lived Maruman’s fellow tradesmen—or rather, unlike Maruman, a failed anarchist, established vendors who operated permanent stalls in Rokku. Though small, each maintained a proper house of their own.

To visit Maruman in his rented room, I had to go around to the back of the dilapidated tenement and enter through the kitchen. In other words, the entrance for the second-floor tenant was that house’s kitchen. It wasn’t that Maruman—with his suspicious-looking bundles—disliked using the front entrance; rather, the karuayumi staircase leading upstairs had been built right in the kitchen through some peculiar design choice. Had they constructed this okaruba second floor from the start intending to rent it out?

When I opened the creaky kitchen door, there sat an old pair of women's geta with red straps and what appeared to be Maruman's stubby wooden sandals. Since Maruman was still single, the women's geta belonged to this house's landlady. As I was taking off my shoes, I saw a woman's shed hair—curled into a tight coil—discarded in the corner of the dirt floor. When I first met Clara, I recalled, one of these had been floating in a bowl of Chinese soba. Was I still unable to forget Clara? To me, with this bitter feeling,

“That brothel rat—Clara, was it?—her old man’s looking for you, Shiro-san.”

Maruman said. I had expected Maruman to show me a thoroughly stern face, but that wasn’t the case. It was I who wore a bitter expression, “Did you come all the way to Maru-san’s place just to search for me?” “I heard you met the old man.” “Huh?”

I had thought this was about before we met. “Speakin’ of brothel rats—there was that matron Tomie in that house, yeah? Middle-aged type.” “She’s runnin’ an oden cart in Ikebukuro now.” “Cheap stall, but for a brothel rat who clawed her way up, damn impressive.” “In that trade you age fast—she’s all shriveled up now... Not that I’d remember ’er otherwise, but when I went drinkin’ there, she just comes out with ‘I finally washed my hands of the red-light life’... Even bein’ that blunt about it’s damn impressive.”

In a way that felt deliberately evasive, "Mari-chan's apparently moved up in the world—they say she's become a pillow geisha at some hot-spring resort." "And Emiko—they say she died of syphilis." "I don't know anything about that." "Tomie still remembers you, Shiro-san—was wonderin' what happened to ya." "More importantly—what happened to Clara?" "The main one—I ain't got a clue." "Even Tomie don't know that much."

“Why’s Clara’s old man looking for me? Is he trying to take me to Manchuria, I wonder?”

“Suna-san’s lookin’ for ya too.” “Clara’s old man and Suna-san seem to be squarin’ off over somethin’, huh?” “They’re comin’ at you from both sides, Shiro-san.” “That’s some real business. You’re somethin’ else, Shiro-san.” “You too, Shiro-san.”

How did Maruman know all this? "There isn’t another one targeting me, is there?" “Yahagi, you mean?” Maruman said bluntly, “That one’s a bit scary, I tell ya.” “Scary? Come to think of it, he even showed up at Namiko’s place. What a nasty feeling.” “Namiko…?”

“Why the hell do they know about me?” “Once that lot sets their sights on someone, they dig up everything about ’em, I tell ya.”

He patted his legs—legs that looked even shorter when he sat cross-legged—and said, “Tamazuka Hidenobu became a novelist.”

Changing the subject again, “First he switches from anarchist to Bolshevik, and now he’s a novelist… I guess that’s what they call a converted writer, huh?”

“Suna Koichi went from being a pure anarchist to a racketeer, and now he’s a China ronin…”

“Suna-san seems to be cookin’ up some grand scheme,” he said defensively. “Maybe it was a mistake goin’ over there and seein’ those bastards exploitin’ China firsthand.” “I’d made a pact with Maru-san here,” I replied, lowering my head to adjust the beka hat, “that if things went south, we’d turn horse bandits.”

I lowered my head and put on my beka. "I never thought that riot plan would collapse so pathetically either." "I’d pegged it as doomed from the start, I tell ya." "The whole setup reeked of convenience…" Into the small ceramic teraire—a hibachi that looked almost dainty—Maruman fed charcoal while speaking. "Givin’ up on Manchuria, eh? "I thought I’d finally see those Northern Manchurian beasts from Kropotkin’s *Mutual Aid*." "Creatures surviving together through that merciless northern wilderness…"

“We’re just like them. Kropotkin’s name came up—now that’s a long-unheard one.” “Nostalgic for you?” Had I already strayed so far from anarchism? Had I abandoned anarchism? To Maruman’s words,

“It’s not Northern Manchuria, but I’m heading to the northern edge...” “Where you going?” “...Ended up putting someone to sleep.”

I'll spill the truth (confess) honestly to Maruman alone. I had spoken with resolve, yet he dismissed it casually—

“Seems so,” he said. “I heard it from Suna-san.” “Did Suna-san hear about it from Yahagi? What kind of guy is this Yahagi anyway?” “You don’t know?”

Maruman said pityingly and told this story. Several years ago, there had been a mysterious death involving Japan’s consul-general. The consul-general stationed in China—at the time called Shina—had returned to Tokyo for discussions with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. On the eve of his planned return to China after concluding the discussions, he had "committed suicide" in a hotel room. The pistol bullet had penetrated from his left temple to the right. The pistol lay by the pillow—not his own. It became clear this was murder rather than "suicide," but the case was left unresolved, ending in what they call the labyrinth of obscurity.

“The culprit apparently was Yahagi.” “No—it’s considered to be Yahagi.” “That consul-general had come to propose abolishing Japan’s extraterritorial rights.” “He apparently got furious over that and took him out.” “To make an example for those weak-on-China diplomacy types—they made that consul-general their blood sacrifice.”

“And yet he hasn’t been caught… What’s more, that Yahagi’s walking around brazen as you please…” “They say he’s been pulling off even more outrageous warigoto behind the scenes.” “Shiro-san, ain’t it better for you to join that hakuī group too?” “What a pain. “Maru-san, you seem pretty chummy with Suna-san—but does cozying up like that really protect anarchism?” “Since when do **you** get to talk like that?”

A steady drizzle was falling gloomily. To that sound, we were listening gloomily.

Suddenly, Maruman made a bashful expression,

“I’ve been thinking it’s about time I settled down.” “That sounds like a woman’s scripted line.” “I was thinkin’ maybe I’ll get myself a wife too...” Maruman laughed, revealing black gums.

Chapter 3

Part One: The Northern Edge

The town of Nemuro is situated on hilly land facing the sea. That sea was the Sea of Okhotsk. After continuing our long, long rattletrap of a train journey, when Namiko and I arrived at Nemuro Station—the final stop—the town lay buried under deep snow. Looking down from the station atop the hill, my entire field of vision was smothered in snow and ice, making it impossible to discern where land ended and sea began. The sea here had frozen solid like a freshwater lake, stretching toward the Kuril Islands as though transformed into an endless ice plain.

Feeling as if I'd been hurled into a boundless world of ice and snow, I couldn't help muttering, "I've landed in some godforsaken place." For Namiko, raised in southern climes, this desolation at the world's northern edge must have struck with particular severity—yet she trudged on, the heavy trunk dangling from both hands, her head completely swathed in a muffler that drew no complaints. The face peeking from that woolen wrap was unmistakably Katyusha-style. This Japanese Katyusha, contrary to Tolstoy's novel, had followed me to my place of exile.

Abiru’s brother’s house stood at what you might call the boundary between land and sea along the shore. He carried the surname Momanari—one bursting with auspiciousness—and though Abiru had told me this younger brother was just a fisherman, he was in truth a proper fishing magnate. Displaying the dignified bearing befitting a young master of a grand house (though naturally it had been inherited from his parents) that matched the Momanari name perfectly, he addressed me—

“Mr. Nakano?”

That was my surname here. "I received a letter from my brother."

It seemed he had gone out of his way to send a letter rather than a telegram, but I had no idea what Abiru had written about me. Whether this brother’s taciturn nature was simply his disposition or if he regarded me with suspicion—I couldn’t tell either. He was called Momanari Shinjiro, and his brother Abiru was named Seiichiro. The fact that Abiru—that man perpetually black with grime—had the proper name Seiichiro struck me as absurd. A neatly dressed woman entered silently, shot Namiko a suspicious glare, and added coal to the stove.

“This is Nakano-san, my brother’s friend.” Shinjiro introduced me that way and told me the woman was his wife. And then, immediately, “Well then...” he stood up.

he stood up. Behind the house was the cannery that Shinjiro ran. Though called a factory, it was a small-scale operation and remained closed during winters when there was no fishing. In one corner of that factory, there was a dormitory for migrant factory girls, and for the time being, we were assigned one of its rooms. The factory girls called “migratory birds” had returned to their hometowns during the snowy season and were now gone. Namiko promptly began cleaning the room as she— “The madam’s quite beautiful.”

“Yeah.” “But doesn’t she seem kind of scary?” “Yeah.” “She looks older than her husband, though.”

“Yeah.” “No matter what I say, you just go ‘Uh-huh…’ So annoying.” “Yeah.” “Oh, there’s a beanbag here…” In the closet, Namiko discovered a beanbag that appeared to have been left behind by one of the factory girls. The beanbag, crafted from beautiful multicolored fabric scraps, spoke of its owner’s long-standing attachment through its faded colors and light stains. “The beads are properly inside.” Mixing old tabi beads in with the azuki beans made the texture feel better when crafting it, and the beads made a pleasant sound. Nostalgic for that sound, Namiko was tossing the beanbag near her ear when she suddenly threw it high—

Deep-cut Saijouzan Chikuma River’s raging waves A distant sound carries faintly— Are they brave ones at Sakamaku’s mounds?

It was the tender voice of a young girl. Namiko’s voice seeped deep into my chest. NOBORU ASAHI NI HATA NO TE NO KURUMAGAKARI NO JINZONAE It was something I would later learn—that here, these beanbags were called ayako, and playing with them was called ayatsuki. “Why would someone leave a beanbag behind here, I wonder.” “It’s not something you’d just leave behind.” “Yeah.”

“Maybe they died,” she said. “The owner?”

I said. Perhaps because it was ominous, had the factory girl’s friends abandoned it there? “Don’t touch that thing.” I told her to get rid of it because it was filthy. “That’s wasteful.”

Namiko cupped it in her hands,

“It’s cold, isn’t it?”

she said for the first time. When March came, the cannery factory girls had already begun arriving. They were daughters of poor farmers from Tohoku. The snow on the ground had yet to melt, but crab fishing had already begun.

From the factory girls’ quarters, we moved to a detached house. To call it a detached house made it sound respectable, but it was a shack. I wound up helping at the accounts office. Transient men hired as deckhands for the fishing boats came flooding in too, and not a soul paid my presence any mind. “Those people use the same dialect as me.”

Namiko looked on with interest, “It’s not ‘baten’ like an X, but they say ‘batte’.” For example, they’d say, ‘I went *batte* (but) didn’t see anything.’ “Are the deckhands from Kyushu?” “No, it’s those factory girls. “They’re from Akita, they say.” “They use the same ‘batte’ as Kyushu, you see.” “How strange.” Among those factory girls, there were some who boarded ships from Nemuro to work at the cannery factories on Kunashiri Island. Because the wages were slightly better than working in Nemuro, they crossed over to the island. Carrying their mothers’ old bikkuri (Shingen bags, traditional cloth bags) diligently—but to me, those young girls looked pitiful. There must surely be girls carrying beanbags in their Shingen bags.

Seeing those factory girls, Namiko declared that since it was a waste to stay idle, she would work at the factory too. “The cannery factory?” “Yes.”

From the factory where the female workers—or in their dialect, "watta-watta"—labored came the ceaseless thunk-thunk of deba knives chopping through Tarabagani crab's massive legs. This task was called deba kirisai. It was also simply called saikatsu. When ships that had gone out to catch crabs in the Okhotsk Sea (not factory ships—Nemuro's vessels at the time were independent boats) came pouring into the harbor, the thunk-thunk-thunk of saikatsu from the factory would continue late into the night. Even what should have been a briskly satisfying rhythmic sound grew erratic late at night from exhaustion. Some workers dozed off and sliced through their fingers along with their work gloves. The factory ceiling had scarecrow clappers strung across it, and to rouse the drowsy factory girls from their stupor, the supervisor would pull their strings to make them clatter.

I disapproved of Namiko working in such a place, but once she set her mind to something, she wouldn’t listen. Abiru’s brother had also said he would arrange other work if she wanted, but she wished to work at the factory like the other factory girls. For Namiko, who was new to cannery factory work, saikatsu was beyond her. Saikatsu couldn’t be done by anyone but skilled workers. The large legs of the Tarabagani crab are called, in order from the base, “Ichiban,” “Rakkyo,” and “Nanban,” and saikatsu refers to the process of cutting the crab’s legs into these three parts with a deba knife in a thunk-thunk-thunk rhythm. The skilled factory girls wielded their deba knives with door-pounding speed and efficiency.

Extracting meat from the legs divided into three parts was Namiko’s job. This meat extraction was an entry-level task for factory girls. Soboro—the removal of lower-grade shoulder meat for canning—was also work done by new factory girls who had just arrived. Namiko did that. “I like working,” she said. Namiko sewed herself the *monpe* work pants and *wappa* coveralls worn by Tohoku-born factory workers as their uniforms. “Since my hands are nimble, I’ll get transferred to meat-packing soon—you’ll see.”

It was the work of packing crab meat into cans lined with parchment paper. The task—placing the crab legs upside down so their red surfaces would show when opened, stuffing *soboro* between them, adding more leg meat, then wrapping it all in paper—seemed simple enough, but demanded dexterous speed. “You’re awfully eager.” When I teased her, “I don’t want to just idly rely on Mr. Momanari’s kindness.” “A waste?” “No—it’s that I feel bad for those poor factory girls. I won’t sit around on top of what you call exploitation... exploitation.”

In February and March of that year, the Blood-Pledge Corps Incident occurred, and Inoue Junnosuke and Dan Takuma were assassinated. In May, Prime Minister Inukai was assassinated. Unlike the previous two incidents, this May 15 Incident sent shockwaves through society as a large-scale collective action. Precisely because of this, the truth was classified as top secret, and since the details weren’t published in the newspapers until a year later, all I could do in Nemuro was...

“They’ve gone and done it,”

I could do nothing but glare at Tokyo's distant sky. The March and October Incidents that had ended in failure now seemed to have been carried out the moment I left Tokyo. This filled me with bitter frustration, yet it wasn't mere frustration. Nor was it simply frustration.

Momanari Shinjiro came to my house and,

“The world’s grown perilous, hasn’t it?” “Though putting it that way might be unfair to you, Mr. Nonaka?” “Unfair? Are you saying I’m part of some dangerous group…? Did Mr. Seiichiro’s letter mention such things?” When she played dumb, he laughed too. “Nothing of the sort.” While Momanari addressed me as “Master” with deference, I responded brusquely,

“If I were part of that group, they should’ve come after me right away.”

“I see…” Not in a tone that was trying to smoke me out, Momanari crossed his arms in his jumper, “It seems Ogawa Akiaki was the mastermind behind the May Incident.” “Then Minami Ikko too…” Was Kodo also involved in that incident?

“You didn’t hear about Minami Ikko, did you?” “Mr. Momanari, do you know any detailed information?” “No, I merely inquired with some newspaper men.”

“Hmm.” “As for matters concerning Mr. Nonaka—I won’t say anything unnecessary to those people…”

Momanari said he wanted me to rest assured, “By the way, where has Ayako gone?”

This Ayako was not referring to the beanbag toy, but was the name of Momanari’s wife. “Isn’t Ayako sometimes… intruding over there?” “No.” “Didn’t you hear anything about your brother?” “No.”

Momanari averted his eyes from me,

“It seems naval officers were quite active in this incident.” He shifted the topic back to the May 15 Incident, though in truth he appeared more concerned about Ayako than any of that. It struck me he’d come here wanting to discuss Ayako and his brother. While I too held some interest in that matter, what weighed on my mind now was the May Incident. Speaking of Momanari’s brother – having been in Nemuro nearly half a year by then – I’d already heard rumors about Abiru’s “disappearance from home.” The gossip claimed his elder brother Seiichiro had fled to Tokyo to let his earnest younger sibling Shinjiro inherit the fishing magnate household. As Seiichiro – who went by Abiru – had told me himself, while it was true he’d once raged as an anarchist, he hadn’t been formally disinherited for it. They said he’d voluntarily cast aside his birthright as eldest son to let his brother succeed.

The rumors about Seiichiro were extremely sympathetic. The rumors, however, did not stop there. I also heard rumors that there seemed to be some complicated circumstances involving Ayako between the brothers. Ayako was, just as Namiko had observed, older than Shinjiro. She was only one year older, but there must have been something subtle hidden in the fact of her seniority.

“Oh, it’s Mrs. Nonaka.”

Namiko, her face so pale it was only natural for Momanari to be startled, returned after quitting her night shift. Staggering in, she hurried to the kitchen, crouched down, and retched violently as if in pain. I thought it might be due to overwork at the factory, but in reality, it was morning sickness.

It was just before the Chishima cherry blossoms began to bloom. The roads, which had been muddy from the melting snow, had finally hardened. On that ground, children were playing patchi—menko card-flipping games. The sight of them playing territory-capture with ramune marbles also caught my eye. Even though children’s figures had never before registered in my vision, was it because I too stood on the brink of becoming a parent like any ordinary man? Seeing their joyful forms—to use the mill girls’ expression—it brought a teki-nai feeling, that particular ache. That said, this wasn’t because I didn’t want children. It was precisely because I did.

It was around that time that the abominable memories of murder began to appear in my dreams. The memories I had tried so hard to forget came surging back with terrible force. The man whose eyes turned white as I killed him—those very eyes now threatened me. "What's with all the groaning?" Namiko shook me awake, "Get a hold of yourself!" "Namiko?"

“What were you dreaming about?”

“Namiko…” “I’m right here.” “You’ve got to pull yourself together—I can’t take this anymore!”

More than at Namiko—no, at myself—I flared up in anger, "I had a dream about getting hauled off. Damn right, it was abominable." Hiding the truth, "There was no need to come all the way near Abashiri."

Life-term prisoners are sent to Abashiri Prison north of Nemuro.

“I had an abominable dream.” “Even if you get caught, I’ll have the baby and raise it right.” Namiko took leave from the factory due to severe morning sickness—a break that coincided with the crab molting season when operations naturally halted. Molted crabs develop a tofu-like substance between shell and flesh, rendering the meat unpalatable and unsuitable for canning. Even during shutdowns, the cannery’s crab stench lingered so pervasively that merely catching a whiff would send Namiko retching. She kept away from the factory grounds, lingering idle at home.

On one such day, Momanari’s wife showed up alone for a visit. Dressed up extravagantly—as Namiko later remarked—her Western-style outfit for formal occasions, likely made in Sapporo, was indeed excessively grand for visiting this shabby barrack, and her face was unpleasantly thick with makeup. Yet to me—still carrying Tokyo’s customs in my eyes—even if she gave the impression of a *feenago* (café waitress) or something of the sort, the truth was it felt like a crane alighting in a garbage dump. “Oh, my, Mrs…,” stammered Namiko in her threadbare, washed-out kimono, both flustered and panicked.

"How about..." Ayako said magnanimously, swiftly scanning the interior of the house. Through her gaze, I noticed once more how our furnishings remained utterly disordered. Yet even so, Namiko had been diligently purchasing and arranging items with our meager funds, striving to make our household resemble that of newlyweds. This marked Ayako’s first visit to our home. Though she had always seemed to avoid me whenever we met outside, her sudden appearance now left me somewhat flustered. There existed no zabuton cushion fit for this Ayako clad in silk socks. I flipped over my own zabuton cushion and offered it to her.

“Please don’t trouble yourself…” Ayako sat directly on the engawa veranda, “I’ve been meaning to visit you for quite some time now, but…” After trailing off, she crossed her legs,

“Today, my husband went to Kushiro, so…”

It was as if she were saying she couldn’t have come sooner because Momanari’s watchful eyes were too bothersome. “Won’t you come up?” Ignoring my words, “Aren’t you acquainted with Mr. Kanbara?” On Ayako’s cheek was a mole resembling an applied beauty spot.

“The one in Kushiro…?” I wondered whether she meant the friend of Momanari’s who had gone to Kushiro, but—

“No.” Having said that, she abandoned the thread of conversation, “The skunk cabbages are blooming so beautifully…”

She looked toward the back of the house. Across the ditch, skunk cabbages bloomed in profusion. This damp place where they thrived matched exactly what their lush growth would suggest. The flowers were beautiful yet unsettling—thick white spathes shaped like flames jutted abruptly from the earth, only their blooms visible above ground. Whether due to their massive size or some other quality, they possessed an eerie allure that surpassed mere beauty.

“These flowers are rather eerie, don’t you think? As if they’re poisonous…” “I haven’t heard anything about them being poisonous… Hmm, well… horses don’t eat these, you know.” In Honshu, you had to go deep into the mountains to see them. I’d never seen them even in Honshu before—only after coming here. Come to think of it, those wild adonis flowers blooming naturally—it was here I saw them for the first time in my life. Though not near our house but somewhere removed from town—when I spotted those yellow adonis buds pushing through a blanket of dead grass on a sunlit cliff where snow had melted earlier than elsewhere—all I could manage was a flat “Huh,” though my astonishment ran deeper than that casual exclamation. Was my surprise at this sudden visit from Momanari’s wife comparable? No—that wasn’t quite right. As a flower, this woman was a skunk cabbage.

In Tokyo, these adonis flowers were potted as auspicious New Year’s decorations—planted in extravagant bonsai pots no less—and back in my childhood, my old man would always buy them on New Year’s Eve (it was invariably New Year’s Eve), and even when drunk, he’d carry them home with exaggerated care. They were long-lasting flowers, but once they fully bloomed, the adonis would inevitably wither along with their blossoms. Was it that they couldn’t thrive in Tokyo? Every year we bought them, and every year we killed them. Seeing them coated in dust, their forms desiccated and brittle in death, felt cruel even through a child’s eyes. It was here in Nemuro that I first saw the adonis growing wild. To encounter them in such a northern extremity—I felt astonishment mingled with an ache in my chest. These adonis wouldn’t be killed. They wouldn’t wither; they could live. They lived rooted in earth. What I saw for the first time wasn’t those pitiful potted specimens, but adonis living anchored in soil. Whether imagined or real, their buds seemed more vivid here than those I’d known in Tokyo.

The adonis of the northern frontier seemed to be speaking to me who had come to this remote land. "You too can now live rooted in the earth. You are living rooted in the earth. For the first time, you're putting down roots in life—" "Never mind about tea—come over here and sit properly. Oh really now... That's quite unnecessary." Ayako turned toward Namiko who was busily preparing tea.

“You two look so happy together,” she said to me,

“You must take good care of her…” “Mr. Kashiwai, you’ll be a darling baby’s daddy next year.” “You must be thrilled.” Here, where I was going by the pseudonym Nonaka, Ayako spoke my real name. “How do you know my name, Mrs…?”

“Even if my husband doesn’t know, I do.” I stared at Ayako’s face, white as a skunk cabbage flower. While sensing the “scary person” Namiko had mentioned there,

“Who told you?” “From Mr. Sei…” For a moment I couldn’t grasp who she meant—then realized it was Momonari Seiichiro.

“I want to hear all sorts of things about Sei-san from you.” “I had thought so ever since you first arrived here in Nemuro—yet still hesitated somewhat.” “No—not hesitation toward others... Perhaps rather restraint toward oneself... Would that phrasing suit?”

Ayako chattered away by herself. It seemed like she was pouring out everything weighing on her heart all at once, but in truth, her chatter appeared more like an attempt to conceal her inner thoughts rather than reveal them. “What on earth is Sei-san doing in Tokyo?” “Kanbara-san seems to know, but he doesn’t tell me anything.” “Is it difficult for you to talk about?” “Mr. Kashiwai—or rather, Mr. Nonaka—if it’s difficult for you to talk about, you don’t have to force yourself to say anything, you know.”

“There’s nothing particularly difficult to discuss.” “Oh, but if my questions might make you feel unpleasant, then perhaps I shouldn’t ask…”

“Well then, if I say we should drop it,” “That he’s living like a beggar or something…” “Oh? You knew about that?” “Do you know too?”

Ayako asked Namiko. "I've never met him."

“My, and here you are a married couple,” Her tone carried more contempt than surprise, yet she continued in the same vein: “I do wish Sei-san would hurry up and get married.” To her baiting words, I— “He’s exactly like a mountain hermit, so marriage never crosses his mind.” “What a troublesome man.” “Did he tell you something about me…?” “Sei-san?”

Odachi—the wind picked up. The Yamase that fishermen speak of—when this east wind blows in from Nosappu, the weather turns foul. Playing on this, fishermen call being in a bad mood "Yamase," but I too was feeling Yamase-ish, “About me—my husband told me... well, he was saying some strange things. That you’ve been coming around to my place often to talk about Sei-san.” “My husband is right-wing.”

She said something unrelated,

“Sei-san’s friend Mr. Nonaka is a leftist, isn’t he?”

“Is your husband right-wing?” “Just social connections—can’t be helped.”

Ayako looked at me with sharp eyes, “If you ever have any troubles, please tell me.” Even if Momanari were to give up on me, she declared in a matriarchal tone that she herself would become my backer and look after me. As I thought this—that her matriarchal act was likely directed at Momonari as well—I pursed my lips into a ヘ-shaped frown. Then from the side, Namiko spoke up in an unnaturally earnest voice: “Please.”

If this were Maruman-ryu, it would have felt like an itsuki—the formal greeting from an oyabun to a bashita, that underworld etiquette between boss and proprietress. Ayako nodded solemnly, "It's turned into such a todoriganai conversation..."

This was factory girl slang meaning something rambling or pointless.

Just then, a fair-skinned boy—a rare sight in the port town—appeared lumberingly for a child. He was Ayako’s child and a first grader in elementary school. He stood silently, staring at us with dark eyes.

The festival began. Each neighborhood brought out their prized floats, and the whole town was caught up in literal festival madness. Carnies of every stripe had come to profit from the festivities. They rode in on what they called their bitaba. My ears caught ill-mannered youths talking about what they'd done to some doya flophouse sharima maid and how that sharima was a total lariko slut. Even if they used this tekiya argot thinking rubes wouldn't get it, I—Maruman's old running mate—understood every word.

Namiko was a *sharima*. But she wasn’t promiscuous. In the world, *sharima* are considered promiscuous, but Namiko isn’t like that. Even I, who was once called Yachimoro’s Shiro-san, have hardened alongside Namiko. Namiko went to enjoy the festival town with her close cannery worker friends. I followed after them. Seeing them as “migratory birds,” the young carnies begin sweet-talking the factory girls. Using a method called *monoshina komashi*, they try to hook women by giving them items they think women would like.

“You think you can *komasu* someone with a fake *waibi* (ring)?”

The thought that even my Namiko was being looked down on by those bastards made me furious. "You shouldn’t use that kind of language." Then Namiko pulled my arm. Namiko’s warning was apt. Having been admonished by Namiko, I too was startled. It wasn’t impossible that some fluke might leave a trail.

—The townspeople were generous, and with it being a festival, they spent money freely; the carnies were overjoyed, shouting “Bai wa mabuten, santaku yorokushita” (“Business went perfectly—we made a killing!”). But among them were some grumbling like “Yoroku wa namin to kan de shimatte” (“We’ve blown all our profits”) and “Hin wa yari mo kamaran” (“Not a penny left”). Up on the hill was the brothel district—had they squandered it all at that so-called “Yama no Ue” on their whoring?

I wonder what happened to Maru-san. Had he quit the carnival life? He'd said he would take a wife—the thought of Maruman came back to me fondly. (Ah, Maru-san... Though you and Yachimoro used to tease me, I've never once gone whoring here.)

I had been completely out of touch with him. Not just Maruman—I hadn't told anyone I was here.

The jurisdictional Special Higher Police must be frantically searching for me—a vanished "person under surveillance." The local police did come to my workplace, but since I was the one who had to deal with detectives constantly checking whether any ex-cons had sneaked in, it became a real nuisance. Momanari had skillfully arranged things that way. This Nonaka was a man introduced through relatives, but what worked well was how he'd initially told the detectives he'd decided to have him help with accounts. Being a married man certainly helped greatly in shielding me from suspicious eyes.

The incident on that ship where Yahagi's gang tried to recruit me—that too seemed to have been buried from darkness into deeper darkness. Had it been discovered, they would've been in danger themselves, so they must have ensured it stayed hidden. Even if exposed, those bastards might've remained utterly unfazed, but just to be certain, they'd weighted the corpse properly and dumped it offshore. What exactly that had been—who it was—I couldn't say for sure, though I had a rough idea. Wasn't that some traitor within their ranks being secretly executed? If so, consigning it from one darkness to another made perfect sense. Still, this remained nothing but conjecture...

The only certain thing was this: I had killed a man who had no connection to me whatsoever.

Part Two: Winter Grazing

When the festival ended, the town was enveloped in thick fog. A low, booming steam whistle sounded from deep within the fog. It was the steam whistle of a ship heading out to sea. It felt like it was calling out to me. You! There—in that godforsaken spot—smoldering away! What the hell are you doing? What about you? Not gonna show yourself either? Come out already, goddammit. "I’m so lonely…"

I muttered. It had to be *samishii*, not *sabishii* - otherwise my true feelings wouldn't come through. The steam whistle sounded *samishii*, and the fog-shrouded town felt *samishii* too - but when I said *samishii*, I meant myself. I'd wanted so desperately to live - fought to keep living - but living now felt *samishii*. Was this what they meant by putting down roots in life? Was this what it meant to be so *samishii*?

If Namiko weren’t by my side, I probably couldn’t endure this samishisa. In other words, by dragging her into my mess, I’m making Namiko feel *samishii* too. In this exile of mine (though I was the one who exiled myself)—Namiko was dragged along as my companion, and now she’s even carrying my child...

“Sorry ’bout this.” “Oh, it’s nothing.” “I’m sorry, Namiko.” “What’re you talking about?” It wasn’t that Namiko had resonated with my ideology or anything like that. Nor had she come to be with me through some ideological alignment. It was precisely because she wasn’t that sort of—what you might call—cheeky woman that I liked her, but for that very reason, burdening such a Namiko with hardship felt downright pitiful. Suddenly, at this moment, I found myself recalling Russian female terrorists for some reason. The first to surface in my mind was Maria Spiridonova. When I had gone to Keijo to target General Ogaki, I’d recalled this Maria too—though it was at that inn in Keijo where I’d first met Namiko. Back then, to steel my faltering resolve, I’d thought of this twenty-one-year-old brave terrorist.

Maria had ambushed and shot the vice-governor—the man who had brutally suppressed a peasant uprising—at the station. This vice-governor had ordered Cossacks to beat rebelling farmers to death with whips, rape their wives and daughters, and commit every imaginable atrocity. In retaliation, Maria shot him dead as an act of terrorist vengeance. After completing her mission, she tried to kill herself on the spot but failed. The Cossack officer who captured her grabbed her by the hair and smashed her head against a stone corridor. Then he dragged her by both legs all the way to the police station.

At the police station, Maria was subjected to horrific torture by two officers. As a result, by the time of her trial, her face had become so altered that witnesses claimed she was a different person. Later, these two officers were executed by the hands of the "Boevaya Organizatsiya" (Combat Group), of which Maria was also a member. "Combat Group" was a terrorist organization created by Gershuni as a special operations unit of the SR Party (Socialist Revolutionary Party). Zinaida Konoplyannikova, one of the group’s members, shot and killed at a station the regimental commander who had suppressed the 1905 Moscow uprising—a man who had been promoted from colonel to major general for his merits. She had prepared a bomb, but not wanting to harm the accompanying wife, she used a pistol instead, they say. Sentenced to death by court-martial, she ascended the gallows, placed the noose around her own neck with her own hands, and met her death with composure.

The reason I recalled these terrorists wasn't because I wanted Namiko to possess such a terrorist's heart or understand their spirit—nothing of the sort. Rather, it must have been my own self—grown distant from such terrorists' hearts—that made visions of their heroic intensity rise within me. I failed to die twice. In the end, I committed a meaningless, worthless murder that had nothing to do with my principles or beliefs, and fled to these northernmost reaches.

“Why’d you decide to marry someone like me?” “What’re you goin’ on about now?” “This lonely, wretched life we’re living...”

“No, it’s all in how you look at it. If you think of it as a fun honeymoon for just the two of us, isn’t that okay?” Namiko, who had lowered an eight-candlepower bulb casting a reddish light near her head, continued sewing without pausing her needlework, working diligently. “A short trip would be fine, I guess.”

“Even you don’t plan to stay here living like this forever, do you? Eventually, you—since you’re someone with guts—will surely do something tremendous, I think.” “What’s this? Before we got together, you used to tell me to become an ordinary person…”

"I want nothing to do with dangerous things like before." "Not like that... you mean some tremendous work?" "Let's stay here until the baby is born." "Yeah."

Once again, I found myself recalling the Russian female terrorists. Did something make Namiko recall such things too? When she worked as a charwoman at the flophouse, Namiko hadn't even blinked upon seeing my pistol. Unlike ordinary girls, she hadn't flinched when hearing my murder stories either— Sophia Perovskaya, famed for assassinating the Tsar, had commanded the terrorist group as a woman. She had planned the assassination down to the last detail. The scheme targeted Alexander II en route through St. Petersburg's streets to the Army Cavalry School. They'd rented a house facing the roadway, disguised it as a shop, tunneled beneath the street, and planted explosives there.

On the day of the operation, the Tsar did not take that street. However, in preparation for that contingency, a separate bomb had been prepared. The male terrorist who hurled the bomb from the street at the Tsar’s carriage—guarded by Cossack cavalry—had acted under Sophia’s composed direction.

After the incident, she rejected her comrades' urging to flee abroad and remained in the capital. She attempted to steer the chaos caused by the Tsar’s assassination into a full-scale riot. She was captured on Nevsky Prospekt in the busy district and summarily hanged. At that time, Sophia was twenty-seven years old.

Everyone had devoted their youthful lives to the revolution. Through such numerous acts of devotion, the wave of revolution had surged. But after the revolution, when the Bolsheviks seized power with their "if you weren't a Bol, you weren't human" attitude, the brave actions of those pre-revolutionary terrorists—their achievements—were dismissed and nearly ignored. Did Sophia and Maria and Zinaida—who had dedicated their young lives to the revolution—die like dogs?

When Zinaida was sentenced to death in court, she cried out asking who had made them terrorists, that they had been forced to become terrorists. Brutal suppression had birthed terrorists. While the masses' apathy under suppression was one cause spawning terrorists, the sheer brutality of that suppression is detailed in Kropotkin's *The White Terror in Russia*. This work was written by Kropotkin as an appeal to foreign nations, its preface beginning with these words.

“The present state of affairs in Russia is utterly hopeless, and it is a public duty to publish before this nation an account of these conditions and earnestly appeal to all lovers of freedom and progress for moral support for the struggle currently being waged to attain political freedom.”

“The ‘despairing’ White Terror drove the ‘struggle being waged to attain political freedom’ into terrorism.” The Red Terror was born of none other than the White Terror. Kropotkin wrote at the end of his preface: "As history clearly shows, such White Terror never restored tranquility to nations—as seen in France during the 1820s following the Bourbon Restoration, in Italy in 1859, and later in Turkey." In doing so, he not only prophesied the inevitability of the Russian Revolution but also wrote that White Terror "spreads an absolute contempt for human life" and "induces a habit of violence." For example, Sophia Perovskaya was a daughter of noble birth whose sensitive heart as a young woman inclined her toward sympathy for the impoverished. At that time, she had been merely a humanist. Becoming a nurse and serving unfortunate people had also stemmed from her humanism. The Tsar's government, which captured her as an "ideologue" and subjected her to cruel persecution, drove this humanist into becoming a terrorist. They had no means other than direct action. In the case of Vera Figner, who likewise plotted to assassinate the Tsar around the same time as Sophia, there had also been no path other than becoming a terrorist. Looking at the surviving photographs showed that Vera had been a woman of rare beauty. When captured due to a spy’s report, she had been twenty-five years old. She was sentenced to death but later had her punishment commuted to life imprisonment and was thrown into Shlisselburg Fortress Prison. After her miserable imprisonment, when released from this terrifying "Russian Bastille" in 1904, the once-beautiful woman had been transformed into an unrecognizable old crone—

Namiko’s belly began to protrude more and more. When winter came, it had swollen into a form that anyone could recognize at a glance as unmistakably pregnant.

Hakusui (snow) began to barete (fall). I thought I should meet with Kanbara before the snow grew too deep. That Kanbara whom Ayako had mentioned—Kanbara, meaning "field of gold," was another absurdly auspicious surname, but unlike Momanari, this was merely a family name, for the man himself was a poor farmer. Kanbara had originally raised hell in Sapporo as an anarchist alongside Momanari Seiichiro—though I only learned this much later, after hearing Ayako mention Kanbara’s name—and now that same Kanbara had settled in the Kushiro Wetlands as a pioneer farmer. Kanbara had taken to calling himself “Vserentsi” (exile).