Pathway to Japanese Literature

Chapter 1

When he groggily opened his eyes，the woman had already begun talking to the old man sitting next to her．This old man was undoubtedly the country fellow who had boarded two stations prior．At the moment of departure，he had let out a frantic cry，rushed aboard，and when he suddenly stripped off his shirt，his back was covered with moxibustion scars—so he remained etched in Sanshirō’s memory．The old man had wiped his sweat，put on his shirt，and sat down next to the woman；Sanshirō had watched it all with such close attention．

The woman was a fellow passenger from Kyoto.
She had caught Sanshirō’s eye from the moment she boarded.
Her skin was dark.
As Sanshirō traveled from Kyushu onto the San'yō Line and drew nearer to Kyoto and Osaka with each stop, he felt a sorrow akin to his hometown receding into the distance—for the woman’s skin grew gradually fairer as they approached.
So when this woman entered the train compartment, he felt a vague sense of having gained an ally of his own hue.
Her skin indeed bore the same dark tone common to Kyushu.

It matched Miss Okata of Miwata’s complexion.
Until just before leaving home, Miss Okata had been an insistent presence.
It had been terribly hard for him to slip away from her side.
Yet seeing things this way, someone like Miss Okata didn’t seem so bad after all.

Solely in terms of facial features, this woman was far superior. Her mouth had definition. Her eyes were clear. Her forehead wasn't as broadly expansive as Miss Okata's. There was something about her that left him with an inexplicably pleasant impression. So Sanshirō raised his eyes to look at the woman about once every five minutes. At times, their eyes met. When the old man sat down next to the woman, he paid the closest attention, watching her for as long as he possibly could. At that moment, the woman smiled warmly and, saying "Here, have a seat," gave up her seat to the old man. After a while, Sanshirō grew sleepy and ended up falling asleep.

While he slept, it appeared the woman and the old man had grown friendly and begun talking. When Sanshirō opened his eyes, he silently listened to their conversation. The woman was saying:――

“Children’s toys are indeed cheaper and better in Kyoto than in Hiroshima. While I was in Kyoto handling some business, I stopped by Tako-yakushi and bought some toys nearby. I’m happy to return home after so long and see the children. But since my husband’s remittance has stopped, I have no choice but to return to my parents’ home—it’s worrying.”

“My husband was in Kure working as a naval factory worker for a long time, but during the war he went to Port Arthur. After the war ended, he came back once. Before long, he said there was more money to be made over there and went off to work in Dalian.”

“At first there were letters, and he sent money every month without fail, so it was fine, but for about the past half year, both letters and money have completely stopped coming. He’s not the unfaithful type, so I’m sure he’s fine, but I can’t just sit around waiting forever. Until I know whether he’s safe or not, there’s nothing to be done—so I plan to go back home and wait there.”

The old man seemed neither to know Tako-yakushi nor have any interest in toys; at first, he only replied with vague “yeses,” but after Port Arthur was mentioned, he suddenly felt moved to sympathy and declared it terribly pitiful.
“My own child was taken by the military during the war and ended up dying over there.
I don’t understand what purpose war serves at all.
Even if the economy improves later on, precious children get killed and prices go up.
There’s nothing more foolish than this.
In better times, there was no such thing as migrant work.
It’s all because of the war.
What’s important is keeping faith.
He must be alive and working.
If you wait a bit longer, he’ll surely come back.”
The old man said these things while earnestly comforting the woman.
When the train soon came to a stop, he bid her farewell with a “Take care,” and energetically disembarked.

Part One, Section Two

Following the old man, about four people had disembarked, but despite it being easy to board, only a single person had gotten on.
The carriage had never been particularly crowded to begin with, but now it suddenly felt desolate.
Perhaps it was because night had fallen.
A station worker thudded across the roof, inserting lit Western-style lamps from above.

Sanshirō began eating the boxed meal he had bought at the previous station, as though he had just remembered it.

Around the time Sanshirō thought two minutes had passed since the train began moving, the woman stood up quietly, passed by his side, and left the compartment.
At this moment, the color of the woman's obi entered Sanshirō's eyes for the first time.
Sanshirō watched her retreating figure with the head of a simmered ayu clamped in his teeth.
While thinking she must have gone to the restroom, he kept eating intently.

The woman soon returned. This time her front came into view.
Sanshirō’s boxed meal was nearly finished.
He looked down, desperately plunging his chopsticks to stuff two or three mouthfuls into his mouth, but the woman still didn’t seem to be returning to her seat.
Thinking “Could it be…?” he glanced up abruptly—and there she stood, right before him.
However, at the very moment Sanshirō raised his eyes, the woman began to move.
She merely passed by Sanshirō’s side—where she should have returned to her seat—came right before him, turned her body sideways, stuck her head out the window, and quietly began gazing outside.
The wind blew strongly, and the sight of the hair at her temples fluttering entered Sanshirō’s eyes.
At that moment, Sanshirō forcefully threw the emptied lunchbox container out the window.
The woman’s window and Sanshirō’s were separated by one house.
When the lid of the container he had thrown against the wind appeared to fly back white, Sanshirō realized he had done something reckless and looked at the woman’s face.
Her face was unfortunately outside the train.
However, the woman quietly pulled her head back in and began carefully wiping her forehead with her chintz-patterned handkerchief.
Sanshirō concluded that, in any case, apologizing would be the safer course of action.

“I beg your pardon,” he said.

“No,” the woman replied.
She was still wiping her face.
Sanshirō had no choice but to fall silent.
The woman also fell silent.
And then she stuck her head out the window again.
Under the dim light of the Western-style lamp, the three or four passengers all wore sleepy expressions.
No one was speaking.
The steam train made a terrible noise as it went.
Sanshirō closed his eyes.

After a while came the woman's voice: "Will we reach Nagoya soon?"
When he looked up, she had somehow turned around and was leaning forward, her face brought close to Sanshirō's side.
Sanshirō started.

"I suppose so," he said, though being his first trip to Tokyo left him thoroughly disoriented.

"At this rate, we'll be late?"

"We likely will."

"You're getting off at Nagoya too..."

"Ah yes, I am."

This steam train terminated at Nagoya.
Their exchange remained utterly mundane.
The woman now sat diagonally across from Sanshirō.
For some time afterward, only the train's clamor filled the space between them.

When the steam train stopped at the next station, the woman finally asked Sanshirō to guide her to an inn once they reached Nagoya, even if it inconvenienced him. She persistently pleaded, saying she felt uneasy going alone. Sanshirō found her request reasonable. Yet he did not feel inclined to accept it readily. After all, she was a stranger—he hesitated considerably over this—but lacking the courage to refuse outright, he ended up giving an evasive, half-hearted reply.

Before long, the steam train arrived in Nagoya.

Part 1-3

There was no need to worry about the large luggage—it had been left at Shimbashi.
Sanshirō exited the ticket gate carrying a suitably sized leather suitcase and an umbrella.
On his head he wore his high school summer cap.
However, he had torn off the emblem—the mark of graduation—and put it away.
In daylight, only that spot appeared newer.
The woman trailed after him from behind.
Sanshirō felt somewhat self-conscious about this cap.
But since she was trailing after him, there was nothing to be done.
As for the woman, she naturally regarded this cap as merely a dirty hat.

The steam train that should have arrived at nine-thirty was delayed by about forty minutes, so it was already past ten.
But as it was the hot season, the town was still as lively as if it were early evening.
There were also two or three inns right before them.
However, to Sanshirō, they seemed a bit too grand.
So he passed straight by the three-story building with electric lamps and walked on aimlessly.
Of course, being in an unfamiliar area, he had no idea where he would end up.
He simply headed toward the darkness.
The woman followed along without saying a word.
Then, at the second house from the corner of a relatively quiet side street, a sign that read "Inn" came into view.
This was a suitably shabby sign for both Sanshirō and the woman.
Sanshirō slightly turned back and briefly consulted the woman by asking "How about this?" but when she said "That will do," he resolutely entered straight in.
At the entrance, just as he meant to explain they weren't together, someone chattered away—"Please come in"—"Right this way"—"Plum No. 4"—so in the end, both of them were led to Plum No. 4 in silence.

While the maid was bringing tea, the two sat facing each other blankly.
When the maid brought tea and mentioned the bath, he could no longer muster the courage to state that this woman wasn’t his companion.
There, he hung his hand towel, said “After you” to her, and went out to the bath area.
The bath area was at the end of the hallway next to the toilet.
It was dimly lit and seemed rather unclean.
Sanshirō took off his kimono, jumped into the bathtub, and thought for a moment.
As he thought “This situation is troublesome” and was scrubbing away vigorously, there came the sound of footsteps in the hallway.
It seemed someone had entered the restroom.
She soon came out.
She washed her hands.
After finishing that, she creaked the bathhouse door halfway open.
The woman asked from the entrance, “Shall I rinse you off a bit?”
Sanshirō said in a loud voice,

“No thank you,” he refused.
However, the woman did not leave.
Instead, she entered.
Then she began to untie her obi.
It appeared she intended to share the bath with Sanshirō.
She showed no particular sign of embarrassment.
Sanshirō immediately leapt out of the bathtub.
Having hastily dried himself, he returned to the room and sat down on the zabuton, still rather astonished, when the maid came with the guest register.

Sanshirō took up the guest register and honestly wrote “Ogawa Sanshirō, twenty-three-year-old student from Masaki Village, Kyōto District, Fukuoka Prefecture,” but when he came to the woman’s section, he was utterly at a loss.
I should have waited until she got out of the bath, he thought, but there was nothing to be done.
The maid stood properly in attendance.
He had no choice but to write “Same prefecture, same district, same village, same surname Hana, twenty-three-year-old” as a fabricated entry and handed it over.
And so he kept fanning himself vigorously.

Before long, the woman returned.
"I'm terribly sorry," she said.
Sanshirō answered, “No.”

Sanshirō took out a notebook from the leather suitcase and began writing the diary.
There was nothing to write about.
If the woman weren’t here, it seemed there would be much to write.
Then the woman said “I’ll step out for a moment,” and left the room.
Sanshirō grew increasingly unable to write the diary.
He began to wonder where she had gone.

一の四

Just then, the maid came to lay out the bedding.
Since she brought only one large futon, she insisted that two beds needed to be laid out, but kept making excuses about the room being too small or the mosquito net being too narrow, so no progress was made.
She also seemed to find it a hassle.
In the end, she said that since the manager had just stepped out, she would ask him when he returned and bring another, then stubbornly spread out a single futon to fill the mosquito net before leaving.

After some time had passed since then，the woman returned.
"I'm terribly sorry for being so late," she said.
While she was doing something in shadow of mosquito net，a clattering sound rang out.
It must have been sound of child’s get-well toy.
The woman soon appeared to have retied furoshiki bundle as it was before.
From beyond mosquito net came voice saying，“After you.”
Sanshirō merely replied “Haa” and remained perched on threshold，using fan.
He even thought he might as well spend night just like this.
But mosquitoes came buzzing around.
Outside was unbearable.
Sanshirō quickly stood up，took out Kyarako shirt and Western-style underpants from leather suitcase，put them on bare skin，and tied navy heko obi over them.
Then，still holding two Western-style towels，he entered mosquito net.
The woman was still moving fan in corner beyond futon.

“Pardon me, but I’m high-strung and can’t bear sleeping in another’s futon… I’ll just take some flea repellent measures, so please excuse this.”

Sanshirō said this and rolled up the excess edge of the already laid-out futon cover tightly toward where the woman lay.
Then he created a long white partition down the center of the futon.
The woman turned over to face away.
Sanshirō spread out the Western-style towels, arranging two of them end to end across his designated area before lying down lengthwise atop them.
That night, neither Sanshirō’s hands nor feet strayed even an inch beyond the narrow width of these Western-style towels.
He did not exchange a single word with the woman.
The woman too remained facing the wall, completely still.

Night gradually broke. When he had washed his face and sat down to the meal, the woman smiled faintly and asked, “Did any fleas trouble you last night?” Sanshirō answered earnestly with something like “Yes, thank you—thanks to you,” while looking down and busily poking at the grape beans in his sake cup.

When they settled the bill, left the inn, and arrived at the station, the woman told Sanshirō for the first time that she was going toward Yokkaichi via the Kansai Line.
Sanshirō’s steam train arrived shortly.
Due to the timing, the woman ended up having to wait a little longer.
The woman who had come to see him off as far as the ticket gate,
“Thank you for all your trouble… Goodbye,” she said with a polite bow.
Holding the leather suitcase and umbrella in one hand, Sanshirō used his free hand to remove his old hat and uttered just a single word,
“Goodbye.”

"Goodbye," he said.
The woman gazed intently at his face for a moment, then in a calm tone,

“You are quite lacking in courage, aren’t you,” she said with a smirk.
Sanshirō felt as though he had been cast out onto Plato’s world of Forms.
When he entered the train car, both his ears grew even hotter.
For a while, he sat rigidly still, making himself small.
Before long, the whistle blown by the conductor resounded from one end to the other of the long train.
The train began to move.
Sanshirō cautiously leaned his head out of the window.
The woman had long since gone somewhere.
Only the large clock caught his eye.
Sanshirō quietly returned to his seat.
There were a good number of passengers.
However, there was not a single person paying attention to Sanshirō’s behavior.
The man sitting diagonally across briefly watched Sanshirō return to his seat.

1-5

When this man looked at him, Sanshirō felt somehow ill at ease. Thinking to distract himself by reading a book, he opened his leather suitcase and found the Western-style towels from last night tightly packed on top. He pulled it close to him, reached into the bottom, and without concern for whatever his hand touched, pulled something out—out came Bacon’s essays, unintelligible even if he tried to read them. It was a pitifully flimsy, crude temporary binding that did poor justice to Bacon. He had never intended to read it on the steam train in the first place, but having failed to pack it into the large trunk, he had tossed it into the bottom of his leather suitcase along with two or three other books while tidying up—and now, through ill luck, it had been selected. Sanshirō opened page twenty-three of Bacon’s essays. There didn’t seem to be any other books he could read either. As for the likes of Bacon, he had no intention of reading them, of course. However, Sanshirō reverently opened page twenty-three and thoroughly surveyed the entire page. Sanshirō intended to briefly go over last night’s events here on page twenty-three.

What kind of woman was she really? Could such a woman even exist in this world? Could women really remain so composed and unruffled like that? Was she uneducated or bold? Or was she simply innocent? In short, since he hadn't pursued matters as far as he might have to see for himself, he couldn't make sense of it. He should have resolved to push a little further and find out. But it was terrifying. When she'd told him at their parting, "You're quite lacking in courage," he'd been stunned. It felt as though twenty-three years' worth of weaknesses had been laid bare all at once. Not even his parents could have pinpointed it so accurately...

Sanshirō had come all this way only to sink into complete dejection.
He felt as though he’d been brought so low by some nobody of unknown origin that he couldn’t hold his head up.
He felt so inadequate that it seemed almost unforgivable even in the face of page twenty-three of Bacon.

I really mustn’t get so flustered that way.
Scholarship and university students—neither was as it should be.
It bears profoundly on one’s character.
There must have been more I could have done.
But if the other party were always to behave that way, then for someone educated like myself, there seemed no alternative but to respond as I had.
Then it would mean one must not approach women indiscriminately.
Somehow I’m spineless.
I feel terribly constrained.
It’s as if I were born defective.
But…

Sanshirō abruptly changed his mental state and recalled matters from another world.
—From here, I would go to Tokyo.
I would enter the university.
I would come into contact with famous scholars.
I would associate with students of refined tastes and good character.
I would conduct research in the library.
I would engage in writing.
The world would applaud.
Indulging in haphazard visions of a future where his mother would be delighted, he found his vigor greatly restored; there was no longer any need to bury his face in page twenty-three.
At that, he abruptly raised his head.
Then the man who had been sitting diagonally across was looking at Sanshirō again.
This time, Sanshirō returned the man’s gaze.

He had a thick beard.
He was a gaunt, long-faced man who somehow resembled a Shinto priest.
Only his perfectly straight nose bridge suggested Western features.
Sanshirō, immersed in formal education, would invariably classify such men as teachers.
The man wore a white-patterned kasuri garment over a meticulously layered white underrobe, with navy tabi socks.
From this attire, Sanshirō concluded he must be a middle school teacher.
When measured against his own grand future, it all struck him as rather pitiful.
The man was probably forty.
From this point onward, there seemed no path left for advancement.

Part 1, Chapter 6

The man was smoking tobacco incessantly.
Blowing long streams of smoke through his nostrils and crossing his arms, he appeared thoroughly leisurely.
Yet he would abruptly stand to visit the toilet or elsewhere.
When rising, he sometimes stretched mightily.
He looked profoundly bored.
The passenger beside him showed no inclination to borrow and read the newspaper left at his side.
Sanshirō grew oddly self-conscious and closed Bacon’s collected essays.
He considered taking out another novel to read properly but abandoned the idea as too troublesome.
Instead he felt moved to borrow the newspaper from the passenger ahead.
Unfortunately, the person in front was snoring soundly.
Sanshirō reached toward the newspaper while deliberately asking the bearded man, “Are you finished?”
The man replied calmly, “It should be available.”
“Go ahead and read it,” he said.
Sanshirō found himself unexpectedly discomposed upon taking up the newspaper.

When he opened it and looked, there was nothing particularly worth seeing in the newspaper.
He finished reading through it in twelve minutes.
Dutifully folding it and returning it to its original place while giving a slight nod, he found the other party also returning a light greeting.

“Are you a high school student?” he asked.

Sanshirō felt pleased that the faint trace of the emblem on his old cap had caught this man’s eye.

“Yes,” he answered.

When the man asked in return, “In Tokyo?” for the first time,

“No, Kumamoto.”
“But…” he began, then fell silent.
He had wanted to say he was a university student, but thinking it unnecessary to elaborate, he held back.
The man likewise said, “Ah, I see,” and continued blowing tobacco smoke.
He didn’t ask why a student from Kumamoto was heading to Tokyo at this time or anything else.
He didn’t seem interested in students from Kumamoto.
At that moment, the man who had been sleeping in front of Sanshirō said, “Hmm, I see.”
And yet he was unmistakably asleep.
It wasn’t a soliloquy or anything of the sort.
The bearded man looked at Sanshirō and smirked slyly.
Sanshirō, seizing that opportunity,

“Where are you headed?” he asked.

“Tokyo,” was all he said slowly.
Somehow, he no longer seemed much like a middle school teacher.
However, given that he was riding third class, it was clear he wasn’t anyone of consequence.
With that, Sanshirō ended the conversation.
The bearded man remained with his arms crossed, occasionally tapping the floor rhythmically with the front teeth of his geta.
He looked thoroughly bored.
But this man’s boredom was of the sort that didn’t care to converse.

When the steam train arrived at Toyohashi, the sleeping man sat up abruptly, rubbed his eyes, and got off.
Sanshirō thought it remarkable that someone could wake up so conveniently.
While worrying that perhaps he had gotten off at the wrong station in his sleep-addled state, as he watched from the window, it became clear this was not the case.
He passed safely through the ticket gate and exited like a sane person.
Sanshirō, relieved, moved his seat to the opposite side.
Now he was seated next to the bearded man.
The bearded man switched seats, stuck his head out the window, and was buying honey peaches.

He soon placed the fruit between the two of them,

“Won’t you have some?” he said.

Sanshirō thanked him and ate one.
The bearded man, evidently fond of them, ate voraciously.
The bearded man told Sanshirō to eat more.
Sanshirō ate another one.
As the two of them ate the honey peaches, they grew quite familiar and began talking about various things.

1-7

According to the man’s theory, peaches were the most sage-like among fruits. It had a somewhat insipid taste. For one thing, the pit’s shape was awkward. Moreover, he said they were full of holes and put together in an amusing way. Sanshirō was hearing this theory for the first time, but he thought the man was spouting rather trivial things.

Next, the man came out with this.
"Shiki was very fond of fruit. Moreover, he was a man who could eat any amount. Once he ate sixteen large barrel-shaped persimmons—and was perfectly fine afterward. Someone like me could never hope to imitate Shiki."
Sanshirō laughed as he listened. Yet he felt some interest in this story about Shiki. He was just thinking of asking more when—

"When it comes to things one likes, one's hands just naturally reach out, you know. There's no helping it. With pigs—since their hands can't reach out, their snouts extend instead. You see, if you tie up a pig so it can't move and line up treats right before its snout—since it can't budge an inch, its snout apparently stretches out bit by bit. It keeps stretching until it reaches the treats. Truly, nothing's as terrifying as single-minded determination," he said, grinning slyly.
His manner of speaking made it hard to tell whether he was serious or joking.

“Well, it’s fortunate we aren’t pigs.”
“If our snouts kept stretching endlessly toward what we desire, they’d surely grow so long by now that we couldn’t even ride the steam train—what a predicament that’d be.”

Sanshirō burst out laughing.
But the other man was surprisingly quiet.

“It’s actually dangerous. Leonardo da Vinci once injected arsenic into a peach tree’s trunk—conducted an experiment to see whether the poison would reach the fruit or not. But someone ate that peach and died. Dangerous. If you’re not careful, it’s dangerous,” he said as he gathered the scattered honey peach pits and skins, wrapped them in newspaper, and threw them out the window.

This time, Sanshirō didn’t feel like laughing either. Hearing the name Leonardo da Vinci had left him somewhat disconcerted; then, for some reason, thoughts of the woman from last night came to mind, making him strangely uncomfortable, so he respectfully kept silent. However, the other man seemed completely oblivious to this. Soon,

“Where in Tokyo are you headed?” he asked.

“Actually, since this is my first time and I’m not quite sure how things work here… I thought I’d start by staying at my hometown’s dormitory or something like that,” he said.

“So Kumamoto is already…”

“I just graduated.”

“Ah,” he said, offering neither congratulations nor approval.
“So you’ll be entering the university now,” he added in an utterly ordinary tone.

Sanshirō felt somewhat dissatisfied.
Instead,
With a curt "Uh-huh," he settled the greeting.
“Your department?” he asked again.
“The first department.”

“Is it the law department?”

“No, the humanities.”

“Ah, I see,” he said again.
Every time Sanshirō heard this “Ah, I see,” he felt strange.
Either the man was someone of great importance, or he trampled others underfoot with abandon—if not, then he must be a man with no connections to or sympathy for the university whatsoever.
However, since he couldn’t determine which of these it was, his attitude toward this man remained extremely unclear.

一の八

At Hamamatsu, both of them ate their boxed meals as if by prior agreement. Even after they finished eating, the steam train showed no sign of departing. Looking out the window, four or five Westerners were walking back and forth in front of the train. One pair among them appeared to be a married couple and were holding hands despite the heat. The woman was dressed entirely in pure white garments and was extremely beautiful. Sanshirō had seen no more than five or six Westerners in all his life. Of these, two were teachers at Kumamoto High School, and of those two, one was unfortunately a hunchback. Among women, he knew one missionary. Her face was quite pointed, resembling a whiting or sea bream fish. Therefore, such showily elegant Westerners were not merely rare—they looked extremely refined. Sanshirō was gazing intently. Under these circumstances, he thought it only natural for them to carry themselves with pride. He even thought that if he were to go to the West and find himself among such people, he would surely feel terribly out of place. When he passed by the window, he tried earnestly to listen to their conversation but couldn’t understand a word. Their pronunciation seemed completely different from that of the teachers in Kumamoto.

Just then, the man stuck his head out from behind.

“Doesn’t look like it’s going to depart anytime soon, does it?” he said, briefly glancing at the Western couple who had just passed by.

“Ah... beautiful,” he whispered softly, then let out a half-suppressed yawn.
Sanshirō noticed how thoroughly provincial he must have appeared and promptly withdrew his head, sitting up properly.
The man also returned to his seat.
And then,

“Westerners are truly beautiful, aren’t they?” he said.

Sanshirō couldn’t come up with a proper response, so he simply laughed awkwardly in return.
Then the bearded man,

“We’re a pitiful pair, aren’t we?” he declared. “With faces like ours and such frailty, even if we win the Russo-Japanese War and become a first-class nation, it’s all for nothing. Though to be fair, whether you look at the buildings or the gardens, they’re all places befitting our faces—but if this is your first time in Tokyo, you’ve yet to see Mount Fuji, I take it. It will come into view soon. Take a look. That is Japan’s number one attraction. There is nothing else to boast of besides that. But that Mount Fuji has existed naturally since ancient times, so there's nothing to be done about it. It isn’t something we created,” he said and smirked again. Sanshirō had never imagined encountering such a person since the Russo-Japanese War. He couldn’t help feeling this man didn’t seem Japanese at all.

“However, from now on, Japan will gradually develop,” he defended.
Then, the man, with an air of composure,

“It’ll perish,” he said.
If someone were to say such things in Kumamoto, they would immediately get beaten up.
If things went badly, they’d be branded as traitors.
Sanshirō had grown up in an atmosphere that left no room for such thoughts in any corner of his mind.
Therefore, he considered that perhaps the man was taking advantage of his youthful age to mock others.
The man smirked in his usual manner.
Yet his speech remained perfectly composed.
Since he couldn’t figure it out at all, he stopped engaging and fell silent.
Then the man said this.

“Tokyo is more expansive than Kumamoto,” he said. “Japan is vaster than Tokyo. Japan is vaster than...” He paused briefly, then seeing Sanshirō listening intently, added: “The mind is vaster than Japan, wouldn’t you say? If you get trapped by narrow thinking, it’s no good. No matter how much you claim to act for Japan’s sake, you’ll only end up toppling things through favoritism.”

When he heard these words, Sanshirō felt as though he had truly left Kumamoto behind. At the same time, he realized he had been terribly cowardly when living there.

That evening, Sanshirō arrived in Tokyo.
The bearded man did not reveal his name until the time of parting.
Sanshirō believed that once he arrived in Tokyo, such men would be everywhere, so he didn’t particularly bother to ask for his name.

Part Two, Chapter One

Sanshirō was surprised by many things in Tokyo.
First he was surprised by the clanging of the electric train.
Then he was surprised by how very many people got on and off during that clanging.
Next he was surprised in Marunouchi.
What surprised him most was that no matter how far he went, Tokyo never seemed to end.
Moreover, no matter where or how he walked, there was lumber strewn about, stones piled up, new houses set back two or three ken from the thoroughfare, and old storehouses half-demolished left standing precariously at the front.
Everything appeared to be in the process of destruction.
And everything appeared to be simultaneously in the process of construction.
The scale of activity was tremendous.

Sanshirō was utterly surprised.
In short, he found himself astonished to precisely the same degree and in precisely the same manner as any ordinary country person standing for the first time at the heart of the capital.
The learning he had acquired up to now proved no more effective than patent medicine at preventing this astonishment.
Along with this shock, Sanshirō's confidence diminished by forty percent.
He felt unbearably uncomfortable.

If this intense activity itself were none other than the real world, then it would mean my life up until today had not made the slightest contact with reality. It was no different from having taken a midday nap at Horagatōge Pass. But if I were to stop taking midday naps from today onward and ask whether I could contribute my share to this activity, that would prove difficult. I am now standing at the center of activity. Yet I have merely been placed in a position where I must observe the activity occurring around me; my life as a student remains unchanged from before. The world is thus in turmoil. I am watching this turmoil. But I cannot join in. My world and the real world lie side by side on the same plane, yet nowhere do they touch. And thus, the real world is in turmoil, leaving me behind as it moves on. I am deeply uneasy.

Sanshirō stood in the center of Tokyo, watching the activity of electric trains, steam trains, people in white clothes, and people in black clothes, and felt this way. However, he had not noticed at all the activity of the ideological world lying beneath student life. —The thought of the Meiji era was reenacting, within forty years, the three centuries of activity that had unfolded in Western history.

While Sanshirō was confined to the ceaselessly moving heart of Tokyo, brooding alone, a letter arrived from his mother back home. It was the first he had received in Tokyo. When he looked, there were all sorts of things written. It began with news of this year’s bountiful harvest being auspicious, followed by a warning that he must take good care of his body, then wrote that everyone in Tokyo was clever but ill-natured so he should be cautious, assured him his tuition money would be sent by the end of each month so he needn’t worry, and concluded by saying that someone who was a cousin of Katsuta’s Masa-san had graduated from the university and was now at the science college, so he ought to go visit him and ask for assistance in all matters. It seemed she had forgotten the crucial name, for in what could be called the margin was written "To Mr. Nonomiya Sōhachi." In this margin were two or three other matters. Saku’s blue horse died suddenly of illness, leaving Saku utterly devastated. Miss Miwata no Okata gave us some ayu, but if we sent them to Tokyo, they would rot on the way, so we ended up eating them at home. And so forth.

Sanshirō looked at this letter and somehow felt as though it had arrived from an antiquated past.
Though he felt bad toward his mother, he went so far as to think he had no time to read such things.
Nevertheless, he read it twice over.
In short, if I am in contact with the real world, then at present there is none other than my mother.
His mother was an old-fashioned person living in an old rural town.
Besides her, there was the woman he had shared a train compartment with.
That was a lightning bolt from the real world.
To call it contact was too brief and too sharp.—Sanshirō decided to seek out Nonomiya Sōhachi as his mother had instructed.

Part Two, Chapter Two

The next day was even hotter than usual.
Though he thought Mr. Nonomiya likely wouldn’t be at the Science University during vacation, since his mother hadn’t informed him of Nonomiya’s lodgings, he decided to go inquire anyway—passing by the high school around four in the afternoon, he entered through Yayoi Gate.
The thoroughfare was covered in two inches of dust, upon which the teeth of geta, the soles of shoes, and the undersides of straw sandals were clearly imprinted.
The wheel tracks of carriages and bicycle tracks formed countless indistinguishable lines.
The road was unbearably sweltering, but upon entering the campus grounds, Sanshirō’s spirits lifted somewhat thanks to the abundance of trees.
When he tried the front door, the lock was fastened.
Going around to the back was no good either.
Finally, he moved to the side entrance.
Thinking it was just a precaution, he pushed, and it opened smoothly.
At the four-way intersection of the corridor, a janitor was dozing.
After stating his business, the janitor spent some time gazing at Ueno's forest to regain his composure, then suddenly said, "He might be out," and disappeared into the inner rooms.
It was extremely quiet and still.
Before long, he came out again.
“Here you are. Come on in,” he said in a friendly manner.
Following the janitor, he turned the corner and went down the Wado corridor.
The world suddenly grew dark.
It was as though his eyes had been dazzled by the blazing sun, but after a short while, his pupils gradually adjusted, and the surroundings came into view.
Being an underground room, it was relatively cool.
There was a door on the left, and that door stood open.
A face appeared from there.

It was a face with a broad forehead and large eyes—one bearing Buddhist associations. Over a crepe shirt he wore a frock coat that showed stains here and there. His back stood very erect. His leanness suited the heat well. He bowed by extending his head and spine in a straight line forward.

“This way,” he said, withdrawing his face into the room.
Sanshirō approached the door and peered inside.
There sat Mr. Nonomiya already in his chair.
“This way,” he repeated.
Where he had indicated stood a platform—
four square posts supporting planked boards.
Sanshirō seated himself on this structure and offered formal greetings.
“I respectfully request a moment of your time,” he said.
Mr. Nonomiya listened with intermittent “Hm”s.
His manner somewhat recalled that train-bound man who had eaten the honey peach.
Having exhausted his rehearsed address, Sanshirō fell silent.
Mr. Nonomiya’s “Hm”s ceased as well.

When he looked around the room, there was a large long oak desk placed at the center. On top of it sat an intricate apparatus covered with thick needle-like wires, beside which stood a large glass bowl filled with water. A file, a small knife, and a collar ornament lay scattered nearby. When he finally looked toward the far corner, there sat on a granite platform about three shaku high an intricate instrument roughly the size of a fukujinzuke pickle can. Sanshirō fixed his gaze on two holes opened in the side of this can. The holes shone like a python’s eyeballs. Mr. Nonomiya said with a laugh, “They should be shining.” Then he offered this explanation.

“During the daytime, I make such preparations, then when night falls—around the time traffic and other human activities dwindle—I observe those eyeball-like apertures through the telescope in this quiet, dark underground room.”
“And then I measure the pressure of light.”
“I began around New Year this year, but the apparatus is so cumbersome that I still haven’t obtained satisfactory results.”
“In summer it’s comparatively tolerable, but on cold nights, it becomes nearly impossible to endure.”
“Even wearing an overcoat and muffler can’t keep out the cold…”

Sanshirō was greatly surprised. Along with his surprise, he struggled to grasp what kind of pressure light exerted and what purpose that pressure served.

Two-Three

At that moment, Mr. Nonomiya encouraged Sanshirō, “Have a look through it.”
Sanshirō went to the telescope positioned a couple of meters before the stone platform—half in amusement—and pressed his right eye against it, but saw nothing.
“How is it? Do you see anything?” Mr. Nonomiya asked.
“I can’t see anything at all,” he answered.
“Ah—the cap was still on,” the other said while rising from his chair to remove the cover from the telescope’s lens.

When he looked again, there were scale markings within blurred outlines of brightness.
Below them, the number 2 appeared.
Mr. Nonomiya asked once more: “How is it now?”
“I can see the number two,” he said.
“It will move shortly,” the other replied as he turned toward the apparatus and seemed to adjust something.

Before long, the scale markings began to move amidst the brightness.
The 2 disappeared.
The 3 appeared.
After that, the 4 appeared.
The 5 appeared.
The numbers continued appearing one after another until they reached 10.
Then the scale markings began moving in reverse again.
The 10 disappeared; the 9 disappeared; descending from 8 to 7, 7 to 6, and so on in sequence until reaching 1 and stopping.

“How is it?” Mr. Nonomiya asked again.
Sanshirō was surprised and removed his eye from the telescope.
He didn’t even feel like asking about the meaning of the scale markings.

After bowing politely and exiting the underground room, when he came out to where people were passing by, he found the world still bustling.
Despite the heat, he took a deep breath.
The sun tilting westward cast diagonal light across the broad slope, and the glass windows of the engineering buildings lining both sides atop the slope blazed as if aflame.
The sky was deeply clear, and within that clarity, the flames of a blazing fire from the western horizon came billowing back in pale red, seeming to sear even the top of Sanshirō’s head.
With half his back exposed to the sun beating down from the side, Sanshirō entered the forest to his left.
That forest too he entered with half his back exposed to the same evening sun.
The spaces between the darkened blue leaves were red as if dyed.
On the thick trunk of a zelkova tree, evening cicadas were singing.
Sanshirō came to the edge of the pond and squatted down.

It was extremely quiet. There was no sound of electric trains. The electric trains that were supposed to pass in front of the Red Gate had been rerouted through Koishikawa due to the university's protest—he had read about this in the newspaper while still back in his hometown.

Sanshirō, squatting at the edge of the pond, suddenly recalled this incident.
A university that wouldn’t even permit electric trains to pass must be thoroughly detached from society.

When one occasionally entered its realm, there were people like Mr. Nonomiya who had spent over half a year testing light pressure in an underground room.
Mr. Nonomiya dressed quite plainly; had you met him outside, he might have been mistaken for an electric company technician.
Yet he remained admirable for dedicating himself so cheerfully and tirelessly to research within those subterranean depths.
However clearly the telescope’s scale markings might shift, they bore no relation to the real world.
Perhaps Mr. Nonomiya never intended to engage with reality at all.
In short, breathing this tranquil air must naturally induce such dispositions.
Might I too live undistracted—a life utterly removed from the pulsing world?

As Sanshirō stared fixedly at the pond’s surface, countless large trees reflected in the water’s depths, and at their very bottom, a blue sky could be seen.
At that moment, Sanshirō felt something far more distant than the electric trains, than Tokyo, than Japan itself.
However, after a while, a haze of loneliness began to spread throughout that feeling.
Then, upon entering Mr. Nonomiya’s underground room, he felt a loneliness so profound it seemed as though he were sitting there utterly alone.
Back when he was at the Kumamoto Higher School, there had been many times when he climbed Tatsuta Mountain—quieter than this—or lay down in the sports ground overgrown with evening primroses, feeling as though he had completely forgotten the world.
But this feeling of loneliness had now arisen for the first time.

Was it because he had seen Tokyo’s feverish activity?
Or perhaps—Sanshirō turned red.
It was because he had recalled the woman he’d shared the train compartment with.
The real world did appear necessary to me.
But the real world felt perilous and impossible to approach.
Sanshirō thought he would return quickly to his boarding house and write a letter to his mother.

2–4

When he suddenly looked up, two women were standing on the hill to his left.
Just below the women was a pond; beyond the pond rose a high cliff covered with trees, and behind them stood a conspicuous red-brick Gothic-style building.
And the sinking sun shone its light sideways from across everything.
The women were standing facing the evening sun.
When viewed from the low shadow where Sanshirō was squatting, the hilltop appeared extraordinarily bright.
One of the women seemed dazzled and was holding a fan over her forehead.
The faces were not clearly visible.
But the colors of kimonos and obis were vividly discernible.
The color of white tabi socks also caught his eye.
Regardless of the strap color, it was also clear zori were being worn.
The other was pure white.
The other woman had neither a fan nor anything else.
She merely furrowed her brow slightly and gazed into the depths of an old tree whose branches stretched high over the pond’s surface, as if being overgrown from the opposite shore.
The woman holding the fan was positioned slightly forward.
The one in white had taken a step back from the edge of the embankment.
When Sanshirō looked, the two figures appeared diagonally aligned.

At that moment, what Sanshirō felt was simply that of beautiful colors. But being a country person, he could neither articulate how these colors were beautiful nor capture them with a brush. He only thought that the one in white was a nurse.

Sanshirō was entranced again.
Then the one in white started moving.
The movement didn’t seem to have any particular purpose.
It was as though her own feet had begun to move of their own accord.
When he looked, the woman holding the fan had also started moving again without him noticing.
The two began walking down the slope in a purposeless manner, as if by prior agreement.
Sanshirō was still watching.

At the bottom of the slope was a stone bridge.
If one did not cross it, one would emerge straight toward the Science University.
If they crossed it, they would come along the water's edge to this side.
The two women crossed the stone bridge.

The fan was no longer being held up.
Holding a small white flower in her left hand, she approached while sniffing it.
While sniffing and looking at the flower held beneath her nose as she walked, her eyes remained cast downward.
So she came to a spot about six feet away from Sanshirō and suddenly stopped.

“What is this?” she asked, looking up.
Above her head grew a large chinquapin tree, its leaves so thick that no sunlight filtered through, spreading out in a rounded shape all the way to the water’s edge.

“This is a chinquapin,” said the nurse.
It was exactly as if she were teaching a child.

“Yes.
“Actually, it’s not growing here,” she said, returning her upturned face to its original position—and in that motion glanced at Sanshirō.
He distinctly perceived the instant her dark eyes moved.
At that moment, all sensation of color vanished as he encountered something indescribable.
This indescribable thing bore an uncanny resemblance to what he had felt when the train woman told him, “You lack courage.”
Sanshirō grew afraid.

The two women passed before him.
The younger one dropped the white flower she had been sniffing right in front of Sanshirō.
He stared fixedly at their retreating figures.
The nurse walked ahead.
The younger followed behind.
Amidst vivid hues glowed an obi dyed with white pampas grass patterns.
In her hair rested a single pure-white rose.
The rose gleamed conspicuously within black tresses under chinquapin shade.

Sanshirō stood dumbfounded. Eventually, he said in a small voice, “A contradiction.” Was it a contradiction between the university’s atmosphere and that woman? Between those colors and that gaze? Between seeing her and recalling the woman from the train? Or was his own future course splitting into two conflicting paths? Perhaps the contradiction lay in feeling fear toward something intensely desirable? — This country-born youth could not comprehend any of it. It was simply a contradiction somehow.

Sanshirō picked up the flower the woman had dropped.
Then he smelled it.
But there was no particular fragrance.
Sanshirō threw this flower into the pond.
The flower floated.
Then suddenly, from the opposite side, someone called his name.

2-5

Sanshirō looked away from the flower.
When he looked, Mr. Nonomiya was standing at length on the other side of the stone bridge.

“You’re still here?” he said.
Before answering, Sanshirō stood up and slowly walked over.
When he came to the top of the stone bridge,

“Yes,” he said.
He seemed somehow vacant.
However, Mr. Nonomiya was not at all surprised.

“Is it cool here?” he asked.
Sanshirō again
“Yes,” he said.
Mr. Nonomiya gazed at the pond’s water for a short while, then inserted his right hand into his inner pocket and searched for something.
Half of an envelope protruded from the inner pocket.
The characters written on it appeared to be a woman’s handwriting.
Mr. Nonomiya apparently failed to find what he sought and let his hand dangle limply as before.
Then he said:
“Today the device went a bit haywire, so I called off the evening experiment.
“I think I’ll take a stroll around Hongo on my way back now. Would you care to join me?”

Sanshirō readily agreed.
The two of them climbed the slope and emerged onto the hilltop.
Mr. Nonomiya briefly stopped near where the woman had been standing earlier and surveyed both the red building visible through the grove of blue-green trees ahead and the pond with its water fallen away, though the cliff was high,

“It’s quite a nice view, isn’t it?”
“The angle of that building protrudes slightly there.”
“Through the trees. See?”
“It’s quite nice, isn’t it?”
“Have you noticed?”
“That building is quite skillfully constructed.”
“The engineering department is well constructed, but this one is more skillfully done, don’t you think?”

Sanshirō was somewhat surprised at Mr. Nonomiya’s aesthetic discernment. To tell the truth, I have no idea which one is better. This time, it was Sanshirō who began making vague sounds of agreement.

“And then, this atmosphere of trees and water—nothing extraordinary, but considering it’s right in central Tokyo—quite tranquil, don’t you think? One can’t properly pursue scholarship except in such a place. Lately Tokyo has grown far too clamorous—it’s becoming a problem.” He started walking while indicating the building on his left. “This is the assembly hall—where they hold faculty meetings. Not that someone like me needs to attend. I get by well enough living in my underground cell. Modern scholarship advances with such ferocious momentum that even slight complacency leaves one behind. To observers we might seem to jest in our cellar, but rest assured—the practitioner’s mind works with violent intensity here. More vigorously than any electric train, perhaps. That’s why even summer travels feel wasteful.” He tilted his head back to gaze at the vast sky. The sky already lacked sunlight.

Across the utterly still blue sky’s surface, thin white clouds floated long and diagonally, like streaks left by the tip of a brush swept across.

“Do you know about that?” he said.
Sanshirō looked up at the semi-transparent clouds.

“That’s all snow particles, you know.”
“When viewed from below like this, they don’t move at all.”
“However, they’re moving at speeds greater than any typhoon that occurs on the ground—Have you read Ruskin?”

Sanshirō answered sullenly that he had not read it.
Mr. Nonomiya merely

“Is that so?” was all he said.
After a while,
“It would be interesting to sketch this sky.
—I wonder if I should mention this to Haraguchi,” he said.
Sanshirō, of course, did not know the name of the painter Haraguchi.

2-6

The two of them emerged from in front of Baelz’s statue, passed by Kikokuji Temple, and came out onto the street with electric trains.
In front of the statue, when asked “What do you think of this statue?” Sanshirō was flustered again.
The street was extremely lively.
Electric trains passed by incessantly.

“Don’t you find the trains bothersome?” he asked again.
To Sanshirō, they were not merely bothersome but almost overwhelming.
He simply answered, “Yes.”
Then Mr. Nonomiya said, “I find them bothersome too.”
However, he didn’t appear bothered in the slightest.

“I can’t transfer trains freely on my own unless I get instructions from the conductor.
"They’ve multiplied recklessly these past two or three years, you see."
"They’ve become convenient, yet it’s all the more troublesome."
“It’s the same with my scholarship,” he said with a laugh.

Since it was the start of the term, a considerable number of students wearing new high school hats were passing by.
Mr. Nonomiya seemed to be in good spirits as he watched this group.

“Quite a lot of new ones have come, haven’t they?” he said.
“Young people being so full of vitality—it’s good.”
“By the way, how old are you?” he asked.
Sanshirō answered as he had written in the guest register.

Then,

“Then you’re only seven years younger than I am.”
“Given seven years, a person can accomplish most things.”
“However, time passes quickly, you know.”
“It’s practically seven years straight,” he said.
Sanshirō could not tell which was true.

As they neared the corner, there were many bookstores and magazine shops on both sides.
At two or three of these shops, people swarmed like a dark mass.
And they were reading magazines.
And then they left without buying anything.
Mr. Nonomiya,

“Everyone’s so sly,” he said with a laugh.
To be fair, he himself also briefly opened Taiyō to take a look.

When they reached the intersection, there was a Western sundries shop on their left-hand side and a Japanese sundries shop across the street.
The electric train swerved sharply through the gap and passed by with tremendous force.
The bell rang ding-ding.
It was so crowded that crossing was difficult.
Mr. Nonomiya pointed to the sundries shop across the street and,

“I need to do a bit of shopping over there,” he said, dashing through the ding-ding ringing.
Sanshirō followed closely and crossed to the other side.
Mr. Nonomiya promptly entered the store.
When Sanshirō, who had been waiting outside, came to his senses and looked, the glass-fronted shelves at the storefront were lined with combs and hairpins.
Sanshirō found it strange.
Wondering what Mr. Nonomiya was buying, he grew suspicious and entered the store to look, where he saw a ribbon resembling a cicada’s wing dangling—

“How about this?” he was asked.
At that moment, Sanshirō thought he too should buy something and send it to Miss Okata of Miwata as a token of gratitude for the sweetfish.
However, he thought that if Miss Okata were to receive it, she would surely come up with some self-serving rationale instead of taking it as gratitude for the sweetfish, so he gave up on the idea.

After that in Magasai-chō, he was treated to Western food by Mr. Nonomiya.
According to Mr. Nonomiya, it was supposedly the best restaurant in Hongo.
But to Sanshirō, it just tasted like Western food.
Still, he ate everything that was served.

In front of the Western restaurant, he parted with Mr. Nonomiya; then, meaning to return to Oiwake, he politely went back to the original intersection and turned left.
He thought about buying geta sandals and peered into a geta shop, but under the incandescent gaslight sat a girl painted stark white like a plaster grotesque, so he abruptly lost interest and abandoned the idea.
On his way home afterward, he thought only about the woman's complexion from their meeting at the university pond's edge—that color being a pale fox-brown, like lightly scorched mochi.
And its texture was exceedingly fine.
Sanshirō concluded that a woman's complexion simply had to be exactly that.

Part 3, Chapter 1

The school year began on September 11th.
Sanshirō dutifully went to school around ten-thirty in the morning, but at the noticeboard before the entrance there was only the lecture schedule posted—not a single student could be seen.
He wrote down his required courses in his notebook and stopped by the office, where at least the clerk was present.
When he asked when lectures would begin, they said they would start on September 11th.
They stated this with perfect composure.
But when he inquired why no lectures seemed to be happening in any rooms, they answered that it was because the professors had not come.
Sanshirō left the office thinking this made sense.
Circling around back, he peered up at the high sky through a large zelkova tree—it appeared clearer than ordinary sky.
He descended through dwarf bamboo to the water's edge, reached his usual spot by the chinquapin tree, and squatted again.
Hoping the woman might pass by once more, he kept glancing up at the hilltop, but no human figures appeared there.
Sanshirō told himself this was only natural.
Yet he remained squatting.
Then when the noon cannon fired its report, he started and returned to his lodging.

The next day, he went to school at exactly eight o'clock.
When he entered the main gate, the rows of ginkgo trees planted on both sides of the straight main avenue caught his eye.
From where the ginkgo rows ended ahead, the ground sloped gently down; standing at the main gate, Sanshirō saw that only part of the second floor of the Science Building across the slope was visible.
Behind its roof, Ueno Forest bathed in morning sunlight glowed distantly.
The sun hung directly ahead.
Sanshirō found this spacious vista pleasing.

To the right, where the row of ginkgo trees ended on this side, stood the Law and Literature College.
To the left, slightly set back, was the Natural History Classroom.
The architecture of both buildings was identical, with triangular pointed roofs protruding above the long narrow windows.
The junction where the red bricks met the black roof at the edge of the triangle was formed by a thin straight line of stone.
Moreover, the stone’s color carried a faint bluish tinge, lending a certain charm to the exposed red bricks directly beneath it.
And these long windows and tall triangular forms continued in a row side by side.
Sanshirō had suddenly come to value this building ever since hearing Mr. Nonomiya’s observations the other day, but this morning he began feeling this appreciation originated from his own perspective rather than being borrowed.
What particularly struck him as irregular and peculiar was how the Natural History Classroom stood slightly recessed rather than aligned straight with the Law and Literature College.
The next time he met Mr. Nonomiya, he resolved to present this observation as his own original insight.

He was also impressed by the library jutting out about half a block from the right edge of the Law and Literature College. He couldn't quite grasp it, but assumed everything must follow the same architectural style. Along that red wall, where five or six large palm trees had been planted, looked particularly fine. The Engineering College far off to the left appeared as if modeled after a Western castle from feudal times. It was perfectly square. The windows too were square. Only the four corners and entrance were rounded—this must have had its turret removed, he thought. It stood as solidly as any fortress. Unlike what he'd seen at the Law and Literature College, it didn't seem likely to collapse; somehow it resembled a stocky sumo wrestler.

Sanshirō looked out as far as he could see, took into account that there were still many buildings beyond his view, and felt an indescribable sense of grandeur.
"The seat of learning must be just like this.
It is precisely because of such a structure that one can conduct research.
It’s magnificent"—Sanshirō felt as though he had become a great scholar.

However, when he entered the classroom—though the bell had rung—the professor did not appear.
Instead, no students came either.
The next period followed suit.
Sanshirō grew irritated and left the lecture hall.
To confirm his solitude, he circled the pond twice before returning to his lodging.

Part 3, Chapter 2

About ten days later, lectures finally began.
The feeling Sanshirō had when first entering the classroom and waiting with other students for the professor's arrival was truly commendable.
He imagined that a Shinto priest donning ceremonial robes must feel this way when preparing to conduct a ritual.
Undoubtedly, he had been struck by academic dignity.
Moreover, when the professor still hadn't appeared fifteen minutes after the bell rang, it heightened the reverent anticipation.
Eventually, a dignified elderly Westerner opened the door and began lecturing in fluent English.
At that moment Sanshirō learned the character for "answer" derived from the Anglo-Saxon word "and-swaru."
He then memorized the name of the village where Scott attended elementary school.
He meticulously recorded both in his notebook.
Next came the literary theory lecture.
The professor entered, glanced at the blackboard, and upon seeing the words "Geschehen" and "Nachbild," remarked "Ah, German?" before laughingly erasing them.
This made Sanshirō feel he'd lost some respect for the German language.
The professor then listed about twenty definitions of literature formulated by ancient scholars.
Sanshirō carefully noted these down too.
In the afternoon he attended the large lecture hall.
About seventy to eighty students filled the room.
Accordingly, the professor adopted an oratorical tone.
The opening line—"A single cannon blast shattered Uraga's dream"—initially captivated Sanshirō, but as German philosophers' names proliferated, comprehension grew increasingly difficult.
Looking at his desk, he found the characters for "failed" exquisitely carved.
The workmanship—clean cuts through hard oak executed with apparent leisure—seemed far from amateur.

It was a work of serious craftsmanship.
The man next to him was taking notes with admirable persistence.
When he peeked over, they were not notes.
From a distance, he had been sketching a caricature of the professor’s face.
No sooner had Sanshirō peeked than the man thrust his notebook toward him.
The drawing was well executed, but he couldn’t decipher the characters written beside it: “The Hototogisu in Kumoi’s Distant Sky.”

After the lecture ended, Sanshirō, somehow feeling fatigued, propped his cheek on his hand at the second-floor window and looked down at the garden inside the main gate.
It was simply a broad path lined with large pine and cherry trees, the spaces between them laid with gravel; perhaps because it wasn’t overly manicured, it felt pleasant to look at.
According to Mr. Nonomiya, this place had not been so beautiful in the past.
A certain teacher of Mr. Nonomiya’s, during his student days, would ride his horse around this area; but the horse refused to obey and spitefully insisted on passing under trees, so his hat would catch on pine branches.
The teeth of his geta became lodged in the stirrup.
The professor was in a great predicament when a large number of barbers from the Kitadoko barbershop in front of the main gate came out and laughed with amusement.
At that time, some enthusiasts had pooled funds to build a stable on campus and kept three horses along with an equine instructor.
However, the professor was such a heavy drinker that he ended up selling the finest white horse among the three and drinking away the proceeds.
Apparently, it had been an old horse from the Napoleon III era.
Surely it couldn’t have been from the Napoleon III era.
However, as he was thinking that there had indeed been a carefree era, the man who had drawn the caricature earlier came over and

“University lectures are pretty dull, huh?”
Sanshirō gave a vague reply.
The truth was, he couldn’t begin to judge whether they were boring or not.
Yet from that moment onward, he found himself conversing with this man.

Part 3, Chapter 3

That day, feeling somehow oppressed in mood and finding nothing enjoyable, he decided against walking around the pond and returned home.
After dinner, he read through his notes again but felt neither particularly pleased nor displeased.
He wrote a colloquial-style letter to his mother.
—School has started.
I will attend every day from now on.
The school is a very spacious, pleasant place with extremely beautiful buildings.
There's a pond in the middle.
I enjoy taking walks around the pond.
I've finally grown accustomed to riding the electric trains lately.
I want to buy you something, but since I don't know what would be good, I won't buy anything.
If you want something, let me know.
This year's rice will likely increase in value soon, so it would be better not to sell it yet.
You shouldn't be too friendly with Miss Miyada Oka.
Coming to Tokyo and looking around, there are people everywhere.
There are many men, but also many women.
It was a letter that jumbled together all manner of such things.

After writing the letter and reading six or seven pages of the English book, he grew bored.
He realized that reading even one such book would prove futile.
He resolved to lay out his bedding and sleep, but sleep refused to come.
While contemplating whether to visit the hospital should insomnia take hold, he drifted off.

The next day, he again went to school at the appointed hour and attended lectures.
During class, he overheard talk of how much this year's graduates had fetched at various institutions.
Some were discussing rumors about certain students lingering to compete for positions at a government school.
Sanshirō vaguely felt a dull pressure—as though the future were surging toward him from afar—but soon forgot it.
Instead, he found more interest in stories about Shōnosuke's exploits.
Catching a classmate from Kumamoto in the hallway, he asked who Shōnosuke was; the classmate explained she was a female gidayū performer appearing at yose theaters.
He went on to describe the theater's signboard and its location in Hongo before inviting Sanshirō to join him that Saturday.
It turned out this classmate had only first entered a yose theater himself the previous night.
Sanshirō found himself strangely wanting to visit a yose and see Shōnosuke.

Just as he was thinking of returning to his lodging for lunch, the man who had drawn the caricature yesterday came over and, calling out “Hey! Hey!”, dragged him off to a place called Yodomiken on Hongō Avenue where he made him eat rice curry.
The place called Yodomiken was a shop that sold fruit.
It had been newly built.
The caricature-drawing man pointed to the front of this building and explained that this was nouveau style.
Sanshirō realized for the first time that architecture could have a nouveau style too.
On the way back, he was also shown Aokidō.
Apparently this too was a place university students frequented.
They entered through Akamon and strolled around the pond together.
At that moment, the caricature-drawing man said—as if personally instructed by the late Mr. Koizumi Yakumo—that Professor Lafcadio Hearn had detested entering the faculty lounge and would always walk circling around this area after finishing his lectures.
When Sanshirō asked, “Why didn’t he enter the faculty lounge?”

“That’s only natural. First of all, even if you listened to their lectures, you wouldn’t understand a thing, would you? There’s not a single person you can talk to,” he stated with such cutting nonchalance that even Sanshirō was taken aback. This man was called Sasaki Yojirō and had graduated from a technical school; this year, he had entered a specialized program, or so it was said. He said he was staying at a place called Hirota’s in Higashikatamachi 5-banchi and told him to come visit. When he asked if it was a boarding house, the other replied that it was a high school teacher’s home.

Part 3, Chapter 4

After that, for a time, Sanshirō went to school every day and diligently attended lectures.
He even occasionally attended non-compulsory courses.
Even so, he still felt unsatisfied.
Eventually, he even began occasionally showing up to courses that were completely unrelated to his major.
However, he usually ended up stopping after two or three times.
Not a single one lasted even a month.
Even so, it averaged about forty hours per week.
Even for as diligent a person as Sanshirō, forty hours was a bit too much.
Sanshirō was constantly feeling a certain pressure.
Yet he felt unsatisfied.
Sanshirō ceased to find enjoyment.

One day, when Sanshirō met Sasaki Yojirō and told him about this, Yojirō widened his eyes at “forty hours” and said, “Idiot!” Then he abruptly hit him with a maxim: “Think about it—if you ate the lousy meals at a boarding house ten times a day, would you ever feel satisfied?”
Sanshirō was immediately overwhelmed and asked, “What should I do?”

“You should ride the electric train,” Yojirō said.
Sanshirō thought there must be some allegory in this and pondered for a while, but no particular idea came to mind, so
“Do you mean an actual electric train?” he asked again.
At that moment, Yojirō guffawed,
“If you ride the electric train and go around Tokyo fifteen or sixteen times, you’ll naturally get your fill.”
“Why?”
“Why? If you seal up a living mind with dead lectures, there’s no saving it.
You go out and let the wind in.
And there are any number of ways to satisfy yourself beyond that, but well, the electric train is the most basic and convenient method.”

That evening, Yojirō dragged Sanshirō along, boarding the electric train from Yonchōme, going to Shinbashi, then turning back from Shinbashi to come to Nihonbashi, where they got off.

“How’s that?” he asked.

Next, they turned from the main street into a narrow side street, went up to a restaurant with a sign that read Hira no Ie, ate dinner, and drank sake.
The maids there all spoke in Kyoto dialect.
Their speech was exquisitely lingering.
Yojirō, who had gone out to the front, had a red face and again

“How’s that?” he asked.

Then, saying he would take him to an authentic yose theater, they entered another narrow side street and stepped into a yose theater called Kihara Store.
There, they listened to a storyteller named Koshō.
After ten o'clock, Yojirō emerged onto the street and once more

“How’s that?” he asked.

Sanshirō did not answer that he was satisfied.
However, he did not feel entirely unsatisfied.
Then Yojirō vigorously began his discourse on Koshō.

Koshō was a genius.
Such artists don’t come around often.
Because people think they can hear him anytime, it gives a cheap impression, which is truly pitiable.
In truth, we who live in the same era as he are truly fortunate.
Even if one were born just a little earlier than now, they could not hear Koshō.
Even if one were born a little later, it would be the same.—En'yū is also skilled.
However, his style differs from Koshō’s.
En'yū's portrayal of a taikomochi is amusing because it shows En'yū who has become the taikomochi, whereas Koshō's taikomochi is amusing because it exists entirely divorced from Koshō himself.
If one were to conceal En'yū from the characters he portrays, the characters would vanish entirely.
No matter how much you try to conceal Koshō from the characters he portrays, they continue to leap about with vivid vitality.
That is what makes him remarkable.

Yojirō said such things and then

“How’s that?” he asked.
To tell the truth, he hadn’t fully grasped the essence of Koshō’s performance.
Moreover, he had never even heard someone like En'yū before.
Consequently, it was difficult to judge the validity of Yojirō’s argument.
However, he was impressed by how literary and precise the comparison had been.

When parting in front of the high school, Sanshirō,

“Thank you—I’ve had my fill,” he said gratefully.
Then Yojirō,

“From now on, nothing but the library will satisfy me,” he said, turning toward Kata-machi as he left.
Through these words alone, Sanshirō came to understand how one enters the library.

3–5

From the very next day, Sanshirō nearly halved his forty hours of lectures.
And then he entered the library.
Wide, long, with a high ceiling and windows lining both sides—it was such a building.
The stacks only revealed their entrance.
When peering straight ahead from this side, it seemed countless books were arrayed deep within.
Standing there watching, he occasionally saw people emerge from within the stacks carrying two or three thick books, reach the exit, then turn left.
They were heading to the staff reading room.
Among them were those who took down necessary books from shelves, spread them open against their chests, and examined them while standing.
Sanshirō grew envious.
He wanted to go all the way back, climb to the second floor, then ascend to the third—to a place higher than Hongō—keeping living things at bay, inhaling paper's scent...and read.
But when it came to what to read, he had no clear idea.
I couldn't know unless I read them, but I thought there must be a great many of something back there.

Since Sanshirō was a first-year student, he did not have the right to enter the stacks. Having no choice, he began examining each sheet of the large boxed card catalog one by one—but no matter how much he flipped through them, new book titles kept appearing endlessly until his shoulders began aching. When he raised his head during a break and looked around the library interior, its silence lived up to what one would expect from such an institution. Yet there were many people present—so many that at the far end someone’s head appeared merely as a black shape with indistinct eyes and mouth. Through high windows he glimpsed scattered trees and patches of sky while distant town sounds drifted in. Standing there motionless, Sanshirō thought how quiet and profound a scholar’s life must be—and so that day he simply returned home unchanged.

The next day, he stopped daydreaming and promptly borrowed books upon entering. However, having failed to borrow them properly, he immediately returned them. The books he later borrowed were too difficult to read, so he returned them again. In this manner, Sanshirō borrowed eight or nine books every day without fail. To be fair, there were some he did read a little here and there. Sanshirō was shocked when he discovered that no matter which book he borrowed, someone had definitely read through it at least once. This was evident from pencil marks scattered throughout the pages. Once, just to confirm, Sanshirō borrowed novels by authors named Afura and Bēn. Though he doubted there would be any marks until opening them, sure enough, careful pencil annotations were there too. At this point, Sanshirō thought it utterly impossible to manage.

Just then, a military band passed by outside the window, so he ended up feeling like going for a walk, went out onto the street, and finally entered Aokidō.

Upon entering, he found two groups of customers—all students—but in the far corner was a man sitting alone drinking tea. When Sanshirō suddenly glanced at his profile, he seemed very much like the person who had eaten many honey peaches on the steam train during Sanshirō’s journey to Tokyo. The man did not notice him. He would take a sip of tea followed by a drag of tobacco, maintaining an air of complete composure. Today he had forgone the white-patterned yukata and wore a suit instead—though by no means an impressive one. The white shirt stood out even more starkly than Mr. Nonomiya’s research on light pressure had ever done. As Sanshirō observed his demeanor, he confirmed this was indeed the honey peach man. Since attending university lectures, what this man had said on the train had abruptly taken on new significance for him, and Sanshirō considered approaching to offer greetings. But the man kept facing forward in an unbroken cycle of sipping tea and smoking tobacco—smoking tobacco and sipping tea—leaving no opening to intervene.

Sanshirō was gazing fixedly at his profile when suddenly he drained the cup of wine in his hand and dashed outside. And then he returned to the library.

3–6

That day, invigorated by wine and some peculiar mental stimulation, Sanshirō found himself studying with unusual enjoyment, which pleased him immensely. After losing himself in reading for nearly two hours, he finally noticed the time and began preparing to leave. As he gathered his belongings, he idly pulled out the last unopened volume from his stack of borrowed books. On the blank endpaper inside the cover, someone had roughly scrawled lines of text in pencil that filled every available space:

"When Hegel lectured on philosophy at Berlin University, he harbored not the slightest intention of 'selling' philosophy. His lectures were not expositions of truth—they were truth incarnate through the lecturer himself. Not lectures from the tongue, but from the heart. When truth and person become one through refinement, what is expounded becomes lectures not for lecturing's sake, but for the sake of the Way. Only at this stage should one attend philosophy lectures.

Those who merely let truth roll off their tongues leave behind nothing but hollow writings—dead ink on dead paper. What meaning could such things hold?

...I now read this book swallowing resentment and tears—for exams' sake, which is to say, for bread's sake. Remember: press down your lofty head and curse the examination system through all eternity."

It read.
There was of course no signature.
Sanshirō couldn’t help smiling.
But he felt as if he had been somewhat enlightened.
Not just philosophy—literature must be the same way, he thought as he turned the page, only to find more.
“Hegel’s…”
He appeared to be a man who liked Hegel a great deal.

“The students who gathered in Berlin from all directions to hear Hegel’s lectures did not assemble with the ambition of using these lectures as a means to secure their livelihood.
It was none other than the manifestation of pure-heartedness—students who, having heard that there existed a philosopher named Hegel imparting supreme universal truth from his lectern, earnestly desired to resolve their profoundly unsettled doubts beneath that platform through their ardent aspiration for self-improvement and truth-seeking.
Therefore, by listening to Hegel, they were able to determine their future.
They were able to reshape their own destinies.
To presume they are equivalent to you Japanese university students who listen to lectures halfheartedly and graduate carelessly is the height of arrogance.
You are nothing but typewriters!
Moreover, greedy typewriters!
What you do, what you think, what you say—ultimately have no connection to society’s vital energy and dynamism.
What shallow creatures you are, persisting in your shallowness all the way to death!
‘What shallow creatures you are, persisting in your shallowness all the way to death!’”

and there it was—the word "shallow" repeated twice.
Sanshirō fell silent and sank into thought.
Then, from behind, someone lightly tapped his shoulder.
It was none other than Yojirō.
It was rare to see Yojirō in the library.
He was a man who asserted that while lectures were useless, the library was essential.
But he was a man who rarely entered in accordance with his own advocacy.

“Hey, Mr. Nonomiya Sōhachi was looking for you,” he said.
Since he had never imagined Yojirō would know Mr. Nonomiya, he asked again to confirm—“Mr. Nonomiya from the science department?”—and received a “Yeah” in reply.
He promptly set down his book and went all the way to the newspaper browsing area near the entrance, but Mr. Nonomiya was not there.
He went out to the entranceway to check, but he was still not there.
He descended the stone steps and craned his neck to look around the area, but neither shadow nor form was visible.
Unwillingly, he turned back.
When he returned to his seat, Yojirō was pointing at the Hegel marginalia and speaking in a low voice,

“This hasn’t been touched in ages.”
“Must be an old graduate.”
“Those old-timers were crude, but there’s something appealing about them.”
“Exactly like this,” he said with a smirk.
He seemed thoroughly amused.
Sanshirō

“Mr. Nonomiya isn’t here,” he said.

“He was at the entrance earlier.”

“Did he seem to have some business?”

“There did seem to be something.”

The two of them left the library together.
At that time, Yojirō spoke.
“Mr. Nonomiya is a former student of Professor Hirota—the one I’m staying with—and often visits.”
“He’s extremely devoted to his studies and has conducted a great deal of research.”
“If they’re in that field, even Westerners know Mr. Nonomiya’s name.”

Sanshirō then recalled the story about Mr. Nonomiya’s teacher who had been troubled by a horse inside the main gate long ago and began to wonder if that person might be Professor Hirota.
When he told Yojirō about it, Yojirō laughed and said that it might be his teacher at home—the kind of person who would do such a thing.

3-7

Since the next day was Sunday, he couldn't meet Mr. Nonomiya on campus. However, he felt uneasy about having been sought out the previous day. Fortunately, as he had not yet visited the new residence, he resolved to go himself and inquire about the matter.

He had resolved to go that morning, but while reading the newspaper and dawdling about, noon arrived. After eating lunch, he was about to leave when a friend from Kumamoto whom he hadn’t seen in ages arrived. It was finally past four o’clock when he managed to send him off. Though it had grown somewhat late, he set out as planned.

Nonomiya’s house was quite far. He had moved to Ōkubo four or five days earlier. Still, using the electric train would make for a quick journey. Having heard it was near the station, he anticipated no trouble finding it. To tell the truth, Sanshirō had been making terrible blunders ever since that visit to the Hirano residence. Once, intending to go to Kanda Higher Commercial School, he had boarded at Hongō Fourth District only to overshoot to Kudan, get carried all the way to Iidabashi, transfer belatedly to the Outer Moat Line, emerge at Kanda Bridge via Ochanomizu, and—still oblivious—hurry along Kamakura Riverbank toward Sukiyabashi. Since then, electric trains had struck him as perilous contraptions, but having heard the Kōbu Line ran straight through, he boarded with reassurance.

After getting off at Ōkubo Station, he avoided going toward Toyama School along Nakahyakunin-dōri and instead turned immediately sideways from the railroad crossing, where the path became a narrow lane scarcely three feet wide. When he meandered up this slope on tiptoe, there was a sparse Moso bamboo grove. In front of and beyond that grove stood one house each. Nonomiya’s house was the one in front. A small gate stood diagonally across the path in a position that seemed utterly unrelated. When he entered, the house again appeared in an unexpected location. Both the gate and entrance seemed to have been added afterward.

Beside the kitchen stood a splendid hedge, yet the garden beyond had neither partitions nor anything of the sort.
Only a large bush clover stretched higher than a person’s back, barely concealing the veranda of the tatami room.
Mr. Nonomiya had brought out a chair to this veranda, sat down on it, and was reading a Western-style magazine.
Seeing Sanshirō enter,

“Come here,” he said.
It was exactly the same greeting as in the Science University’s underground cell.
Should he enter from the garden or go around to the front entrance? Sanshirō hesitated slightly.
Then again,

Urged by “This way,” he resolved to enter from the garden.
The tatami room served as the study—eight mats in size with a considerable number of Western books.
Mr. Nonomiya rose from his chair and sat down.
Sanshirō made remarks about the quiet location, how one could reach Ochanomizu relatively quickly, how the telescope tests were progressing—after this loose, casual conversation,

“I heard you came looking for me yesterday—was there something you needed?” he asked.
Then Mr. Nonomiya wore a slightly apologetic expression and,

“It’s really nothing at all,” he said.
Sanshirō simply replied, “Ah.”

“So you came specially for this?”

“Oh, it wasn’t exactly like that.”

“Well, your mother back home—saying I’ve been looking after you—sent something quite nice, so I thought I should at least thank you…”

“Ah, I see. Did she send something?”

“Well, it’s red fish pickled in sake lees.”

“Then it must be Himeichi.”

Sanshirō thought his mother had sent such a trivial thing. However, Mr. Nonomiya asked various questions about that Himeichi. Sanshirō specifically explained the proper way to eat it. He taught him that if you burned the sake lees and then, when transferring it to a plate, didn’t remove the lees, the flavor would be lost.

As the two of them discussed Himeichi, the day grew dark. Sanshirō was just about to take his leave and head home when a telegram arrived from somewhere. Mr. Nonomiya opened the envelope, read the telegram, and muttered under his breath, “This is troublesome.”

3-8

Sanshirō could not maintain an air of nonchalance, nor did he feel inclined to pry into the matter, so merely,

“Did something happen?” he asked bluntly.
Then Mr. Nonomiya,

“It’s nothing serious,” he said, and showed Sanshirō the telegram he was holding.
It says, “Come right away.”

“Are you going out somewhere?”

“Yes, my sister has been ill for some time now and is in the university hospital, but she’s telling me to come right away,” he said with no sign of alarm.
Sanshirō was the one who felt surprised.
He bundled together Mr. Nonomiya’s sister, her illness, and the university hospital, added the woman he had met around the pond to the mix, stirred them all at once, and found himself shocked.

“Then it must be quite serious?”

“Oh, it’s likely not that serious.
You see, my mother is there nursing her—if it were truly due to illness, she could have taken the train and rushed here much faster.
It must be my sister’s mischief.
She’s foolish enough to often pull such stunts.
Since I haven’t visited even once since moving here, she probably assumed I’d come today on Sunday and has been waiting—that’s all,” he said, tilting his head sideways in thought.

“But you should go. If it turns serious, that would be unacceptable.”

“True. Though it’s unlikely her condition would worsen so suddenly after just four or five days—still, I suppose I’ll go check.”

“You’re certainly not too young to make the visit.”

Nonomiya decided to go.
Having settled on going, he brought up a request to Sanshirō.
If the telegram was indeed due to her illness, he wouldn’t be able to return tonight.
Then the house would be left with only the maid.
The maid was extremely timid, and the neighborhood was particularly noisy.
Since Sanshirō had happened to come by at just the right time, if his studies tomorrow wouldn’t be hindered, perhaps he could stay over? Of course, if it was just an ordinary telegram, Nonomiya would return right away.
If he had known earlier, he would have asked that Sasaki fellow, but now it was too late to arrange anything.
It was only for a single night, and whether he would stay at the hospital or not remained unclear, so imposing on someone unrelated felt too selfish, making it difficult to insist—of course, Nonomiya did not make the request this smoothly, but given that Sanshirō was not a man who required such eloquence to be persuaded, he readily agreed.

When the maid asked about dinner, he replied "There will be none," then told Sanshirō, "Apologies, but please eat alone later," leaving him behind with the evening meal as he departed.
Just when Sanshirō thought he had gone, a loud voice called out from the dark bush clover,

“You may read any of the books in my study. There’s nothing particularly interesting, but please feel free to look at whatever you like. There are also some novels.”

Having said that，he vanished.
When Sanshirō saw him off to the engawa veranda and expressed his thanks，the bamboo stalks of the Mōsō grove—about three tsubo in size—could still be seen standing sparse at full height，each one distinct.

Before long，Sanshirō sat before a small meal tray in the center of the eight-mat study and ate his dinner.
When he looked at the meal tray，true to the master’s words，that Himeichi was there.
He was glad as if he had caught the scent of his hometown for the first time in a while，but the rice was unexpectedly bland.
When he looked at the face of the maid who had come to serve，it too had timid features，just as the master had said.

3-9

When the meal was finished, the maid went down to the kitchen.
Sanshirō was left alone.
When he was alone and settled, he suddenly became worried about Mr. Nonomiya’s sister.
He felt as though she were in critical condition.
He felt that Mr. Nonomiya was taking too long to arrive.
And he couldn’t shake the feeling that the sister was just like the woman he had seen the other day.
Sanshirō once again repeated the woman’s facial features, her gaze, and her attire exactly as they were at that time, placed her on the hospital bed, made Mr. Nonomiya stand beside her, and had them exchange a few words; but finding the brother insufficient, before he knew it, he had substituted himself in his stead and was tenderly nursing her.
At that moment, the steam train roared and passed right beneath the Mōsō bamboo grove.
Whether due to the floor joists or the soil quality, the room seemed to shake slightly.

Sanshirō ceased nursing and surveyed the room.
The building must have been considered quite old, for its pillars bore a desolate air.
On the other hand, the sliding paper doors were poorly fitted.
The ceiling was pitch black.
The Western-style lamp alone cast its modern glow.
It was on par with someone like Mr. Nonomiya—a modern scholar—renting such a house as an eccentric collector would and living while gazing at a feudal-era Mōsō bamboo grove.
If it were an eccentric collector’s whim, that would be their own choice; but if one were compelled by necessity to banish oneself to the suburbs, it would be truly pitiable.
From what he had heard, despite being a scholar of his caliber, Mr. Nonomiya apparently received only fifty-five yen a month from the university.
So he must have had no choice but to teach at private schools.
Having his sister hospitalized would probably be unbearable for him.
Perhaps his move to Ōkubo had also been due to such financial circumstances...

Though it was early evening, the place was hushed for what it was. In the garden beyond, the sound of insects could be heard. When he sat alone, it was the lonely beginning of autumn. At that moment, someone in the distance—
“Ahh… just a little longer.”

A voice called out.
The direction seemed to be behind the house, but it was too distant to tell for certain.
Before he could discern its origin, it had already faded.
Yet to Sanshirō's ears, this single phrase clearly sounded like the true soliloquy of someone abandoned by all—one who expected no answer from anything.
Sanshirō grew unsettled.
Then again, a steam train rumbled from afar.
As the sound drew nearer and passed beneath the Mōsō bamboo grove, it roared twice as loud as the last before fading away.
Sanshirō had stood dazed until the room's faint tremors subsided; then, like flint sparking, he linked the earlier lament with this train's reverberation through some kind of causality.
He jerked upright.
The connection was terrifying.

At that moment, Sanshirō discovered how excruciatingly difficult it was to remain rigidly seated.
From his spine down to the soles of his feet prickled with anxious dread.
He stood up and went to the toilet.
When he peered out the window, he found a star-strewn moonlit night, the railroad beneath the embankment deathly still.
Even so, he pressed his nose close enough to protrude through the bamboo lattice and stared into the darkness.

Then from the station direction came a man bearing a lit lantern along the railroad tracks.
By their voices, they seemed to number three or four.
The lantern's glow vanished from the railroad crossing into the embankment's shadow; when they passed beneath the Mōsō bamboo grove, only their voices remained.
Yet their words rang as clear as if he could seize them in his hand.

“Just a bit further ahead.”

The footsteps receded into the distance.
Sanshirō circled around to the front of the garden and, without removing his geta, crawled down the embankment—a little over six feet—from the Mōsō bamboo grove and chased after the lantern’s trail.

3-10

Before he had gone thirty feet or so，another figure came leaping down from the embankment.
——

“Isn’t this someone who was run over?”

Sanshirō tried to say something in response，but for a moment，no sound came out.
In the meantime，the black-clad man passed by.
“This must be the master of the house living behind Mr．Nonomiya’s place，” he thought while following behind.
After walking about fifty meters，the lantern had come to a stop.
People had also stopped.
The people remained silent，keeping the light aloft.
Sanshirō wordlessly looked beneath the light.
Below lay half a corpse.
The steam train had cleanly ripped it apart from the right shoulder down below the breast to above the waist，leaving the diagonally severed torso behind as it moved on.
The face was uninjured.
It was a young woman.

Sanshirō still remembers how he felt at that time.
He tried to turn on his heel and leave immediately, but his legs froze, leaving him almost unable to move.
After crawling up the embankment and returning to the room, his heart began pounding.
Thinking to get water, he called the maid—who fortunately seemed unaware of everything.
Before long, some commotion broke out in the house at the rear.
Sanshirō realized the master had returned.
Soon clamor rose from below the embankment.
When it subsided, silence returned.
A silence so profound it felt nearly unbearable.

Before Sanshirō's eyes, the woman's face from earlier appeared vividly.
When he pieced together that face with the feeble voice murmuring "Ahh..." and the cruel fate that must have lurked behind them both, it seemed the sturdy-seeming root of what we call life had imperceptibly loosened, ready at any moment to drift free into darkness.
Sanshirō was terrified beyond any capacity for desire or gain.
It had been but a single thunderous instant.
Until that moment, she had undoubtedly been alive.

At that moment, Sanshirō suddenly recalled the man on the steam train who had given him a honey peach while repeating, "Dangerous, dangerous! You must be careful or it’ll be dangerous." Even as he kept uttering those warnings, that man had remained oddly composed. In other words, Sanshirō thought, if one stood in a position safe enough to declare "Dangerous, dangerous," then perhaps anyone could become such a man. For those who inhabited the world yet remained mere observers, there might indeed be some allure to this stance. From the way he had eaten that honey peach to his ritual of sipping tea at Aokidō—alternating between tobacco puffs and tea gulps while sitting rigidly upright—everything marked him as precisely this type of person. A critic. Sanshirō tested the word "critic" in this peculiar sense. Having done so, he admired his own cleverness. Not only that—he even began contemplating whether he too might exist as such a critic in the future. When confronted with that ghastly death-mask of a face, these thoughts inevitably surfaced.

Sanshirō looked around at the Western desk in the corner of the room, the chair before the desk, the bookcase beside the chair, and the Western books neatly arranged within that bookcase, and thought that the owner of this quiet study was just as safe and content as that critic.
——To research light pressure, one doesn’t go around getting women run over by trains.
The master’s sister was ill.
But it was not an illness his brother had created.
It was an illness she had contracted herself.
As his mind wandered from one thought to another, it became eleven o'clock.
The Nakano-bound electric train would not be coming anymore.
Perhaps her illness had taken a turn for the worse, and that was why he wasn’t coming back—the thought made him worry all over again.
Just then, a telegram arrived from Nonomiya.
It stated that his sister was safe and that he would return tomorrow morning.

He went to bed reassured, but Sanshirō's dream turned perilous—the woman who had tried to be run over was connected to Nonomiya, and Nonomiya, knowing this fact, did not return home. He had sent the telegram solely to reassure Sanshirō. The claim about his sister being safe was false; at the very hour when the run-over death had occurred that night, his sister too had died. And that sister was none other than the woman Sanshirō had met at the edge of the pond……

Sanshirō woke up unusually early the next morning.

3-11

Gazing at the bedding in the unfamiliar place where he had slept, he smoked a cigarette, but everything from the previous night felt like a dream.
He stepped out onto the veranda and looked up at the sky beyond the low eaves—today was fine weather.
The world bore the hue of having just turned radiant.
After finishing his meal, drinking tea, and bringing a chair out onto the veranda to read the newspaper, Mr. Nonomiya returned as promised.

“I hear there was a run-over death there last night,” he said. He had likely heard about it at the station or somewhere. Sanshirō recounted his experience in full.

“That’s unusual. It’s not something you come across often. I wish I had been home. They’ve probably already taken care of the corpse. Even if I went, I probably wouldn’t be able to see it now.”

“I suppose it’s too late now,” he answered tersely, but was taken aback by Mr. Nonomiya’s nonchalance. Sanshirō concluded that this insensitivity arose entirely from the distinction between night and day. He had completely failed to notice that the inclination of a person who tests light pressure would manifest the same attitude even in such circumstances. It must be because he is young.

Sanshirō changed the subject and asked about the patient.
According to Mr. Nonomiya’s reply, just as he had surmised, there had been no abnormalities with the patient.
It was simply that he hadn’t gone to see her in five or six days; feeling dissatisfied with this, she had lured her brother over as a distraction from her boredom.
She was apparently angry, saying it was cruel that he hadn’t come even though today was Sunday.
That was why Mr. Nonomiya kept calling his sister a fool.
He truly seemed to think she was a fool.
He said it was foolish to waste a busy person’s precious time like this.
However, Sanshirō could hardly comprehend the meaning of it.
If a sister would go so far as to send a telegram because she wanted to meet him, then sacrificing one or two Sunday evenings shouldn’t be something to regret.
The time spent with such a person was real time, while the days passed testing light in a cellar should rather be called a leisured existence far removed from life.
If I were Mr. Nonomiya, I would actually welcome having my studies interrupted for this sister’s sake.
He had felt that way, but at that moment, he had forgotten about the run-over death.

Mr. Nonomiya said that since he hadn’t slept well last night, he couldn’t very well go around in a daze.
“Today, fortunately, I have to go to Waseda School in the afternoon, and since the university is off, I’ll rest until then,” he said.
Sanshirō asked, “Were you up quite late?” To this, he explained that a former teacher named Hirota—who had coincidentally taught at the high school—had come to visit his sister, and while they were all talking together, they missed the last train and ended up deciding to stay over.
“I was supposed to stay at Hirota’s place, but my sister threw a tantrum, insisting I absolutely must stay at the hospital, so I reluctantly slept in a cramped space and ended up feeling so uncomfortable I couldn’t get any rest.”
“My sister is such a fool.”
He launched another attack on his sister.
Sanshirō found it amusing.
He considered defending the sister a little, but found it somehow awkward to say and stopped himself.

Instead, he asked about Mr. Hirota. Sanshirō had now heard Mr. Hirota’s name three or four times. He had secretly given him the nicknames "the Honey Peach Professor" and "the Aokidō Professor." Then there was also the time he had been tormented by a spiteful horse inside the main gate and laughed at by the craftsmen at Kitadoko—this too he had attributed to Mr. Hirota. However, upon hearing this now, he realized the horse incident was indeed connected to Mr. Hirota. He therefore concluded that the honey peach must also refer to this same professor. When he thought about it, it did seem rather forced.

When leaving, since it was on his way, he said he wanted it delivered by noon and had him take a lined kimono to the hospital.
Sanshirō was very happy.

3-12

Sanshirō was wearing a new square hat.
He felt somewhat proud to be able to go to the hospital wearing this hat.
He left Mr. Nonomiya's house with a sharp look.

He got off the electric train at Ochanomizu and immediately hailed a rickshaw—behavior unbefitting his usual self. When he had the rickshaw puller energetically enter Akamon, the law and literature department’s bell began ringing. Normally at this hour, notebook and inkwell in hand, he would be entering classroom number eight. But with the resolve that missing an hour or two of lectures hardly mattered now, he rode straight to Aoyama Internal Medicine’s entrance.

Following instructions—past the entryway further in, right at the second corner, left at the dead end to reach the east-side room—he walked accordingly and found it exactly where described. A black-lacquered nameplate hung at the doorway, bearing “Nonomiya Yoshiko” in kana. Sanshirō stood there reading it, lingering motionless. Being a country bumpkin, he didn’t think to knock.

“The person inside is Mr. Nonomiya’s sister and a woman named Yoshiko.”

Sanshirō stood there thinking this.
He wanted to open the door and see her face, yet he dreaded being disappointed by what he saw.
The trouble was that the woman’s face flitting through his own head bore no resemblance to Mr. Nonomiya Sōhachi.

From behind came the nurse, the sound of her clogs drawing near.
Sanshirō resolutely opened the door about halfway.
And their eyes met.
(With one hand still gripping tightly)

She was a large-eyed, thin-nosed, thin-lipped woman with a forehead so broad it seemed her cranial bowl had spread open and a sharply tapered chin. Her features were just that. However, Sanshirō was seeing for the first time in his life the instantaneous expression that flashed from such features at this moment. Behind the pale forehead, thick hair hanging naturally was visible down to the shoulders. The morning sunlight leaking through the east window shone from behind, so where her hair met the light burned violet, bearing a vivid halo along its edge. And yet, both face and forehead were strikingly dark. Dark and pale. In their midst were eyes with a distant air. High clouds lingered deep in the sky, unmoving. But they could not remain still. They moved as if crumbling. When the woman saw Sanshirō, her gaze was like this.

Sanshirō perceived within this expression a unity of languid melancholy and unhidden vivacity.
This sense of unification was, for Sanshirō, life's most precious shard.
And it constituted a monumental discovery.
Gripping the handle—his face half-protruding from the door's shadow into the room—Sanshirō surrendered himself completely to this momentary sensation.

“Please come in.”

The woman spoke as though she had been waiting for Sanshirō.
In her tone lay a calm timbre unexpected in a woman meeting him for the first time.
Only a pure child or a woman acquainted with every sort of man could produce such an effect.
This was not mere familiarity.
It felt as though they had been old acquaintances from the very beginning.
Simultaneously, the woman moved her thin cheeks into a soft smile.
Within the pallor emerged a nostalgic warmth.
Sanshirō’s feet carried him into the room of their own accord.
At that moment, the image of his mother in his distant hometown flashed through the youth’s mind.

3-13

When he circled around behind the door and finally faced forward, a woman in her fifties greeted Sanshirō.
It appeared this woman had risen from her seat and been waiting even before Sanshirō’s body had fully emerged from the door’s shadow.

“Are you Mr. Ogawa?” she asked.
Her face resembled Mr. Nonomiya’s.
It also resembled her daughter’s.
But this resemblance was merely superficial.
When he produced the wrapped bundle entrusted to him, she accepted it and offered thanks,

“Please,” she said while sliding the chair forward, then moved around to the bed’s far side.

When he looked at the futon spread on the bed, it was pure white.
The covering spread on top was also pure white.
Having rolled it halfway up at a slant and avoiding where the hem appeared thicker, the woman sat with her back to the window.
Her feet did not reach the floor.
She was holding knitting needles in her hand.
The yarn ball rolled under the bed.
A long red yarn trailed from the woman’s hand.
Sanshirō thought about retrieving the yarn ball from under the bed for her.
However, since the woman seemed completely indifferent to the yarn, he held back.

From across the room, the mother repeatedly expressed her thanks for last night. “In the midst of your busy schedule,” she said. Sanshirō replied, “It was no trouble—I had free time anyway.” While the two were talking, Yoshiko remained silent. When their conversation lapsed, suddenly:

“Did you see last night’s accident?” she asked. When he looked, there was a newspaper in the corner of the room. Sanshirō said:

“Yes.”

“Was it frightening?” she asked, tilting her head slightly as she looked at him. She was a long-necked woman who resembled her brother. Sanshirō did not answer whether it was frightening or not and instead gazed at the curve of her neck. Half of it was because the question was too straightforward, leaving him at a loss for an answer. Half of it was because he had forgotten to answer. The woman seemed to notice and immediately straightened her neck. And then, a faint blush rose from within her pale cheeks. Sanshirō thought it was time to leave.

He gave his greetings, left the room, and came to the front entrance. When he looked ahead, at the end of the long corridor—squarely cut off and abruptly bright—where the greenery outside was reflected in the stairway entrance, stood the woman from the pond. Startled, Sanshirō’s feet faltered in their pace. At that moment, the woman’s figure—darkly outlined within the transparent canvas of air—took a step forward. Sanshirō moved forward as though drawn in. The two approached each other along the straight corridor, fated to pass one another somewhere along its length. Then the woman turned around. In the bright outside air floated nothing but early autumn’s green. In response to her backward glance, within that square frame appeared nothing—nor was there anything that had awaited this moment. In that interval, Sanshirō committed her posture and attire to memory.

The color of the kimono was impossible to name.
It was like when the shadow of a cloudy evergreen tree was reflected in the university pond’s water.
Vivid stripes ran through it from top to bottom.
And as those stripes ran through, they undulated like waves, sometimes drawing close to each other, sometimes pulling apart, overlapping to thicken or splitting into two strands.
At the upper third—irregular yet orderly—it was divided horizontally by a wide obi.
The obi had a warm ambiguity.
This was probably because it contained yellow.

When she turned around, her right shoulder pulled back while her left hand, remaining at her waist, moved forward.
She held a handkerchief.
The excess portion around her fingers lay smooth.
It must have been the silk.—From the waist down, she kept proper posture.

Three-Fourteen

The woman soon turned back to her original position.
When she approached Sanshirō by about two steps with downcast eyes, she suddenly drew her head back slightly and looked directly at him.
Her almond-shaped eyes with double eyelids maintained a composed appearance.
Those eyes lived vividly beneath strikingly black eyebrows.
Simultaneously, beautiful teeth came into view.
To Sanshirō, these teeth and this complexion created a contrast impossible to forget.

Today she wore a thin layer of white powder.
Yet it showed no vulgar excess that might mask her natural skin.
Beneath an extremely fine dusting of powder lay flesh richly tinted—appearing resilient against strong sunlight—and perfectly hued.
It was not a face that shone with oiliness.

The flesh—whether of the cheeks or the jaw—was taut and firm.
What remained over the bones was scarcely any in amount.
And yet, the entire face was tender.
It was not that the flesh was soft; the bones themselves seemed pliant.
It was a face that gave a sense of deep dimensionality.

The woman bent forward. Sanshirō was startled less by being bowed to by a stranger than by the refined technique of her gesture. Her upper body descended like a sheet of paper caught in the wind—swift yet precise. Having reached an exact angle, it halted effortlessly. This was no practiced formality.

"Pardon me..." A voice issued from between white teeth. Crisp yet unhurried. It bore no resemblance to inquiries about summer acorns. Sanshirō lacked mental space for such trivial observations.

“Ah,” he said, stopping short.

“Where might Room Fifteen be located?”

Room Fifteen was the chamber Sanshirō had just left.

“Is this Professor Nonomiya’s room?”

This time the woman answered with an “Ah.”

“Professor Nonomiya’s room—you turn at that corner there, proceed straight until the end, then turn left once more—it’s the second door on your right.”

“At that corner…” she said, extending a slender finger.

“Yes, it’s right at that next corner.”

“Thank you very much.”

The woman passed by.
Sanshirō stood motionless, watching her receding figure.
She reached the corner.
Just as she turned, she glanced back.
Sanshirō flushed crimson in his fluster.
The woman smiled faintly, her expression seeming to ask, "This corner?"
Sanshirō nodded reflexively.
Her silhouette veered right and vanished into the white wall.

Sanshirō wandered out the entrance. Thinking she might have mistaken him for a medical student when inquiring about the room number, he took five or six steps before it struck him—when she had asked about Room Fifteen, he should have turned back to Yoshiko's room and guided her there. He had made a regrettable mistake.

Now he couldn't summon the courage to go retrieve her. Reluctantly, he walked another five or six paces before halting abruptly. The color of the ribbon tied around the woman's hair flashed through his mind. When he realized its hue and texture exactly matched what Nonomiya had purchased at Ken'an, his legs turned leaden. As he staggered past the library toward the main gate, Yojirō called out unexpectedly from nowhere in particular.

“Hey, why’d you skip? Today there was a lecture on how Italians eat macaroni,” he said as he came over and tapped Sanshirō’s shoulder.

The two walked a short way together.
When they neared the main gate, Sanshirō asked,

“Do people still wear thin ribbons this time of year? Aren’t those only for the peak of summer?”

Yojirō laughed with an “Ah ha ha,” then said,
“Ask Professor So-and-so. He’s a man who knows everything,” brushing it off.

At the main gate, Sanshirō announced he was feeling unwell and would be skipping school that day.
Yojirō returned to the classroom without so much as mentioning that having followed him along had been a waste of time.

4-1

Sanshirō's soul drifted free.
When he listened to lectures, they sounded distant.
If he wasn't careful, he ended up leaving out crucial points.
In extreme moments, he felt as though he was renting someone else's ears with a fee.
Sanshirō found himself unbearably foolish.
Having no choice, he turned to Yojirō and said that lately the lectures had been rather uninteresting.
Yojirō’s answer was always the same.—
“There’s no reason for lectures to be interesting.”
“You’re a country bumpkin, so I suppose you’ve been toughing it out listening until now thinking you’ll become something great one day.”
“The height of foolishness.”
“Their lectures have been like this since the dawn of time.”
“It’s no use getting disappointed about it now.”

“It’s not exactly like that…” Sanshirō protested.
The mismatch between Yojirō’s flippant tone and Sanshirō’s stiff manner of speaking was so extreme it became exceedingly comical.

Through two or three repetitions of such exchanges, nearly half a month had slipped by before they noticed.
Sanshirō's ears were gradually ceasing to feel like borrowed instruments.
Then it was Yojirō who turned to Sanshirō this time and said,

“You’ve got such a strange look on your face,” he said. “You look utterly worn out by life. It’s a fin de siècle face.” Even to this critique, Sanshirō still kept repeating, “It’s not exactly like that…” He had not yet been exposed to the artificial atmosphere enough to feel pleased upon hearing a term like “fin de siècle,” nor had he become sufficiently acquainted with the intricacies of a certain social sphere to wield this as an intriguing plaything. Only the phrase “tired of life” somewhat appealed to him. He did indeed seem to be growing weary. Sanshirō did not think it was solely due to diarrhea. But he was not so modern in his outlook on life as to proclaim a thoroughly weary face. And so, this conversation ended without developing any further.

Before long, autumn deepened.
Appetite increased.
The time had come when a twenty-three-year-old young man could not possibly be tired of life.
Sanshirō went out often.
He had walked around the perimeter of the university pond quite a bit but found nothing unusual.
He walked back and forth in front of the hospital countless times yet encountered only ordinary people.
When he went to the underground lab at the science university and asked Mr. Nonomiya, he was told his sister had already left the hospital.
He considered mentioning the woman he had met at the entrance but held back upon seeing how busy Mr. Nonomiya seemed.
If he went to Ōkubo for a leisurely talk this time, he would likely learn her name and background - so he withdrew without urgency.
And so he wandered aimlessly.
Tabata, Dōkanyama, Somei Cemetery, Sugamo Prison, Gokokuji - Sanshirō even reached Arai no Yakushi.
On his return from Arai no Yakushi toward Ōkubo intending to visit Mr. Nonomiya's house, he took a wrong turn near Ochiai Crematorium and emerged at Takada, boarding the steam train from Mejiro to return home.
In the train car he devoured alone all the chestnuts bought as get-well gifts.
The next day Yojirō came and finished what remained.

The more Sanshirō drifted about, the more cheerful he became.
At first, because he had focused too intently on the lectures, his hearing grew dull which made note-taking difficult, but lately, as he listened with moderate attention, it no longer troubled him.
During lectures, he thought about various things.
Even if he missed a little, he didn’t feel it was a loss.
Upon closer observation, starting with Yojirō, everyone was doing the same thing.
Sanshirō thought that this much should be good enough.

While Sanshirō was pondering various things, that ribbon would occasionally surface.
When that happened, he became concerned.
He felt extremely uncomfortable.
He immediately felt like going out to Ōkubo.
But whether from the chain of his thoughts or the stimulation of the outside world, after a while, it would scatter and fade away.
So for the most part, he remained carefree.
And so he was dreaming.
He still hadn’t made it to Ōkubo.

4-2

One afternoon, as was his custom, Sanshirō strolled from the top of Dangozaka, turned left, and emerged onto the wide avenue of Sendagaya Hayashichō.
Though called an autumn clear sky, lately even Tokyo’s sky appeared as deep as the countryside’s.
Merely thinking that he was alive beneath such a sky made his mind clear.
And if he were to go out to Ueno, there would be nothing more to desire.
His spirits grew light and free, his soul expanding to the breadth of the heavens.
Yet even so, his entire body grew tense.
It was different from the careless languor of spring.
Sanshirō walked on, gazing at the hedges on either side while taking in his first Tokyo autumn since arriving here.

At the foot of the slope, the chrysanthemum dolls had opened for business just two or three days prior.
As he rounded the slope, even the banners came into view.
Now only the voices could be heard.
Dochin don, they cheered from afar.
The sound of festive music, rising gradually from below and spreading through the crystal-clear autumn air, eventually thinned into an exceedingly faint wave.
The ripples of sound reached near Sanshirō’s eardrums and naturally came to rest.
Rather than feeling noisy, it was actually quite pleasant.

At that moment, two people suddenly appeared from the side street on the left.
One of them saw Sanshirō and said, “Hey.”

For once, Yojirō’s voice carried a precise edge today.
Instead, there was a companion.
When Sanshirō saw the companion, he realized that the person who had been drinking tea at Aokidō was indeed Mr. Hirota, just as he had long surmised.
He had developed a peculiar relationship with this man ever since the honey peach incident.
Ever since he drank tea and smoked tobacco at Aokidō and sent him rushing to the library, it had become even more deeply etched in his memory.
No matter when you looked at him, he had the face of a Shinto priest with the nose of a Westerner.
He was still wearing the same summer clothes as before today and did not seem particularly cold.

Sanshirō thought to say something and greet them, but too much time had passed, and he didn’t know how to begin speaking.
He simply removed his hat and bowed.
Toward Yojirō, he was overly polite.
Toward Hirota, his greeting was a bit too curt.
Sanshirō found himself caught in an awkward middle ground between the two.
Then Yojirō immediately,

“This man is my classmate.
—fresh from Kumamoto Higher School to Tokyo,” he went on proclaiming Sanshirō’s country bumpkin status without even being asked, then turned toward Sanshirō,

“This is Professor Hirota. From the Higher School...” he finished introducing them both without explanation.

At this moment, Professor Hirota repeated twice, “I know, I know,” which made Yojirō pull a puzzled face. But he refrained from asking troublesome questions like “How do you know?” Instead, he immediately pressed on:

“You know any houses for rent around here? Spacious, clean ones with rooms for students?”

“As for rental houses... there is one.”

“Whereabouts? Can’t have it being dirty.”

“Well, there’s a nice one.”
“There’s one with a large stone gate.”

“That’s brilliant!
Where exactly?
Professor, wouldn’t a stone gate be splendid?”
“Shouldn’t we absolutely go with that?” Yojirō pressed eagerly.

“I refuse a stone gate,” said the Professor.

“Won’t have it?”
“That’s no good!”
“Why is it unacceptable?”

“Because it just isn’t acceptable.”

“A stone gate would be fine, though.”
“Wouldn’t it be splendid, Professor—like a new baron?”

Yojirō was earnest.
Professor Hirota smirked enigmatically.
Ultimately, earnestness won out—they agreed at least to go see the place, and Sanshirō guided them.

4-3

After turning back down the side street and emerging onto a back street, about half a block north, there was an alley that seemed to dead-end.
Sanshirō led the two men into this alley.
If you went straight, you would end up at the gardener’s yard.
The three stopped about nine to eleven meters before the entrance.
To the right stood two rather large granite pillars.
The door was iron.
Sanshirō said this was the one.
Sure enough, there was a rental sign attached.

“This is terrifying!” Yojirō exclaimed, shoving the iron door hard, but the lock held firm.
“Wait here—I’ll go ask!” he declared, dashing off toward the gardener’s residence before anyone could respond.
Hirota and Sanshirō stood abandoned in his wake.
The two began speaking.

“How are you finding Tokyo?”

“Well...”

“It’s vast yet squalid, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I suppose...”

“Nothing here compares to Mount Fuji, would you say?”

Sanshirō had completely forgotten about Mount Fuji.
Prompted by Professor Hirota’s remark, the Mount Fuji he had first glimpsed from the steam train window was, upon reflection, truly sublime.
It could not compare at all to the jumbled state of the world currently swirling in his mind.
Sanshirō felt ashamed that he had somehow let slip that initial impression.
Then,

“Have you ever tried translating Mount Fuji?” came the unexpected question.

“Translation is…”
“When you translate nature, it all turns human—that’s what makes it interesting.”
“‘Sublime,’ ‘great,’ ‘majestic’—those sorts of things.”

Sanshirō understood what he meant by translation.

"They all become terms of human character."
"To those who can't translate nature into terms of character, nature imparts no character-shaping influence whatsoever."

Sanshirō kept silent, expecting more to follow.
But Mr. Hirota concluded his remarks there.
He peered toward the gardener's rear quarters,

"I wonder what Yojirō's doing.
He's being rather slow," he muttered like a man talking to himself.

"Shall I go check?" Sanshirō offered.

“No need to go look—he’s not the type to emerge just because someone checks on him,” said Professor Hirota. “Far less bother to wait here than chase after him.” He crouched beneath the trifoliate orange hedge, picked up a pebble, and began sketching something in the dirt. It was a leisurely gesture. Yojirō’s brand of carefreeness pointed in the opposite direction, yet matched it in degree.

From beyond the pine grove, Yojirō’s voice boomed out.

“Professor! Professor!”

The professor was still drawing something.
It looked like a lighthouse.
When there was no reply, Yojirō had no choice but to come out.

“Professor, please take a look.
It’s a nice house.
This one is owned by the gardener.
We could have them open the gate, but it’s quicker to go around from the back.”

The three went around from the back.
They opened the storm shutters and walked through inspecting each room.
It was built so that middle-class people could live there without feeling ashamed.
The rent was forty yen, and the deposit amounted to three months’ worth, it was said.
The three went back out to the front.

“Why are we looking at such a splendid house?” Professor Hirota said.

“Why must there be a reason? Isn’t it fine just to look?” said Yojirō.

“Even though we’re not renting it…”

“We were planning to rent it.”
“But they absolutely refused to lower the rent to twenty-five yen…”

Professor Hirota simply said, “Naturally.”
Then Yojirō launched into the history of the stone gate.
He explained that until recently, it had stood at the entrance of a certain mansion they frequented, but during renovations they had acquired it and erected it right there.
Yojirō was the only one who had been researching such odd things.

IV-iv

Then the three returned to the main road, descended from Dōzaka into Tabata Valley, and by the time they reached the bottom, they were simply walking along.
They had completely forgotten about the rental house.
Yojirō alone would occasionally mention the stone gate.
He said it had cost about five yen in labor to transport it from Kōjimachi to Sendagi.
That gardener must be quite wealthy, he added.
He even made unnecessary remarks about who would ever rent a forty-yen house built there.
In the end, they concluded that with no tenants forthcoming and the rent sure to be lowered, they should negotiate again then and make sure to rent it.
Professor Hirota, seemingly without any such intention himself, said the following.

“It’s because you keep going on with all this unnecessary talk that it’s taking so much time.”
“You should come out once you’ve had your fill of it.”

“Did it take that long?
"You were drawing something, right?"
“You’re quite the carefree one yourself, Professor.”

“There’s no telling who’s the carefree one.”

“What kind of drawing is that?”

The professor remained silent.
At that moment, Sanshirō, with a serious face,

“Isn’t that a lighthouse?” he asked.
The artist and Yojirō burst out laughing.

“A lighthouse is rather unconventional.”
“So you were drawing Mr. Nonomiya Sōhachi inside it, weren’t you?”

“Why?”

“Mr. Nonomiya may shine abroad, but here in Japan he’s in utter darkness.”
“No one has any idea.”
“So he gets a meager salary and shuts himself away in a cellar—it’s really a rotten deal.”
“Every time I see Mr. Nonomiya’s face, I can’t help feeling sorry for him.”

“You only dimly illuminate about two feet square around where you’re sitting—you’re like a round lantern.”

Yojirō, who had been compared to a round lantern, suddenly turned toward Sanshirō.

“Ogawa-kun, what year of Meiji were you born in?” he asked.
Sanshirō replied simply,

“I’m twenty-three,” he answered.

“That’s about right.—Professor, I really dislike being called things like ‘round lantern’ or ‘kettle spout’.”
“It might be because I was born after Meiji 15, but somehow I find it old-fashioned and unpleasant.”
“What about you?” he asked, turning toward Sanshirō again.
Sanshirō said,

“I don’t particularly dislike it,” he said.

“Of course, you’re just from the countryside of Kyushu, so your mentality’s probably the same as someone from around the first year of Meiji.”

Neither Sanshirō nor Hirota offered any particular response to this.
A short distance ahead, someone had cut down the cedar grove next to an old temple, neatly leveled the ground, and built a Western-style house painted blue.
Professor Hirota looked upon the temple and the blue-painted Western-style house with equal measure.

“It’s an anachronism.”
“Japan’s material world and spiritual realm are both just like this.”
“You know the lighthouse at Kudan,” he brought up again.
“That’s an old one—it appears in the Edo Meisho Zue.”

“Professor, you mustn’t joke like that.”
“No matter how old the Kudan lighthouse is, if it’s in the Edo Meisho Zue, that’s a big deal!”

Professor Hirota burst out laughing.
It turned out there had been an error in the multicolored woodblock print claiming to depict Tokyo’s famous landmarks.
According to the professor’s theory, right beside such an antiquated lighthouse that still stood, a new-style firebrick structure called the Kaikōsha had been erected.
When viewed side by side, they appeared utterly ridiculous.
Yet nobody noticed; everyone remained unbothered.
He declared this represented Japanese society.

Yojirō and Sanshirō, having murmured "I see," passed before the temple and walked five or six blocks until they encountered a large black gate.
Yojirō proposed cutting through here to reach Dōkanyama.
When someone questioned whether this was permissible, another maintained that since this was the Satake clan's lower residence where anyone could pass freely, there would be no issue. Both men caught the spirit of adventure and slipped through the gate, passed beneath thickets until reaching an old pond's edge—where a guard emerged and roundly scolded all three.
At that moment, Yojirō bobbed his head apologetically to the guard.

Then they went out to Yanaka, circled around Nezu, and returned to their lodgings in Hongō in the evening.
Sanshirō felt as though he had spent a carefree half-day unlike any he had experienced recently.

4-5

The next day when he went to school, Yojirō wasn't there. He thought he might come in the afternoon, but he didn't. He even went into the library but still couldn't find him. There was a common lecture for the pure literature department from five to six o'clock. Sanshirō attended it. It was too dark to take notes. It was too early for the electric lights to be on. As it was that time when the depths of the large zelkova branches visible beyond the narrow windows outside were gradually darkening, inside the room both the lecturer's face and the students' faces were equally hazy. Consequently, like eating a steamed bun in the dark, it felt somehow mysterious. Sanshirō thought it strange that there were parts of the lecture he didn't understand. As he listened with his cheek propped in his hand, his nerves grew dull and his mind began to drift. He felt this was precisely what gave the lecture its value.

Just then, the electric light flashed on, making everything somewhat more distinct. Then he suddenly wanted to return to his lodgings and eat. The professor, sensing the mood, considerately wrapped up the lecture. Sanshirō returned to Oiwake at a brisk pace.

When he changed into fresh clothes and sat down to the meal tray, there lay a letter alongside a bowl of steamed egg custard. Upon seeing the envelope, Sanshirō immediately knew it was from his mother. It was shameful, but he had completely forgotten about her for over half a month. From yesterday through today—what with talk of anachronisms, Mount Fuji's personality, and those mystical lectures—the shadow of that woman hadn't once surfaced in his mind. Sanshirō found this state satisfactory. Resolving to read his mother's letter later at leisure, he first finished his meal and lit tobacco. Watching the smoke rise, he recalled the earlier lecture.

At that moment, Yojirō wandered in.
When Sanshirō asked why he had skipped school, Yojirō explained it wasn’t school business but rather house-hunting.

“Are you moving in such a hurry?” Sanshirō asked.

“They made us wait until the Emperor’s Birthday the day after tomorrow even though we were supposed to move last month,” Yojirō said. “So we’ve got to find a place by tomorrow no matter what.”
“Do you know of any places?” he pressed.

Despite this urgency, Yojirō had idled around yesterday in a way that made it unclear whether he was taking a walk or actually searching.
Sanshirō could hardly make sense of it.
Yojirō interpreted his confusion: “It’s because the Professor was involved from the start.”
“It’s fundamentally wrong for the Professor to be house-hunting anyway.”
“He’s never done it before—must’ve been acting strange yesterday.”
“Thanks to that mess, we got an earful at the Satake residence—what a fine situation! —So come on, do you know anywhere?” he urged.
It became clear Yojirō had come solely for this purpose.
Upon closer inquiry, it emerged that Yojirō had declared they would vacate their current lodgings out of sheer indignation—the landlord being a loan shark who kept raising rents unreasonably.
In that case, the responsibility fell entirely on Yojirō.

“Today I went all the way to Ōkubo, but still nothing. —Speaking of Ōkubo, I stopped by Mr. Nonomiya’s place on the way and met Miss Yoshiko.”
“Poor thing, her complexion still lacks luster—a ginger-spiced beauty—and her mother asked me to pass along her regards to you.”
“But since then, things seem to have calmed down there.”
“There haven’t been any more run-over deaths since then, it seems.”

Yojirō’s talk jumped from topic to topic.
He was usually unfocused to begin with, and today’s house-hunting had left him somewhat flustered.
When the conversation reached a lull, as if giving a cue, he would ask, “Do you know any places?”
In the end, even Sanshirō burst out laughing.

4-6

Before long, Yojirō’s restlessness gradually subsided, and he even began delighting in borrowing Chinese phrases like “one should grow intimate with lamplight.”
The conversation unexpectedly turned to Professor Hirota.

“What’s the name of your professor?”

“His name is Naga,” he wrote with his finger and showed, “but the grass radical is unnecessary.”
“I wonder if it’s in the dictionary.”
“That’s a strange name they gave him,” he said.

“Was he a high school teacher?”

“He has been a high school teacher from long ago up until today.”
“That’s impressive.”
“They say it’s like ten years as a single day, but it must have been twelve or thirteen years by now.”

“Does he have any children?”
“Not only does he not have children—he’s still unmarried.”

Sanshirō was slightly surprised. He found himself doubting whether anyone could remain unmarried at that age.

"Why hasn't he taken a wife?"

"That's precisely what makes him the Professor—for all his quirks, he's a formidable theorist. He decided through pure logic that marriage is undesirable without ever trying it first. It's absurd. That's why he's always contradicting himself. He goes around saying 'There's no place as filthy as Tokyo,' yet when he sees a stone gate, he puts on this act of being intimidated and starts spouting nonsense like 'This is improper!' or 'Too ostentatious!'"

“Then perhaps he should try taking a wife and see how that goes.”
“He might declare it splendid or something.”

“The Professor says Tokyo is dirty and Japanese people are ugly, but has he ever even been abroad?”

“What’s he gonna do? That’s just the kind of person he is. His mind’s always racing ahead of reality—that’s why he ends up like that. Instead, he studies the West through photographs. He’s got stacks of them—the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, the Houses of Parliament in London. It’s unbearable how he measures Japan against those snapshots. Of course it looks dirty! Yet no matter how filthy his own place gets, he’s oddly unfazed by it—strange, isn’t it?”

“He was riding in a third-class steam train.”

“Doesn’t he go around grumbling ‘filthy, filthy’?”

“No, he didn’t voice any particular complaints.”

“But the Professor is a philosopher, isn’t he?”

“Does he even teach philosophy at the school?”

“No—at school he only teaches English, but that man has naturally shaped himself into a philosopher. It’s interesting.”

“Does he have any writings?”

“There’s nothing. He does write papers occasionally, but they make no impact at all. That’s no use. There’s just no helping it when the world remains completely unaware. The Professor called me a round lantern—but he himself is a vast darkness.”

“Somehow, I think he’d thrive if he ventured into society.”

“You say he’d thrive out there—but Professor, he’s not one to lift a finger himself. First off, without me around, he couldn’t even manage three square meals a day.”

Sanshirō laughed, stopping himself just short of calling it the exact opposite.

“It’s not a lie. He’s pitifully incapable of doing anything at all. In any case, I’ll have the maid handle things to the Professor’s liking—but trivial matters aside, from here on out I plan to really get moving and make him a university professor.”

Yojirō was serious.
Sanshirō was astonished by his grandiose words.
There was no harm in being surprised.
He continued in his state of astonishment until finally,

“When I move, please come and help me,” he requested.
He spoke as if a house had long since been secured through prior arrangement.
And with that, he left straight home.

4-7

Yojirō had returned around ten o'clock.
When he was sitting alone, he felt a chill creeping in from somewhere.
When he suddenly noticed, the window before his desk had been left open.
When he opened the shoji, it was a moonlit night.
The blue light shone upon the unpleasant hinoki cypress that met his gaze each time, the edges of its black shadow appearing slightly hazy.
While thinking how unusual it was that autumn had come to the hinoki cypress, he closed the storm shutters.

Sanshirō immediately got into bed.
Sanshirō was less a studious type than a wanderer, so he did not read many books.
Instead, when he encountered a scene worth capturing, he took pleasure in renewing it in his mind many times over.
That way, he felt, life gained depth.
Today as well, under normal circumstances, he would have happily repeated moments like when the lights abruptly came on during the mysterious lecture, but since he had his mother’s letter, he started by dealing with that first.

The letter stated that Shinzō had given her honey, so she mixed it with shochu and drank a cup each night.
Shinzō was their tenant farmer, and every winter he would bring twenty bales of tribute rice.
He was an extremely honest man, but due to his quick temper, he would sometimes strike his wife with firewood.
Lying in bed, Sanshirō even recalled the time long ago when Shinzō had started keeping bees.
That was about five years ago.
He found two to three hundred honeybees hanging from the chinquapin tree in the backyard, immediately sprayed them with sake using a husking funnel, and captured every last one alive.
He then placed them into a box, made holes for entry and exit, and set it on a sunlit stone.
Then the bees gradually began to multiply.
One box became insufficient.
He made two.
Again it proved inadequate.
He made three.
Continuing this expansion, there were now six or seven boxes.
He claimed to annually remove one box from the stone and extract honey for the bees.
Every summer when Sanshirō returned home, Shinzō never failed to promise honey, yet he had never actually brought any.

But this year his memory must have suddenly improved, leading him to finally fulfill the longstanding promise.

The letter said Hiratarō had erected a stone monument for his father and asked them to come see it. When they went, there in the middle of the garden's red soil where neither trees nor grass grew stood a monument made of granite. The letter noted how proud Hiratarō was of that granite. It had taken several days to quarry it from the mountain, and then the stonemason charged ten yen. Farmers might not understand such things, it read, but the young master of your household has entered university—he must know good stone from bad. In your next letter, he wanted you to ask about it and have them praise the ten-yen monument he'd made for his father.—Sanshirō chuckled quietly to himself. It was far more imposing than Sendagi's stone gate.

The letter said to send a photograph of him wearing his university uniform. Sanshirō thought he would have it taken someday and turned to the next part, where, as expected, Miwata no Okata came up.—Recently, Okata’s mother had visited to propose that once Sanshirō-san graduated from university, he should marry her daughter. She wrote that Miss Okata was both beautiful and kind-natured, that her family owned substantial farmland, and given the longstanding ties between their households, such a match would suit both parties well—then added a postscript: “Miss Okata would surely be pleased as well.—But I don’t care for Tokyo people—you can’t know their true hearts.”

Sanshirō rolled up the letter, put it into the envelope, placed it by his pillow, and closed his eyes.
The rats suddenly began scurrying wildly across the ceiling but soon settled down.

4-8

Within Sanshirō, three worlds had formed.
One was far away.
It carried what Yojirō called the scent of the era before Meiji 15.
While everything was peaceful, everything was also drowsy.
Of course, returning required no effort.
If he were to try to return, he could do so immediately.
However, unless push came to shove, he had no intention of returning.
It was, so to speak, like an eviction.
Sanshirō sealed his discarded past into this eviction.
When he thought that even his dear mother had been buried here, it suddenly felt like a waste.
So when a letter came, he would linger awhile in this world, warming himself with old joys.

Within the second world were moss-covered brick buildings. When one gazed from corner to corner, there spread a reading room so vast that faces across became indistinct. There stood books piled beyond reach without a ladder. Worn spots and finger grime had darkened them where touched, while gilt titles still gleamed through the patina. Sheepskin parchments lay beside cowhide vellums and two-century-old papers, all blanketed under dust accumulated across decades—precious sediment formed through twenty or thirty years of stillness. This was dust whose quietude could overpower even the most silent of days.

When one saw the moving figures in the second world, they mostly had unkempt beards. Some walked while looking at the sky. Some walked with their heads bowed. Their clothing was invariably unkempt. Their livelihoods were undoubtedly meager. And yet they remained serenely composed. While surrounded by electric trains, they breathed the boundless tranquil air without restraint. Those who entered here were unfortunate because they did not know the secular world, and fortunate because they escaped the burning house. Professor Hirota existed within this. Mr. Nonomiya also existed within this. Sanshirō resided where he had managed to vaguely grasp the air of this realm. If he were to leave, he could. But it would be a shame to abandon the interest he had just begun to grasp.

The third world pulsated brilliantly like spring.
There were electric lights.
There were silver spoons.
There were shouts of joy.
There was laughter and talk.
There were foaming champagne glasses.
And above all else, there were beautiful women.
Sanshirō had spoken to one of those women.
He had seen her twice.
To Sanshirō, this world was the most substantial.
It hovered just before his eyes.
Yet remained maddeningly inaccessible.
In its elusiveness, it resembled lightning from beyond the heavens.
Sanshirō gazed at this world from afar and marveled.
If I don't enter some part of this world, I feel a fissure will form somewhere within it.
I appear qualified to be protagonist of some corner here.
And still—this world that ought to crave harmonious growth instead constricts itself, barring the passage through which I should freely come and go.
To Sanshirō, this defied understanding.

Sanshirō lay in bed and lined up these three worlds side by side, comparing them against each other.
Next, he stirred these three worlds together and extracted a single result from their midst.
"In short," he concluded, "there could be nothing better than bringing Mother from the countryside, taking a beautiful wife, and devoting myself entirely to scholarship."

The result was utterly commonplace.
However, since he had pondered various things before arriving at this result, when viewed by the thinker himself—who was prone to inflate or deflate the conclusion’s value by factoring in the mental effort expended—it wasn’t quite so commonplace.

However, doing so would mean representing the vast third world with a single, insignificant wife.
There are many beautiful women.
If you translate beautiful women, they become manifold.—Sanshirō had followed Professor Hirota’s example and tried using the word "translation."
――As long as they can be translated into terms of character, one must come into contact with as many beautiful women as possible to broaden the sphere of influence arising from that translation and thereby perfect one’s own individuality.
To be content with knowing only a single wife is akin to actively rendering one’s own development incomplete.

Having extended his logic this far, Sanshirō thought he had become a bit infected by Professor Hirota’s influence.
The truth was, he hadn’t actually felt such acute dissatisfaction.

Having extended his logic to this point, Sanshirō thought he had become slightly tainted by Professor Hirota’s influence.
In truth, it was because he had not felt such an acute sense of deficiency himself.

4-9

The next day when he went to school, the lectures were as tedious as ever, but since the air in the room remained removed from the mundane, by three o'clock in the afternoon he had fully become a man of the second world. Assuming the dignified bearing of a great man, he arrived before the police box at Oiwake—where he suddenly encountered Yojirō.

“Ah ha ha ha. Ah ha ha ha.”

The great man’s demeanor collapsed entirely because of this.
Even the police officer at the box wore a faint smirk.

“What?”

“There’s nothing to it.”
“You ought to walk a bit more like an ordinary person.”
“It’s pure romantic irony.”

Sanshirō didn’t quite understand the meaning of this Western term. Since there was nothing else to do,

“Did you find a house?” he asked.

“That’s why I went to your place just now—I’m finally moving tomorrow. Come help me out.”

“Where are you moving to?”

“Nishikata-chō 10-banchi no 3-gō. Go there by nine and clean up, okay? Wait for me there. I’ll come after. Got it? By nine o’clock. No. 3 at 10 Nishikata-chō. Later.”

Yojirō hurried past.
Sanshirō also hurried back to the lodging.
That evening he returned and looked up the phrase "romantic irony" in the library; it turned out to be a term coined by Friedrich Schlegel of Germany, whose theory stated that a genius must spend all day idling about without purpose or effort.
Sanshirō finally felt relieved, returned to the lodging, and went straight to sleep.

The next day, bound by his promise and undeterred by Tenchōsetsu (the Emperor’s Birthday), he rose at his usual hour and entered Nishikata-chō 10-banchi—intending to go to school afterward—but upon checking No. 3, found it situated midway along a strangely narrow street.
It was an old house.

Instead of an entrance hall, there protruded a single Western-style room, with a Japanese-style room positioned at a right angle to it. Behind the Japanese-style room lay the dining area, and across from this, arranged in a row, were the kitchen and maid’s quarters. There was also a second floor, though he could not tell how many tatami mats it contained.

Sanshirō had been tasked with cleaning, but he saw no real need to do so. It was certainly not clean. Yet when it came down to it, there was nothing that demanded removal. As he considered that if forced to discard anything, it would only be items like the tatami mats and fixtures, he opened only the storm shutters, sat on the veranda of the Japanese-style room, and gazed out at the garden.

There was a large crape myrtle.
However, since its roots were in the neighboring property, more than half of its trunk extended sideways from the cedar fence, encroaching into this space.
There was a large cherry tree.
This one was clearly growing within the fence.
In return, half of its branches had escaped into the street; a little more growth and they would soon begin interfering with the telephone lines.
There was a single clump of chrysanthemums.
But though they appeared to be winter chrysanthemums, they showed no sign of blooming.
There was nothing else besides these.
It was a pitiable sort of garden.
Only the soil lay flat, its texture fine and remarkably beautiful.
Sanshirō was looking at the soil.
It was practically a garden made for contemplating soil.

Before long, the school bell at the high school began ringing to mark the start of the Tenchōsetsu ceremony. Sanshirō, hearing the bell, thought that nine o'clock had probably come. Since it would be bad to remain idle, when he finally thought of sweeping up the dead cherry leaves, he realized there was no broom. Again, he sat down on the veranda. No sooner had he been sitting there for about two minutes than the garden gate slid open. And then, the unexpected woman from the pond appeared in the garden.

Part Four, Chapter Ten

Both sides were partitioned by a hedge.
The square garden measured less than ten tsubo.
The moment Sanshirō saw the woman from the pond standing in this narrow enclosure, he immediately realized:
Flowers must always be cut and admired in a vase.

At this moment, Sanshirō’s hips left the veranda.
The woman stepped back from the sliding door.

“Excuse me, but…”

The woman began with this phrase and bowed.
As was her custom, she inclined her upper body forward slightly but kept her face resolutely upright.
While bowing, she kept her gaze fixed on Sanshirō.
When viewed from the front, the woman’s throat appeared elongated.
At the same time, her eyes were reflected in Sanshirō’s.

Two or three days prior, Sanshirō had been shown a painting by Greuze by his aesthetics teacher. At that time, the teacher explained that all portraits of women painted by this artist brimmed with voluptuous expressions. Voluptuous! To describe the look in the pond woman's eyes at this moment, no other words would suffice. They pleaded something. They pleaded with a sensual allure. And they appealed directly to the senses. Yet it was an appeal that pierced through sensuality's bone to reach its marrow. An appeal that transformed into fierce stimulation surpassing what could be endured as sweet. Rather than sweet, it was painful. Of course it differed from servile flattery. It was a gaze so cruel that its recipient felt compelled to fawn upon her. Moreover, this woman shared not a single trait with Greuze's paintings. Her eyes were half the size of those in Greuze's works.

“Is Mr. Hirota’s relocation to be here?”

“Ah, yes, here it is.”

Compared to the woman’s voice and tone, Sanshirō’s reply came off rather blunt.
Sanshirō was aware of this too.
But there had been no other way to say it.

“Has Mr. Hirota not moved in yet?”
The woman’s words were clear.
They did not trail off ambiguously as people usually do.

“He hasn’t arrived yet.
He should be here soon.”

The woman hesitated for a moment.
She was holding a large basket in her hand.
The woman’s kimono was, as usual, impossible to make out.
The only thing that caught his eye was that it did not shine as usual.
The fabric was somehow rough.
The fabric had either stripes or some kind of pattern.
The pattern was utterly haphazard.

Cherry leaves occasionally fell from above.
One of them landed on the basket’s lid.
No sooner had it landed than it was blown away.
The wind enveloped the woman.
The woman stood in the midst of autumn.

“You are…”

When the wind had passed over to the neighboring area, the woman asked Sanshirō.

“I was asked to come and clean,” he said, but since he had actually been seen sitting there blankly, Sanshirō himself found it comical.
Then the woman also laughed and,

“Then perhaps I shall wait a little while?” she said.
The way she said this sounded to Sanshirō as if she were seeking his approval, which greatly pleased him.
“Ah,” he replied.
In Sanshirō’s mind, this “Ah” was an abbreviation of “Ah, please wait.”
The woman was still standing there.
Sanshirō, since there was no help for it,
“You are…” he asked in return, echoing the same question that had been posed to him.
Then, the woman placed the basket on the veranda, took a single business card from her obi, and gave it to Sanshirō.

4-11

The business card read Satomi Mineko.
Since it was in Hongō Masagochō, it was just across the valley.
While Sanshirō was looking at this business card, the woman sat down on the veranda.

“I believe we’ve met before,” said Sanshirō as he put the business card into his sleeve and looked up.

“Ah.”
“Sometime at the hospital…” she said, turning toward him.

“And another time…”

“And then at the edge of the pond…” the woman said immediately.
She remembered well.
Sanshirō had nothing more to say.
The woman finally,

"I must apologize for the intrusion," she concluded. Sanshirō replied,
"No need."
His response was exceedingly concise.
The two looked at the cherry branches.
Atop the tree, only a few insect-eaten leaves remained.
The moving belongings showed no sign of arriving.

"Do you have some business with the professor?"

Sanshirō suddenly asked this.
The woman—who had been intently gazing at the high cherry tree's dead branches—abruptly turned toward him.
Her face bore an expression of startled dismay—Oh, how severe!—as though shocked.
Yet her answer was perfectly ordinary.

"I was also asked to assist."

It was only now that Sanshirō noticed—the veranda where the woman sat was heaped with sand.

"The sand's quite something.
Your clothes will get soiled."

"Oh," she said, merely glancing left and right.
She did not rise.
No sooner had her eyes finished surveying the veranda than they shifted to Sanshirō.

"Have you finished cleaning yet?" she asked, laughing.
Within that laugh, Sanshirō detected something all too familiar.

"I haven't started yet."

“Shall we help each other and begin together?”

Sanshirō immediately stood up.
The woman did not move.
Remaining seated, she inquired about the whereabouts of a broom and duster.
Since Sanshirō had come empty-handed, there were none anywhere.
When he asked if he should go to the street to buy them, she said that would be a waste, so borrowing from the neighbor would be better.
Sanshirō immediately went next door.
When he promptly borrowed a broom, a duster, and even a horsehair brush and a rag before hurrying back, the woman was still sitting in her original spot, gazing at the high cherry branches.

"There was..." she said simply.

Sanshirō hoisted the broom onto his shoulder and dangled the horsehair brush from his right hand as he replied matter-of-factly: "Yes, there were."

The woman stepped up onto the sandy veranda still wearing white tabi socks.
As she walked, narrow footprints formed.
She took out a white apron from her sleeve and tied it over her obi.
The edge of the apron was trimmed like lace.
The color was too beautiful for cleaning.
The woman took the broom.

"Let's sweep it out once," she said, pulling her right hand from inside her sleeve and hoisting the dangling sleeve hem over her shoulder.
Her beautiful hand was exposed up to her upper arm.
From the edge of the hoisted sleeve hem appeared the beautiful sleeve of an underrobe.
Sanshirō, who had been standing blankly, suddenly made the horsehair brush clatter and headed around to the kitchen entrance.

4-12

Mineko swept while Sanshirō wiped down behind her with a cloth.
While Sanshirō beat the tatami mats, Mineko dusted the shoji screens.
By the time they had somehow finished cleaning, the two had become rather close.

After Sanshirō went to the kitchen to change the water in the horsehair brush, Mineko took the duster and broom and went up to the second floor.

"Please come up here for a moment," she called down from above.

"What is it?" said Sanshirō from below the stairs, holding the horsehair brush.
The woman stood in the shadows.
Only her apron remained pure white.
Still gripping the brush, Sanshirō climbed two or three steps.
The woman stayed perfectly still.
He climbed two more steps.
In the dimness, their faces drew within a foot of each other.

"What is it?"

"It's too dark here—I can't see anything."

"Why?"

"Just because."

Sanshirō abandoned his questioning.
He slipped past her and went upstairs.
Setting the brush on the dark engawa, he opened the door.
The latch clearly wasn't working right.
Soon Mineko came up too.

“It still won’t open.”

Mineko went to the other side.

“This way.”

Sanshirō wordlessly approached Mineko.
Just as his hand was about to touch hers, he stubbed his toe on the horsehair brush.
A loud noise echoed.
When he finally managed to open one sliding door, harsh sunlight poured straight in.
It was nearly blinding.
They looked at each other’s faces and burst out laughing despite themselves.

He opened the rear window too.
The window had a bamboo lattice.
Beyond it lay the landlord’s garden.
Chickens pecked about.
Mineko swept the room in her usual manner.
Sanshirō got down on all fours and wiped the floor behind her.
Mineko stood clutching the broom with both hands, watching Sanshirō.

“Oh!”

She soon threw the broom onto the tatami mats, went to the back window, and stood gazing outside.
Before long, Sanshirō too finished wiping.
He plopped the wet cloth into the horsehair brush container, came to Mineko’s side, and stood next to her.

“What are you looking at?”

“Take a guess.”

“Is it the chickens?”

“No.”

“That big tree?”

“No.”

“Then what are you looking at? I can’t figure it out.”

“I’ve been looking at that white cloud for some time now.”

Indeed, a white cloud was traversing the vast sky. The sky was limitlessly clear, and across its endlessly blue expanse flew thick clouds that shone like cotton. The wind’s force seemed fierce—when gusts scattered their edges, they thinned until blue showed through beneath. At times they gathered into clumps even as they dispersed, frayed like bunches of soft white needles. Mineko pointed at one such clump and said.

“Don’t you think it resembles an ostrich boa?”

Sanshirō did not know the word 'boa'.
So he said he didn't know.
Mineko again,

“Oh!” she said, but then immediately proceeded to politely explain what a boa was.
At that moment, Sanshirō—

“Yeah, I know that one,” he said.
And then he explained exactly what he had heard from Professor Nonomiya the other day—that all those white clouds were snow particles, and that for them to appear moving at that speed when viewed from below, they must be traveling at nothing short of hurricane-force winds.
Mineko,

“Oh, is that so?” she said, looking at Sanshirō.

“If it’s snow, that’s simply uninteresting,” he said in a tone permitting no denial.

“Why do you say that?”

“No matter why—clouds must remain clouds. There’s no value in gazing at them from afar like this, is there?”

“Is that so?”
“Is that so? You wouldn’t mind if it were snow, then?”
“You seem fond of looking at high places.”
“Yes.”

Mineko was still gazing at the sky through the bamboo lattice.
White clouds came flying one after another, then another.

4-13

The sound of a handcart carried from afar.
Now, as it turned into the quiet side street, the vibrations through the ground made its approach unmistakable.
Sanshirō said, “It’s here.”
Mineko said, “That was quick,” and stayed motionless.
She strained her ears as if the cart’s rumbling bore relation to the white clouds’ drifting.
The cart advanced relentlessly through autumn’s calm.
Soon it arrived before the gate and halted.

Sanshirō left Mineko behind and ran down the stairs.
The moment Sanshirō stepped out to the entrance was the exact same moment Yojirō came through the gate.

“That was quick,” Yojirō said first.

“It’s slow,” Sanshirō retorted.
He was the opposite of Mineko.

“It’s slow because we had to unload all the luggage at once. There’s no helping that.”
“Moreover, I was alone.”
“There was nothing I could do with the maid and the cart driver.”

“The professor...”

“The professor was at school.”

While the two of them had started talking, the cart driver began unloading the luggage.
The maid also came in.
Entrusting the kitchen to the maid and cart driver, Yojirō and Sanshirō carried the books into the Western-style room.
There were a great many books.
Arranging them was quite a task.

“Hasn’t Miss Satomi arrived yet?”
“She’s here.”
“Where?”
“She’s on the second floor.”
“What’s she doing on the second floor?”
“What’s she doing? She’s on the second floor.”
“That’s no joke!”

Yojirō, still holding a single book, went along the corridor to the foot of the stairs and, in his usual voice,

“Miss Satomi, Miss Satomi. Since we’re tidying up the books, please give us a hand.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Carrying a broom and duster, Mineko quietly came down.

“What were you doing?” Yojirō pressed impatiently from below.

“Cleaning the second floor,” came the reply from above.

Unable to wait for her to come down, Yojirō brought Mineko to the doorway of the Western-style room.
The books the cart driver had unloaded were piled in a heap.
Sanshirō, having entered among them, crouched facing forward and began intently reading something.

“Oh my, what a mess.
What are we going to do with this?” When Mineko spoke, Sanshirō turned around while crouching.
He was smirking.

“There’s nothing to fuss about. We’re taking these into the room to organize them. The professor should be back soon to help, so it’ll be no trouble—hey, you can’t just crouch down and start reading books like that! You can borrow it later and read it at your leisure,” Yojirō grumbled.

When Mineko and Sanshirō arranged the books at the doorway, Yojirō took on the role of receiving them and placing them on the shelves in the room.

“If you handle them so roughly, it’s a problem. There should still be another volume in this series,” Yojirō said, brandishing a flat blue book.

“But it isn’t here.”

“Nonsense—it must be!”

“Here! Here it is!” Sanshirō exclaimed.

“Here, let me see,” Mineko said, leaning closer.
“History of Intellectual Development.”
“Oh, there it was.”

“There’s no point arguing whether it was there or not! Just bring it out already!”
“Hurry up and bring it out.”

4-14

The three of them worked diligently for about thirty minutes.
In the end, even Yojirō grew less frantic.
When he looked, he was sitting cross-legged facing the bookshelf, silent.
Mineko lightly poked Sanshirō’s shoulder.
Sanshirō laughed and,

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Sanshirō asked.

“Yeah,” Yojirō replied. “What’s the Professor thinking, hoarding all these books that don’t even fit? It’s downright cruel. We could sell them now and invest in stocks for profit—but no use complaining.” He sighed, still sitting cross-legged facing the wall.

Sanshirō and Mineko exchanged glances and laughed. With their key organizer inactive, both refrained from sorting books. Sanshirō pulled out a poetry volume while Mineko spread a large art album across her lap. From the kitchen came vehement arguing between a temporary rickshaw puller and the maid—a tremendous racket.

“Take a look,” Mineko said softly.
Sanshirō crouched forward and brought his face over the art album.
The scent of perfume drifted from Mineko’s hair.

The illustration depicted a mermaid.
From the waist down, the nude woman transformed into a fish—the creature’s torso coiled around her hips, its tail emerging on the far side.
She faced forward, combing her long hair while catching stray strands in her palm.
The background showed an expanse of sea.

“Mermaid.”

“Mermaid.”

The two pressed their heads together and whispered in unison.
At that moment, Yojirō—still sitting cross-legged—must have thought something,

“What? What are you looking at?” he said, emerging into the hallway.
The three of them huddled together and leafed through the art album page by page.
Various remarks surfaced.
They were all rather half-hearted.

Just then, Professor Hirota returned from the Emperor’s Birthday ceremony wearing his frock coat.
The three closed the album when offering greetings.
As the professor urged them to finish organizing the books promptly, they set to work diligently again.
With their leader now present—leaving no room for slacking—the hallway books somehow found their way into the shelves within an hour.
The four stood side by side surveying the neatly arranged collection.

“We'll finish organizing the rest tomorrow,” Yojirō said.
It wasn’t as though he had said, “Put up with this for now.”

“You’ve collected quite a lot, haven’t you?” Mineko said.

“Professor, have you read all of these?” Sanshirō finally asked. He apparently found it necessary to confirm this fact for future reference.

“Can anyone read all these? Well… Sasaki might.”

Yojirō was scratching his head. Sanshirō became serious. The truth was, ever since he started borrowing books one at a time from the university library, no matter what book he borrowed, someone had already read it. He had tested this by borrowing a novel by someone named Aphra Behn, but even that showed signs of having been read by someone else, so he had asked to find out just how far this reading extended.

“As for Aphra Behn, I’ve read her too.”

Sanshirō was startled by this single remark of Professor Hirota’s.

“I’m surprised. The Professor has a habit of reading things nobody else does,” Yojirō said.

Hirota laughed and went toward the sitting room—likely to change his clothes. Mineko followed him out. Later, Yojirō said to Sanshirō:

“That’s why he’s a great darkness. He reads absolutely everything. But none of it illuminates anything. I wish he’d read more popular things and come out into the world a bit more.”

Yojirō’s remarks were by no means a cold critique. Sanshirō was silently gazing at the bookcase. Then, Mineko’s voice was heard from the sitting room.

“I’ll treat you both, so please come in.”

4-15

When the two came from the study through the hallway to the sitting room, Mineko's basket sat in the center of the tatami room. The lid had been removed. Inside lay numerous sandwiches packed tightly. Mineko sat beside it, portioning the basket's contents onto small plates. A conversation began between Yojirō and Mineko.

"You actually remembered to bring it."

"Well, you specifically requested it."

"Did you buy that basket too when coming here?"

"No."

“Was it at your house?”

“Yes.”

“It’s quite a large basket. Did you bring a rickshaw puller with you? You could’ve left him here to work for a while while you were at it.”

“The rickshaw puller was sent out on an errand today. Even a woman can manage something of this size.”

“It’s because it’s you that you can carry it. If it were another young lady, they’d probably give up.”

“Is that so? If that were the case, I could have given up as well.”

Mineko was transferring food onto small plates while responding to Yojirō. Her words flowed without the slightest hesitation. Moreover, she remained completely composed. She hardly even glanced at Yojirō’s face. Sanshirō was impressed.

From the kitchen, the maid brought tea.
The group gathered around the basket began eating the sandwiches.
For a short while it was quiet; then Yojirō, as if suddenly remembering something, addressed Professor Hirota again.

“Professor—since we’re on the subject—I want to ask briefly about that ‘something Behn’ you mentioned earlier...”

“Aphra Behn.”

“What exactly is this Aphra Behn you’re talking about?”

“A British lady novelist.”
“From the seventeenth century.”

“The seventeenth century is too old. It won’t make suitable material for a magazine, you know.”

“Old? But she’s famous as the first woman to work professionally as a novelist.”

“Famous? That’s a nuisance. Let me ask a bit more—what kind of things did she write?”

“I’ve only read the novel called *Oroonoko*, but Mr. Ogawa, such a title must have been in the collected works.”

Sanshirō had completely forgotten. When he heard the professor outline its plot, it told of a black prince named Oroonoko who was deceived by an English captain, sold into slavery, and endured great hardships. Moreover, this was believed by later generations to be the writer’s firsthand account.

“That’s interesting.
“Miss Satomi, how about writing an Oroonoko?” Yojirō turned toward Mineko again.

“I could write it, but I have no such firsthand account to draw from.”

“If you need a black protagonist, wouldn’t Mr. Ogawa here do?”
“Because he’s a dark-skinned man from Kyushu.”

“Mean-spirited,” Mineko said in Sanshirō’s defense before turning to face him directly.
“Would you permit me to write it?” she asked.
When their eyes met, Sanshirō recalled her appearance that morning—emerging through the sliding door with basket in hand.
He felt self-intoxicated.
Yet this intoxication brought paralysis.
No words like “Please allow this” could possibly form on his lips.

4-16

Professor Hirota began smoking tobacco as was his custom.
Yojirō remarked that he was exhaling philosophical smoke from his nostrils.
Indeed, the way the smoke issued forth differed slightly.
Two thick, sturdy columns came leisurely through the apertures.
Yojirō gazed at these pillars of smoke, half-leaning against the paper sliding door, and kept silent.
Sanshirō's eyes rested vacantly on the garden.
This was no relocation.
It rather resembled a small gathering.
Their conversation accordingly remained casual.
Only Mineko, positioned behind Professor Hirota, began folding the Western clothes he had earlier cast off.
One could surmise it had been Mineko who dressed the Professor in his kimono.

“Now, about that Oroonoko discussion earlier—since you’re prone to carelessness and mustn’t make mistakes, I’ll mention this now.” Professor Hirota’s trail of smoke briefly ceased.

“Certainly, I’ll make sure to remember that,” Yojirō replied dutifully.

“After that novel was published, there exists another instance where someone named Sazan adapted the story into a play.”
“It also has the same title.”
“You mustn’t conflate them.”

“Oh, I won’t conflate them.”

Mineko, who had been folding the Western clothes, glanced briefly at Yojirō’s face.

“In that play there’s a famous line—‘Pity’s akin to love.’” Having said this much, he blew another stream of philosophical smoke toward the brazier.

“That seems like a phrase we might have in Japan too,” Sanshirō remarked this time.
The others agreed it sounded plausible.
Yet none could recall an exact equivalent.
They resolved to attempt a translation, but despite various efforts from all four, nothing satisfactory emerged.
Finally Yojirō spoke up:

“This absolutely demands a folk song approach.
The very spirit of the phrase belongs to folk songs,” he declared in his characteristic manner.

So, the three of them decided to completely entrust the translation rights to Yojirō.
Yojirō thought for a while, but
“It’s a bit forced, but how about putting it like this? ‘Pity leads to love.’”

“No good, no good! Utterly vulgar!” Professor Hirota said, immediately pulling a bitter face.
The sheer vulgarity of his tone made Sanshirō and Mineko burst out laughing simultaneously.
Before their laughter could subside, the garden gate creaked open and Mr. Nonomiya entered.

“Have you mostly finished up here?” Mr. Nonomiya said as he reached the front of the veranda and peered into the room where the four sat.

“Not finished yet,” Yojirō promptly replied.

“Would you mind helping a little?” Mineko chimed in, matching Yojirō’s tone.
Mr. Nonomiya smirked and,

“It seems quite lively here.
Is there something interesting going on?” he said, swinging around to sit on the veranda with his back turned.

“I just tried translating something and got scolded by the professor.”

“Translation?”
“What kind of translation?”

“Oh, it’s nothing—it’s that pity leads to love, I’m saying.”

“Hmm,” said Mr. Nonomiya, turning toward the diagonal brace on the veranda.
“What exactly is that?”
“I don’t understand the meaning.”

“No one would understand that,” the professor said.

“Well—I compressed the phrasing a bit too much. If I were to extend it normally, it would be like this.”
“To say ‘pitiable’ is to say ‘in love.’”

“Ah ha ha!”
“And what does the original text say?”

“Pity's akin to love,” Mineko repeated.
Her enunciation was exquisitely clear.

Mr. Nonomiya stood up from the veranda, took two or three steps toward the garden, but soon turned around again and came to a stop facing the room directly.

"That’s a clever translation indeed."

Sanshirō could not help but notice Mr. Nonomiya's attitude and gaze.

4-17

Mineko went to the kitchen.
She washed the teacups, poured fresh tea, and carried it out to the edge of the veranda.
“Tea,” she said simply, sitting down there.
“How is Miss Yoshiko doing?” she asked.

"Yes, she's physically recovered," he said, sitting back down and drinking tea.
Then he turned slightly toward the professor.

"Professor, though I took the trouble to move to Ōkubo, it seems I'll have to come back this way again."

"Why?"

"My younger sister has started saying she hates passing through Toyama Plain on her way to and from school."
"Moreover, since I conduct experiments at night, she finds it lonely waiting until late and apparently can't bear it."
"Of course, while my mother is still here it's manageable, but once she returns home to the countryside, we'll be left with just the maid."
"With two timid souls like us, it'll surely become unbearable—what a nuisance," he said with a half-joking sigh, then looked at Mineko and added, "What do you say, Miss Satomi? Couldn't you take her in at your place?"

“I’d be happy to take her in anytime.”

“Which one?”
“Are you asking about Sōhachi-san’s side or Yoshiko-san’s side?” interjected Yojirō.

“Either one.”

Sanshirō alone remained silent.
Professor Hirota grew slightly more earnest,

“And what do you plan to do?”

“Once I’ve taken care of my sister’s arrangements, I can stay at a boarding house temporarily.
Otherwise, I’ll have to relocate somewhere.
I was considering perhaps placing her in the school dormitory instead.
After all, since she’s still a child, it won’t do unless it’s somewhere I can visit regularly or she can come to me frequently.”

“Then Miss Satomi’s place is your only option,” Yojirō interjected again.
Mr. Hirota seemed to disregard Yojirō,

“I could let her stay in my second floor, but there’s someone like Sasaki there,” he said.

“Professor, please let Sasaki stay on the second floor,” Yojirō himself requested.
Mr. Nonomiya laughed and,

“Well, what can you do? She’s tall for her age but so foolish—it’s truly a hassle.”
“And then she says she wants to see the chrysanthemum dolls at Dangozaka and tells me to take her there.”

“You should simply take her there.”
“I’d like to see them too.”

“Then shall we go together?”

“Yes, by all means.”
“Mr. Ogawa, you must join us too.”

“Yes, let’s go.”

“Mr. Sasaki too—you must join us.”

“I’ll pass on the chrysanthemum dolls.”
“If it’s just about seeing chrysanthemum dolls, I’d rather go watch moving pictures.”

“Chrysanthemum dolls are fine,” Professor Hirota said this time. “There’s likely nothing as artificial as that even in foreign countries. One must observe how skillfully artificial such things have been crafted. If those were made by ordinary people, there’d probably not be a single soul going to Dangozaka. If they were ordinary people, you’d find four or five in every household. No need to go out to Dangozaka.”

“That’s your signature logic, Professor,” Yojirō commented.

“Back when he taught in the classroom, he often employed that,” said Mr. Nonomiya.

“Then you must join us too, Professor,” Mineko said finally.
The Professor remained silent.
Everyone burst out laughing.

From the kitchen came the old woman's call: "Is someone there?"
Yojirō sprang up with a gruff "Coming!"
Sanshirō kept his seat.

"Well then, I should take my leave," said Mr. Nonomiya, rising from his cushion.

"Oh! Leaving already?" Mineko's voice carried playful reproach.
"That's rather abrupt."

Professor Hirota interjected, "Do wait a while longer about that other matter," to which Mr. Nonomiya replied "Of course" before exiting through the garden.
When his shadow disappeared beyond the latticed door, Mineko suddenly cried "Ah yes!" as if struck by recollection, stepped into the wooden geta she'd left at the veranda's edge, and hurried after him.
Their voices murmured beyond the gate.

Sanshirō remained silently seated.

5-1

Upon entering the gate, he found the bush clover from before standing thicker than a person’s height, casting a black shadow at its roots.
This black shadow crept across the ground and disappeared as it reached deeper into the garden.
It seemed to climb up even to where leaves overlapped beneath.
The front side lay bathed in such intense sunlight.
Beside the hand-washing basin stood a nandina.
This too rose taller than ordinary ones.
Three stalks clustered together grew spindly and frail.
Their leaves reached up to rest against the bathroom window.

Between bush clover and nandina lay a glimpse of veranda.
The veranda ran diagonally from where it met with nandina toward its opposite end.
Where it fell under bush clover’s shadow marked its farthest edge.
Thus did bush clover claim foremost position.
Yoshiko dwelled within this bush clover’s shade,
perched upon veranda’s edge.

Sanshirō stood brushing against the bush clover.
Yoshiko rose from the veranda.
The feet were on a flat stone.
Sanshirō was now startled by its height.

"Please come in."

Her manner of speech still carried the air of someone who had been awaiting Sanshirō.
Sanshirō recalled the hospital days.
He passed through the bush clover and reached the veranda's edge.

“Please have a seat.”

Sanshirō wore shoes.
He sat down as though his life depended on it.
Yoshiko brought a cushion.

“Please lay it down.”

Sanshirō spread out the futon.
Since entering the gate, he had yet to utter a single word.
This simple girl spoke her mind to him but seemed to expect no response whatsoever.
Sanshirō felt himself standing before an innocent queen.
All he could do was obey her commands.
There was no need for flattery.
To voice even one word catering to her wishes would have felt degrading.
It would be pleasant to act exactly as directed, like a mute slave.
Though treated like a child by this childlike Yoshiko, he felt not the slightest wound to his self-respect.

“Are you looking for my brother?” Yoshiko asked next.

It wasn’t that he had come specifically to see Nonomiya.
Nor was it that he hadn’t come to see him.
The truth was, even Sanshirō himself didn’t understand why he had come.

“Is Mr. Nonomiya still at the university?”

“Yes, he never comes home unless it’s late at night.”

This was something Sanshirō already knew.
Sanshirō found himself at a loss for words.
When he looked, there sat a paintbox on the veranda.
There lay an unfinished watercolor.

“Are you learning painting?”

“Yes, I paint because I like it.”

“Who is your teacher?”

“I’m not skilled enough to learn from a teacher.”

“May I take a look?”

“This? This isn’t finished yet,” she said, handing the unfinished painting to Sanshirō.
Indeed, her own garden was partially depicted.
The sky, the persimmon tree of the neighboring house, and the bush clover at the entrance were rendered.
Among them, the persimmon tree stood out vividly red.

“Quite good,” Sanshirō said while looking at the painting.

“This?” Yoshiko asked, slightly surprised.
She was genuinely surprised.
There was none of Sanshirō’s artificial tone in her voice.

Sanshirō could no longer treat his own words as a joke, nor could he take them seriously.
Either way, it seemed Yoshiko would hold him in contempt.
Sanshirō kept gazing at the painting while blushing inwardly.

5-2

When he looked around the sitting room from the veranda, it was utterly quiet.
In the tearoom—naturally—and even in the kitchen, there seemed to be no one.

“Has your mother already returned to her hometown?”

“She hasn’t returned yet.”
“She is supposed to leave soon, though.”

“Is she coming in now?”

“She just stepped out to do some shopping.”

“Is it true that you are moving to Mr. Satomi’s residence?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Why do you ask? Well—there was talk about that at Professor Hirota’s place the other day.”

“It hasn’t been decided yet. Though depending on how things go, it might turn out that way.”

Sanshirō somewhat grasped the gist.

"Has Mr. Nonomiya been acquainted with Mr. Satomi from the beginning?"

"Yes."
"They're friends."

He wondered if she meant friends as in a man and a woman, but somehow it felt odd.
However, Sanshirō could not inquire any further.

"I hear Professor Hirota was Mr. Nonomiya's former teacher, isn't that right?"

"Yes."

The conversation was blocked by a “Yes.”

“Would it be better for you to move into the Satomi residence?”

“Me?
“I suppose so.
“But I feel sorry for Miss Mineko’s brother.”

“Does Miss Mineko have an older brother?”

“Yes.
“He graduated in the same year as my brother.”

“Is he also a Bachelor of Science?”

“No, the department differs.”
“He’s a Bachelor of Laws.”
“Her eldest brother was a friend of Professor Hirota’s, but he passed away early, and now there’s only Kyōsuke-san.”

“What about her father and mother?”

Yoshiko smiled slightly and said, “No.” To say that imagining Mineko’s parents’ existence was comical would be going too far. They must have died quite early. In Yoshiko’s memory, they probably never existed at all.

“Given that relationship, Miss Mineko visits Professor Hirota’s house regularly?”

“Yes.”
“The deceased brother was very close with Professor Hirota.”
“And since Miss Mineko enjoys English studies, she likely goes there for lessons.”

“Does she come here too?”

Yoshiko had resumed her watercolor painting unnoticed.
Sanshirō’s proximity caused her no discomfort.
Yet she still answered him.

“Miss Mineko?” he asked as she added shading to the thatched roof beneath the persimmon tree.

“It’s a bit too dark, don’t you think?” she said, holding the painting out before Sanshirō.

This time, Sanshirō answered honestly:

“Yes, it’s a bit too dark.”

Then Yoshiko soaked her brush in water and began washing away the dark areas while—

“She does visit,” Yoshiko finally replied to him.

“Often?”

“Yes, often,” Yoshiko responded, still facing her drawing paper.

After Yoshiko resumed painting, the conversation became much easier for Sanshirō.

5-3

For a while, Sanshirō peered into the painting in silence as Yoshiko meticulously washed away the black shadow of the thatched roof. But with too much water and her unskilled brush technique, the dark pigment began seeping out uncontrollably in all directions, turning the carefully rendered red persimmons into the dull hue of shade-dried astringent fruit.
Yoshiko stopped her brushwork, stretched both hands, leaned her head back, and examined the Whatman paper from as far away as possible before finally murmuring in a small voice,

“It’s no good anymore,” she said.
Since it was truly beyond saving, there was nothing to be done.
Sanshirō felt sorry.

“You should give up on this one.
Then start fresh with a new drawing.”

Yoshiko kept her face turned toward the painting and looked at Sanshirō out of the corner of her eye.
They were large, moist eyes.
Sanshirō felt even more sorry.
Then the woman suddenly burst into laughter.

“How foolish. I’ve wasted two hours,” she said, drawing two or three thick lines crisscross over the painstakingly painted watercolor before snapping the paintbox shut.

“Let’s abandon this. Please come into the tatami room—I’ll serve you tea,” she said as she went upstairs. Because taking off his shoes was troublesome, Sanshirō still remained sitting on the veranda. Inwardly, he now found the woman serving tea quite intriguing. Though Sanshirō had absolutely no intention of finding this woman excessively amusing, when suddenly told she would serve him tea, he couldn’t help feeling a certain kind of pleasure. That feeling was not one attainable through proximity to the opposite sex.

Voices murmured from the tea room.
There must have been a maid.
Presently Yoshiko slid open the fusuma door, tea utensils in hand, and emerged.
When he faced her directly, Sanshirō thought again that hers was the most quintessentially feminine countenance among women.

Yoshiko poured tea and brought it to the veranda, then sat down on the tatami in the room. Sanshirō had thought about leaving, but being near this woman made him feel it would be fine to stay. At the hospital, he had once stared at her face too intently, making her blush and prompting him to withdraw quickly; today held no such discomfort. With tea served, they resumed talking across the veranda and tatami room. As their conversation wandered, Yoshiko posed an odd question to Sanshirō - whether her brother Nonomiya was liked or disliked.

At first it sounded like a child's naive inquiry, but her meaning ran deeper. "Those devoted to academic research view everything through that lens," she explained, "which thins their human affection. When you see things through emotion alone, everything becomes mere liking or disliking. There's no room for study." She continued logically: "Since my brother's a scientist, he must study me too. The more he studies me, the less affection he feels - making him unkind as a brother." Then came her paradox: "Yet when I consider how this research-obsessed man still cares for me so much, I conclude he must be Japan's kindest person."

When Sanshirō heard this theory, he felt it seemed quite reasonable yet somehow lacking, but with his mind in a fog, he couldn’t quite grasp where the gap lay. And so, outwardly, he offered no particular criticism of this theory. Merely in his heart, he blushed deeply at the spinelessness of being unable to clearly critique what a woman had said—a failing unworthy of a man. At the same time, he realized that Tokyo’s female students were not to be taken lightly.

Sanshirō returned to his lodging harboring feelings of respect and affection toward Yoshiko.
A postcard had arrived.
“I shall come to see the chrysanthemum dolls tomorrow around one o’clock in the afternoon, so please come to Professor Hirota’s house.”
“Mineko”

The characters resembled those on the envelope that had been half-protruding from Mr. Nonomiya’s inner pocket, so Sanshirō read them over again several times.

5-4

The next day was Sunday.

Sanshirō finished his midday meal and immediately came to Nishikata-chō.
He wore a new uniform and polished shoes.
When he reached the front of Professor Hirota's house in the quiet side street, voices could be heard.

Upon entering the gate of Professor Hirota's house, the garden lay immediately to the left; opening the side gate allowed one to reach the veranda of the tatami room without passing through the main entrance.
Sanshirō was about to undo the latch visible between the bamboo fence slats when he suddenly caught voices in the garden.

A conversation was unfolding between Nonomiya and Mineko.

"If you do that, you'll only fall to the ground and die."
This was a man's voice.

“I would rather die than do otherwise.” This was the woman’s reply.

“Of course, such reckless people are fully worth only falling from a great height and dying.”

“That’s a cruel thing to say.”

Sanshirō opened the gate at that moment.
The two conversants who had been standing in the garden’s center both turned to look.
Nonomiya simply uttered an ordinary “Oh” and did nothing more than nod.
He wore a new brown fedora on his head.
Mineko immediately—

“When did the postcard arrive?” she inquired.
The conversation they had been engaged in until then came to an abrupt end.

On the veranda sat the master in Western attire, holding forth on philosophy as usual.
He clutched a foreign magazine.
Beside him sat Yoshiko.
With hands thrust behind her back and body leaning skyward, she gazed at the thick zōri sandals adorning her outstretched legs—Sanshirō appeared to have been awaited by all present.

The master threw down the magazine.

“Shall we get going?”
“I’ve been properly dragged out now.”

“Thank you for your trouble,” said Mr. Nonomiya.
The two women exchanged glances and shared a laugh containing secrets unknown to others.
As they left the garden, the women followed behind.

“He’s rather tall, isn’t he?” Mineko remarked from the rear.

“Beanpole,” Yoshiko replied.
When they lined up by the gate, she explained, “That’s why I wear sandals as tall as I can manage.”
Sanshirō followed and was about to exit the garden when the second-floor shoji slid open with a clatter.
Yojirō appeared at the handrail.

“Are you going?” he asked.

“Yeah—and you?”

“No.
“What’s the point of looking at the likes of chrysanthemum dolls?”
“You’re being ridiculous.”

“Let’s go together.”
“There’s no use staying home anyway, is there?”

“I’m writing a paper now.”
“A major paper.”
“It’s no small matter.”

Sanshirō let out a laugh tinged with utter exasperation and chased after the four of them.
The four of them were about two-thirds of the way along the narrow side street heading toward the wider avenue.

When he noticed this group's shadow beneath the high air, Sanshirō felt his present life was becoming something of far deeper meaning than his Kumamoto days had held. Of the three worlds he had once conceived, the second and third were now precisely represented by this group's shadow. One half of the shadow held a dusky darkness. The other half shone like a field of flowers. Within Sanshirō's mind these two aspects fused in perfect harmony. More than that—he found himself naturally woven into this fabric of events without realizing when it happened. Yet somewhere within this integration lingered a point of disquiet. This was anxiety. As he walked contemplating, he recognized the immediate cause lay in that earlier garden conversation between Nonomiya and Mineko. To dispel this unease, Sanshirō felt compelled to dissect their exchange once more.

The four of them had already reached the corner.
All four of them stopped and looked back.
Mineko shaded her forehead with her hand.

V.5

Sanshirō caught up in less than a minute.
Even though he had caught up, no one said anything.
They merely began walking.

After a while, Mineko spoke up.
“Mr. Nonomiya, being a scientist, would still make such statements,” she began, continuing their earlier discussion.
“It makes no difference whether you do anything or not,” he replied.
“If you wish to fly high, you must first devise equipment capable of flight—that’s an absolute certainty.
Wouldn’t the intellect need to come first?”
“Those who don’t wish to fly so high might make do with that.”

“If you don’t endure, it’s only death after all.”

“Then being safe and standing on the ground becomes the best option. It all seems rather pointless somehow.”

Mr. Nonomiya stopped replying and turned toward Professor Hirota—

“Women have many poets among them,” Mr. Nonomiya said with a laugh.

Then Professor Hirota offered a peculiar greeting: “The flaw of men lies rather in their inability to fully become pure poets.”

Mr. Nonomiya fell silent at that.
Yoshiko and Mineko began conversing between themselves.
Sanshirō had finally obtained the opportunity to ask a question.

“What kind of conversation was that just now?”

“Oh, it’s about the flying machine,” Mr. Nonomiya said offhandedly.
Sanshirō felt as though he were hearing the punchline of a rakugo story.

After that, no particular conversation emerged.
They then reached a place so crowded with people that holding any lengthy conversation became impossible.
In front of the Great Kannon was a beggar.
Rubbing his forehead against the ground, he continuously uttered loud pleas, persisting in his entreaties.
Whenever he raised his face, the part of his forehead was white with sand.
No one paid him any heed.
The five of them passed by nonchalantly as well.
When they had come about ten meters away, Professor Hirota suddenly turned and asked Sanshirō.

“Did you give that beggar any money?”

“No,” Sanshirō said as he looked back. The beggar remained beneath his sand-white forehead, hands pressed together, still bellowing pleas.

“I simply can’t bring myself to give anything,” Yoshiko said at once.

“Why?” Her brother turned his gaze upon her.
His words carried no real reproof.
Nonomiya’s expression held only composure.

“Ah! Clinging so desperately never prospers—that’s why it fails,” Mineko observed.

“No, it’s because the location is bad,” Professor Hirota said this time. “It’s no use—there are far too many people passing through here. If you met a man like that in some lonely mountain spot, anyone would feel compelled to give.”

“Though you might wait there all day without seeing a soul,” Nonomiya added with a quiet chuckle.

Sanshirō felt the moral principles he had cultivated until now being chipped away as he listened to the four critique the beggar. Yet when he reflected on how he himself had felt no inclination to toss even a coin while passing the man—how his displeasure had in truth only deepened—he realized these four were being more honest with him than he had been with himself. Moreover, he understood they were city dwellers who could afford such honesty, breathing as they did beneath skies broad enough to permit it.

5-6

As they went further, the number of people increased. After a while, they encountered a lost child. She was a girl of about seven years old. While crying, she darted right and left between people's sleeves, wandering about. "Grandma! Grandma!" she cried out frantically. To this, even the passersby all appeared to have their hearts stirred. Some stopped in their tracks. Some said she was pitiful. Yet no one lifted a hand. The child attracted everyone's attention and sympathy while crying and wailing incessantly, searching for her grandmother. It was a paradoxical phenomenon.

“Isn’t this also because the location is bad?” said Mr. Nonomiya as he watched the child’s figure recede.

“Since it’s certain the police will handle it soon, everyone is evading responsibility,” Professor Hirota explained.

“If they come near me, I’ll take them to the police box,” Yoshiko said.

“Then go chase after her and take her there,” her brother suggested.

“I don’t want to chase after her.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because there are so many people here—it’s not just me, you know.”

“They’re still evading responsibility,” said Hirota.

“It’s still because the location is bad,” said Nonomiya.
The two men laughed.

When they reached the top of Dangozaka, people were gathered like a black mountain in front of the police box. The lost child had at last been handed over to the police officer.

“Everything’s all right now; there’s nothing to worry about,” Mineko said, turning to Yoshiko. Yoshiko said, “Well, that’s a relief.”

When viewed from the top of the slope, it curved like the tip of a sword. The width was naturally narrow. The two-story building on the right half-blocked the tall hut on the left. Behind them stood numerous tall banners. People seemed to plunge suddenly into the valley bottom below. Those descending became entangled with those climbing up until the road was completely clogged, making the valley floor—now stretched to its full width—shift with eerie restlessness. Watching them made one’s eyes ache from their erratic squirming. Professor Hirota stood at the top of this slope,

“This is terrible,” Professor Hirota said, looking as though he wished to turn back.
The four urged the professor forward from behind and descended into the valley.
Where the valley began curving midway along its path, tall reed-screened huts rose steeply on both narrow sides—left and right—making even the sky appear unexpectedly confined.
The thoroughfare stayed packed until darkness fell.
Within this crowd, ticket takers shouted at maximum volume.
“These aren’t human voices—they’re voices from chrysanthemum dolls,” Professor Hirota remarked.
Their cries deviated so completely from ordinary human speech.

The group entered the left hut. There was a depiction of Soga's Attack. Gorō, Jūrō, and Yoritomo all wore identical chrysanthemum robes. Their faces and limbs alone were carved entirely from wood. Next came a scene of falling snow. A young woman appeared to be suffering convulsions. This figure too had been crafted by covering its frame with chrysanthemums so that flowers and leaves formed seamless garments.

Yoshiko observed with rapt attention. Professor Hirota and Mr. Nonomiya launched into animated discussion. As they debated differing chrysanthemum cultivation techniques, Sanshirō found himself separated by the crowd and stranded some six feet away. Mineko had already moved ahead of him. The spectators consisted largely of common townsfolk. Few showed any marks of cultured upbringing. Mineko stood among them and turned back. She stretched her neck to peer toward Nonomiya's location. Nonomiya had withdrawn his right hand from the bamboo railing and now gestured at chrysanthemum roots while delivering some earnest explanation. Mineko faced forward again. Propelled by the throng, she moved briskly toward the exit. Sanshirō shouldered through the crowd, abandoning the three men to pursue Mineko.

5-7

At last, he came to Mineko's side,

When he called “Miss Satomi,” Mineko placed her hands on the bamboo railing, turned her head slightly, and looked at Sanshirō.
She said nothing.
Inside the bamboo railing was Yōrō Waterfall.
A round-faced man with an axe at his waist held a gourd and crouched beside the waterfall basin.
When Sanshirō looked at Mineko’s face, he hardly noticed what was inside the bamboo.

“Is something wrong?” he blurted out.
Mineko still gave no answer.
She fixed her dark eyes wearily to the left on Sanshirō’s forehead.
At that moment, Sanshirō detected an inexplicable significance in Mineko’s double eyelids.
Within that meaning lay a weariness of the spirit.
There was a slackness in the flesh.
There was a plea close to pain.
Sanshirō forgot the present moment in which he was anticipating Mineko’s reply and abandoned everything between these eyes and these eyelids.
Then Mineko said.

“Let’s leave now.”

The distance between pupils and eyelids appeared to gradually narrow.
As this narrowing progressed, a conviction that he must intervene on behalf of this woman began sprouting in Sanshirō’s heart.
When this conviction reached its peak intensity, she jerked her head forward.
Releasing her grip on the bamboo railing, she walked toward the exit.
Sanshirō immediately trailed behind her through the doorway.

When they stood side by side outside, Mineko lowered her gaze and pressed her right palm against her forehead.
People swirled around them like eddies.
Sanshirō leaned his mouth toward her ear.

“Is something wrong?”

The woman started walking through the crowd toward Yanaka.
Sanshirō of course began walking alongside her.
When they had come about half a chō, the woman stopped amidst the crowd.

“Where could this be?”

“If we go this way, we’ll come out at Tennō-ji in Yanaka.”
“It’s exactly the opposite direction from the way back.”

“Yes.
“Yes. I’m feeling unwell…”

Sanshirō felt a helpless anguish in the middle of the thoroughfare.
He stood thinking.

“Isn’t there somewhere quiet?” the woman asked.

Where Yanaka and Sendagi meet in the valley, a small stream flows through the lowest part.
Following this stream and turning left at the town’s edge leads straight into open fields.
The river ran straight north.
Sanshirō well remembered how many times he had walked on the far side of this stream and how many times on this near side since coming to Tokyo.
The place where Mineko stood was beside the stone bridge where this stream cut through Yanaka’s town toward Nezu.

“Can you walk about one more block?” he asked Mineko.

“I can walk.”

The two immediately crossed the stone bridge and turned left.
They walked through a path-like area by the houses of others for about eighteen meters, crossed over a plank bridge from near the gate to this side, and after walking along the riverbank for a while, no one passed by anymore.

It was a wide field.

When Sanshirō stepped into this quiet autumn landscape, he suddenly began chattering.

"How are you feeling? Do you have a headache? It must be because there were too many people back there. That crowd looking at the dolls seemed rather vulgar—did someone say something rude to you?"

The woman kept silent. Eventually raising her eyes from the river's flow, she looked at Sanshirō. Her double eyelids now held distinct firmness. Sanshirō felt half-reassured by that gaze.

"Thank you, I've improved quite a bit."

“Shall we rest?”
“Yes.”
“Can you walk a little further?”
“Yes.”
“If you can walk, please walk a little more.
This place is dirty.
If we go that far, there’s a good place to rest.”
“Yes.”

5-8

They had walked about one block.
There was another bridge.
Over an old plank—less than a foot long—laid without effort across, Sanshirō strode with large steps.
The woman followed and crossed.
To Sanshirō's waiting eyes, her feet appeared as lightly as when she normally trod upon solid earth.
This woman carried her straightforward steps directly forward.
She did not adopt an artificially feminine gait.
Therefore, he could not casually offer assistance from his side.

In the distance was a thatched roof.
The underside of the roof was entirely red.
When they drew near and looked, they found it was red peppers that had been hung to dry.
The woman came to where she could discern that these red things were red peppers and stopped.

“How beautiful,” she said as she sat down on the grass.
The grass grew only in a narrow strip along the edge of the small stream.
Even that was not as green as the height of summer.
Mineko did not seem to mind her showy kimono getting dirty in the least.

“Could you walk a little further?” Sanshirō tried saying in an urging manner while standing.

“Thank you. This will do.”

“Are you still feeling unwell?”

“I’m simply too tired.”

Sanshirō at last sat down on the soiled grass.
About four feet separated Mineko and Sanshirō.
Beneath their feet flowed a small river.
The water had grown shallow with autumn’s dwindling flow.
On an angular stone perched a lone wagtail.
Sanshirō gazed into the water.
It was gradually clouding.
Looking upstream, he saw a farmer washing daikon radishes.
Mineko’s eyes remained fixed on the distant view—
Ahead lay open fields ending in woods that met the sky.
The sky’s hue slowly shifted.

Within what had been simply monotonously pure, various hues began to emerge.
The deep, transparent indigo expanse began to fade as though dissolving.
Above it, white clouds began to pile up heavily.
The accumulated masses dissolved and began to drift.
So indistinct was the boundary between earth and cloud that one could not tell where either began, while a yellowish hue had softly suffused the entire expanse.

“The sky’s color has grown turbid,” said Mineko.

Sanshirō took his eyes from the stream and looked up.
He had seen skies like this before.
Yet this was the first time he had heard someone describe the sky as "clouded."
When he looked properly, it was indeed a color that could only be called clouded.
Before Sanshirō could form a response, the woman spoke again.

“How heavy it feels.
It looks like marble.”

Mineko narrowed her double eyelids and gazed at something high above.
Then she quietly turned those narrowed eyes toward Sanshirō.
And then,

“Doesn’t it look like marble?” she asked.
Sanshirō,

“Yes, it does look like marble,” was all he could reply.
The woman fell silent at that.

After a while, this time Sanshirō spoke.

“Under such a sky, my heart grows heavy yet my spirit feels light.”

“What do you mean?” Mineko asked again.

Sanshirō had no answer.
Without responding, he spoke once more.

“It looks like a sky dreaming peacefully.”

“It seems to move yet doesn’t move at all,” Mineko said, gazing again at distant clouds.

V-IX

The voices calling customers to the chrysanthemum dolls occasionally reached the spot where the two were sitting.

“Those are quite loud voices, aren’t they?”

“Do they keep making that noise from morning till night? That’s something else,” he said, but Sanshirō suddenly remembered the three people he had left behind. While he was trying to say something, Mineko replied:

“It’s business, you know. It’s exactly the same as the beggars at Daikannon.”

“Isn’t this spot rather unfortunate?”

Sanshirō uncharacteristically made a joke and laughed by himself—because he found Hirota’s past remarks about beggars extremely amusing.

“Professor Hirota often says things like that,” she remarked airily, as if to herself, then abruptly shifted her tone.
“If we sit here like this,” he added with forced cheerfulness, “we’ll surely pass.”
He then laughed alone at his own joke.
“Just as Mr. Nonomiya said—no matter how long we wait, no one seems likely to come by.”
“Isn’t that ideal?” she retorted briskly before adding, “We’re beggars who don’t take alms anyway.”
This sounded like an afterthought meant to explain her previous remark.

Just then, a stranger suddenly appeared.
Emerging from the shadow of the house with drying red peppers, he seemed to have crossed over to the other side of the river unnoticed.
He gradually drew nearer to where the two were sitting.
Wearing Western clothes and sporting a beard, he was a man about Professor Hirota's age.
When this man came before them, he turned his face fully around and glared at Sanshirō and Mineko head-on.
In his eyes was a clear look of hatred.
Sanshirō felt such constraint that sitting rigidly became difficult.
The man soon passed by.
Watching the man's retreating figure, Sanshirō,

“Professor Hirota and Mr. Nonomiya must have been looking for us afterward,” he said, as though the thought had just occurred to him.
Mineko remained cool.

“It’s nothing to worry about.
We’re just big lost children.”

“Since we’re lost, they must have been searching for us,” Sanshirō insisted, clinging to his earlier point.
Mineko replied in the same detached tone,

“They’re the sort who’d want to avoid responsibility anyway—this works out perfectly.”

“Who?”
“Do you mean Professor Hirota?”

Mineko did not answer.

“Do you mean Mr. Nonomiya?”

Mineko still did not answer.

“Are you feeling better now? If you’ve recovered, shall we be going back?”

Mineko looked at Sanshirō.
Sanshirō half-rose but settled back onto the grass.
At that moment, somewhere within him, Sanshirō felt he was no match for this woman.
Simultaneously came a faint humiliation - the awareness that she had seen through his intentions.

"Stray sheep."

The woman repeated this phrase while still looking at Sanshirō.
Sanshirō did not answer.

"Do you know the English translation for 'stray sheep'?"

Sanshirō had not anticipated this question to such an extent that he couldn't say whether he knew it or not.

"Shall I tell you?"

"Yes," he said.

“Straying child—do you understand?”

5-10

Sanshirō was the sort of man who struggled with conversation in such situations. When the moment of spontaneity had passed and his mind began to function coolly, he would look back on the past and regret—I should have said that, I should have done this. And yet, he was not so frivolous as to anticipate this regret and force out a hasty reply with feigned naturalness and confidence. So he simply remained silent. And he was aware that remaining silent was utterly awkward.

The phrase “straying child” seemed to make sense to him, yet also didn’t. Yet it also seemed he didn’t understand. Whether he understood or not had less to do with the meaning of the phrase itself than with what the woman who had used it meant by it. Sanshirō idly gazed at the woman’s face and remained silent. Then the woman suddenly became serious.

“Do I really appear so impertinent?”

In her tone lingered an apologetic undercurrent.
Sanshirō was struck by an unanticipated sensation.
Until now, he had been shrouded in fog.
He had wished for that fog to clear.
These words had dispelled it entirely.
Before him now stood the woman in sharp relief.
He found himself resenting this newfound clarity.

Sanshirō wanted Mineko’s demeanor to hold significance—something akin to cause itself, or like the sky stretching above them, neither clear nor clouded—a suspended ambiguity.
Yet he sensed this could not be restored through mere conciliatory phrases meant to placate her.
The woman abruptly began moving—

“Well then, let us return now,” she said.
There was no spite in her manner of speaking.
It was merely a quiet tone, as though she had resigned herself to being someone who held no interest for Sanshirō.

The sky had changed again.
A wind began blowing from afar.
The sun hung low over the vast field; gazing at it filled him with a loneliness so profound it chilled to the bone.
Their bodies were cold from the earth's chill rising through the grass.
When he came to his senses, he couldn’t help but think how they had managed to sit here in such a place for so long without moving.
Had he been alone, he would have undoubtedly gone somewhere else by now.
Mineko too—Mineko might be the kind of woman who would sit in such a place.

“It seems to have gotten a bit cold, so let us stand up in any case.”
“It’s bad for you if you get cold.”
“But has your mood completely recovered now?”

“Yes, I’ve completely recovered,” he answered clearly, then abruptly stood up.
As he rose, he muttered in a low voice, as if speaking to himself,
drawing out the words: “Straying child.”
Sanshirō naturally gave no response.

Mineko pointed toward where the Western-suited man had earlier appeared and said she wished to take whatever path might exist past those red peppers.
They walked in that direction.
Behind the thatched roof they indeed found a narrow path about three shaku wide.
When they had gone halfway along it, Sanshirō spoke.

“Has it been decided that Miss Yoshiko will come to your place?”

The woman smiled with one side of her face.
Then she countered with a question.

“Why do you ask?”

When Sanshirō tried to say something, there was mud before his feet.
About four shaku ahead, the ground had sunk in where water lay perfectly still.
At its center sat a suitably sized stone placed as a foothold.
Sanshirō leaped across without using the stone.
He then looked back at Mineko.
Mineko set her right foot upon the stone in the mud’s center.
The stone sat unsteadily.
She pressed down with her foot, swaying her shoulders to find balance.
Sanshirō reached out his hand from his side.

“Please take hold.”

“No, I’m fine,” the woman said with a laugh.
While he held out his hand, she only adjusted her balance without crossing.
Sanshirō withdrew his hand.
Then Mineko transferred her weight onto her right foot on the stone and lightly stepped across with her left.
Having focused too intently on keeping her geta clean, she overexerted herself, causing her hips to rise.
Her upper body pitched forward.
With that momentum, Mineko’s hands fell onto Sanshirō’s arms.

“Stray sheep,” Mineko murmured under her breath.
Sanshirō could sense her breath.

6-1

The bell rang, and the lecturer left the classroom.
Sanshirō shook his ink-stained Western pen and tried to close his notebook.
Then Yojirō, who was sitting next to him, called out.

“Hey, let me borrow that for a sec.”
“There’s a part I missed.”

Yojirō pulled Sanshirō’s notebook closer and peered down at it from above.
The words “stray sheep” were scrawled haphazardly.

“What’s this?”

“I got tired of taking lecture notes, so I was doodling.”

“You can’t keep neglecting your studies like this. He was explaining how Kant’s transcendental idealism compares to Berkeley’s transcendental realism.”

“Explaining how...?”

“Weren’t you listening?”

“No.”

“You’re utterly stray sheep through and through.”
“Hopeless case.”

Yojirō stood up clutching his notebook and, while stepping away from his desk, said to Sanshirō,

“Hey, come here for a sec,” he said.

Sanshirō followed Yojirō and left the classroom. They descended the stairs and came to the lawn before the entrance. There stood a large cherry tree. The two sat down beneath it.

Here, when early summer arrived, medick would spread across the ground. When Yojirō had first come to submit his application at the office, two students had been lying beneath this cherry tree. One had said to the other that if they let him fail the oral exam with a dodoitsu ballad, he'd sing as many as they wanted—whereupon his companion had softly crooned about wanting to take a love exam before some dashing professor. From that day Yojirō had taken a liking to this spot beneath the cherry tree, dragging Sanshirō here whenever something came up. When Sanshirō heard this history from him, he thought it made perfect sense that Yojirō would translate "pity's love" through folk songs. Today however, Yojirō was uncharacteristically earnest. No sooner had he settled cross-legged on the grass than he pulled from his pocket a magazine called *Literary Review* and flipped an open page toward Sanshirō.

“How’s this?” he said.
When Sanshirō looked, the title stood in bold type: “The Great Darkness.”
Beneath it appeared the pen name Zero Yoshi.
This was the phrase Yojirō habitually used to describe Professor Hirota—a formulation Sanshirō had heard him repeat several times before.
Yet Zero Yoshi itself meant nothing to him.
When addressed with this question, Sanshirō first turned to study Yojirō’s face before replying.
Without speaking, Yojirō thrust his flat-featured face forward and pressed his right forefinger against the tip of his nose in intense concentration.
A student standing nearby began smirking at the spectacle.
Noticing this at last, Yojirō finally withdrew his finger.

“I’m the one who wrote it,” he said.
Sanshirō realized that was indeed the case.

“Is this what you were writing when we went to see the chrysanthemum dolls?”

“No, wait—that one? Wasn’t that just two or three days ago? How could it possibly get typeset so quickly? That one comes out next month. This one was written much earlier. You can probably tell what it’s about from the title.”

“Is it about Professor Hirota?”

“Yeah.”
“By doing this, we’ll stir up public opinion first.”
“And then we’ll lay the groundwork to get the professor into the university…”
“Is that magazine really so influential?”

Sanshirō didn’t even know the name of the magazine.

“Well, it’s precisely because it has no influence that it’s a problem,” Yojirō replied.
Sanshirō could not help but smile.

“About how many copies does it sell?”

Yojirō did not say how many copies would sell.

“Oh, it’s fine.”
“Better than not writing at all,” he explained.

6-2

As he gradually learned more, Yojirō had been involved with this magazine all along and contributed to nearly every issue whenever he had free time; however, since he changed his pen name each time, aside from two or three fellow contributors, no one knew it was him, he said.
That made sense.
Sanshirō had only just heard about Yojirō’s involvement with the literary world.
However, Sanshirō couldn’t understand why Yojirō was using a pseudonym akin to a prank to secretly publish what he called his grand essay.

When he bluntly asked if this was work being done to save up some pocket money, Yojirō’s eyes widened.

“You’re from the countryside of Kyushu, so I suppose you’re saying such carefree things because you don’t know the state of the central literary circles.”
“How can anyone with a mind to think remain indifferent while witnessing such violent upheavals at the very center of today’s ideological world?”
“In reality, since today’s literary authority lies entirely in the hands of us youths, wouldn’t it be a loss if we didn’t speak out as much as we possibly could—even a single word or half a phrase?”
“The literary world is undergoing a remarkable revolution with sudden and unstoppable momentum.”
“Everything is in complete upheaval, surging toward a new era—so being left behind would spell disaster.”
“If we don’t proactively create this momentum ourselves, there’s no point in being alive.”
“People go on about literature being cheap, but that’s just the kind of literature you hear about in universities.”
“Our so-called new literature is a great reflection of life itself.”
“The new literary movement must influence the activities of the entire Japanese society.”
“And it is already happening.”
“While they’re taking their midday naps and dreaming away, it’s already influencing them without their knowing.”
“It’s terrifying.……”

Sanshirō listened silently.
He found it somewhat boastful.
But even if it was a boast, Yojirō was quite earnest in spinning his tale.
At least he himself appeared utterly serious.
Sanshirō was considerably moved.

“So you’re acting with that spirit? Then manuscript fees mean nothing to you?”

“Well, I do take manuscript fees.
I take all I can get.
But since the magazine doesn’t sell well, they hardly ever send payment.
We must devise some method to boost sales a bit.
Don’t you have any clever ideas?” he now asked Sanshirō.
The conversation had abruptly descended into practical matters.
Sanshirō felt strangely unsettled.
Yojirō remained unperturbed.
The signal bell began clanging violently.

“Anyway, I’ll give you a copy of this magazine—read it.
‘The Great Darkness’ makes an intriguing title.
With this title people are bound to be shocked—if you don’t shock them they won’t read it, so it’s useless.”

The two went through the entrance, entered the classroom, and took their seats at their desks.
Before long, the professor arrived.
Both began taking notes.
Concerned about “The Great Darkness,” Sanshirō left the Literary Review open beside his notebook and began reading it intermittently between taking notes, careful not to let the professor notice.
Fortunately, the professor was nearsighted.
Not only was he nearsighted, but he was also completely absorbed in his own lecture.
He was not at all concerned with Sanshirō’s misconduct.
Feeling rather pleased with himself, Sanshirō alternated between jotting down notes here and reading there as he went along. But since this was fundamentally an impossible task—trying to manage alone what two people should do—both “The Great Darkness” and his lecture notes ultimately became utterly incomprehensible.
Only a single phrase from Yojirō’s writing clearly sank into his head.

"How many years did nature spend creating a gem? And how many years did this gem shine quietly until meeting its fate to be mined?" This was the phrase. The rest remained incoherent. Instead, during that time, he managed not to write a single character of *stray sheep*.

6-3

As soon as the lecture ended, Yojirō turned to Sanshirō.

“Well?” he asked.
When Sanshirō answered that he hadn’t properly read it yet, Yojirō criticized him as a man who didn’t understand the economy of time.
“You must read it,” he said.
Sanshirō promised to read it without fail once he returned home.
Before long, it was noon.
The two left through the gate together.

“You’ll attend tonight, right?” said Yojirō, stopping at the corner of the side street leading into Nishikata-chō.
Tonight there was a gathering of classmates.
Sanshirō had forgotten.
Finally remembering, he answered that he intended to go, whereupon Yojirō—

“Just invite me before you leave.
I have something to tell you,” he said.
He was holding a Western penholder behind his ear.
He seemed unaccountably pleased with himself.
Sanshirō agreed.

He returned to his lodgings, took a bath, and when he stepped out feeling refreshed, there was a picture postcard on his desk.
It depicted a small stream with disheveled grass growing along its edge, two sheep lying down at the bank, and on the opposite side, a large man standing holding a Western cane.
The man's face had been rendered with extreme ferocity.
It was unmistakably modeled after devils from Western paintings, and for good measure, the word "Devil" was neatly written beside it in kana.
On the front, beneath Sanshirō's address, only "stray sheep" was written in small characters.
Sanshirō immediately understood who the stray sheep referred to.
Moreover, on the postcard's reverse side were two stray sheep drawn, and he felt deeply gratified that one had been implicitly likened to himself.
Among the stray sheep, it was not just Mineko—he too had been included from the very beginning.
This appeared to have been Mineko's intention.
Through this, the meaning behind Mineko's use of *stray sheep* had finally clarified itself.

He thought about reading "The Great Darkness" as he had promised Yojirō, but couldn't muster the will to start.
He gazed intently at the picture postcard and pondered.
It had a comical flair not even Aesop could match.
It also appeared innocent.
It was witty too.
And beneath all this lay something that stirred Sanshirō's heart.

Even in terms of execution alone, it was worthy of the utmost admiration.
Everything was rendered with perfect clarity.
It bore no comparison to Yoshiko's painted persimmon tree.
That was what Sanshirō thought.

After a while, Sanshirō finally began reading *The Great Darkness*. To be truthful, he had started reading distractedly, but after two or three pages, he gradually became engrossed until, before he knew it, he had advanced five or six pages and effortlessly finished the twenty-seven-page essay. When he read through the final sentence, he realized for the first time that it was over. He lifted his eyes from the magazine and thought, "Ah, I've read it."

But the next moment, when he tried to recall what he had read, there was nothing. Strangely enough, nothing at all remained. He only felt that he had read extensively and fervently. Sanshirō was impressed by Yojirō's skill.

The essay began with an attack on contemporary literary figures and concluded with praise for Professor Hirota.
It particularly excoriated the Westerners in the university’s humanities department.
Unless they promptly invited suitable Japanese scholars to deliver proper university lectures, even this supreme institution of learning would regress to the state of old temple schools, becoming no different from mummies fashioned from bricks and stone.
Of course, this would be unavoidable if no qualified candidates existed—but here stood Professor Hirota.
For ten years as if each day were identical, he had wielded his lectern at a higher school, resigned to meager pay and obscurity.
Yet he was a true scholar.
He was precisely the man who should assume professorship—one who could contribute fresh currents to the academic sea while engaging with Japan’s vital society.
When distilled to essentials, this was all it contained—yet these essentials stretched across twenty-seven pages through eminently reasonable rhetoric and coruscating aphorisms.

It contained various amusing phrases in abundance—such as “Only old people boast about baldness,” “Venus was born from waves, but insightful men aren’t born from universities,” and “To consider PhD holders academia’s prized products is like regarding jellyfish as Tagonoura’s local specialty.” But beyond that, there was nothing else. What was particularly strange was that after likening Professor Hirota to a great darkness, he compared other scholars to round paper lanterns that merely cast a dim light over an area of about two feet square—writing exactly what Hirota himself had once said. Furthermore, it explicitly declared that round paper lanterns, kettle spouts, and all such things were mere relics of the old era and utterly useless to our youth—just as previously asserted.

6-4

Upon careful consideration, Yojirō’s essay had vitality.
Because he truly seemed to be representing New Japan all by himself, as one read it, they inevitably got swept up in that spirit.
However, it had no substance at all.
It was like a war without a base.
Moreover, if interpreted uncharitably, it might even be a work written with political stratagem in mind.
As a country bumpkin, Sanshirō could not precisely pinpoint where the issue lay; yet after reading it, when he probed his own heart, he felt a certain dissatisfaction lingering somewhere.
He took Mineko’s picture postcard again and began gazing at the two sheep and the familiar devil.
Then, everything about this side was a delight.
As this delight grew, the earlier dissatisfaction became increasingly pronounced.
As a result, he stopped thinking about the essay altogether.
He thought he would send a reply to Mineko.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t draw.
He thought he would write it in prose.
If it were prose, the phrases had to be ones that rivaled this picture postcard.
He could not easily come up with that.
While dawdling around, it had gone past four o'clock.

He put on his hakama and went to Nishikata-chō to invite Yojirō. When he entered through the kitchen, in the tearoom, Professor Hirota was sitting at a small dining table, having his evening meal. Beside him, Yojirō sat formally, serving.

“How is it, Professor?” he was asking.

The professor seemed to have stuffed something hard into his cheeks. When he looked at the dining table, about ten charred reddish-black things, each about the size of a pocket watch, were lined up on a plate.

Sanshirō took his seat.
He bowed.
Professor Hirota twisted his mouth.

“Here, you should try one too,” Yojirō said, picking it up with his chopsticks and offering it.
When he placed it on his palm, he saw it was a seasoned and grilled dried horse clam fillet.

“You eat strange things,” he said.

“Strange? It’s delicious! Try it.
You see, I went out of my way to buy this as a get-well gift for the Professor.
The Professor says he still hasn’t eaten this before.”

“From where?”

“From Nihonbashi.”

Sanshirō found it amusing.
When it came to such matters, his manner differed slightly from the tone of that earlier essay.
"How does it fare, Professor?"

“It’s hard.”

“Hard doesn’t mean it isn’t tasty.”
“You must chew it thoroughly.”
“The flavor emerges through chewing.”

“Chewing until the flavor emerges would exhaust one’s teeth.”
“Why procure such an anachronism?”

“Is it not acceptable?”
“This may indeed prove incompatible with your palate, Professor.”
“Miss Satomi Mineko would likely fare better.”

“Why?” asked Sanshirō.

“Ah—were she composed, she’d assuredly chew until the essence surfaced.”

"That woman maintains composure yet possesses roughness," said Professor Hirota.

"Yes, she's rough."
"There's something reminiscent of Ibsen's women about her."

"Ibsen's women manifest roughness overtly, but hers lies within the heart."
"Though when I say 'roughness,' it carries a different meaning from the commonplace variety."
"Nonomiya's younger sister appears rough at first glance, yet ultimately retains feminine qualities."
"Curious, isn't it?"

“Is Satomi’s roughness an internal conflict?”

Sanshirō listened silently to the two men’s critiques.
None of their critiques made sense to him.
That the word “roughness” could be applied to Mineko—this was the first mystery that baffled him.

六の五

Yojirō soon put on hakama and came out formally.

“I’ll be going out for a bit,” he said.
The professor silently drank his tea.
The two went outside.
Outside was already dark.
After leaving the gate and walking two or three ken, Sanshirō immediately started talking.

“The Professor said Miss Satomi was rough, right?”

“Yeah. The Professor says whatever he wants depending on the occasion. First off, his way of judging women is laughable. His knowledge about women must be practically zero. How could someone who’s never been in love understand them?”

“The Professor aside, didn’t you agree with his view?”

“Yeah, I said she was rough. What about it?”

“What exactly makes her rough?”

“There’s no ‘exactly’ about it. All modern women are fundamentally rough. It’s not just her.”

“Didn’t you say that person resembles one of Ibsen’s characters?”

“I did.”

“Which of Ibsen’s characters is that person supposed to resemble?”

“Who do you mean… They do resemble them.”

Sanshirō was of course not convinced.
However, he did not press further.
They walked about six feet in silence.
Then suddenly Yojirō spoke.

"It’s not just Miss Satomi who resembles Ibsen’s characters—all modern women do nowadays."
"It’s not just women either."
"Any man who’s touched new currents will have something of Ibsen’s characters in him."
"The only difference is that neither men nor women take free action like Ibsen’s people do."
"In their hearts though, most are already caught up in it."

“I’m not too caught up in it.”

“You’re deceiving yourself by saying you aren’t.—No society exists without flaws.”

“That can’t be right.”

“If that were the case, then the creatures living within it would inevitably feel some lack somewhere.”
“Ibsen’s characters are those who most clearly perceived the flaws in modern social systems.”
“We too will gradually come to be like that.”

“Do you think so?”

“It’s not just me.”
“All discerning people think so.”

“Does your professor hold such a view?”

“Our professor? I don’t know about the Professor.”

“But earlier, when commenting on Miss Satomi, didn’t the Professor say she’s composed yet rough? If you interpret that, it means she maintains composure by harmonizing with her surroundings, but has an underlying roughness due to some deficiency—isn’t that what it means?”

“I see—the Professor has his admirable points. When it comes to such matters, he truly is impressive,” Yojirō abruptly began praising Professor Hirota. Sanshirō had wanted to press further about Mineko’s personality, but Yojirō’s remark completely derailed him. Then Yojirō said:

“Actually, when I said I had business with you today—well, before that, have you read ‘the great darkness’? If you don’t read that first, my business won’t sink into your head properly.”

“I went home today after that and read it.”

“How was it?”

“What did the Professor say?”

“The Professor read it? Not a chance.”
“He doesn’t have a clue.”

“I suppose so. It’s interesting enough, but—it’s like drinking flat beer that doesn’t sit right in the stomach.”

“That’s plenty! As long as reading it gives them a boost, that’s enough. That’s why I used a pseudonym. After all, this is just the preparatory period. I’ll keep it like this for now and reveal my real name at just the right time.—Be that as it may—let’s get back to the earlier business.”

Six of Six

Yojirō’s business was as follows—at tonight’s meeting, they would lament at length about their department’s poor performance, so Sanshirō too must join in lamenting with them. Since the slump was an undeniable fact, others were bound to lament it as well. Then, the large group would come together to devise recovery measures. After all, they were to declare that securing one suitable Japanese scholar for the university was an urgent matter. Everyone would agree. Since this was only natural, their agreement was inevitable. Next would come discussions about suitable candidates. At that point, Professor Hirota’s name would be raised. The plan required Sanshirō to support Yojirō by vigorously praising the professor. Without this, those aware that Yojirō was Hirota’s dependent might grow suspicious. Being currently under Hirota’s patronage himself, Yojirō claimed not to care about others’ opinions—but should any trouble reach the professor, it would be unforgivable. Admittedly, three or four other allies existed externally, making the situation secure, but since even one more supporter proved advantageous, the opinion held that Sanshirō should speak up as much as possible. Once unanimous agreement was reached, representatives would be selected to visit both the dean’s and president’s offices—though matters might not progress that far tonight. Nor was immediate action strictly necessary. Such details would be handled with flexible adaptation.

…
Yojirō was remarkably eloquent.
The pity was that his eloquence had a glibness to it, robbing it of gravitas.
At times, one might suspect he was earnestly expounding on a joke as if it were serious.
However, since it was a fundamentally sound campaign, Sanshirō also expressed general agreement.
He said that only the method was somewhat too contrived and unappealing.
At that moment, Yojirō stopped in the middle of the street.
The two were standing right before the torii gate of the shrine in Morikawa-chō.

“You say it’s contrived, but all I’m doing is making sure nature’s course isn’t disrupted by setting things up beforehand through human effort. It’s fundamentally different from scheming senseless things that go against nature. Even contrivance doesn’t matter. It’s not that the contrivance is bad. It’s bad contrivances that are bad.”

Sanshirō was left completely speechless. He felt he had some retort, but it wouldn't come out. Within Yojirō's words, the part he himself hadn't yet considered now stood clearly reflected in his mind. Sanshirō found himself rather impressed by that aspect.

"I suppose that's true," he replied ambiguously, and they began walking side by side again.

When they passed through the main gate, the space before their eyes suddenly opened up.
Large buildings stood here and there, dark against the sky.
Beyond where the roofs distinctly ended, the sky stretched clear.
The stars were innumerable.

“It’s a beautiful sky,” said Sanshirō.
Yojirō too walked about six feet while gazing at the sky.
Suddenly,

“Hey, you,” he called to Sanshirō.
Sanshirō, thinking it was a continuation of their earlier conversation, replied, “What?”

“What do you feel when you look at a sky like this?”

Yojirō had said something unlike himself.
There were any number of stock answers like "infinite" or "eternal," but thinking Yojirō would laugh at him if he voiced them, Sanshirō remained silent.

“We’re such dull creatures.
Maybe we should abandon this campaign starting tomorrow, I wonder.
Even if we write about the great darkness, it doesn’t seem likely to be of any use.”

“Why did you suddenly say such things?”

“When I look at this sky, such thoughts come to mind—have you ever been in love with a woman?”

Sanshirō could not answer immediately.

“Women are a frightening lot,” Yojirō said.

“They’re frightening—I know that too,” Sanshirō said.
Then Yojirō burst into loud laughter.
It sounded exceptionally loud in the quiet night.

“You don’t know a thing about it.
You don’t know a thing about it.”

Sanshirō looked nonplussed.

“Tomorrow’ll be fine weather too. The athletic meet’s a godsend—plenty of pretty women coming. You should definitely go see.”

In the darkness, the two came to the front of the student assembly hall.
Inside, electric lights were shining.

Six-Seven

When they rounded the wooden corridor and entered the room, those who had arrived early were already clustered together. There were about three clusters in all—some large, some small. Among them were also those who silently perused the provided magazines and newspapers while deliberately keeping their distance from the groups. Conversations could be heard from various corners. The voices seemed to outnumber the clusters themselves. Yet the atmosphere remained relatively orderly and quiet. Tobacco smoke billowed up fiercely.

They gradually converged there. A dark shadow would emerge faintly from the darkness onto the windblown corridor, each figure brightening as they entered the room. At times, five or six would come in succession, illuminated in turn. Before long, nearly everyone had assembled.

Yojirō had been busily moving back and forth through the tobacco smoke for some time now.
Wherever he went, he was whispering something in a low voice.
Sanshirō watched him, thinking they must have gradually begun their campaign.

After a while, the organizer announced in a loud voice for everyone to take their seats.
The dining table had of course been prepared beforehand.
Everyone took their seats in a disorderly fashion.
There was no order or anything.
The meal began.

In Kumamoto, Sanshirō had drunk nothing but red sake.
The so-called red sake was an inferior brew produced locally.
All the students from Kumamoto drank red sake.
They considered it perfectly natural.
When they did go out to eat, it was to beef restaurants.
There was a suspicion that the beef at those restaurants might actually be horse meat.
The students would grab the meat served on plates with their hands and throw it against the walls of the tatami room.
If it fell off, it was beef; if it stuck, it was horse meat—or so they claimed.
They were engaged in what looked like some superstitious ritual.
For Sanshirō, such a refined student social gathering was a rare thing.
He was happily wielding his knife and fork.
In the meantime, he drank beer heartily.

“The food at the student assembly hall is terrible, isn’t it?” said the man sitting next to Sanshirō. This man was a quiet student with a crew cut and gold-rimmed glasses.

“I suppose so,” Sanshirō replied perfunctorily. Had it been Yojirō, he—country bumpkin that he was—would have declared it delicious with complete honesty; but fearing such candor might instead sound sarcastic, he held back. Then the man spoke up.

“Which high school did you attend?” he inquired.

“I’m from Kumamoto.”

“Kumamoto?”
“I had a cousin in Kumamoto too, but I hear it’s quite a dreadful place.”

“It’s a barbaric place.”

While they were talking, a high-pitched voice suddenly rang out from across the way.
Looking over, Sanshirō saw Yojirō earnestly holding forth to two or three people at the neighboring seats.
At times he would say “Darter” and “Fabura.”
Sanshirō couldn’t understand what it meant.
However, Yojirō’s companions burst out laughing each time they heard these words.
Yojirō grew even more animated and continued with his “Darter, Fabura—we youths of the new era...”
The fair-skinned, refined student sitting diagonally across from Sanshirō paused his knife work to observe Yojirō’s group, then remarked half-jokingly in French, “Il a le diable au corps” (“He has the devil in him”).
Evidently unheard by those across the room, about four Western-style beer mugs were raised high in unison at that moment.
They lifted their glasses triumphantly.

“That person is quite lively, isn’t he?” said the student with gold-rimmed glasses sitting next to Sanshirō.

“Yes. He does tend to chatter a great deal.”

“I was once treated to rice curry at Yodomiken by him. Even though we were complete strangers, he suddenly came up and said ‘Let’s go to Yodomiken,’ and kept insisting until he dragged me there...”

The student burst out laughing.
Sanshirō realized that he wasn’t the only one whom Yojirō had treated to rice curry at Yodomiken.

6–8

Before long, coffee was served.

A man rose from his chair.
When Yojirō clapped his hands vigorously, the others immediately joined in rhythm.

The man who stood up was wearing a new black uniform and already had a mustache under his nose.
He was quite tall.
He was a man who cut a fine figure when standing.
He began something resembling a speech.

That we have gathered here tonight to foster fellowship through an evening of camaraderie is in itself a pleasant matter; yet when I chanced to realize this fellowship might yield not merely social significance but another form of consequential influence, I felt compelled to rise.
This gathering begins with beer and ends with coffee.
It is an entirely ordinary gathering.
Yet these nearly forty souls who drank that beer and coffee are no ordinary individuals.
Moreover, between their first sip of beer and final draught of coffee, they had already awakened to the expansion of their destinies.

Advocating political freedom belonged to an earlier age.
Advocating freedom of speech likewise belonged to the past.
Freedom is not a term to be monopolized for these superficial phenomena that readily appear on the surface.
We youths of the new era believe we have met an hour when we must proclaim the great freedom of the heart.

We are those who cannot endure old Japan's oppression.
Simultaneously, we exist under conditions compelling us to declare to society that we cannot endure the new West's oppression either.
The new West's oppression - whether in society or in literary arts - pains us youths of this new era as deeply as old Japan's oppression.

We study Western literary arts.
Yet research remains research through and through.
This fundamentally differs from subjugating ourselves beneath those very arts.
We do not study Western literary arts to become shackled by them.
We study them to liberate minds already imprisoned.
We possess the confidence and resolve to refrain from studying any literary art misaligned with this expedient means, regardless of coercion imposed.

We differ from ordinary people in that we possess this confidence and resolve.
Literary arts are neither technique nor administrative work.
They are the driving force of society that touches more deeply upon life's fundamental principles.
It is in this sense that we study literary arts; in this sense that we possess the aforementioned confidence and resolve; and in this sense that we envision this evening's gathering exerting an influence of greater significance than ordinary affairs.

Society is in violent upheaval.
Literary arts, as a product of society, are also in upheaval.
Riding this wave of upheaval, to guide literary arts according to our ideals, we must unite fragmented individuals and fulfill, develop, and expand our own destinies.
Tonight's beers and coffees—in having advanced such a hidden objective by one step—are beers and coffees a hundred times more valuable than ordinary beers and coffees.

The gist of the speech was roughly along these lines. When it ended, all the students present burst into applause. Sanshirō stood among the most enthusiastic applauders. Then Yojirō suddenly rose to his feet.

“Daughter of Albion—what’s the use counting how many tens of thousands of words Shakespeare used or tallying up Ibsen’s white hairs? Not that listening to such idiotic lectures could imprison anyone—perfectly safe—but it’s downright pitiful for the university. They simply must bring in people who can satisfy us youth of the new era. Westerners won’t do. For one thing, they’ve no real sway…”

The entire hall once again burst into applause.
And they all laughed.
The person next to Yojirō,

“Let’s raise a toast to the Daughter of Albion,” someone proposed.
The student who had given the speech earlier immediately agreed.
Unfortunately, all the beer was gone.
“Alright,” said Yojirō, and immediately dashed toward the kitchen.
The waiter brought out sake.
No sooner had they raised their glasses in toast than—

“Another one—
“This time for the great darkness!” someone said.
Those around Yojirō raised their voices in unison and laughed, “Ahahaha!”
Yojirō scratched his head.

When the time came for the gathering to adjourn and all the young men had scattered into the dark night, Sanshirō asked Yojirō.

“What does ‘Daughter of Albion’ mean?”

“It’s Greek.”

Yojirō gave no answer beyond that.
Sanshirō, too, asked nothing beyond that.

The two of them returned home beneath a beautiful sky.

6–9

The next day was as expected a fine day. This year's weather was much milder than usual. The day was especially warm. Sanshirō went to the bathhouse in the morning. Because it was a world with few idle people, mornings were quite empty. Sanshirō looked at the Mitsukoshi Department Store signboard hanging in the entranceway. A beautiful woman was depicted. The woman's face somewhat resembled Mineko's. Upon closer inspection, the gaze was different. He could not discern how her teeth were aligned. What surprised Sanshirō most about Mineko's face were her gaze and the alignment of her teeth. According to Yojirō's theory, that woman had a tendency toward buckteeth, which was why she was always flashing them like that—but Sanshirō never saw it that way.…

Sanshirō was soaking in the bath and thinking about such things, so he got out without washing himself thoroughly. Since the previous evening, his self-awareness of being a youth of the new era had suddenly intensified—yet this strength resided solely in his awareness while his body remained unchanged. When resting, he felt more at ease than others did. Today he meant to go see the university's athletic meet that would start in the afternoon.

Sanshirō had never been particularly fond of sports by nature. Back home he had gone rabbit hunting a few times. Then during a boat race at his higher school, he had served as a flag waver. On that occasion he had mistakenly waved blue and red flags, provoking many complaints. To make matters worse, the professor responsible for firing the starting pistol for the final race had failed to discharge it properly—he pulled the trigger but no report sounded. This became the source of Sanshirō's panic. Since then he had kept away from athletic meets. But today's event would be his first since coming to Tokyo, and he was determined to attend. Yojirō too had urged him emphatically to go see it. According to Yojirō's account, the women spectators promised more interest than the competitions themselves. Among them would likely be Nonomiya's sister. And where Nonomiya's sister was, Mineko too would probably be present. He wanted to go there and attempt some greeting—"Good afternoon" or something of the sort.

As it was past noon, he set out.
The entrance to the venue was at the southern corner of the athletic field.
A large Hinomaru and the British national flag were crossed.
The Hinomaru made sense, but he couldn’t fathom why the British national flag was there.
Sanshirō wondered if it might be due to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.
But he couldn’t quite see what connection there was between the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and the university’s athletic meet.

The athletic field was a rectangular lawn.
As autumn deepened, the color of the grass had faded considerably.
The place to watch the athletic events was on the west side.
With a large artificial hill looming fully behind, and the front partitioned by the athletic field’s fence, it was designed to funnel everyone into this enclosed space.
Narrow for its size yet crowded with spectators, it was terribly cramped.
Fortunately, the weather was fine, so it wasn’t cold.
However, a considerable number of people were wearing overcoats.
On the other hand, there were also women who had brought umbrellas.

What disappointed Sanshirō was that the women’s seating area was set apart where ordinary people could not approach. Then men in frock coats and other such dignified attire had gathered in great numbers, making him appear surprisingly lacking in presence. Though considering himself a youth of the new era, Sanshirō had become somewhat diminished. Still he did not forget to peer through gaps between people toward the women’s seating area. From his angle he could not see clearly, but this area was indeed beautiful. All were dressed in their finest. Moreover, being at a distance, every face looked beautiful. On the other hand, there was no one who stood out as particularly beautiful. The whole was beautiful in its entirety—an aura of women conquering men. It was not an aura where one woman triumphed over another. At this Sanshirō was disappointed again. However when he paid attention, thinking they must be somewhere, and looked around carefully, there indeed were two people sitting side by side near the frontmost railing.

6-10

Since Sanshirō had finally figured out where to focus his gaze and felt he'd reached a sort of conclusion, settling into relief, five or six men suddenly came dashing before his eyes.
The two-hundred-meter race had ended.
The finish line stood directly before where Mineko and Yoshiko sat—practically under their noses—so these strapping men inevitably invaded Sanshirō's gaze that had been fixed on the two women.
Five or six soon became twelve or thirteen.
They all appeared to be breathing heavily.
Comparing these students' attitudes with his own, Sanshirō was startled by their difference.
He wondered how they could bring themselves to dash about so recklessly.
Yet all the women watched with keen interest.
Among them, Mineko and Yoshiko seemed particularly engrossed.
Sanshirō found himself wanting to run just as wildly.
The first arrival stood facing the women's seats wearing purple athletic shorts.
Looking closely, he resembled the student who'd given last night's speech at the fellowship meeting.
Ah—with that height, no wonder he came in first.
The timekeeper wrote "25.74" on the blackboard.
When he finished writing and tossed aside the leftover chalk before turning around, it proved to be Professor Nonomiya.
Professor Nonomiya wore an uncharacteristically jet-black frock coat with a judge's badge on his chest, looking quite distinguished.
He took out a handkerchief and brushed his suit sleeves twice before leaving the blackboard to cross the grass.
He stopped directly in front of where Mineko and Yoshiko were seated.
Leaning his neck over the low fence into the women's section, he said something.
Mineko stood up.

She walked over to where Mr. Nonomiya was.
They seemed to have begun talking across the fence.
Mineko suddenly turned around.
Her face brimmed with a smile that looked joyful.
Sanshirō watched the two intently from afar.
Then Yoshiko stood up.
She moved closer to the fence.
The two became three.
On the lawn, the shot put began.

There was likely nothing requiring as much arm strength as the shot put.
For all the strength it demanded, few things were this uninteresting.
It was merely throwing a metal ball.
No artistry whatsoever.
Mr. Nonomiya stood at the fence, glanced at this scene, and laughed.
He must have thought it improper to block spectators' views.
He left the fence and withdrew onto the lawn.
The two women returned to their original seats.
The shot put kept being thrown now and then.
Sanshirō could hardly even tell how far it was going.
He felt utterly ridiculous.

Even so, he endured and kept standing.
It seemed the matter had finally been settled, for Mr. Nonomiya wrote 11.38 meters on the blackboard again.

Then there were more races and the long jump, followed by the start of the hammer throw.
When it came to this hammer throw, Sanshirō could finally endure no longer.
Athletic meets should be held however each person likes.
They are not something to be shown to others.

Having become so convinced that all those women who were eagerly watching such things were entirely mistaken, he slipped out of the venue and came to the artificial hill at the back.
A curtain was stretched across, making it impassable.
When he turned back and came a little way along the graveled path, people who had escaped the venue were walking here and there.
Women in formal attire could also be seen.
Sanshirō turned right again and reached the summit of the hill via the steep path.
The path ended at the summit.
There was a large rock.
Sanshirō sat down on it and gazed at the pond below the high cliff.

From the athletic meet grounds below came a loud "whoa" from the crowd.

Sanshirō remained seated on the rock for about five minutes, staring blankly.
Eventually feeling inclined to move again, he rose from his seat and, standing up while adjusting his shoe heels, caught sight of the woman’s figure from earlier at the foot of the hill amidst faintly tinted autumn leaves.
They walked side by side along the base of the hill.

6-11

Sanshirō looked down at the two women from above.
They emerged through gaps in the branches into a sunlit clearing.
If they stayed silent, they would pass right by.
Sanshirō wondered whether to call out.
The distance was too great.
He hurriedly took two or three steps down the grassy slope.
As he began descending, one of the women turned toward him obligingly.
Sanshirō stopped there.
Truth be told, he had little desire to ingratiate himself from his position.
The athletic meet was grating on his nerves.

“Up there…” Yoshiko began.
She was startled into laughter.
This woman seemed to regard even the most mundane things with an air of novelty.
Instead, it was easy to imagine that even when encountering something truly novel, she would still greet it with a gaze as though she had been expecting it.
So when meeting this woman, there was not the slightest heaviness, and yet a sense of calm arose.
Sanshirō, still standing there, thought this was entirely due to those large, ever-moist black eyes.

Mineko stopped too.
She looked at Sanshirō.
Yet her eyes at this moment conveyed nothing.
They were exactly like eyes gazing up at a tall tree.
Sanshirō felt as though he were seeing an extinguished Western lamp within himself.
He stood frozen where he was.
Mineko remained motionless too.

"Why aren't you watching the events?" Yoshiko called up from below.

"I was watching until now, but it was dull so I left."

Yoshiko glanced back at Mineko.
Mineko still showed no change in expression.
Sanshirō—

“Rather than that, why have you come out here? Weren’t you watching with great enthusiasm?” he said loudly, making a remark that was both pointed and vague. Mineko smiled faintly for the first time then. Sanshirō could not quite grasp the meaning of that smile. He took a couple of steps closer to the women.

“Are you going home already?”

The two women did not answer. Sanshirō took another two steps closer to them.

“Are you going somewhere?”

“Yes, just a bit,” Mineko said in a small voice. He couldn’t hear her clearly. Sanshirō finally came down to where the women stood. However, he stood without pressing further about where they were going. From the direction of the grounds came the sound of cheers.

"The high jump!" Yoshiko said.
"I wonder how many meters it's reached this time."

Mineko simply laughed softly.
Sanshirō also remained silent.
Sanshirō had no intention of deigning to comment on the high jump.
Then Mineko asked.

“Is there something interesting up there?”

Above there were only rocks and a cliff.
There could be nothing of interest there.

“There’s nothing there.”

“Is that so?” Yoshiko said, her tone laced with doubt.

“Shall we go up and take a look?” Yoshiko suggested cheerfully.

“You’re still not familiar with this place?” the woman addressed him calmly.

“Go ahead in.”

Yoshiko went on ahead.
The two followed after her.
Yoshiko extended her foot to the edge of the lawn and, turning to look back,

“It’s a cliff,” she said, using exaggerated language.
“Wouldn’t even Sappho consider jumping from a place like this?”

Mineko and Sanshirō laughed out loud.
Yet Sanshirō did not really know from where Sappho had jumped.

“Why don’t you try jumping in yourself?” Mineko said.

“Me?
Shall I jump in, then?
But the water’s too dirty,” she said as she came back this way.

Soon, a discussion began between the two women.

“You should go in,” said Mineko.

“Yes.
“And you?” said Yoshiko.

“What should we do?”

“It doesn’t matter.
“In that case, I’ll go for a bit, so you wait here.”

“I suppose.”

It was taking quite some time to settle.
When Sanshirō inquired, Yoshiko said that since it was a good opportunity, she was going to briefly visit the nurse at the hospital to express her thanks.
Mineko would visit the nurse she had become acquainted with when her relative was hospitalized this summer, but this was apparently unnecessary.

6-12

Yoshiko, being an honest and carefree woman, tossed out that she’d be right back and hurried down the hill alone.
There was no need to stop her, nor was her errand significant enough to accompany her, so the two naturally remained behind.
Considering their passive attitudes, it was less that they remained than that they were left behind.

Sanshirō sat down on the rock again.
The woman remained standing.
The autumn sun cast its light upon the pond, whose surface lay turbid like tarnished glass.
At its center stood a small island.
Upon this island grew but two trees.
A blue pine and a pale maple had intertwined their branches with artful balance, creating an effect reminiscent of a miniature garden.
Beyond the island, the opposite shore glowed darkly with dense foliage.
From her position atop the hill, the woman pointed toward that shadowed grove.

"Do you recognize that tree?" she asked.

“That’s an oak.”
The woman laughed.
“You remember well.”
“Is it the nurse from that time—the one you said you were going to visit now?”

“Yes.”

“Is yours a different nurse from Miss Yoshiko’s?”

“It’s different. This is an oak—I mean, nurse.”

This time, Sanshirō burst out laughing.

“That place there, right? That time you were standing there with that nurse holding a fan—”

The place where the two were was elevated, protruding into the pond. A hill completely unrelated to this one lay a step lower, stretching along the right side. A large pine, a corner of the palace, a section of the athletic meet’s curtain, and a gentle lawn could be seen.

“That was a hot day, wasn’t it? Because the hospital was so unbearably hot, I finally couldn’t stand it anymore and came out.” “And why did you end up crouching in such a place?”

“Because it was hot. That day was my first time meeting Mr. Nonomiya, then I came here and found myself spacing out. I felt somehow... unmoored.”

“So meeting Mr. Nonomiya made you feel unmoored?”

“No, that’s not what I—” He started to object while looking at Mineko’s face, then suddenly veered the conversation elsewhere. “Speaking of Mr. Nonomiya—he’s working exceptionally hard today.”

“Yes—even wearing a frock coat for once. It must be quite burdensome.”
“From morning till night.”

“But he seems rather pleased with himself, doesn’t he?”

“Who? Mr. Nonomiya? —You’re quite something yourself.”

“Why?”

“But he isn’t the sort to grow self-important just from being made a measurer at the Shingyaku Athletic Meet, surely.”

Sanshirō changed the topic again.

“Earlier, someone came to your place and was talking about something, right?”

“At the venue?”

“Yes, at the fence of the athletic field,” he said, though Sanshirō suddenly wished to retract his question.
The woman kept staring at his face after uttering “Yes.”
Her smile lingered with a slight curl of her lower lip.
Sanshirō grew unbearably tense.
Just as he sought words to deflect attention, she spoke first.

“You still haven’t sent a reply to that picture postcard from before.”

“I will,” Sanshirō answered haltingly.
The woman offered neither approval nor refusal.

“Do you know a painter named Mr. Haraguchi?” she asked again.
“I don’t know.”
“I see.”
“Is something the matter?”

“Oh, nothing. That Mr. Haraguchi came by today to observe. Since he’s sketching everyone, Mr. Nonomiya specifically warned us to be careful or we’ll end up drawn as caricatures.”

Mineko came to his side and sat down.
Sanshirō felt as though he were utterly a fool.

"Is Miss Yoshiko not returning home with her brother?"

"Even if they tried to go back together, they couldn't.
Miss Yoshiko has been staying at my house since yesterday, you see."

6-13

It was then that Sanshirō first heard from Mineko that Nonomiya’s mother had returned to her hometown.
At the same time his mother returned home, Mr. Nonomiya would vacate Ōkubo and move into a lodging house, while Yoshiko would commute to school from Mineko’s residence for the time being—it had all been settled, apparently.

Sanshirō was rather surprised at how carefree Mr. Nonomiya seemed.
If he could return to lodging life so easily, it would have been better not to have kept a household in the first place.
First, he even went so far as to consider unnecessary things—like how one would dispose of household utensils such as pots, kettles, and buckets—but since it wasn’t worth voicing aloud, he offered no particular criticism.
Moreover, for Mr. Nonomiya—once the head of a household—to backtrack and revert to a lifestyle indistinguishable from that of a pure student was nothing less than taking a step away from the family system; for Sanshirō himself, it became a convenient turn of events, as though his immediate doubts were shifted to a more distant remove.
Instead, Yoshiko ended up living with Mineko.
These siblings seemed structured such that they would not be whole unless they kept constantly coming and going.
While they kept constantly coming and going, the relationship between Nonomiya and Mineko gradually shifted.
Then there was no telling when the time might arrive for Mr. Nonomiya to permanently end his lodging life once again.

Sanshirō was interacting with Mineko while picturing in his mind a future fraught with such uncertainties.
He was not in the mood at all.
If he tried to maintain even just his external demeanor as usual, it became painful.
Fortunately for him, Yoshiko returned just then.
Among the women, there had been a discussion about going once more to watch the athletic events, but as the shortening autumn day had advanced considerably and—with its progression—the open-air chill was growing keener by degrees, their talk concluded on returning home.

Sanshirō thought to part from the group of women and return to his lodging, but as the three of them set off walking while talking in a leisurely manner, there was no distinct opportunity for him to offer his farewells.
The two of them appeared to be pulling him along.
He too began to feel as though he wanted to be pulled along.
And so he clung to the two and came heading from beside the library along the edge of the pond toward Akamon in the opposite direction.
At that moment, Sanshirō turned to Yoshiko and,
“I hear your brother has moved into a lodging house,” he asked, and Yoshiko immediately—

“Yes.”
“Well… he just pushed everything onto Miss Mineko and left.”
“Isn’t that harsh?” she said, as if seeking agreement.
Sanshirō tried to say something in response.
Before he could speak, Mineko interjected:

“Someone like Mr. Sōhachi exists beyond our comprehension.”
“He dwells on a higher plane, contemplating grand matters,” she began extolling Mr. Nonomiya’s virtues with fervor.
Yoshiko listened in silence.

When scholars avoid mundane affairs and endure austere lifestyles, it becomes an unavoidable necessity for their research—there’s no alternative.
That someone of Mr. Nonomiya’s international renown would reside in lodging as plain as any student’s only proves his extraordinary nature—indeed, the shabbier his quarters, the greater our respect must be.
—Thus continued Mineko’s paean to Nonomiya.

Sanshirō parted with the two at Akamon.

He began thinking while heading toward Oiwake.
Indeed, it was exactly as Mineko had said.
When I compared myself with Nonomiya, there was an immense difference.
I had merely come from the countryside and entered university.
I possessed neither proper scholarship nor true insight.
It was only natural that I couldn't receive from Mineko the same degree of respect I held for Nonomiya.
Put that way, it somehow felt like that woman was making a fool of me.
Earlier, when I answered from the hilltop that the athletic meet was boring so I'd stay here, Mineko had asked with a solemn face, "Is there anything more interesting beyond this?"
At the time I hadn't realized it, but interpreting it now, those words might have been deliberately mocking.—As Sanshirō became aware of this and began re-examining every attitude and remark Mineko had directed at him until today, he found they could all be assigned malicious meanings.
Sanshirō turned crimson in the middle of the street and looked down.
Suddenly raising his face, he saw Yojirō and the student who had delivered last night's speech approaching side by side from ahead.
Yojirō merely nodded and remained silent.
The student removed his hat and bowed while

“Last night.”
“How was it?”
“You mustn’t get caught up,” he said with a laugh as he passed by.

7-1

When he went around to the back and asked the old woman, she replied in a low voice that Mr. Yojirō had not returned since the day before.
Sanshirō stood at the kitchen entrance and pondered.
The old woman, showing tact, said, “Please do come in.”
While saying, “The professor is in his study,” she continued washing the dishes without pausing.
It seemed dinner had just finished.

Sanshirō passed through the tea room and, following the corridor, came to the entrance of the study.
The door was open.
From inside came a voice calling out, “Hey.”
Sanshirō stepped over the threshold.
The professor was sitting at his desk.
He couldn’t tell what was on the desk.
A high back concealed the research.
Sanshirō sat near the entrance.

"Are you working?" he politely asked.
The professor twisted only his face backward.
The shadow of his beard was indistinctly tangled.
He resembled someone’s portrait seen in a photogravure.

“Oh, I thought it was Yojirō. It’s you—my mistake,” he said, rising from his seat.
On the desk were a brush and paper.
The professor had been writing something.
As Yojirō had mentioned, their teacher would occasionally write things down.
But what he wrote remained utterly incomprehensible to anyone else who might read it.
If he could compile it into a major scholarly work while alive, that would be splendid—but if he died like that, it would just leave a pile of waste paper.
It was truly pointless.
Yojirō had once sighed in despair.
Sanshirō looked at Hirota’s desk and immediately recalled Yojirō’s words.

“If I’m disturbing you, I’ll leave. It’s not as though I have any particular business.”

“No need to send you away—it’s no great disturbance. My own affairs aren’t particularly pressing either. Nothing that demands immediate resolution,” he replied.

Sanshirō found himself at a loss for words. Yet inwardly, he thought how much easier studying might become if he could attain this man’s state of composure.

After a while, he said.

“Actually, I came to see Sasaki-kun... but since he wasn’t here...”

“Ah.”

“Yojirō apparently hasn’t returned since last night.”
“He tends to wander off and cause problems.”

“Did something urgent come up?”

“He’s not the sort to have proper business come up.
“He’s just a man who fabricates business, you see.”
“There aren’t many fools like that.”

Sanshirō, finding himself at a loss,

“Quite carefree, isn’t he?” he said.

“If it were carefree, that would be fine, but...
“Yojirō’s isn’t carefree.”
"It’s that his attention shifts—if you think of it as something like a stream flowing through the fields, you won’t be wrong."
"Shallow and narrow."
"Yet its water level keeps shifting constantly."
“That’s why there’s absolutely no consistency in what he does. If he goes to a festival day just to browse around, he’ll suddenly come out with some absurd remark like, ‘You should buy a potted ‘Professor Pine.’’”
"And then, without even saying whether he’ll buy it or not, he haggles the price down and ends up buying it."
"But when it comes to buying festival goods, he’s quite skilled though."
"If you have him do the buying, you can get things remarkably cheap."
“But then, come summer when everyone leaves their houses unattended, he’ll leave the pine in the tatami room just like that, close the storm shutters, take off the lock, and be done with it.”
“When he returns home, he finds the pine steamed bright red by the humid heat.”
“Everything’s like that—it’s truly a nuisance.”

To tell the truth, Sanshirō had recently lent Yojirō twenty yen.
He said that since he would receive the manuscript fee from Bungei Jihyō-sha in two weeks, Sanshirō should advance him the money until then.
When Sanshirō heard the circumstances, he felt sorry; deducting five yen from the remittance he had just received from home, he ended up lending the entire remainder.
It was not yet the repayment deadline, but after hearing Hirota’s words, he felt somewhat concerned.
However, he couldn’t bring himself to confide such matters to Professor Hirota, so instead,

“But Yojirō greatly respects you and works quite hard for your sake behind the scenes,” he said, whereupon the professor grew serious.

“What kind of efforts is he making?” he inquired.
However, all of Yojirō’s deeds concerning Professor Hirota—including “The Great Darkness”—had been forbidden from being disclosed to the professor by Yojirō himself.
If word got out about such things while they were still in progress, it was certain that Professor Hirota would scold him, so he said they should keep quiet.
Since he had explicitly stated that he would speak himself when the time was right, there was nothing to be done.
Sanshirō ended up changing the subject.

7-2

There were various reasons why Sanshirō came to Hirota’s house.
One was that this man’s lifestyle differed from ordinary conventions.
Particularly in aspects that seemed utterly incompatible with his own disposition.
Thus Sanshirō came to study him as a reference point, driven by curiosity about how one might become that way.
Moreover, when facing this man directly, he would grow carefree.
The world’s competition no longer weighed heavily on him.
Mr. Nonomiya too shared Professor Hirota’s air of detachment from worldly matters, yet appeared to shun common desires in pursuit of ambitions transcending the mundane.
Thus when conversing privately with Mr. Nonomiya, Sanshirō felt compelled to quickly establish himself through proper work and contribute to academia’s vast ocean.
He grew unbearably restless.
By contrast, Professor Hirota remained serenely composed.
The professor merely taught languages at the high school—to put it bluntly—without displaying other talents or publicly engaging in research.
Yet he maintained perfect equanimity.
Here, Sanshirō thought, must lie the source of this carefreeness.
Lately Sanshirō had become ensnared by a woman.
Had it been romantic captivity, it might have been pleasant—but this entanglement defied comprehension: Was he being adored or mocked? Feared or scorned? Ought he end it or let it continue?
Sanshirō grew vexed.
At such times, only Hirota would do.
After thirty minutes facing the professor, his mood would grow tranquil.
He’d think it mattered little what became of one or two women.
To tell the truth, seventy percent of why Sanshirō had come tonight lay in precisely this meaning.

The third reason for visiting was quite contradictory.
I was suffering because of Mineko.
If he placed Mr.Nonomiya beside Mineko，the suffering became even more intense.
The one closest to that Mr.Nonomiya was this professor.
Therefore，when he came to the professor’s place，he thought the relationship between Mr.Nonomiya and Mineko would naturally become clear.
If only this became clear，I could decisively determine my own attitude.
Yet he had never once asked the professor about those two.
He felt tempted to try asking about it tonight.

“I hear Mr. Nonomiya has moved to a lodging house.”

“Yes, I hear he has moved to a lodging house.”

“It must be inconvenient for someone who owns a house to take up lodgings again, yet Mr. Nonomiya manages...”

“Ah yes, he’s utterly indifferent to such matters.”
“You need only look at his attire.”
“Not the domestic sort.”
“Though when it comes to scholarship, he grows positively neurotic.”

“Does he mean to continue living that way indefinitely?”

“Hard to say.”
“He might suddenly acquire a house again.”

“Has he not considered taking a wife?”

“He might have. Find him a nice match then.”

Sanshirō gave a bitter smile. He thought he had overstepped. Then Professor Hirota asked,

“What about you?”

“I…”

“It’s still too early, isn’t it? Taking a wife now would be quite a burden.”

“My mother keeps recommending someone from back home though.”

“Who in the country?”
“My mother.”

“Do you intend to take someone as your mother suggests?”

“I can’t quite bring myself to.”

Professor Hirota laughed, revealing his teeth beneath his mustache. They were relatively clean teeth. At that moment, Sanshirō was suddenly filled with nostalgia. Yet this nostalgia had nothing to do with Mineko. It had nothing to do with Nonomiya. It was a nostalgia that transcended Sanshirō’s immediate concerns. Now feeling embarrassed about inquiring into matters concerning Nonomiya and others, Sanshirō stopped asking questions.

Then Professor Hirota began to speak again.—

7-3

“You should listen to your mother as much as possible.”
“The youth today differ from our generation—their self-consciousness has grown excessively strong to a fault.”
“When we were students, not a single act we committed was separated from others.”
“Everything—be it you, parents, country, or society—all existed through external orientation.”
“To put it bluntly, every educated person was a hypocrite.”
“When that hypocrisy could no longer withstand societal changes, and self-centeredness gradually permeated thought and action, this self-awareness swelled beyond measure.”
“Where once stood hypocrites, we now find ourselves in an age of ostentatious vice.—Tell me, have you heard this term ‘ostentatious vice’ before?”

“No.”

“I just coined that term on the spot. You too are one of these ostentatious vice types—whether you are or not, well, you probably are. When it comes to someone like Yojirō, he’s the epitome of it. There’s that Miss Satomi you know. She’s also a type of ostentatious vice, and then there’s Nonomiya’s sister. That one too is interesting in her own way as an ostentatious vice type. In the past, it was feudal lords and fathers who sufficed as ostentatious vice types, but today everyone wants to become one with equal rights. Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing, though. If you remove the lid from something smelly, it’s a manure bucket—strip away splendid forms, and what remains is mostly ostentatious vice. This is perfectly clear. Even splendid forms are too much trouble, so everyone economizes and makes do with plain wood. It’s thoroughly invigorating. Natural ugliness flourishes unrestrained. But when this flourishing exceeds reasonable bounds, ostentatious vice types begin to find each other inconvenient. When that inconvenience gradually intensifies and reaches an extreme, altruism will revive once more. When that again becomes formalized and decays, it will revert once more to egoism. In other words, there’s no end to it. If we accept that we live in such a manner, there’s no harm in it. We progress as we go on like that. Behold Britain. These two doctrines have maintained a good balance since ancient times.”

“That’s why it doesn’t move.”
“That’s why it doesn’t progress.”
“Neither Ibsen nor Nietzsche emerges.”
“It’s a pitiable state of affairs.”
“They may seem self-satisfied on their own, but from an outside perspective, they’ve grown rigid and are turning into fossils…”

Though Sanshirō was inwardly somewhat impressed, he found himself slightly taken aback as the conversation veered off course, twisted into unexpected directions, and grew increasingly unwieldy.
Then Professor Hirota finally noticed.

“What on earth were we talking about?”

“It’s about marriage.”

“Marriage?”

“Yes, I did listen to what my mother said…”

“Yeah, that’s right.”
“You should listen to your mother as much as possible,” he said with a broad smile.
He was treating him exactly like a child.
Sanshirō didn’t feel particularly offended.

“It’s fine that we’re ostentatious vice types, but what do you mean when you say people of your era were hypocrites?”

“You there—do you find it pleasant when people show you kindness?”

“Well… yes, it’s pleasant.”

“Oh? You do? I’m not like that—there are times when being treated with great kindness becomes unpleasant.”

“In what cases?”

“When the form alone matches kindness.”
“But when kindness itself isn’t the purpose—”

“Could such a case exist?”

“You there—when someone wishes you ‘Happy New Year,’ do you actually feel happy?”

“Well…”

“You probably don’t.”
“Just as with those who claim to be doubled over laughing or rolling on the floor laughing—not a single one of them is actually laughing.”
“Kindness works the same way.”
“There are those who perform kindness as their duty.”
“It’s akin to me being a schoolteacher.”
“The actual purpose lies in securing one’s livelihood, so from the students’ perspective, it must surely be unpleasant.”
“In contrast, someone like Yojirō—precisely because he’s the ringleader of ostentatious vice—often causes me trouble; he’s an incorrigible mischief-maker, but without any ill intent.”
“He has his endearing qualities.”
“It’s exactly like how Americans are blunt about money.”
“It is an end in itself.”
“There’s nothing as honest as actions that are ends in themselves, and nothing as free of affectation as honesty—so all of us in this era, educated under such grade-school moralizing that we can’t express ourselves honestly in anything, end up hopelessly affected.”

The logic up to this point had been clear even to Sanshirō. Yet what pressed upon him now wasn't some grand philosophical principle. He desperately needed to know whether this particular person involved with him was being genuine. Once more he turned over Mineko's conduct toward him in his mind. But whether her mannerisms were affected or sincere remained nearly impossible to determine. Sanshirō started wondering if his own perceptions might be abnormally obtuse compared to others'.

7-4

At that moment, Professor Hirota suddenly went “Hmm,” as though he had recalled something.

“Hmm, there’s another one.”
“Since entering this twentieth century, strange things have become fashionable.”
“It’s a convoluted approach—using egoistic motives to fill an altruistic framework. Have you encountered such people?”

“What do you mean?”

“To put it another way—performing hypocrisy through ostentatious vice.”
“You still don’t grasp it, do you?”
“I must be explaining this poorly. Consider the hypocrites of old.”
“Their foremost desire was to be perceived favorably.”
“But now it’s reversed—they deliberately act hypocritically to wound others’ feelings.”
“Whether viewed laterally or directly, they orchestrate matters so the recipient perceives nothing but hypocrisy.”
“Naturally, this leaves the recipient discomfited.”
“Thus the perpetrator achieves their aim.”
“The hallmark of these ostentatious vice practitioners lies in their candid attempt to pass hypocrisy as hypocrisy itself, while maintaining impeccably virtuous conduct outwardly—there you have it, a sort of dual entity.”
“Those adept at wielding this method seem to have proliferated greatly of late.”
“For hyper-sensitive denizens of civilization seeking to adopt ostentatious vice with maximum elegance, this proves the optimal method.”
“The barbaric notion that bloodshed is required for murder—mark my words—will gradually become obsolete.”

Professor Hirota’s manner of speaking resembled that of a guide explaining an ancient battlefield; he had positioned himself at a vantage point from which to observe reality from afar. This gave it a distinctly optimistic quality. It evoked the same sensation one might feel when listening to a lecture in a classroom. Yet Sanshirō responded. For Mineko occupied his thoughts entirely, allowing him to immediately apply this theory. Sanshirō placed this standard in his mind and attempted to measure all of Mineko against it. However, vast territories remained beyond measurement. Professor Hirota closed his mouth and, as was his custom, began exhaling philosophical smoke through his nose.

Footsteps were heard at the entrance.
Without even asking to be shown in, he came down the corridor and entered.
Suddenly, Yojirō was sitting at the entrance to the study,

“Mr. Haraguchi has arrived.”
He had omitted the customary greeting of “I just returned.” Perhaps he had left it out deliberately.
To Sanshirō, he gave a respectful nod and immediately left.

Passing by Yojirō at the threshold, Mr. Haraguchi entered.
Mr. Haraguchi was a portly man with a French-style mustache and a close-cropped head.
He appeared two or three years older than Mr. Nonomiya.
He was wearing a far more splendid kimono than Professor Hirota.

“Hey, long time no see. Sasaki’s been at my place until now, you see.” “We ate meals together and such—then I was finally dragged out…” he said in a rather cheerful tone. His voice naturally brightened the mood of those nearby. From the moment he heard the name Haraguchi, Sanshirō had mostly assumed he was that painter. Even so, Yojirō was quite the socialite. Since he was acquainted with nearly all the notable seniors, Sanshirō was impressed by how remarkable this was and stiffened up. Sanshirō became stiff when in front of his elders. He interpreted this as a result of his Kyushu-style education.

Soon, the host introduced him to Haraguchi.
Sanshirō bowed politely.
The other man returned a slight nod.
Sanshirō then remained silent and listened to their conversation.

Mr. Haraguchi said he would first settle the business matter and requested that they attend a meeting to be held soon.
"We don’t intend to create anything as grand as an official membership, but since we’ll limit those notified to just a small number—writers, artists, university professors, and the like—there should be no issues.
Moreover, since most are acquaintances among us, formalities are entirely unnecessary.
The sole purpose is for a large gathering to have dinner.
Then we engage in beneficial literary and artistic discussions.
That’s about the gist of it."

Professor Hirota simply said, “Let’s go.”
That settled the matter.
The matter was settled with that, but the subsequent conversation between Mr. Haraguchi and Professor Hirota proved most interesting.

Chapter 7, Section 5

When Professor Hirota asked Mr. Haraguchi, “What have you been up to lately?” Mr. Haraguchi said the following.

“I’m still practicing Ichiyūbushi.”
“I’ve already learned about five pieces.”
“There are some truly fascinating ones like Hanamomiji Yoshiwara Hakkei and Koine Hanbee Karasaki Shinjuu.”
“Why don’t you give it a try too?”
“Though mind you, they say you shouldn’t sing too loudly.”
“Apparently it was originally meant for four-and-a-half-mat rooms.”
“But look how loud my voice is!”
“And the melodic phrasing is so intricate—I just can’t get it right.”
“I’ll perform one for you next time—do come listen.”

Professor Hirota laughed. Then Mr. Haraguchi continued speaking in this manner:

“Even I can manage somewhat, but when it comes to Satomi Kyōsuke, he’s utterly hopeless. I don’t know what it is about him. Yet his sister is so skillful! The other day, he finally gave up and declared he’d quit singing altogether. Then when he said he wanted to learn an instrument instead, someone actually suggested he take up lively festival music! We roared with laughter!”

“Is that truly so?”

“It certainly is.
“In fact, Satomi told me, ‘If you do it, it’s fine,’ so there you have it.
“Apparently, that lively festival music has eight different ways of being played.”

“What if you tried it? Even an ordinary person could manage that.”

“No—I detest festival music. I’d rather attempt drumming instead. When you hear the drum’s resonance, it utterly dissolves any awareness of the twentieth century—marvelous, isn’t it? Merely pondering how such carefree simplicity persists in this age becomes its own potent antidote. However leisurely I may be, capturing a drum’s essence in paint remains beyond me.”

“You’re not making any effort to paint it, are you?”

“I can’t paint it, you see.”
“Can anyone in Tokyo today produce a leisurely painting?”
“Though I suppose it’s not limited to paintings.”
“Speaking of paintings—the other day I went to the university athletic meet intending to draw caricatures of Satomi and Miss Nonomiya’s sister, but they ended up getting away from me.”
“I’m thinking of painting a proper portrait this time and perhaps submitting it to an exhibition.”

“Whose?”

“Satomi’s younger sister’s.”
“Ordinary Japanese women’s faces all follow Utamaro-esque styles that don’t translate well onto Western canvases, but that woman and Mr. Nonomiya work.”
“Both would make proper paintings.”
“I’ve been considering trying to capture her life-sized—holding an uchiwa fan with a grove behind her as she faces toward the light.”
“Western fans feel affected and wrong, but Japanese uchiwa have an intriguing freshness, don’t you think?”
“At any rate, I must act quickly.”
“If she were to marry soon, I might lose this chance to compose it freely.”

Sanshirō listened to Haraguchi’s words with great interest. The composition of Mineko holding an uchiwa fan particularly moved him profoundly. He felt almost convinced some mysterious karmic thread connected them. Then Professor Hirota bluntly interjected, “There’s nothing particularly interesting about that composition.”

“But it’s what the person herself wanted,” Haraguchi replied. “When she asked how holding the uchiwa would look, I told her it’d make an intriguing effect and agreed to it. It’s not a poor composition at all. Though much depends on execution.”

"If you paint her too beautifully, there'll be so many marriage proposals it'll be troublesome."

"Ha ha ha! Then I'll just paint her moderately."
"Speaking of marriage, that woman has reached marrying age."
"What do you think? Isn't there a good prospect somewhere?"
"I've been asked by the Satomi family too, but—"

"Why don't you marry her?"

“Me? If I’m acceptable, I’ll take her, but I just don’t trust that woman.”

“Why?”

“When Mr. Haraguchi went abroad, he made this big show of stockpiling katsuobushi to hole up in his Paris lodgings—but the moment he arrived, they say he completely changed his tune. People laugh about it—it’s quite the predicament.”
“You probably heard this from my brother or someone.”

“She won’t go anywhere unless it’s where she wants to go.”
“It’s no use trying to persuade her.”
“She should stay single until she finds someone she likes.”

“Truly Western-style, isn’t it. Admittedly, all women will go that way from now on, so perhaps that’s acceptable.”

From there, a long discussion about painting unfolded between them.
Sanshirō marveled at how Professor Hirota knew so many Western painters' names.
As he looked for his geta at the back entrance while leaving, the professor came to the foot of the stairs and called out, "Hey Yojirō, come down here a moment."

7-6

It was cold outside.
The sky stretched high and clear, so intensely that one might wonder from where the dew could fall.
When a hand touched the kimono, only the contacted spot turned cold.
After turning and winding through a little-traveled alleyway two or three times, he suddenly came upon a street fortune-teller.
They had lit a large round lantern that turned their lower half crimson.
Sanshirō wanted to try buying a fortune-telling slip.
However, he did not dare purchase one.
He passed by so close that the shoulder of his haori brushed against the cedar fence while avoiding the red lantern.
After some time, passing diagonally through a dark area, he emerged onto Oiwake-dōri Avenue.
At the corner stood a soba shop.
Sanshirō now resolutely stepped through the shop curtain.
It was to drink a little sake.

There were three high school students.
They remarked that recently, more schoolteachers had taken to eating soba for lunch.
When the noon cannon fired, soba shop carriers would pile steamers and ingredients mountain-high on their shoulders and rush through the school gates.
They speculated this shop must be making a killing.
There was talk about some teacher who ate kamatama udon even in summer—they wondered what sort of person he could be.
They concluded he probably had stomach trouble.
They discussed all manner of things.
Teachers' names were generally uttered with contempt.
One of them brought up Hirota-san.
Then they launched into debating why Hirota-san remained unmarried.
The prevailing theory held that since a female nude painting hung at his place, he must dislike women.
Though since it depicted a Westerner, they conceded it might not count.
Another theory suggested he might specifically dislike Japanese women.
A countertheory emerged: no—it must stem from a failed romance.
Someone even asked if heartbreak had turned him into such an eccentric.
Yet another pressed whether rumors of a young beauty visiting him were true.

As he kept listening, it ultimately became established that Professor Hirota was a remarkable man.
Sanshirō himself didn't fully understand why he was considered remarkable, but regardless, all three students had read Yojirō's essay "The Great Darkness."
In fact, they said that after actually reading it, they had suddenly taken a liking to Mr. Hirota.
They would sometimes quote aphorisms from "The Great Darkness."
And they enthusiastically praised Yojirō's writing.
They wondered who this "Bulbil" could be.
In any case, all three agreed he must have been a man who knew Mr. Hirota very well.

Sanshirō, sitting nearby, was genuinely impressed.
Yojirō was indeed the one who had written "The Great Darkness."
Though Yojirō himself had admitted the poor sales of literary reviews, Sanshirō had doubted what purpose there could be in pompously touting his so-called grand thesis beyond satisfying vanity; but seeing this, he realized the power of print was truly formidable.
As Yojirō insisted, failing to speak even a single word or half-phrase would be a loss.
When he realized people's reputations could rise or fall from such trivial circumstances, the responsibility of wielding a pen grew so terrifying that Sanshirō left the soba shop.

When he returned to his lodging, the sake had already worn off.
He felt unbearably listless for some reason.
When he sat down at his desk and began to space out, the maid came up from downstairs with a kettle of hot water and, in the process, left a sealed letter.
It was another letter from his mother.
Sanshirō immediately opened it.
Today he found it exceedingly pleasant to see his mother’s handwriting.

The letter was quite long but contained nothing of particular note.
He was especially relieved that there was not a single mention of Miwata no Okata.
However, there was a strange piece of advice within it.

“You’ve had no courage since you were a child—it’s unbearable. Having no courage is a great disadvantage—you can’t imagine how much trouble it causes during exams and such. Takashi-san from Okitsu excels academically and works as a middle school teacher, but every time he takes certification exams, his body trembles so badly he can’t perform well—it’s pitiful how his salary still hasn’t increased. He asked a friend who was a medical scholar to make him pills to stop the trembling, took them before the exam, but apparently still trembled. Since your trembling doesn’t seem as severe as Takashi’s, you should have a Tokyo doctor prepare some medicine to fortify your courage for daily use and try taking it. There’s no reason it shouldn’t work.”

Sanshirō thought it utterly absurd.
Yet within that absurdity, he discovered profound consolation.
He couldn’t help but admire how genuinely kind his mother was.
That night, he labored until nearly one o'clock composing a lengthy reply to her.
Within it lay one particular line: Tokyo was not much of an interesting place.

8-1

The circumstances under which Sanshirō lent money to Yojirō were as follows.

The other night, around nine o’clock, Yojirō suddenly came through the rain and announced from the very start that he was in a terrible bind. When Sanshirō looked at him, his complexion was uncharacteristically pale. At first, Sanshirō thought it was simply from being exposed too long to the cold air dampened by autumn rain, but when Yojirō sat down and he looked closer, the problem wasn’t just his complexion. He was uncharacteristically dejected. When Sanshirō asked, “Are you feeling unwell?” Yojirō blinked his deer-like eyes twice and replied as follows.

“Actually, I lost the money—I’m in a real bind.”

At this, he assumed a slightly worried expression and blew two or three puffs of tobacco smoke through his nose. Sanshirō couldn’t simply remain silent and wait. When he methodically asked what kind of money it was and where it had been lost, he quickly grasped the situation.

Yojirō had only restrained himself long enough to expel those two or three smoke puffs through his nostrils; afterward, he recounted the entire story smoothly and without hesitation.

The money Yojirō lost totaled twenty yen—and it belonged to someone else. Last year, when Professor Hirota had rented his previous residence, he found himself short on funds for the three-month deposit and had temporarily borrowed the difference from Mr. Nonomiya.

However, this money had apparently been specifically sent by Mr. Nonomiya’s father back home because he needed to purchase a violin for his sister. Thus, while not urgently required today, the longer repayment was delayed, the more Yoshiko would struggle.

Yoshiko still hasn’t bought that violin to this day—all because Professor Hirota hasn’t repaid the debt.

The professor would have settled it long ago if possible, but being a man who never earned a single sen beyond his monthly salary—and having no surplus funds whatsoever—he had simply let matters stand.

However, this summer when he undertook the task of reviewing high school entrance exam papers, he finally received his stipend of sixty yen only recently.

With this, he could at last fulfill his obligation—and Yojirō was charged with delivering the payment.

“I’m sorry—it’s because I lost the money,” Yojirō said. He actually did look genuinely remorseful. When asked where he had dropped it, he replied, “It’s not that I dropped it.” “I bought several horse race tickets and ended up losing all the money,” he explained. Sanshirō was utterly dumbfounded by this. It had gone so far beyond mere recklessness that he didn’t even feel like offering an opinion. Moreover, the man himself was dejected. When comparing this to his usual animated state, one could only think there were two Yojirōs. The contrast was too stark. So a combination of the comical and the pitiable came over Sanshirō. Sanshirō laughed. Then Yojirō also laughed.

“Well, I suppose it’ll work out somehow,” he said.

“Does the Professor still not know?” he asked.

“He still doesn’t know.”

“Does Mr. Nonomiya...”

“Of course he still doesn’t know.”

“When did you receive the money?”

“Since I received it at the start of this month, today makes exactly two weeks.”

“When did you buy the horse race tickets?”

“The very next day after I received it.”

“Have you left it untouched from then until today?”

“I tried everything I could, but since nothing worked out, there’s nothing to be done. If there’s no other way, I’ll just leave it as is until the end of this month.”

“Do you have any prospect of managing it by the end of this month?”

“Something might come through from the Literary Review Company.”

Sanshirō stood up and opened the desk drawer. He peered into the letter from his mother that had just arrived the day before,

“The money is here. This month, it was sent early from home,” he said.
Yojirō,

“Much obliged. Dear Ogawa-kun,” he suddenly declared in a buoyant voice, adopting the manner of a rakugo storyteller.

The two of them braved the rain past ten o'clock, emerged onto Oiwake-dōri, and entered a soba shop on the corner.
It was at this time that Sanshirō came to drink sake at a soba shop.
That evening, both of them drank merrily.
Yojirō paid the bill.
Yojirō was not the sort of man to let others pay.

8-2

From then until today, Yojirō had not returned the money.
Sanshirō, being honest, grew concerned about settling his lodging fees.
Though he refrained from pressing for repayment—thinking it would suffice if Yojirō could somehow manage it—the days passed until the month's end drew near.
Only a day or two remained.
The notion that he might simply defer payment if things went wrong had not yet occurred to Sanshirō.
He certainly didn't trust Yojirō enough to believe he would absolutely bring the money, but he thought there must at least be some goodwill in him to try and manage it somehow.
According to Professor Hirota's assessment, Yojirō's mind was like shallow water constantly shifting; but if he shifted so recklessly that he forgot his responsibilities, that would pose a problem.
Surely it wouldn't come to that.

Sanshirō was gazing out at the street from the second-floor window. Then from across the way, Yojirō came hurrying over. Arriving right beneath the window, he looked up and called out, "Hey, you there?" Sanshirō looked down at Yojirō from above and said, "Yeah, I'm here." Once this idiotic exchange had been traded between them from above and below, Sanshirō withdrew his head back into the room. Yojirō clattered up the stairs.

"You haven't been waiting, have you? Since it's you, I figured you'd be worried about the lodging bill—went to a lot of trouble over it." "Ridiculous."

“Did they give you the manuscript fee from the Literary Review?”

“Manuscript fee? They’ve already taken all the manuscript fees.”

“But you said the other day you’d collect it by the end of the month, didn’t you?”

“Is that so? That must be a misunderstanding. There’s not a single penny left to collect.”

“That’s strange... But you clearly said that!”

“Well, I meant that I’d get an advance. But they just won’t lend it. They think if they lend it to me, I won’t pay it back. Outrageous! It’s just a mere twenty yen. No matter how much I write about grand darkness, they still don’t trust me. How tedious. I'm sick of it all.”

“So you couldn’t get the money?”

“No—I got it sorted out elsewhere.
“I thought you’d be in trouble.”

“I see.
“That’s unfortunate.”

“But a problem came up.”
“The money isn’t here.”
“You’re the one who’s gotta go get it.”

“Where?”

“Actually, since the literary review payment wasn’t enough, I went around to two or three places like Haraguchi’s, but everywhere was tight at the end of the month.”
“Then finally, I went to Satomi’s place—you know Satomi, right?”
“Satomi Kyōsuke.”
“He’s a Bachelor of Laws.”
“He’s Miss Mineko’s brother.”
“When I went there, they were out again, so I still couldn’t get anywhere.”
“Meanwhile, I got hungry and walking became a hassle, so I finally met Miss Mineko and talked to her.”

“Isn’t Mr. Nonomiya’s sister there?”

“Well, it’s a little past noon—she’s likely at school now.”
“Besides, it’s the parlor—it makes no difference even if she were present.”

“I see.”

“So Miss Mineko agreed to handle it—said she’d take care of things.”

“Does that woman actually have money of her own?”

“How should I know?”
“But rest assured—she accepted responsibility.”
“She’s an odd one—still young yet fond of playing the elder sister role—so once she commits, you needn’t fret.”
“No cause for concern.”
“As long as the request was properly made.”
“But then at the last moment she declares, ‘The money’s here, but I can’t give it to you’—what a shock!”
“When I asked ‘Don’t you trust me?’, she just laughed and said ‘Indeed I don’t.’”
“Utterly insufferable.”
“So I pressed—‘Shall I send Ogawa instead?’—and she replies ‘Yes, I’ll personally deliver it to Mr. Ogawa.’”
“Let her have her way.”
“Can you go collect it?”

“If I don’t go get it, I’ll have to send a telegram home or something, right?”

“The telegram can wait.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Even you can go get it, can’t you?”

“I can go.”

With this, the matter of twenty yen was finally settled.

When that was settled, Yojirō immediately began reporting on the matter concerning Professor Hirota.

8-3

The campaign was steadily progressing.
Whenever he had free time, he would go to the lodging house and consult with each person individually.
Consultations had to be conducted individually.
When a large group gathered, each person tried to assert their own presence and was all too quick to raise objections.
Otherwise, they felt their existence had been neglected and acted coldly from the start.
Consultations had to absolutely be limited to one person at a time.
On the other hand, it required time.
It also required money.
If they let that trouble them, they couldn’t run a campaign.
He also decided not to mention Professor Hirota’s name too much during consultations.
If it was perceived not as a consultation for our sake but as one for Professor Hirota’s, things wouldn’t come together.

Yojirō was apparently advancing the campaign using this method.
So far, things went smoothly.
The discussion reached the point where they wanted to have Japanese people included, since it wasn’t permissible with Westerners alone.
From this point onward, it was simply a matter of gathering once again, selecting committee members, and sending them to state our hopes to the dean or the president.
Of course, since the gathering itself was merely a formality, it could be omitted.
The students who should be on the committee were more or less identified.
Since they were all people who sympathized with Professor Hirota, depending on how the negotiations went, we might bring up his name to the authorities ourselves...

As he listened, it seemed as though Yojirō alone could manage the entire realm as he pleased.
Sanshirō was quite impressed by Yojirō’s resourcefulness.
Yojirō then began explaining how he had brought Mr. Haraguchi to the professor’s place the other evening.

“That evening, Mr. Haraguchi had suggested to Professor Hirota that he should attend the literary society gathering, right?” he said.
Sanshirō certainly remembered.
According to Yojirō’s account, that too had apparently been something he himself initiated.
There were various reasons for this, but first and foremost—to put it simply—among those members were influential professors from the university’s humanities department.
Facilitating contact between that man and Professor Hirota had been extremely advantageous for the professor at this juncture.
Because the professor was an eccentric, he did not seek to associate with anyone.
However, if they created suitable opportunities on their end and facilitated contact, he would engage with others in his own eccentric way…

“I had no idea there was such a meaning to it.”
“So you’re saying you’re the organizer, but when the time comes to hold the meeting, will all those distinguished people really gather just by sending out notices under your name?”

Yojirō looked gravely at Sanshirō for some time before finally smiling wryly and turning aside.

"Don't spout nonsense.
'Organizer' doesn't mean the public-facing one.
I'm just the one who devised this whole meeting.
Meaning I convinced Mr. Haraguchi and set everything up so he'd manage the arrangements."

"I see."

"That 'I see' reeks of country bumpkin.
Anyway, you ought to attend that gathering.
It should be happening soon..."

"There's no use going where nothing but grand personages appear.
I'll decline."

“There you go spouting that country bumpkin talk again. The only difference between important people and unimportant people is the order in which they stuck their heads out into society. What’s the big deal about those people? Even if you call them Ph.D.s or bachelors, once you meet and talk to them, they’re nothing special. In the first place, they don’t think they’re all that great themselves. You should definitely attend. Because it’s for your future.”

“Where will it be held?”

“It will probably be at Seiyōken in Ueno.”

“I’ve never been to a place like that. They probably charge a high fee.”

“Well, probably around two yen.”
“You don’t need to worry about things like the fee.”
“If you don’t have it, I’ll cover it for you.”

Sanshirō suddenly recalled the matter of the twenty yen.
Yet, strangely, he didn’t find it amusing.
Yojirō then suggested going to eat tempura at some place in Ginza.
He said he had the money.
He was a mysterious man.
Even Sanshirō, who usually went along with whatever was suggested, turned down the offer.
Instead, they went out for a walk together.
On their way back, they stopped by Okano, where Yojirō bought a large quantity of chestnut manjū.
Saying he would take these as a gift for the professor, he clutched the bag and headed home.

8-4

That evening, Sanshirō thought about Yojirō’s character.
He wondered if staying in Tokyo for a long time made one become like that.
Then he considered going to Satomi to borrow money.
The fact that he now had a reason to go to Mineko’s place made him feel something like happiness.
However, lowering his head to borrow money was no easy matter.
Sanshirō was a man who had never once borrowed money from another person from the day he was born until now.
Moreover, the person offering to lend it was a young woman.
She was not an independent person.
Even if the money were freely available, if he were to borrow funds kept secret without her brother's approval—as the borrower—he might end up causing trouble later for the lender.
Or perhaps—since it was that woman—he thought it might have been arranged from the start in a way that would cause no trouble.
He would just go meet her.
If after meeting her borrowing seemed unappealing he could decline delay paying his lodging house for a while and have money sent from home—that would settle it.
Having considered practical matters up to this point he drew a line under them.
After that thoughts of Mineko began drifting haphazardly through his mind.
He let his imagination run wild adding and removing elements of Mineko’s face hands collar obi and kimono.
Especially when imagining meeting her tomorrow—what attitude she might take what she might say—the scene split into ten twenty different variations each emerging in its own way.
Sanshirō had always been this sort of man.
When making appointments for business matters he would only imagine how others might behave.
He never considered making such expressions saying such things or using such tones himself.
Moreover once meetings concluded he would inevitably start thinking about those aspects afterward.

And then he would regret it.

Especially tonight, there was no room left for him to imagine himself.
Sanshirō had been suspecting Mineko for some time now.
Yet he kept suspecting without making any progress.
That being said, since there was not a single incident he could confront her about face-to-face, something like a swift decisive resolution lay beyond imagining.
If Sanshirō needed resolution for his peace of mind, the only way was to seize an opportunity to interact with Mineko and grant himself a suitable final judgment based on her demeanor.
Tomorrow’s meeting was an indispensable element for this verdict.
Therefore he imagined all sorts of things about her.
However no matter how he imagined it, only scenes convenient for himself came to mind.
And yet in reality it remained highly doubtful.
It felt exactly like taking a beautiful photograph of something dirty and gazing at it.
As a photograph it was undeniably true to its form, yet reality’s filthiness stood equally indisputable—these two things that ought to match never aligned.

Finally, he thought of something pleasant.
Mineko had said she would lend money to Yojirō.
But she had also said she wouldn't give it to Yojirō.
In truth, Yojirō might well be untrustworthy with money.
Yet it remained doubtful whether that was why Mineko refused to hand it over.
If her reason lay elsewhere, this would become an exceedingly obliging matter for me.
The mere act of lending the money would itself constitute sufficient kindness.
That she wanted to meet him personally to deliver it—Sanshirō had been feeling rather self-satisfied up to this point, but suddenly,

He suddenly thought, “So she really is mocking me after all,” and turned red.
If someone were to ask why that woman mocked him, Sanshirō would likely have been unable to answer.
If forced to consider it, he might have concluded she was simply a woman who took interest in mockery itself.
He certainly could not have considered it as punishment for his own vanity.
——Sanshirō believed Mineko had made him conceited.

8-5

The next day, fortunately two teachers were absent, and afternoon classes had been canceled.
Finding it bothersome to return to his lodgings, he prepared a simple meal at a restaurant along the way and went to Mineko’s house.
He had passed by the front many times before.
However, this was his first time entering.
On the pillar of the tile-roofed gate was a nameplate bearing the name Satomi Kyōsuke.
Every time Sanshirō passed by this place, he wondered what sort of man Satomi Kyōsuke was.
He had never met him.
The gate was closed.
When entering through the side gate, the distance to the main entrance proved unexpectedly short.
Rectangular granite stones lay scattered at intervals.
The entrance was tightly shut with a narrow, elegant lattice.
He pressed the doorbell.
When he asked the maid who answered, “Is Miss Mineko at home?” Sanshirō felt a strange, almost bashful sensation at his own words.
He had never before inquired about a young woman’s presence at another household’s entrance.
He felt it highly improper to ask.
The maid, however, remained unexpectedly earnest.
Moreover, she was deferential.
After going inside once more then returning, she bowed politely and said “Please,” so he followed her into the parlor.
It was a Western-style room with heavy drapes.
It felt slightly dim.

The maid once again said, “Please wait a moment…” and left.
Sanshirō took a seat in the quiet room.
In the front wall was a small fireplace.
The top was a long horizontal mirror with two candlesticks before it.
Sanshirō looked at his face reflected between the candlesticks and sat back down.

Then from deep within came the sound of a violin.
It vanished instantly as though carried off by the wind.
Sanshirō felt regretful.
Leaning against the thick chair back, he strained his ears hoping for more playing—but the sound ended there.
Within about a minute he forgot about the violin.
He gazed at the mirror and candlesticks opposite.
There was an oddly Western atmosphere.
Then came an association with Catholicism.
Sanshirō didn’t understand why Catholicism came to mind.
At that moment the violin sounded again.
This time high and low notes rang out abruptly two or three times.
Then stopped completely.
Sanshirō knew nothing of Western music.
Yet these notes couldn’t be taken as part of any coherent piece.
They were merely sounded.

The rudeness of simply playing it suited Sanshirō's mood perfectly.
Suddenly, two or three grains fell from the sky—like haphazard hail.

When Sanshirō shifted his half-numbed eyes to the mirror, Mineko was already standing there within the glass.
The door he thought the maid had closed was open.
Mineko, who had pushed aside the curtain hanging behind the door with one hand, was clearly reflected from the chest up.
Mineko saw Sanshirō in the mirror.
Sanshirō saw Mineko in the mirror.
Mineko smiled softly.

“Please come in.”

The woman's voice was heard afterward.
Sanshirō had to turn around.
The woman and the man immediately looked at each other.
At that moment, the woman adjusted her wide-parted hair slightly forward and bowed.
Her attitude was so familiar that a bow seemed unnecessary.
The man, on the other hand, slightly raised himself from his chair and bowed his head.
The woman, feigning ignorance, turned around to position the mirror behind her back and sat down directly facing Sanshirō.

“I’ve finally gotten you to come in.”

It was the same familiar tone.
To Sanshirō, this single phrase sounded exceedingly pleasant.
The woman was wearing shimmering silk.
Judging from how she had made him wait quite some time earlier, she might have deliberately changed into something elegant before coming out to the parlor.
There she sat composedly.
In her figure—eyes and mouth bearing a smile as she wordlessly watched Sanshirō—the man felt rather a sweet anguish.
The moment the woman settled into her seat arose in him an unbearable sensation of being intently observed.
Sanshirō immediately opened his mouth.
It was nearly convulsive.

“Sasaki…”

Eight-six

“Mr. Sasaki had you come here, I suppose,” she said, revealing her usual white teeth.
Behind the woman, the previous candlesticks were lined up on both sides of the fireplace mantel.
It was an intricately shaped stand crafted in gold.
That this was a candlestick holder had been merely Sanshirō’s presumptuous judgment; in reality, its true nature remained unclear.
Behind this enigmatic candlestick holder stood a clear mirror.
The light had been blocked by the thick window drapes and could not fully enter.
Moreover, the weather was cloudy.
In that moment, Sanshirō saw Mineko’s white teeth.

“Sasaki came.”

“What did he say to get you to come here?”

“He came and told me to go to your place.”

“That’s right—so that’s why you came here?” she deliberately inquired.

“Uh-huh,” he said，hesitating slightly.
After a moment，he answered，“Well，that’s right.”
The woman completely hid her teeth.
She quietly rose from her seat，went to the window，and began looking outside.

“It’s clouded over．It must be cold outside.”

“No，it’s surprisingly warm．There’s no wind at all.”

“I see，” she said as she returned to her seat.

“Actually，Sasaki’s money…” Sanshirō began．

“I know,” she cut him off mid-sentence.
Sanshirō also fell silent.
Then,

“How did you lose it?” she asked.

“He bought horserace tickets.”

“Oh,” said the woman.
Despite her exclamation of “Oh,” her face showed no surprise.
Instead, she was smiling.
After a moment, she added, “That’s not good, is it?”
Sanshirō did not answer.

“Isn’t hitting with horserace tickets more difficult than hitting someone’s heart? You’re such a carefree person that you won’t even try to strike a heart that comes with an index.”

“I didn’t buy the horserace tickets.”

“Oh. Who bought them?”

“It was Sasaki who bought them.”

The woman suddenly burst into laughter.
Sanshirō also became amused.

“So you didn’t actually need the money after all. How absurd!”

“It’s me who needs it.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“But that’s absurd.”

“So I don’t need to borrow it.”

“Why? Do you find it disagreeable?”

“It’s not that I mind, but borrowing from you without informing your brother wouldn’t be proper.”

“Why? But my brother knows about it.”

“Is that so? Then I can borrow it—but I don’t have to borrow it either. If I just tell my family, it’ll come in about a week.”

“If it’s a bother, I won’t press further…”

Mineko suddenly turned cold.
The presence that had been beside him until now felt about a hundred meters away.
Sanshirō thought he should have borrowed it after all.
But there was nothing to be done now.
He stared at the candlestick, maintaining his composure.
Sanshirō was not a man to voluntarily try to appease others.
The woman did not approach again after distancing herself.
After a while, he stood up again.
He peered through the window at the outdoors,

“It doesn’t look like it’s going to rain,” she said.
Sanshirō replied in the same tone, “It doesn’t look like it’s going to rain.”

“If it doesn’t rain, perhaps I’ll come out for a bit,” she said, still standing by the window.
Sanshirō interpreted this to mean she was telling him to leave.
Changing into the shimmering silk had not been for his sake.

“Let’s go home now,” he said, standing up.
Mineko came to see him off to the entrance.
As he stepped down to the entryway and was putting on his shoes, Mineko called from above,

“Let me accompany you that far.”
“Is that alright?” she said.
While tying his shoelaces, Sanshirō replied, “Yes, whatever.”
The woman had, unnoticed, descended to the earthen entryway.
While descending, she brought her mouth close to Sanshirō’s ear and whispered, “Are you cross with me?”
Just then, the maid came hurrying out to see them off, looking flustered.

8.7

The two had walked about half a chō in silence.
All the while, Sanshirō kept thinking about Mineko.
This woman must have been raised willfully.
In her household, she must have enjoyed more freedom than ordinary women and behaved exactly as she pleased in all matters.
This too made it clear that she walked through the streets with him without seeking anyone’s permission.
With elderly parents absent and a young brother taking a laissez-faire approach, she could act this way; but if this were the countryside, it would surely be problematic.
If someone were to tell this woman to live a life like Miss Okata of Miwata’s, he wondered what she would do.
In Tokyo—unlike the countryside where everything remained private—all matters lay exposed to public view; perhaps women here were generally like this, though when imagined from afar, they still seemed somewhat more old-fashioned.
Then he realized that Yojirō’s characterization of Mineko as Ibsen-esque was indeed apt.
Was it merely her disregard for conventional etiquette that made her Ibsen-esque, or did that quality extend even to the thoughts at her core?
He couldn’t tell.

Eventually, they emerged onto Hongō Street.
Though walking together, the two walking side by side had no idea where the other was headed.
By now, they had turned down about three side streets.
Each time they turned, their feet—as if by prior agreement—continued in silent unison toward the same direction.
On their way to the fourth-block corner of Hongō Street, the woman asked.

"Where are you heading?"

"Where are you going?"

The two briefly exchanged glances.
Sanshirō was being utterly serious.
The woman could no longer contain herself and once again revealed her white teeth.

“Let’s go in together.”

The two turned at the fourth-block corner toward the cutting.
After walking about fifty meters, there was a large Western-style building on the right.
Mineko stopped before it.
From between her obi, she took out a thin notebook and a seal.

“Please,” she said.

“What is it?”

“Use this to withdraw the money.”

Sanshirō reached out and took the bankbook.
In its center was printed “Small Current Account Bankbook,” with “Miss Satomi Mineko” written along the side.
He stood holding the bankbook and seal while looking at her face.

“Thirty yen,” she stated.
Her tone suggested she was addressing someone who withdrew money daily.
Fortunately, Sanshirō had often used such bankbooks to make trips to Toyosu back home.
He climbed the stone steps at once, opened the door, and entered the bank.
After handing over the bankbook and seal to the clerk and receiving the specified amount, he emerged to find Mineko no longer waiting.
She had already walked about twenty ken toward the cutting.
Sanshirō rushed to catch up.
As he reached into his inner pocket to hand her what he’d received, Mineko—

“Have you seen the Tanseikai exhibition?” she asked.

“I haven’t seen it yet.”

“I received two invitation tickets but simply haven’t had the time to go yet. Shall we go see it?”

“We could go.”

“Let’s go.”
“Since it will close soon.”
“I must see it at least once beforehand—or I won't settle matters with Mr.Haraguchi.”
“Did Mr.Haraguchi give you those invitation tickets?”

“Yes. Do you know Mr. Haraguchi?”

“I met him once at Professor Hirota’s.”

“He must be quite interesting. I hear he’s practicing foolish music.”

“The other day he said he wanted to practice the drum. From that—”

“From that...?”

“From that... he mentioned something about painting your portrait. Is that true?”

“Yes, I’m a high-class model,” she said.
The man was constitutionally incapable of saying anything more clever than this.
And so he fell silent.
It seemed the woman had wanted him to say something.

Hachi no Hachi

Sanshirō reached into his inner pocket again.
He took out the bankbook and seal and handed them to the woman.
The money should have been placed between the pages of the bankbook.
However, the woman—

“And the money?” she said.
When she looked, it wasn’t there.
Sanshirō searched the clothing pouch again.
From within, he snatched out the crumpled banknotes.
The woman did not extend her hand.

“Please keep it for me,” she said.
Sanshirō felt somewhat troubled.
Yet he was not one to argue in such situations.
Moreover, being on a public street made him all the more reserved.
He reluctantly returned the bills he had just clutched to his pocket, thinking her a peculiar woman.

Many students were passing by.
Whenever they passed each other, they invariably looked at the two.
Some among them fixed their gaze from afar.
To Sanshirō, the road until reaching Ikenohata felt exceedingly long.
Still, he felt no desire to take the streetcar.
Both of them walked slowly onward.
They arrived at the venue just before three o'clock.
Strange signs were posted.
Both the characters spelling "Tanseikai" and the designs surrounding them appeared entirely novel to Sanshirō's eyes.
Yet their newness—of a kind unseen in Kumamoto—struck him as rather peculiar.
The interior was still more so.
To Sanshirō’s eyes, it merely meant the distinction between oil paintings and watercolors appeared clear.

Even so, he had his likes and dislikes.
There were some he thought he wouldn't mind buying.
However, he could not discern their quality at all.
Consequently, having resigned himself from the outset to lacking discernment, Sanshirō kept his mouth shut.

When Mineko asked, "What do you think of this?" he responded, "Yes, that's so."
"Don't you find this interesting?" she pressed, to which he answered, "It does seem so."
His responses lacked any vigor.
He came across as either a fool incapable of conversation or a great man disdaining engagement.
If a fool, his charm lay in complete unaffectedness.
If great, his aloofness proved disagreeable.

There were many paintings by siblings who had traveled abroad for years. Both shared the same surname, with their works displayed side by side in one section. Mineko stopped before one of them.

“That’s Venice, isn’t it?”

Even Sanshirō could tell this much. Somehow it did look like Venice. He felt an urge to ride in a painted pleasure boat. Sanshirō had learned the characters for “painted pleasure boat” during his higher school days. Since then, he had grown fond of those characters. When he thought of painted pleasure boats, he felt one simply had to ride them with a woman. He gazed silently at the blue water, the tall houses lining both banks, the upside-down reflections of buildings, and the red fragments flickering within those shadows.

Then,

“It seems the brother’s are considerably better,” Mineko said.
This meaning did not make sense to Sanshirō.

“About the brother…”

“This one must be the brother’s work.”

“Whose?”

Mineko looked at Sanshirō with a puzzled expression.

“But that one over there is the younger sister’s work, so this one here must be the older brother’s, don’t you think?”

Sanshirō took a step back and looked over one side of the path they had just walked down.
Works depicting foreign landscapes in the same style were hung all around.

“Is that wrong?”

“You came in thinking it was just one person?”

“Uh-huh,” he said, standing there dazedly.
Before long, the two exchanged glances.
Then they both burst into laughter at once.
Mineko, feigning surprise, deliberately widened her eyes and lowered her voice to an even softer whisper,

“How absurd,” she said, walking briskly about six feet ahead.
Sanshirō remained standing where he was and began gazing once more at the Venice canal.
The woman who had gone ahead now turned around.
Sanshirō was not looking toward her.
She stopped mid-stride.
From across the way, she stared intently at Sanshirō's profile.

“Miss Satomi.”

Abruptly, someone called out in a loud voice.

8-9

Both Mineko and Sanshirō turned their faces simultaneously.
About six feet away from an entrance labeled "Office," Mr. Haraguchi stood.
Behind Mr. Haraguchi, slightly overlapping him, stood Mr. Nonomiya.
Mineko looked not at Haraguchi—who had been called—but at Mr. Nonomiya, who stood farther away than Haraguchi.
The moment she saw them, she took two or three steps back and came to Sanshirō’s side.
Just inconspicuously enough to avoid drawing attention from others, she brought her mouth close to Sanshirō’s ear.
And then she whispered something.
Sanshirō had no idea what she had said.
Before he could ask her to repeat herself, Mineko had turned back toward the two men.
She was already greeting them.
Mr. Nonomiya turned to Sanshirō,

“What a strange bunch we’ve got here,” he said.
As Sanshirō was about to respond, Mineko—
“It suits you, doesn’t it?”
Mr. Nonomiya said nothing.
He turned around sharply.
Behind him was a large painting about the size of a tatami mat.
That painting was a portrait.
And it was entirely black.
Neither the kimono nor the hat received enough light to be distinguished from the background; only the face stood out white.
The face was gaunt, the flesh of the cheeks sunken.

“It’s a copy, isn’t it?” Mr. Nonomiya said to Mr. Haraguchi.
Mr. Haraguchi was now earnestly talking to Mineko about something—the event was already closing.
The visitors had also decreased considerably.
At the start of the event, he had come to the office every day, but lately he rarely showed his face.
Today, for the first time in a while, he had business here and ended up bringing Mr. Nonomiya along.
He had managed to bring him along.
Once this exhibition closed, they would have to immediately begin preparing for next year, making them extremely busy.
They usually held it during the flower-viewing season, but next year they planned to start a bit earlier due to the members’ circumstances, so it would effectively be like holding two events in succession.
They would have to work frantically.
By then, he was determined to have Mineko’s portrait completed.
It must be a nuisance, but even on New Year’s Eve, he would have him finish painting it.

“Instead, I plan to hang it right here.”

Mr. Haraguchi turned toward the black painting for the first time at that moment.
Mr. Nonomiya had been vacantly gazing at the same painting all the while.

“What do you think?”
“Velázquez.”
“Though admittedly, it’s a copy.”
“And not even a particularly good one,” Mr. Haraguchi explained.
Mr. Nonomiya no longer had any need to speak.

“Who made the copy?” the woman asked.

“Mitsui.”
“Though Mitsui usually does better work.”
“I can’t say I’m impressed with this piece,” he said, stepping back to examine it.
“When copying someone who’d reached the pinnacle of technique like this, it never turns out well.”

Haraguchi tilted his head.
Sanshirō watched as Haraguchi tilted his head.

“Have you seen everything already?” the painter asked Mineko.
Mr. Haraguchi spoke to Mineko.

“Not yet.”

“How about it?
Let’s call it a day and all go out together.
I’ll treat you to tea at Seiyōken.
Actually, I have business there anyway—something about the event I need to discuss with the manager beforehand.
He’s an acquaintance of mine.
Now’s just the right time for tea.
If we wait any longer, it’ll be too late for tea but too early for dinner—an awkward in-between time.
What do you say?
Why don’t you all come along?”

Mineko looked at Sanshirō.
Sanshirō had an indifferent look on his face.
Nonomiya remained standing and did not involve himself.

“Since we’ve made the effort to come, let’s have a proper look around before leaving. Don’t you agree, Mr. Ogawa?”

Sanshirō said yes.

“Then let’s proceed like this. There’s an inner chamber further back here containing Mr. Fukami’s posthumous works. We’ll view those and then stop by Seiyōken on our return. They’ll go ahead and wait for us there.”

"Thank you."

"You mustn't view Mr. Fukami's watercolors as ordinary watercolors."
"They remain entirely Mr. Fukami's watercolors through and through."
"If you refrain from focusing on the actual objects and instead attune yourself to perceive Mr. Fukami's artistic spirit, truly intriguing qualities will reveal themselves," Haraguchi advised as he departed with Nonomiya.
Mineko expressed her thanks and watched their retreating figures.
Neither man turned back.

8.10

The woman turned and entered the separate room.
The man followed a step behind.
It was a dimly lit room lacking sufficient light.
Looking at Professor Fukami's posthumous works hung in a row along the narrow wall, they found nearly all were watercolors as Mr. Haraguchi had noted.
What struck Sanshirō most was how these watercolors used pale hues sparingly, lacked contrast, and were rendered so subtly they seemed to require sunlight to stand out.
Yet the brushstrokes showed no hesitation whatsoever.
They gave the impression of having been completed in a single fluid motion.
Even through the clearly visible pencil outlines beneath the paint, one could discern his stylish artistic approach.
When depicting human figures, they appeared slender and elongated, round like bamboo poles.
Here too hung a varnished piece.

“This one is also varnished, isn’t it?” said the woman as she approached.

"Yes," he said, though the varnish had suddenly made him remember.

"What did you say before?"

“Earlier?” the woman asked in return.

“Earlier, when I was standing there looking at that varnished piece over there.”

The woman once again revealed pure white teeth.
But she said nothing.

"If it's not important, you needn't answer."

"That’s not what I meant."

Sanshirō still wore a strange expression.
The overcast autumn day had already passed four o'clock.
The room was growing dim.
The spectators were extremely few.
In the separate room existed only the shadows of a man and woman.
The woman moved away from the painting and stood directly before Sanshirō.

"Mr. Nonomiya. Well, well..."

"Mr. Nonomiya…"

“You’ve figured it out now, haven’t you?”

The meaning of Mineko’s words flooded Sanshirō’s chest like a great crashing wave.

“Did you mock Mr. Nonomiya?”

“Why?”

Her tone was utterly guileless.
Sanshirō suddenly lost the nerve to continue.
He took two or three silent steps.
She followed as if clinging to him.

“I wasn’t ridiculing you.”

Sanshirō stopped again.
Sanshirō was a tall man.
He looked down at Mineko from above.

“That’s fine.”

“Why is it wrong?”

“That’s why it’s fine.”

The woman turned her face away.
Both walked toward the doorway.
As they exited the doorway, their shoulders brushed against each other.
The man suddenly remembered the woman he had met on the train.
Where he had touched Mineko’s flesh lingered a sensation like an ache from a dream.

“Is it really all right?” Mineko asked in a small voice.
From the opposite direction came two or three visitors together.
“Anyway, let’s go out,” said Sanshirō.

They retrieved their footwear and stepped outside to find it raining.

“Shall we go to Seiyōken?”

Mineko did not answer.
They stood in the wide field before the museum, getting wet in the rain.
Fortunately, the rain had only just begun.
Moreover, it was not falling hard.
The woman stood in the rain, looking around, then pointed toward the forest ahead.

“Let’s go into the shade of that tree.”

If they waited a little longer, it seemed likely to let up.
The two moved under a large cedar tree.
It was not a tree well-suited to keeping off the rain.
Yet neither of them moved.
They stood there getting wet.
Both of them grew cold.
The woman said, “Mr. Ogawa.”
The man furrowed his brows deeply, then turned his face—which had been gazing at the sky—toward the woman.

“Is it wrong? What happened earlier.”

“That’s fine.”

"But..." she said, drawing closer. “I just felt compelled to do that somehow, you see. It’s not that I meant to disrespect Mr. Nonomiya, but...”

The woman fixed her gaze and looked at Sanshirō. Sanshirō recognized in her eyes an appeal deeper than words—as if to say from beneath those double eyelids, "After all, wasn’t it done for your sake?" Sanshirō, once more,

“That’s why it’s fine,” he answered.

The rain gradually grew heavier.
There were few places where raindrops did not fall.
The two of them gradually huddled closer into a single spot.
They stood frozen, their shoulders nearly brushing against each other.
Amid the sound of the rain, Mineko said,
“Please use the money from earlier.”
“I’ll borrow it. Just what I need,” he answered.
“Use all of it,” she said.

Nine-One

At Yojirō’s urging, Sanshirō finally attended the gathering at Seiyōken.
At that time, he wore a black tsumugi haori.
In his mother’s letter was a lengthy explanation: this haori had been woven by Miss Okata’s mother from Miwata, dyed with the family crest, and sewn together by Miss Okata herself.
When the package arrived, he had tried it on once but, finding it unappealing, stored it in the cupboard.
Yojirō insisted he absolutely must wear it, saying it would be a waste not to.
Since Yojirō was so insistent that he would take and wear it himself if Sanshirō didn’t, Sanshirō ended up deciding to put it on.
When he tried it on, it didn’t seem so bad.

In this attire, Sanshirō stood with Yojirō at the entrance of Seiyōken.
According to Yojirō’s theory, guests were supposed to be received in this manner.
Sanshirō had not known about such things.
To begin with, he had come as a guest.
Under these circumstances, his tsumugi silk haori made him feel rather shabby as a reception helper.
He thought it would have been better if he had worn a uniform.
Gradually, members began arriving.
Yojirō would catch each arriving person and invariably strike up a conversation.
He treated them all as if they were old acquaintances.
The guests would hand their hats and coats to the attendant, turn past the wide staircase toward the dark corridor, and then Yojirō would inform Sanshirō who they were.
Thanks to this, Sanshirō came to recognize the faces of many notable figures.

Before long，the guests had mostly gathered.
There were just under thirty people.
Professor Hirota was also there.
Mr.Nonomiya was also there.—Though he was a scientist，Mr.Haraguchi had apparently dragged him out by force on the grounds that he liked painting and literature.
Mr.Haraguchi was of course there.
He had arrived first—handling arrangements，exuding charm，twirling his French-style beard—appearing thoroughly occupied with every task.

Soon they were seated.
Everyone found seats wherever they pleased.
There was neither yielding nor vying.
Even among them all, Professor Hirota—contrary to his usual slowness—was first to settle into his seat.
Only Yojirō and Sanshirō came together to take places near the entrance.
The rest sat facing each other by chance or side by side as neighbors.

A critic wearing a striped haori seated himself between Mr.Nonomiya and Professor Hirota.
Opposite them settled a scholar called Dr.Shōji.
This was what Yojirō termed an influential humanities professor.
He presented a dignified figure in his frock coat.
His hair hung more than twice its usual length.
Under electric light it appeared as a dark swirling vortex.
The contrast with Professor Hirota's shaven head proved striking.
Mr.Haraguchi took a seat considerably apart from others.
Positioned at the far corner, he faced Sanshirō directly across the room.
At his folded collar flared the ends of a wide black satin cravat spread across his chest.
Yojirō had once told him French painters all wore such neckwear.
Sanshirō sipped his broth while thinking it resembled nothing so much as a traditional sash knot.
Gradually conversation began to stir.
Yojirō drank nothing but beer.

He did not speak in his usual manner.
Even a man of his usual boldness seemed somewhat reserved today.
Sanshirō, in a low voice,

When he said, "Hey, Darter, shall we have some Fabra?" he answered, "Not today," but immediately turned sideways and began talking to the man beside him.
He was expressing his gratitude, saying something like how he had greatly benefited from reading your paper.
However, since that paper was one he had vehemently criticized in front of him, Sanshirō found it extremely puzzling.
Yojirō turned back toward him again.

“That haori is quite splendid. It suits you well,” he said, deliberately examining the white family crest.
At that moment, from the far end of the room, Mr.Haraguchi addressed Nonomiya.
Since he was by nature a loud-voiced person, this proved advantageous for conversing at a distance.
Professor Hirota and Dr.Shōji, who had been exchanging words face-to-face until now, ceased their conversation for fear of interrupting the two men’s exchange.
All the others also fell silent.
The focal point of the gathering formed for the first time.

9-2

“Mr. Nonomiya, have you completed the light pressure tests yet?”

“No, it’s still ongoing.”

“That must require considerable effort.”
“Our profession demands patience too, but yours seems more intense.”

“Paintings can be created quickly through inspiration, but physics experiments don’t proceed so smoothly.”

“I’ve grown weary of inspiration.”
“This summer when passing a certain place, I encountered two old women deep in discussion.”
“They were debating whether the rainy season had truly ended—one complained that while thunder once definitively marked its conclusion, nowadays that no longer holds.”
“The other retorted indignantly—‘How could mere thunder end it?’ Paintings follow the same principle—modern art can’t be produced through inspiration alone!”
“Don’t you agree, Mr. Tamura? Novels work the same way.”

Next to him sat a novelist named Tamura.
This man answered that his only inspiration came from editorial deadlines, which sent the room into uproarious laughter.
Tamura then formally asked Mr. Nonomiya whether light exerted pressure and, if so, how one might test it.
Mr. Nonomiya’s answer was interesting—

Using mica or similar material, you create a thin disc about 16 musashi in size, suspend it with a quartz thread, place it in a vacuum, and when you shine an arc lamp’s light perpendicularly onto the surface of this disc, the disc will move under the pressure of the light.
he explained.

The entire group listened attentively.
In particular, Sanshirō recalled inwardly how he had been startled by a telescope when first arriving in Tokyo, imagining such a device must be inside that fukujinzuke can.

"You—does a quartz thread exist?" he asked Yojirō in a low voice.
Yojirō shook his head.

"Mr. Nonomiya, is there a quartz thread?"

"Yes—you take quartz powder. Melt it with an oxyhydrogen blowpipe's flame."
"Once it solidifies, you pull it apart with both hands to either side—and a thin thread forms."

Sanshirō said, “I see,” and fell silent.
This time, the critic in the striped haori sitting next to Mr. Nonomiya interjected.

“When it comes to such fields, we are completely ignorant—how did someone first hit upon the idea to conduct such an experiment?”

“The one who first hit upon it was, I believe, a Swedish scholar or someone of that sort.”
"The tail of that comet was supposed to be pulled toward the sun, yet every time it appeared, it always bent in the opposite direction—someone thought this strange and began investigating."
"Then it occurred to them that perhaps it was being blown away by the pressure of light."

The critic seemed quite impressed.

“The idea itself is fascinating, but above all, its grand scale is splendid,” he said.

“It’s not merely grand—it’s blameless and delightful,” said Professor Hirota.

“And if that hypothesis proves incorrect, it remains blameless and splendid,” Mr. Haraguchi said with a laugh.

“No, it appears to hold true.”
“The pressure of light is proportional to the square of the radius, but since gravitational force follows the cube of the radius, as objects diminish in size, gravity weakens while light pressure intensifies.”
“If we posit that a comet’s tail consists of extremely fine particles, they would inevitably be propelled away from the sun.”

Nonomiya inadvertently became serious.
Then Haraguchi, in his usual manner,

“While it’s guiltless, the calculations have become terribly troublesome.
Still, it’s a double-edged sword,” he said.
With this single remark, the people returned to their original beer-induced mood.
Professor Hirota made such a remark.

“It seems physicists make rather poor naturalists.”

The two terms “physicist” and “naturalist” stimulated no small interest among the entire gathering.

9-3

“What do you mean by that?” asked Mr. Nonomiya himself.
Professor Hirota found himself compelled to explain.

“Because even if you open your eyes wide and observe nature to test light pressure, it’s useless.”
“Unless a comet appears for someone to notice, doesn’t nature’s design completely omit the fact of light’s pressure?”
“That’s why they create artificial setups—quartz threads, vacuums, mica discs—to make physicists see that pressure.”
“Hence they’re not naturalists.”

“But they’re not Romanticists either,” interjected Mr. Haraguchi.

“No—they’re Romanticists,” Professor Hirota explained with an air of importance.
“Placing light rays and the objects receiving them in a positional relationship that cannot be found in ordinary nature—isn’t that entirely Romanticist?”

“However, once you’ve placed them in such a positional relationship, all you do is observe the light’s inherent pressure—so after that, it’s naturalist,” said Mr. Nonomiya.

“So physicists are Romantic naturalists? In literature terms, wouldn’t that correspond to someone like Ibsen?” proposed the doctor sitting across from him.

“Indeed, Ibsen’s plays employ setups as elaborate as yours, Mr. Nonomiya—but one might question whether the characters moving through those frameworks obey natural laws like light rays do,” remarked the critic in the striped haori.

“That may be true, but I consider this a crucial point to remember when studying humanity—that humans placed in specific circumstances inherently possess both the capacity and right to act contrary to expectations.”
“Yet through some peculiar convention, we persist in believing humans function by mechanical laws like light rays—a misconception that breeds monumental errors.”
“Set a trap to provoke anger, and they laugh; devise a scheme to elicit mirth, and they rage.”
“Utterly inverted.”
“But whichever way they leap, it remains fundamentally human,” Professor Hirota concluded, broadening the debate’s scope once more.

“Then, under certain circumstances, no matter what actions a person takes, it would be considered natural, wouldn’t it?” asked the novelist across from him.

“Yes, yes,” answered the doctor. “No matter what kind of human being you depict or how you depict them, isn’t there likely at least one such person in the world? As humans, we fundamentally cannot imagine actions that are truly inhuman. Isn’t it that they aren’t perceived as human simply because they’re poorly written?”

The novelist fell silent at that. This time, the doctor spoke up.

“Even among physicists—when Galileo noticed that the duration of a single oscillation in a cathedral’s hanging lamp remained constant regardless of its amplitude, or when Newton discovered an apple falling due to gravity—those men were naturalists from the very beginning.”

“If that’s what you mean by naturalists, then it should work splendidly in literature too,” said Mr. Nonomiya. “Mr. Haraguchi, does a naturalist school exist in painting as well?”

“Of course there is. There’s a formidable fellow called Courbet—vérité vraie; they won’t accept anything unless it’s fact. However, they aren’t running quite so rampant yet. They’re merely recognized as a school. But then again, they can’t not exist either. The same must hold true for novels as well, don’t you think? Still, there must be those like Moreau and Chavannes as well, don’t you think?”

“They must exist,” answered the novelist next to him.

After the meal, there were no speeches or anything of the sort at the table. Only Mr. Haraguchi kept criticizing the statue on Kudan Hill—if such statues were erected indiscriminately, he argued, Tokyo citizens would be inconvenienced. Rather than those, he maintained it would show better sense to erect bronze statues of beautiful geisha instead. Yojirō informed Sanshirō that the bronze statue on Kudan Hill had been made by someone who didn’t get along with Mr. Haraguchi.

When the gathering ended and they stepped outside, there was a beautiful moon.
Yojirō asked whether Professor Hirota had made a good impression on Dr. Shōji that evening.
Sanshirō replied that he probably did.
Yojirō stood by the communal tap and recounted how, this summer during a nighttime stroll, he had been bathing there to escape the heat when a policeman spotted him, forcing him to run up Suribachiyama.
The two of them viewed the moon from atop Suribachiyama and returned home.

9-4

On their way back, Yojirō turned to Sanshirō and suddenly began explaining about the debt.

It was a relatively cold evening under a clear moon.
Sanshirō was hardly thinking about money at all.
He wasn't even taking the explanation seriously.
He thought Yojirō probably wouldn't repay it anyway.
Yojirō never said he would repay it.
He simply elaborated on various circumstances preventing repayment.
Sanshirō found the manner of explanation far more amusing.
——A man I once knew grew weary of the world after a failed romance and resolved to end his life—but found the sea disagreeable, rivers unacceptable, volcanic craters still worse, and hanging most repugnant of all. In the end, he reluctantly bought a pistol.
After buying it but before acting on his purpose, a friend came to borrow money.
He refused, saying he had none, but when the friend pleaded desperately, he reluctantly lent out his precious pistol.
The friend pawned it to get by temporarily.
When he sorted his affairs and came to redeem it from the pawnshop, the pistol's owner had already lost the will to die.
Therefore, it was effectively as though this man's life had been saved because someone came to borrow money.

“There are such cases, you know,” said Yojirō.
To Sanshirō, it was merely amusing.
Beyond that, it held no significance whatsoever.
He looked up at the lofty moon and laughed aloud.
Even without repayment, it felt agreeable.
Yojirō,

“You mustn’t laugh,” he cautioned.
Sanshirō became even more amused.

“Don’t laugh—think it through properly.”
“It’s precisely because I didn’t repay you that you were able to borrow money from Miss Mineko, right?”

Sanshirō stopped laughing.

"So?"

"Isn't that alone enough? You're in love with that woman, aren't you?"

Yojirō knew this well.
Sanshirō said "Hmph" and looked up at the high moon again.
A white cloud appeared beside the moon.

"Hey, have you paid that woman back yet?"

"No."

"Just keep it borrowed forever."

He made a carefree remark.
Sanshirō had nothing to say in response.
However, he certainly had no intention of keeping it borrowed forever.
In truth, he had intended to pay the necessary twenty yen to his lodging house and deliver the remaining ten yen to the Satomi residence first thing the next day, but upon reconsidering that returning it now would run counter to goodwill and be ill-advised, he turned back even at the cost of sacrificing this hard-won opportunity to step through their gate.
At that moment, in a lapse of vigilance, he ended up breaking the ten-yen bill into smaller denominations.
In fact, tonight’s event fee had come from that amount.
It was no longer in his possession.
Yojirō's portion had also come from that amount.
Afterwards, barely two or three yen remained.
Sanshirō thought to buy winter undergarments with that.

In truth, since Yojirō showed no sign of repaying, Sanshirō had resolved to request an additional thirty yen from his family back home.
While he received sufficient monthly educational stipends, he couldn’t simply request more on the grounds of shortage.
Since Sanshirō was not a man who often lied, he found himself at a loss when it came to providing a reason for the request.
With no alternative, he simply wrote that a friend had lost money and been reduced to dire straits, so he had taken pity and lent it to him.
As a result, he was now the one in dire straits.
He wrote asking them to please send it.

If they had sent a prompt reply, it should have arrived by now, yet it still hadn’t come. Thinking that tonight might be when it would finally arrive, he returned to his lodging and found an envelope written in his mother’s handwriting neatly placed on his desk. Strangely, what always came by registered mail had today been sent with just a single 3-sen stamp. When he opened it, the contents were unusually brief. As a mother, she had concluded the matter with nothing but business, to an almost unkind degree. The requested money had been sent to Mr. Nonomiya, so this was merely an instruction to collect it from him.

Sanshirō laid out his bedding and went to sleep.

9-5

The next day and the day after that, Sanshirō did not go to Mr. Nonomiya's place.
Mr. Nonomiya had not made any contact either.
About a week passed in this manner.
Finally, Mr. Nonomiya sent a letter through the lodging house maid.
It stated there was something requested by his mother, so he should come by briefly.
Sanshirō found time between lectures and descended once more to the science building's basement laboratory.
He had hoped to settle things through a standing conversation there, but circumstances proved less straightforward.
In the room Mr. Nonomiya had exclusively occupied that summer, two or three bearded men now worked.
There were also two or three students in uniforms.
All were conducting research with quiet intensity, disregarding the sunlit world above their heads.
Among them, Mr. Nonomiya appeared most burdened.
After briefly noticing Sanshirō at the doorway, he approached without speaking.

“The money from home has arrived, so please come collect it.”
“I don’t have it here with me now.”
“And there are other matters to discuss.”

Sanshirō answered with a "Hah."
He asked, "Would tonight be all right?"
Nonomiya thought for a moment but finally resolved himself and said, "That would be fine."
Sanshirō left the basement laboratory with that.
As he left, he couldn't help but admire how scientists truly were people of remarkable perseverance.
The pickled radish can he had seen that summer and the telescope remained positioned exactly as they had been before.

When he met Yojirō during the next lecture period and told him about this, Yojirō looked at Sanshirō without calling him a fool,

“That’s why I told you to just keep it borrowed forever.”
“You’re just making unnecessary trouble and worrying the old folks.”
“You’ll get lectured by Mr. Nonomiya.”
“There’s nothing as foolish as this,” he declared, showing no sign of acknowledging that the matter had originated from himself.
Sanshirō, too, had already forgotten Yojirō’s responsibility regarding this matter.
Therefore, he gave a reply that had not occurred to Yojirō.

“Because I didn’t want to keep borrowing it forever, I told my family to send it.”

“Even if you hate it, they’d be glad.”

“Why?”

This “why” rang false even to Sanshirō himself.
Yet it seemed to leave the other utterly unfazed.

“Isn’t that obvious?
“Swap me with anyone else—same thing.
“Say I’ve got money burning a hole in my pocket.
“In that case, feels better letting you keep it than making you pay back.
“People want to play the saint, see—just not enough to actually inconvenience themselves.”

Sanshirō did not reply and began taking lecture notes.
When he had written a few lines, Yojirō brought his mouth close to his ear again.

“Even I used to lend money to people when I had some.”
“But nobody ever paid me back.”
“That’s why I’m so damn pleased with myself.”

Sanshirō thought precisely the opposite but couldn’t even muster a tentative agreement.
He offered only a faint smile before resuming writing with his Western-style pen.
Yojirō too grew quiet then, remaining silent until the lecture ended.

When the bell rang and they left the classroom side by side, Yojirō abruptly asked:

“Is that woman in love with you?”

From behind them, lecture attendees streamed out one after another.
Having no choice, Sanshirō descended the stairs in silence, exited through the side entrance to the vacant lot beside the library, and only then looked back at Yojirō for the first time.

"I really don't know."

Yojirō watched Sanshirō for a while.

"There's also that way of looking at it."
"But even if you did understand—"
"You—could you become that woman's husband?"

Sanshirō had never once considered this problem.
The very fact of being loved by Mineko had felt like the sole qualification for becoming her husband.
When stated so plainly, he realized it was indeed a valid question.
Sanshirō tilted his head.

"Mr. Nonomiya could," Yojirō said.

"Mr. Nonomiya and that person—have they had some kind of relationship until now?"

Sanshirō's face remained as serious as if carved in stone.
Yojirō took a breath,
"I don't know," he said.
Sanshirō remained silent.

“Well, go listen to Mr. Nonomiya’s talk,” Yojirō said dismissively and began walking toward the pond.
Sanshirō stood rigid as a signpost of foolishness.
Yojirō took five or six steps before turning back with a laugh.

“Why don’t you just marry Miss Yoshiko?” he said, pulling Sanshirō along toward the pond.
As they walked, he repeated twice, “That’d be perfect—that’d be perfect.”
Soon the signal bell rang again.

9-6

That evening, Sanshirō set out for Mr. Nonomiya’s place, but as it was still somewhat too early, he took a walk as far as the fourth block and entered a large Chinese goods store to buy a shirt.
The shop boy brought various items from the back, which Sanshirō felt with his hands and unfolded, but he did not readily make a purchase.
As he stood there with unwarranted nonchalance, Mineko and Yoshiko happened to come in together to buy perfume.
After saying “Oh!” in greeting, Mineko,

“Thank you for the other day,” she said.
Sanshirō understood perfectly what this gratitude meant.
The day after borrowing money from Mineko, he should have visited again at once to return the excess; instead he waited two days and sent her a polite thank-you letter.

The letter's phrasing had sincerely expressed the writer's feelings at the time of composition, though it was undoubtedly excessive. Sanshirō had fervently conveyed his gratitude by meticulously arranging every possible word in layers. To ordinary eyes, it steamed with such intensity that one could hardly recognize it as a thank-you note for a loan. Yet beyond gratitude, it contained nothing else. This very limitation meant that through natural progression, the gratitude had transcended mere thanks. When Sanshirō dropped this letter into the mailbox, he had expected Mineko's immediate reply. Yet the carefully written envelope simply vanished into silence. From that day until now, no opportunity to meet Mineko had arisen. Faced with this faint echo of "Thank you for the other day," Sanshirō found himself unable to muster the courage for a proper response. As he spread the large undershirt before his eyes with both hands, he wondered if Mineko's coldness stemmed from Yoshiko's presence. Then it struck him that even this undershirt would be purchased with her money. The shop boy pressed him: "Which one will you choose?"

The two women came over laughing and looked at the undershirts together with him.
Finally, Yoshiko said, “Take this one.”
Sanshirō chose that one.
This time, Sanshirō was consulted about perfume.
He had no idea.
Holding a bottle labeled “heliotrope” and asking half-heartedly, “How about this one?” Mineko promptly decided, “Let’s go with that.”

Sanshirō felt almost pitiable.

When they tried to part ways upon exiting, the women began bowing to each other.
“Well, I’ll be going then,” said Yoshiko, and Mineko replied, “Please do hurry…”
Upon hearing this, he realized that the younger sister was heading to her older brother’s lodging house.
The evening had come when Sanshirō should once again walk with a beautiful woman toward Oiwake.
The sun had not yet completely set.

Sanshirō felt somewhat inconvenienced by the necessity of meeting Yoshiko at Nonomiya’s lodging house rather than simply walking there together with her.
He thought about perhaps returning home tonight and then setting out again.
However, to hear what Yojirō called his lecture, it might be more convenient if Yoshiko were there to assist.
There was no way she would give such an unreserved reminder in front of others about this request from her mother.
Depending on how things went, it might just be a matter of receiving the money and being done with it.
Sanshirō made a slightly cunning resolution in his heart.

“I’m also on my way to Mr. Nonomiya’s place.”
“Right.”
“For a visit?”

"No, I have some business there."
"Are you going for a visit?"

"No, I have business there too."

Both had asked similar questions and received similar answers.
Moreover, there was not the slightest indication that either felt inconvenienced.
Sanshirō, just to be sure, asked if he was in the way.
It did not seem to be any hindrance at all.
The woman’s denial of being a hindrance was not confined to words alone.
Her face, rather, showed surprise at why he would ask such a thing.
Under the gaslight at the shopfront, Sanshirō thought he recognized that surprise in the woman’s black eyes.
In fact, they had merely appeared large and black.

“Did you buy a violin?”

“How did you know?”

Sanshirō was at a loss for a reply.
Without hesitation, the woman promptly said:

“No matter how much I told my brother, he would just say ‘I’ll buy it for you, I’ll buy it for you,’ but he never actually did.”

Sanshirō inwardly blamed Yojirō rather than Nonomiya or Hirota.

Nine-Seven

The two turned from Oiwake's main street into a narrow alley.
When they turned inward, numerous houses stood within.
Eaves lamps at each doorway illuminated the dark lane.
They stopped before one of these eaves lamps.
Nonomiya resided deeper within.

Sanshirō's lodging stood nearly one chō away.
Since Nonomiya had moved here, Sanshirō had visited two or three times.
Nonomiya's room lay at the end of a broad hallway; ascending two straight steps brought one to two separate rooms on the left.
Facing south, another's expansive garden spread almost entirely beneath the eaves, maintaining profound quietness day and night.
When Sanshirō first saw Mr. Nonomiya secluded in this detached room, he understood why closing his family home for lodgings hadn't been ill-conceived—indeed, he had admired its comfort from that initial visit.
At that time, Mr. Nonomiya had descended to the hallway and, looking up at his room's eaves from below, remarked: "Notice—it's thatched."
True enough, the roof unusually lacked tiles.

Since it was nighttime, the roof was of course not visible, but inside the room, an electric light was lit.
The moment Sanshirō saw the electric light, he recalled the thatched roof.
And then he found it amusing.

“What strange guests have gathered here.”
“Did you meet them at the entrance?” Mr. Nonomiya asked his sister.
His sister explained that wasn’t the case.
She then suggested it might be good to buy shirts like Sanshirō’s.
From her brother, she pressed him about replacing the Japanese-made violin they’d postponed buying—its sound was unacceptable—urging him to exchange it for a better one.
She added that if it were someone like Miss Mineko, she could tolerate it.
She kept up a steady stream of similar childish complaints.
Mr. Nonomiya neither frowned nor offered kind words, simply listening half-heartedly.

All this while, Sanshirō had said nothing.
Yoshiko spoke of nothing but trivial matters.
Moreover, she showed no restraint whatsoever.
He found it neither foolish nor selfish.
Listening to her exchange with her brother from nearby, he felt as though he had stepped out into a wide, sunlit field.
Sanshirō had completely forgotten about the serious discussion he was supposed to have.
At that moment, he was suddenly startled.

“Ah, I’d forgotten,”
“There’s a message from Miss Mineko!”

“Is that so?”

“You must be pleased.”
“Aren’t you pleased?”

Mr. Nonomiya made a face as if something itched.
Then he turned toward Sanshirō.

“My sister is such a fool,” he said.
Sanshirō had no choice but to keep laughing.

"I'm not a fool. Right, Mr. Ogawa?"

Sanshirō laughed again.
Inside, he was already tired of laughing.

“Miss Mineko said, ‘Brother, please take me to the Literary Association’s performance.’”

“It would be fine if I went with Miss Satomi.”

“There’s something she needs you for.”

“Are you going too?”

“Of course I am!”

Mr. Nonomiya gave no answer about attending.
He turned to Sanshirō and explained he’d called his sister over for a serious matter, but her carefree chatter made things difficult.
Upon hearing this—though it involved scholars—the matter proved unexpectedly simple.
There was a marriage proposal for Yoshiko.
When they informed his parents back home, they’d replied having no objections.
Now they needed to properly confirm her own opinion on the matter.
Sanshirō merely replied it sounded fine and tried to settle his own business quickly to leave.
So,

“My mother apparently troubled you with a request,” he began.
Mr. Nonomiya,
“It was no particular trouble,” he replied, immediately taking out the entrusted items from his desk drawer and handing them to Sanshirō.

Chapter 9, Section 8

“Your mother was worried and wrote a long letter,” he began.
“She says you told her you lent your monthly school allowance to a friend due to unavoidable circumstances, but even among close friends, one shouldn’t borrow money so recklessly—and if they did borrow it, they ought to repay it properly.”
“Country folk are honest by nature, so it’s only reasonable she’d think that way.”
“Then there’s the matter of how you lent the money—even if you were going to lend it, your approach was far too extravagant.”
“For someone living off monthly allowances from their parents, casually lending out twenty or thirty yen at once shows utter recklessness—and somehow she’s written this as though I’m responsible! It’s rather awkward......”

Mr. Nonomiya looked at Sanshirō and grinned.
Sanshirō earnestly said, "I'm terribly sorry."
Mr. Nonomiya, apparently not having spoken with any intention to reprimand the young man, softened his tone slightly.

“There’s no need to worry.”
“It’s nothing serious at all.”
“Your mother assigns value to money based on rural standards, so thirty yen becomes a tremendous burden.”
“She wrote that with thirty yen, a family of four could eat for half a year—but does that really hold true, you think?” he asked.
Yoshiko burst into loud laughter.
To Sanshirō too, there was something quite amusing in how foolish it all seemed, but since his mother’s words were not entirely divorced from reality, when he realized this, he felt a slight regret that he had indeed acted too rashly.

“Then, since that’s five yen per month, it comes to one yen and twenty-five sen per person.”
“Dividing that over thirty days, it comes to about four sen—but even for the countryside, that seems a bit too cheap,” Mr. Nonomiya calculated.

“What could you possibly eat to survive on so little?” Yoshiko asked earnestly.
Sanshirō found himself with no time for regret and launched into describing the realities of country life as he knew them.
Among these was the annual custom of shrine donations.
In Sanshirō’s household, it was customary to donate ten yen once a year to the entire village.
At that time, one person from each of sixty households would come out, and those sixty people would take a break from work, gather at the village shrine, and from morning till night drink and feast nonstop, it was said.

"Ten yen for that?" Yoshiko exclaimed in surprise.
The discussion seemed to have wandered off somewhere with this.
After they chatted a bit more and things had settled down, Mr. Nonomiya spoke once again as follows.

“After all, it’s your mother’s concern,” he said. “She wants me to investigate the circumstances first and hand over the money only if I confirm there’s no issue. But you’d already given it away without anyone hearing the details—what should we do? You did lend it to Sasaki, didn’t you?”

Sanshirō deduced that the information had leaked from Mineko, been passed to Yoshiko, and consequently become known to Mr. Nonomiya. However, since neither sibling realized this money had circulated through multiple hands and ultimately transformed into a violin, he felt an odd sensation. He simply replied, “That’s correct.”

“So Sasaki bought horse tickets and lost his own money, I hear.”

“Yes.”

Yoshiko burst into loud laughter again.

“Well then, let’s convey that to your mother in appropriate terms.”
“But you should resolve not to lend such sums anymore.”

Sanshirō answered that he would resolve not to lend any more money, exchanged farewells, and was about to stand when Yoshiko also announced she would leave.

“We need to discuss what we talked about earlier,” her brother reminded her.

“That’s enough,” the sister refused.

“It’s not okay.”

“That’s enough.
I don’t know.”

The brother looked at his sister’s face and fell silent.
The sister spoke again.

“But there’s nothing to be done about it, is there?”
“Even if you ask whether I’ll go or not to someone I don’t even know...”
“Since I neither like nor dislike it, there’s simply nothing I can say.”
“So I don’t know.”

Sanshirō finally came to grasp the true meaning behind Yoshiko’s “I don’t know.”
Leaving the siblings as they were, he hurried out to the front.

Nine-Nine

When he emerged from the deserted alley—where only the eaves lights shone brightly with no one passing through—the wind blew.
When he turned to face north, it hit him squarely in the face.
Cutting through time, it blew from the direction of his boarding house.
At that moment, Sanshirō thought.
In this wind, Mr. Nonomiya would probably escort his sister all the way to Satomi’s.

He climbed up to the second floor of his boarding house, entered his room, and sat down—and still, the sound of the wind persisted.
Every time Sanshirō heard this wind, he thought of the word “fate.”
Each roaring gust made him want to freeze.
I do not consider myself a strong man at all.
When I thought about it, my fate since coming to Tokyo had largely been shaped by Yojirō.
Moreover, it had been crafted in such a way that I found myself subjected to these amicable yet vague manipulations.
Yojirō was a lovable scoundrel.
From now on too, I felt my fate would remain in the grasp of this lovable scoundrel.
The wind blew relentlessly.
It was truly a force greater than Yojirō himself.

Sanshirō placed the thirty yen from his mother by his pillow and went to sleep.
This thirty yen too had been born of fate's manipulations.
What role this thirty yen might play hereafter was utterly unclear.
"I'll go return this to Mineko," he thought.
When Mineko received it, another gust was sure to come.
Sanshirō hoped it would arrive with full force.

Sanshirō fell asleep just like that.
Fate and Yojirō alike entered a sleep so sound that neither could lay a hand on him.
Then he awoke to the sound of a fire bell.
Voices could be heard somewhere.
This was Tokyo’s second fire.
Sanshirō hung his haori over his sleeping gown and opened the window.
The wind had died down considerably.
Amid the howling wind, the two-story house across the way appeared pitch-black.
The blacker the house appeared, the redder the sky behind it was.

Sanshirō endured the cold and stared at this redness for a while.
At that moment, fate burned vividly red in Sanshirō’s mind.
Sanshirō burrowed back into the warm futon.
And then, he forgot about the many people whirling madly within that red fate.

When day broke, he was his usual self.
He put on his uniform, took his notebook, and headed to school.
The only thing he hadn't forgotten was to put the thirty yen in his pocket.
Unfortunately, his class schedule was unfavorable.
It was packed solid until three o'clock.
If he went after three o'clock,Yoshiko would likely have returned from school.
Depending on circumstances,Mineko's brother Satomi Kyōsuke might also be at home.
If there were people around,the prospect of returning the money felt utterly hopeless.

Then Yojirō spoke up again.

“Did you catch that serious talk last night?”

“It wasn’t anything so formal.”

“Right—Nonomiya’s actually quite reasonable when you get down to it,” he said before wandering off.
They met again during a lecture two hours later.

“Looks like Professor Hirota’s situation’s sorting itself out nicely.” When pressed about how far matters had progressed: “No need to fret—I’ll lay it all out properly later. He did mention you’ve been scarce lately though—heard it straight from him myself. You oughta visit more often—bachelor living alone and all that rot.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially: “Not our place to coddle him anyway—just bring something next time you come,” he tossed over his shoulder before disappearing.
Then he materialized again during the next class period.
This time—mid-lecture—he suddenly—

He wrote something like a telegram—“Got the money?”—on a blank sheet and slid it over. Sanshirō thought about writing a reply, but when he glanced toward the teacher, the instructor was staring straight at him. He crumpled the paper and tossed it under his foot. He waited until the lecture ended before responding.

“I got the money.”
“It’s right here.”

“Ah, right. Good.”
“Planning to return it?”

“Of course I’ll return it.”

“That’s best.”
“Return it quickly.”

“I intend to return it today.”

“Yeah, it might get pretty late in the afternoon.”

“Are you going somewhere?”

“Of course I’m going. I go every single day to get painted.
“It must be nearly done by now.”

“To Mr. Haraguchi’s?”
“Yeah.”

Sanshirō ascertained Mr. Haraguchi’s lodging from Yojirō.

Part Ten, Chapter One

Because it was said Professor Hirota was ill, Sanshirō came to visit him. When he entered the gate, a pair of shoes stood neatly aligned in the entryway. He thought it might be a doctor. When he circled around to the kitchen entrance as usual, no one was there. Stealthily climbing up into the tearoom, he heard voices talking in the sitting room. Sanshirō stood motionless for a while. He held a rather large furoshiki bundle in his hand. Inside were packed barrel persimmons—he had bought them at Oiwake Street because Yojirō had told him to bring something when visiting next time. Then from the sitting room came sudden thudding and banging noises. It sounded like someone had started grappling. Sanshirō became certain it was a fight. Still clutching the furoshiki bundle, he sharply slid open the partition’s paper door about a foot and abruptly peered inside. Professor Hirota lay pinned beneath a large man wearing tea-colored hakama trousers. The professor’s face—which had been pressed flat against the tatami—jerked upward sharply; spotting Sanshirō, he grinned slyly,

“Oh, you’re here,” he said.
The man on top remained slightly turned around.

“Professor, if you’ll pardon me, try getting up now.” It seemed he took the Professor’s hand in a reverse grip and pressed against the elbow joint from the front with his kneecap. The professor answered from below that it was utterly impossible for him to get up. The man on top then released his hands, raised his knees, straightened the pleats of his hakama, and adjusted his seating position. He was a fine-looking man. The professor also immediately sat up.

“I see,” he said.

“If you try to resist by force in that technique, there’s a risk of breaking your arm—it’s dangerous.”

Through this exchange, Sanshirō finally realized what these two men had been doing.

"I heard you were ill—are you better now?"

"Yes, I'm quite recovered."

Sanshirō untied the furoshiki bundle and spread its contents between them.

"I bought some persimmons."

Professor Hirota went to his study and brought back a small knife.
Sanshirō brought a kitchen knife from the kitchen.
The three of them began eating persimmons.
As they ate, the professor and the man began earnestly discussing rural middle schools.
The financial hardships, the constant disturbances, being unable to remain long in one place, having to teach jujutsu outside regular subjects, one teacher buying new geta soles while reusing old straps until they wore out completely, how unlikely it was they would find new positions after resigning, having no choice but to send their wives back to their hometowns—the list seemed endless.

Sanshirō spat out a persimmon seed and, while looking at this man’s face, felt disheartened. When he compared himself now with this man, it felt as though they were entirely different races. In this man’s words there was a desire to experience student life once more. The phrase "There's nothing as carefree as student life" had been repeated several times. Every time Sanshirō heard this phrase, he began to wonder whether his own lifespan might also be a mere two or three years—as fleeting as a Bon Festival spear. It felt as uninspired as when he ate soba with Yojirō.

Professor Hirota stood up again and entered his study.
When he returned, he was holding a volume of a book in his hand.
The cover was reddish-black, and the edges were stained with dust.

“This is the Hydriotaphia I mentioned the other day. Should boredom strike, do peruse it.”

Sanshirō expressed his thanks and received the book.

"How densely the poppies of desolation are scattered!"
A phrase caught his eye: "When commemorating people, one does not question whether it merits eternity."
Professor Hirota, now at ease, continued his conversation with the jujutsu practitioner.
"When hearing about middle school teachers' living conditions, they all seem pitiable enough—but those who truly feel pity are only the individuals themselves."
"The reason is that modern people favor facts yet habitually discard the sentiments accompanying them."
"It can't be helped—society presses so urgently that they must be discarded."
"The proof lies in newspapers."
"Nine-tenths of social columns in newspapers are tragedies."
"Yet we lack the composure to appreciate these tragedies as tragedies."
"We merely read them as factual reports."
"The papers people read sometimes feature columns titled 'Deaths of Over Ten People,' listing in six-point type—line by line—the ages, registries, and causes of those who met unnatural ends in a day."
"It was conciseness and clarity perfected."
"There's also a 'Burglary at a Glance' column where burglaries cluster so one can immediately see where and what kind occurred."
"This too proved supremely convenient."
"Everything must follow this rhythm."
"Resignations are no exception."
"For those involved, it may verge on tragedy—but one must steel oneself to others not feeling it so acutely."
"If they proceed with that understanding, matters would improve."

"But if you have that much composure to spare, Professor, you ought to feel things a bit more sharply," said the jujutsu practitioner with a solemn expression.
At that moment, Professor Hirota, Sanshirō, and even the speaker himself all burst into laughter.
As the man showed no inclination to leave, Sanshirō borrowed the book and slipped out through the kitchen.

10-2

“To sleep in an undecaying tomb, to live through being transmitted, to remain in a known name—or else, resigning oneself to the world’s vicissitudes, to persist into later ages—this has been humanity’s aspiration since antiquity. When this aspiration is fulfilled, man dwells in paradise.”
Yet through the lens of true faith’s teachings, both this aspiration and its fulfillment prove as insubstantial and vain as if they were naught.
To live is to return to one’s primal self; to return to one’s primal self is neither desire nor hope, but a plain fact witnessed by noble believers—thus those lying in Saint Innocent’s burial ground remain as those interred in Egypt’s sands.
Should one behold and rejoice in their eternal being, then even a confined six feet differs not from Adriana’s grand mausoleum.
“Resolve solely to let things become as they will.”

This was the concluding passage of Hydriotaphia.
Sanshirō walked aimlessly toward Hakusan while reading this section amidst the bustling streets.
From what he had heard from Professor Hirota, this author was a renowned master of prose, and this particular essay counted as a masterpiece among works by such literary artists.
When explaining this earlier, Professor Hirota had laughed and clarified, "Though mind you, this isn't my own theory."
Truth be told, even Sanshirō couldn't properly discern what made it exemplary writing.
The punctuation felt awkward, the diction strangely archaic, the phrasing laboriously heavy—it all left him with the same sensation one gets when gazing at an ancient temple.
Reading just this single passage required covering three or four city blocks.
Yet clarity remained elusive.

What he had managed to grasp felt desolate.
It was like striking the bell of the Great Buddha of Nara and having the faint reverberations reach his own ears in Tokyo.
Rather than the meaning conveyed by the passage, Sanshirō found delight in the emotional undertone clinging to its meaning.
Sanshirō was a man who had never earnestly contemplated the problem of life and death.
To think - the blood of youth ran too hot.
Before his eyes burned a great fire so fierce it could singe one's eyebrows.
That sensation was his true self.
Sanshirō was now heading to Haraguchi's place in Akebono-chō.

A child's funeral procession approached. Two men wearing haori followed behind. The small coffin was wrapped in spotless white cloth. A beautiful pinwheel had been fastened beside it. The wheel spun ceaselessly. Its vanes were painted in five colors that blurred into one as they whirled. The white coffin passed by Sanshirō's side, endlessly setting the pinwheel aquiver. He thought it a beautiful funeral.

Sanshirō had always observed other writings and other funerals from a remove. Had someone come and casually advised him to view Mineko with similar detachment, he would surely have been startled. His eyes had become incapable of seeing Mineko as anything but immediate. He no longer recognized such distinctions as near or far in the first place. As matters stood, other deaths held a serene beauty while beneath his rapturous regard for the living Mineko lurked an undercurrent of anguish. Sanshirō walked straight ahead to shake off this torment. Moving forward seemed the only way to shed it—the notion of sidestepping his distress never once crossed his mind. Unable to conceive of alternatives, he now contemplated this assembly of dissolution through written words alone, sensing the pathos of untimely death from three feet away. Yet what should have been sorrowful he observed with pleasure, finding beauty where none ought to be.

When he turned into Akebono-chō, there stood a large pine tree. He had been told to use this pine as a landmark. Upon reaching beneath the pine, he found the house didn't match. Looking across, there stood another pine. Beyond that too were pines. Pines stood in abundance. Sanshirō thought it a pleasant area. After passing numerous pines and turning left, there appeared an elegant gate within a hedgerow. Indeed, a nameplate marked "Haraguchi" hung there. The nameplate consisted of a dark-grained board with "Haraguchi" painted flamboyantly in green oil. The characters were so ornate they blurred between writing and pattern. From gate to entryway lay completely empty space. To both sides, lawn had been planted.

10-3

In the entranceway, Mineko's geta were neatly arranged. The two straps differed in color between left and right. That was why he remembered them so clearly. Following the maid's relayed message that Haraguchi was working but would see him if possible, he entered the studio. It was a spacious room. The long floor stretching north to south was cluttered in a way typical of painters. A rug lay in one section. Compared to the room's size, it looked utterly mismatched—less like proper flooring than some elegantly patterned fabric tossed down for its colors. Across the way, a large tiger skin similarly failed to suggest any intentional seating arrangement. It lay diagonally out of harmony with the rug, its long tail trailing. There stood a large jar resembling compacted sand. Two arrows protruded from within it. Between their ash-gray feathers glinted intense gold leaf. Beside this sat armor. Sanshirō thought it must be unohana-zukushi—armor laced in deutzia flower patterns. In the far corner, something suddenly caught his eye: a small-sleeved kimono with purple hem patterns and gold-thread embroidery. A curtain rope ran through both sleeves, hung up as if airing against moths. The sleeves were round and short. Sanshirō realized this must be Genroku period work.

Besides these, there were many paintings.
Even counting only those hung on the wall, large and small combined made for a considerable number.
As for unframed preliminary sketches, their stacked and rolled edges had come loose, haphazardly exposing the cut ends.

The portrait of the subject being painted existed amidst pigments that dazzled the eye.
The subject stood at the far end directly opposite, holding up an uchiwa fan.
The painter turned his rounded back fully around and faced Sanshirō, still holding his palette.
He gripped a thick pipe between his teeth.

“You’ve come,” he said, removing the pipe from his mouth and placing it on a small round table. There were matches and an ashtray on it. There were chairs too.

“Please sit down.”
“—That’s the one,” he said, looking toward the half-painted canvas. It measured a full six shaku in length. Sanshirō simply said,

“It certainly is large.”
Mr. Haraguchi, acting as though he hadn’t heard,

“Hmm, not bad,” he muttered to himself, beginning to paint where the hair met the background.
Sanshirō finally looked toward Mineko at that moment.
In the shadow of the uchiwa fan she held up, her white teeth faintly glimmered.

Then, for two or three minutes, complete silence fell.
The room was warmed by a fireplace.
Outside too, it was not particularly cold that day.
The wind had died away completely.
A withered tree stood soundlessly enveloped in winter daylight.
When Sanshirō was led into the studio, he felt as though he had entered a haze.
Resting his elbows on the round table within this quietness surpassing even night's stillness, he let his unguarded mind submerge itself.
Within this silence existed Mineko.
Mineko's form was gradually materializing.
Only the stout painter's brush moved.
Even he moved nothing but his eyes, leaving auditory stillness undisturbed.
The stout painter did move occasionally.
Yet no footsteps sounded.

Mineko, encased in stillness, did not move at all.
Her very posture of standing there holding the uchiwa fan was already a painting.
From Sanshirō’s perspective, Mr.Haraguchi was not simply depicting Mineko.
Starting from a painting imbued with mysterious depth, he was painstakingly stripping away that very depth to redraw Mineko into an ordinary composition.
Nevertheless, within this stillness, the second Mineko gradually drew closer to the first.
To Sanshirō, it seemed that between these two Minekos lay a long, quiet stretch of time untouched by the sound of a clock.
As time passed so soundlessly that it didn’t even register in the painter’s consciousness, the second Mineko gradually drew closer.
Just when they were on the verge of meeting perfectly and merging into one, the flow of time abruptly shifted course and poured itself into eternity.
Mr.Haraguchi’s brush could not advance beyond that point.
Sanshirō had followed along to that point, noticed, and suddenly looked at Mineko.
Mineko remained still as ever.
In the midst of this stillness, Sanshirō’s mind had begun to stir unbidden.
He felt intoxicated.
Then suddenly Mr.Haraguchi burst out laughing.

10–4

“You seem to be uncomfortable again.”

The woman said nothing, immediately relaxed her posture, and plopped down into the armchair beside her as though falling into it. At that moment, her white teeth shone again. And with the movement of her sleeve, she looked at Sanshirō. Her gaze shot past Sanshirō’s brow like a meteor.

Mr. Haraguchi came up beside the round table and said to Sanshirō,

"How about it?" he remarked while striking a match, relighting his earlier tobacco, and putting it back in his mouth. He pressed his finger against the bowl of the large wooden pipe, blew out two thick puffs of smoke through his beard, then turned his rounded back toward them as he approached the painting again. He kept daubing paint wherever he fancied.

The painting was naturally still unfinished. Yet since pigment had been evenly applied across every inch, to Sanshirō's untrained eyes it appeared quite impressive. Whether skillful or insipid, he naturally couldn't discern. To Sanshirō—incapable of technical critique—there remained only the sensation that technique produced. Even this seemed to miss the mark entirely due to his inexperience. The mere act of proving himself not wholly indifferent to art's influence marked Sanshirō as a man of refined sensibilities.

When Sanshirō looked at it, the painting appeared strikingly vivid throughout.
The entire surface seemed dusted with powder, as if bathed in lusterless sunlight.
Even the shadowed areas weren't black.
Rather, a pale purple hue was cast across them.
Looking at this painting gave Sanshirō an inexplicably buoyant feeling.
Its floating quality evoked the sensation of riding in a small swift boat.
Yet it maintained an underlying composure.
There was no intensity to it.
Nowhere could one find harshness, dullness, or garishness.
Sanshirō thought this must be characteristic of Mr.Haraguchi's work.
Then Mr.Haraguchi, casually manipulating his brush as he painted, began to speak.

“Mr. Ogawa, there’s an interesting story.”
“There was a man I knew who got so sick of his wife that he asked for a divorce.”
“But she refused, saying, ‘Since I came to this house through fate’s design, even if you dislike me, I will never leave.’”

Mr. Haraguchi had momentarily stepped away from the painting there and was gazing at the result of his brushwork, but now he turned toward Mineko,

“Miss Satomi. Since you didn’t wear a single-layer kimono, the garment is proving difficult to depict—it’s quite troublesome. Since you’re being entirely nonchalant about it, I have to be a bit too bold with my brushstrokes.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” Mineko said.

Without replying, Mr. Haraguchi approached the painting again. “So then, since the wife’s backside was too heavy for her to leave through divorce, the friend told her this: ‘If you don’t want to leave, then don’t. You can stay in the house forever if you like. In that case, I’ll be the one to leave.’ Miss Satomi, please stand up for a moment. The uchiwa fan doesn’t matter. Just stand. Right. Thank you.—The wife said, ‘But if I stay in the house and you leave, won’t that cause problems later?’ To which he replied, ‘It doesn’t matter. You can just take in a live-in husband if you like.’”

"And then, what happened?" Sanshirō asked.
Mr. Haraguchi, perhaps deeming it unworthy of further elaboration, continued nonetheless.

“It’s hopeless.”
“That’s why marriage requires careful consideration, I tell you.”
“Unions and separations—neither can be freely controlled.”
“Look at Professor Hirota; look at Mr. Nonomiya; look at Satomi Kyōsuke; and finally, look at me.”
“None of them are married.”
“When women grow too accomplished, these single types multiply like rabbits.”
“Therefore society’s basic rule must be keeping women from becoming so accomplished that single people can’t exist, I tell you.”

“But my brother will be getting married soon.”

“Oh, is that so?”
“Then what will become of you?”

“I don’t know.”

Sanshirō looked at Mineko.
Mineko also looked at Sanshirō and laughed.
Only Mr.Haraguchi remained focused on his painting.
"I don't know—I just don't!" she said as he moved his brush.

10-5

Sanshirō took advantage of this opportunity to leave the side of the round table and approach Mineko.
Mineko let her lusterless head rest carelessly against the back of the chair, her posture that of a weary person indifferent to tidiness.
The nape of her neck showed plainly above the collar of her underrobe.
Her haori jacket lay draped over the chair.
The neatly kept underside of her hair at the temples was visible.

Sanshirō had thirty yen in his pocket.
He believed this thirty yen symbolized something inexplicable between them.
This was why he had meant to return it yet held back.
This was why he now resolved to return it at last.
If he gave it back, their connection would end and they might drift apart—or perhaps grow closer without this pretext. To an ordinary observer, Sanshirō would have seemed tinged with superstition.

“Miss Satomi,” he said.

“What?” she replied.
She tilted her head back and looked up at Sanshirō from below.
The face remained composed as usual.
The eyes moved.
And they came to rest gently directly before Sanshirō.
Sanshirō judged that the woman was somewhat tired.

“Since this seems opportune, let me return it here,” he said, undoing a button and slipping his hand inside his coat.
The woman again,

“What?” she repeated.
Her tone remained as flat and uninflected as ever.
With his hand still in his coat, Sanshirō deliberated how to proceed.
At last he resolved himself.

“This is the money from before.”

“Handing it over now serves no purpose.”

The woman continued gazing upward from below.
She did not extend her hand.
She did not shift her posture.
Her face maintained its usual composure.
The man could not fully grasp even the meaning of her reply.
At that moment,

“Just a bit more—how about it?” came a voice from behind.
When he looked, Mr. Haraguchi was standing facing this way.
With the paintbrush still clamped between his fingers, he pulled at the tip of his triangularly trimmed beard and laughed.
Mineko placed both hands on the arms of the chair, remained seated, and straightened her head and spine.
Sanshirō said in a low voice,

“Will it still take much longer?” he asked.

“About another hour,” Mineko replied in a small voice.
Sanshirō returned to the round table.
The woman had already assumed the pose she was to take for the painting.
Mr. Haraguchi lit his pipe again.
The paintbrush began to move again.

While turning his back, Mr. Haraguchi said this.

“Mr. Ogawa. Take a look at Miss Satomi’s eyes.”

Sanshirō did as he was told.
Mineko suddenly released the uchiwa fan from her forehead and broke her quiet posture.
She turned sideways and gazed at the garden through the window glass.

“That won’t do. If you turn sideways like that, it won’t do. But I’ve only just begun drawing you.”

“Why must you say such unnecessary things?” the woman said, returning to face front.
Mr. Haraguchi offered an explanation.

“I wasn’t teasing you. I had something to discuss with Mr. Ogawa.”

“What about?”

“I’ll explain now, so please return to your original pose.”
“Right.”
“Move your elbow a bit more forward.”
“Now then, Mr. Ogawa—do the eyes I’ve painted here capture her actual expression?”

“I can’t quite grasp it,” she said. “Even though you paint like this day after day, how can the expression in the subject’s eyes remain unchanged?”

“That would change,” he replied. “The subject isn’t the only one who changes—the painter’s mood shifts every day too. To tell the truth, this means we should end up producing countless portraits, but it doesn’t quite work that way.” He paused, then added with a thoughtful pull at his beard, “Yet it’s strange how with just a single one, something quite cohesive can emerge.” His brush continued moving as he posed the question lingering in the air: “Why do you think that is...?”

Mr. Haraguchi had been wielding his brush this whole time.
He was also looking at Mineko.
Sanshirō witnessed all of Mr. Haraguchi’s faculties working at once and was amazed.

10-6

"If you keep painting like this every day, the daily accumulation builds up until gradually a fixed mood settles into the work-in-progress."
"So even when returning from outdoors in a different state of mind, once you enter the studio and face the painting, you quickly attune to this particular mood."
"In other words, the painting's atmosphere transfers itself to us."
"The same applies to you, Miss Satomi."
"Naturally left alone, various stimuli would produce shifting expressions - yet what prevents this from significantly affecting the actual painting is how these surroundings - that posture you maintain, these disorderly drums and armors and tiger pelts - come to naturally evoke one fixed expression. As this habitual impression grows strong enough to suppress others... well, under normal circumstances it's best to simply complete these eyes as they are now."
"And even speaking of expressions..."

Mr. Haraguchi suddenly fell silent.
He seemed to have reached a rather complicated stage.
He stepped back about two paces and was intently comparing Mineko to the painting.

“Miss Satomi, is something wrong?” he asked.

“Not at all.”

It was hard to believe this answer had come from Mineko’s lips.
Mineko maintained her posture with such quiet composure.

“And even if we speak of expressions—” Mr. Haraguchi began again.
“A painter doesn’t paint the heart. We paint where the heart reveals itself outwardly—so as long as you thoroughly observe its display, the substance will naturally reveal itself. That’s how we approach it.
What cannot be discerned through outward display should be resigned to lie outside the painter’s domain of responsibility.
That’s why we’re only painting the flesh.
No matter what flesh you paint, if there’s no spirit dwelling within, it’s merely dead flesh and cannot function as a true painting.
So, these eyes of Miss Satomi’s, you see.
I’m not drawing with the intention of capturing Miss Satomi’s heart.
I’m simply painting them as eyes.
I’m painting them because I found these eyes appealing.
The shape of these eyes, the shadow of the double eyelids, the depth of the pupils—everything I can see, I’ll depict exhaustively.
Then, as an accidental result, a certain expression emerges.
If it doesn’t emerge, then either my color application was off, or my grasp of the form was mistaken—it must be one or the other.
In reality, those very colors and shapes themselves constitute an expression—there’s no helping it.”

Mr. Haraguchi once again stepped back about two paces at this moment and compared Mineko with the painting.

“There’s something off about you today. You must be tired. If you’re tired, let’s stop—are you tired?”

“Not at all.”

Mr. Haraguchi approached the painting again.

“So, as for why I chose Miss Satomi’s eyes—”
“Well, I’ll tell you, so listen well.”
“When you look at women’s faces in Western paintings, no matter who painted the beauty, they invariably have large eyes.”
“They’re all just ridiculously large eyes.”
“However, in Japan—starting with Kannon, Otafuku, Noh masks, and most notably the beauties depicted in ukiyo-e—all have narrow eyes.”
“They all have slit-like eyes.”
“When you consider why Eastern and Western standards of beauty differ so greatly, it must seem rather puzzling.”
“But in reality, there’s nothing mysterious about it.”
“In the West, since everyone has large eyes, aesthetic selection occurs among those large eyes.”
“Since Japan is full of narrow-eyed lineages—a man named Pierloti once mocked, ‘How do they even open their eyes?’—well, given such national characteristics, there’s simply no way an aesthetic appreciation for large eyes could develop when they’re so scarce to begin with.”
“So among the narrow eyes where there was freedom of selection, the ideal that came to be formed ended up being embodied by Utamaro and Sukenobu, whose works are highly prized.”
“However, no matter how Japanese they may be, in Western paintings, eyes that narrow would look like they’re depicting blindness and simply won’t do. Yet if we go for something like Raphael’s Madonna, that’s not heavenly at all, and even if it existed, it couldn’t be called Japanese. That’s why we’ve had to trouble you, Miss Satomi.”
“Just a little longer now, Miss Satomi.”

There was no answer.
Mineko remained perfectly still.

10-7

Sanshirō found this painter's talk extremely interesting.
He thought that had he come solely to listen to such discourse, it would have multiplied his interest manyfold.
Sanshirō's focus now rested neither on Mr. Haraguchi's words nor on Mr. Haraguchi's painting.
Naturally, it converged entirely upon Mineko standing motionless before them.
Though Sanshirō attended to the painter's speech with his ears, his eyes never once strayed from Mineko.
The woman's posture mirrored in his vision seemed like nature's progression captured prisoner at its most exquisite instant - frozen mid-flow.
In immutability lay lasting solace.
Yet when Mr. Haraguchi abruptly craned his neck to ask if something troubled her,
Sanshirō felt something akin to dread.
For he heard in this an artist's admission that all methods for fixing transient beauty without transference had been exhausted.

Indeed, when he considered it this way, there did seem to be something amiss. Her complexion lacked vitality. At the corners of her eyes lay an unbearable languor. Sanshirō lost the comforting illusion of this living tableau. Simultaneously, it struck him that he himself might be the cause of this transformation. Suddenly, an intensely personal agitation overwhelmed his heart. The shared poetic notion of capturing fleeting beauty had utterly retreated into shadow. ――I hold such sway over this woman.―― With this realization, Sanshirō became acutely aware of his entire being. Yet whether this influence would prove advantageous or ruinous remained an open question.

At that moment, Mr. Haraguchi finally set down his brush.

“Let’s stop.
It’s just not working today no matter what I try,” he declared.
Mineko, still standing, dropped the uchiwa fan she had been holding onto the floor.
She picked up the haori that had been hanging on the chair and put it on as she approached.

“You seem tired today.”

“Me?” she said, straightening the haori’s sleeves and tying the cords.

“Well, actually, I’m tired too. Let’s continue tomorrow when we’re both fresher. For now, why don’t you have some tea and unwind?”

There was still time before evening.
However, Mineko said she had a slight errand to attend to and would be leaving.

Sanshirō had been urged to stay but purposefully declined, exiting together with Mineko through the front entrance.
Within Japan's social climate, creating such opportunities at one's own discretion proved challenging for Sanshirō.
He attempted to prolong this chance and utilize it to the fullest extent possible.
Thus he tried inviting her to stroll through Akebono-chō—a tranquil district where few people passed—for a circuitous walk.
Yet contrary to expectations, his companion refused.
They cut straight through between hedgerows and emerged onto the main thoroughfare.
Walking alongside her,

"Mr. Haraguchi also mentioned it earlier, but is something truly wrong?" he asked.

“Me?” Mineko said again.
It was the same response she had given Mr. Haraguchi.
Ever since Sanshirō had come to know Mineko, she had never once used lengthy speech.
Most responses would be settled with a phrase or two.
Moreover, they were exceedingly simple.
And yet, they imparted a kind of profound resonance to Sanshirō’s ears.
It produced a nuance that could scarcely be perceived from anyone else.
Sanshirō was impressed by this.
He found it strange.

“Me?” she said, turning her face halfway toward Sanshirō. Through the slit of her double eyelids, she looked at him. Her eyes seemed veiled in haze. An uncharacteristic tepidness emanated from her presence. Her cheeks held a faint pallor.

“Your color looks rather poor.”

“Does it?”

The two walked five or six steps in silence.
Sanshirō wanted by any means necessary to tear through the thin curtain-like veil that hung between them.
Yet he found himself utterly at a loss for what words might rend it.
He refused to employ those saccharine phrases found in novels.
Neither matters of taste nor the social conventions between young men and women permitted their use.
What Sanshirō sought was fundamentally unattainable.
This went beyond mere hope - as they walked, he actively strategized.

10-8

Before long, she began to speak.

“Did you have business with Mr. Haraguchi today?”

“No, I had no business there.”

“Then did you just come by for amusement?”

“No, I didn’t go there for amusement.”

“Then why did you come?”

Sanshirō seized this moment.

“I went there to see you.”

Sanshirō intended to have said everything he could say at this point.
Then, the woman showed not the slightest sign of being affected, yet in her usual tone that intoxicated him,

“I can’t accept the money there.”
Sanshirō was dejected.

The two walked another five or six ken in silence.
Sanshirō suddenly opened his mouth.

“I wasn’t really going there to return the money.”

Mineko did not respond for some time.
Before long, she said quietly,

“I don’t need the money either.
Please keep it.”

Sanshirō could no longer endure it.
Suddenly,

“I just went because I wanted to see you,” he said, peering sideways at the woman’s face.
The woman did not look at Sanshirō.
At that moment, a faint sigh escaped the woman’s lips and reached Sanshirō’s ears.

“The money...”

“Money or something...”

Their conversation, making no sense to either party, broke off halfway.
And so they walked another small half-cho.
This time the woman spoke first.

“What did you think of Mr. Haraguchi’s painting after seeing it?”

With multiple possible responses available, Sanshirō walked a short distance without answering.

“Please don’t be surprised that it was finished so quickly.”

“Yes,” he said, though in truth he had only just noticed.
When he thought about it, it hadn’t even been a month since Haraguchi had come to Professor Hirota’s place and mentioned his intention to paint Mineko’s portrait.
The direct request to Mineko at the exhibition had come after that.
Sanshirō was unfamiliar with the world of painting, so he could hardly imagine at what speed such a large canvas could be completed. However, when Mineko pointed it out, it did seem to have been finished rather too quickly.

“When did he start working on it?”

“He only truly began working on it just recently, but he had been doing a little bit at a time before that.”

“When you say ‘before that,’ around when did he start?”

“You can tell by that outfit.”

Suddenly, Sanshirō recalled the hot summer day when he had first encountered Mineko by the pond.

“Look, weren’t you crouching under that oak tree?”

“You were holding up a round fan and standing on higher ground.”

“It must be just like that painting.”

“Yes.”
“Exactly like that painting.”

The two looked into each other’s faces.
They were nearly at the top of Hakusan slope.

A carriage came running from ahead.
Wearing a black hat and gold-rimmed glasses, a man whose polished appearance was evident even from afar rode in it.
From the moment this carriage entered Sanshirō's view, the young gentleman atop it seemed to be staring fixedly at Mineko.
When they were two or three ken ahead, he abruptly stopped the carriage.
Skillfully flipping back his apron and jumping down from the carriage step, he revealed himself to be a tall, slender-faced man of striking presence.
He was clean-shaven.
Yet he was thoroughly masculine.

"I've been waiting until now, but since you were too late, I came to meet you," said the man as he stood directly before Mineko.
He looked down at her and laughed.

“Yes, thank you,” Mineko laughed in return, meeting the man’s gaze before shifting her eyes toward Sanshirō.

“Who’s this?” the man inquired.

“Mr. Ogawa from the university,” Mineko replied.

The man lightly took off his hat and greeted them.
“Let’s hurry. Brother is also waiting.”

Conveniently, Sanshirō was standing at the corner of the side street where he should turn toward Oiwake.
In the end, the money went unreturned as they parted ways.

Eleven-One

Lately, Yojirō had been going around the school selling tickets for the Literary Association.
It seemed he had taken two or three days to roughly sell them to acquaintances.
Yojirō then decided to target strangers.
He usually cornered them in the hallway.
Then he wouldn’t easily let them go.
One way or another, he made them buy in the end.
At times, the bell rang during negotiations, and he ended up letting them escape.
Yojirō dubbed these instances "ill-timed."
At times, the other party was laughing, and he could never get to the point.
Yojirō dubbed these instances "people disadvantage."
On one occasion, he caught a professor emerging from the restroom.
The professor wiped his hands with a handkerchief and, having just said "Just a moment," hurried into the library.
He never came out after that.
Yojirō dubbed this—he couldn’t come up with a name for it.
After watching his retreating figure, he informed Sanshirō that it must be enteritis.

When asked how many tickets he had been entrusted to sell, Yojirō replied he'd been told to sell as many as possible. When Sanshirō inquired whether overselling might risk exceeding the theater's capacity, Yojirō admitted there was some danger. Pressing further that this would cause problems later, Sanshirō received Yojirō's calm rebuttal: some buyers acted out of obligation, others might cancel unexpectedly, and a few could develop intestinal catarrh anyway.

Watching Yojirō sell tickets, Sanshirō noted he collected payment immediately from willing buyers but simply handed tickets to reluctant students. To cautious Sanshirō, this casual distribution seemed alarmingly reckless. Asked whether payments would materialize later as hoped, Yojirō flatly denied it. He insisted careless bulk selling proved more profitable than meticulous small-scale transactions, comparing his method to how the Times company had marketed encyclopedias in Japan. Though the analogy sounded plausible, Sanshirō felt uneasy nonetheless. When he cautiously warned Yojirō about this approach, the response proved characteristically entertaining.

“They’re Tokyo Imperial University students.”

“Even students—if you handle money so carelessly, plenty will take their sweet time paying.”

“Those who don’t pay willingly—the Literary Association probably won’t kick up a fuss.”
“No matter how many tickets you sell, in the end it’s clear the debt will land on the Association.”

Sanshirō pressed him to clarify whether this was his personal view or the Association’s official stance.
Yojirō smoothly replied that it was naturally both his own opinion and the Association’s position.

When listening to Yojirō’s explanations, people couldn’t help feeling that anyone who didn’t attend this performance was a complete fool. Yojirō would hold forth until they felt like fools themselves. Whether he did this to sell tickets, because he genuinely believed in the Literary Association’s event, or simply to lift his own spirits while simultaneously lifting theirs and then the event’s—thereby enlivening the general social atmosphere as much as possible—the distinction remained unclear. Thus, despite feeling like fools, people were not much swayed by Yojirō’s influence.

Yojirō first spoke about how he had been working tirelessly on the members’ rehearsals.
If you took his words at face value, it seemed likely that most members would become unfit before the actual day due to their rehearsals.
Then he talked about the stage scenery.
The stage scenery was so magnificent that it seemed they had gathered every promising young painter in Tokyo and had each display their full artistic talents.
Next, he discussed the costumes.
The costumes had been made from head to toe entirely in an old-fashioned style.
Next, he discussed the script.
They were all new works, and all of them were interesting.
There were any number of other things.

Yojirō said he had sent invitation tickets to Professor Hirota and Mr. Haraguchi. He reported making the Nonomiya siblings and Satomi siblings purchase premium tickets. He declared everything was proceeding splendidly. Sanshirō shouted "Long live the Literary Association!" in support of Yojirō's efforts.

Eleven-Two

On the evening they cheered “Long live the Literary Association!”, Yojirō came to Sanshirō’s boarding house. He was completely different from how he had been during the day. Stiffening up, he sat down by the brazier and kept muttering, “Cold, cold.” His face suggested it wasn’t just physical chill. At first, he held his hands over the brazier as if leaning into it, but soon tucked them into his sleeves. Sanshirō moved the desk lamp from one end to the other to brighten Yojirō’s expression. Yet Yojirō only let his jaw drop heavily, his shaven head darkly lit by the lamp’s glow. He showed no sign of perking up. When Sanshirō asked what was wrong, he raised his head and stared at the lamp.

“Haven’t they installed electric lights in this house yet?” he asked, bringing up something entirely unrelated to his expression.

“They haven’t installed them yet.”
“They plan to switch to electric lights soon, I hear.”
“The oil lamp isn’t acceptable, you see,” he was answering when suddenly—appearing to forget all about oil lamps—

“Hey, Ogawa—a terrible thing has happened,” he declared.

He decided to ask for the reason.
Yojirō took out a wrinkled newspaper from his pocket.
They were two sheets overlapping.
He peeled off one sheet, refolded it properly, and thrust it forward, saying, “Read this part.”
He was pressing down on the section to be read with his fingertip.
Sanshirō brought his eyes close to the oil lamp.
The headline read “The University’s Department of Pure Literature.”

The university’s Department of Foreign Literature had traditionally been managed by Westerners, with all instruction entrusted to foreign teachers; however, prompted by the progress of the times and the hopes of many students, they had now come to recognize lectures by Japanese nationals as a required subject.
Therefore, they had been in the process of selecting a suitable candidate for some time, and it seemed they had finally decided on a certain individual, with an announcement to be made shortly.
The individual in question, having received an overseas study mandate in the recent past and being a scholar of considerable talent, would likely be supremely qualified.
Such was the content.

“So it wasn’t Professor Hirota after all,” Sanshirō said, turning to look at Yojirō.
Yojirō was still looking at the newspaper.

“Is this certain?” Sanshirō asked again.

“Well…” he tilted his head, “I thought it was pretty much settled, but… I messed up. Though I have heard this man has been campaigning quite vigorously,” he added.

“But this is still just a rumor, isn’t it? We won’t know for sure until they make the official announcement.”

“No, that part alone wouldn’t be an issue. Since it doesn’t concern the Professor, but—” He refolded the remaining newspaper, pressed his fingertip against the headline, and held it beneath Sanshirō’s eyes.

The latest newspaper also carried roughly the same sort of thing.
That much alone would not have made any particularly new impression, but what came after shocked Sanshirō.
Professor Hirota was portrayed as a terrible scoundrel.
For ten years he had been a language teacher, remaining utterly unknown to the world as the mediocrity he was, yet upon merely hearing that the university would appoint a Japanese lecturer in foreign literature, he abruptly commenced fox-and-rat maneuvering and began circulating self-aggrandizing accounts of his reputation among the students.
Not only that, but he had his disciples draft a paper titled "The Great Darkness" for a minor magazine.
This essay appeared under the pseudonym Yamaimo, but it had been discovered that it was in fact penned by Ogawa Sanshirō, a literature student who frequented Hirota’s home.
And then, at last, Sanshirō’s name appeared.

Sanshirō made a peculiar face and looked at Yojirō.
Yojirō had been watching Sanshirō’s face all along.
Both of them remained silent for a while.
Before long, Sanshirō,

“This is such a problem,” he said. He resented Yojirō a little. Yojirō wasn’t particularly concerned about that part.

“What do you make of this?” he said.

“What do you mean by ‘think’?”

“They must have published the letter to the editor as it was.”
“They certainly didn’t investigate this at the newspaper office.”
“In the Literary Review section’s six-point type letters to the editor, submissions like this come in by the dozen.”
“Six-point type is practically a bundle of wickedness.”
“If you really look into them, there are so many lies.”
“There are also those telling blatant lies.”
“As for why they do such foolish things—well—”
“They all seem to be motivated by conflicts of interest.”
“So when I was handling six-point type submissions, I’d toss most of the questionable ones straight into the wastebasket.”
“This article is entirely one of those.”
“It’s the result of an opposition movement.”

11-3

“Why did my name appear instead of yours?”

“That’s how it works,” Yojirō replied.
After a pause, he added:
“It must come down to status.
You’re an undergraduate while I’m just a special student.”
But this explanation meant nothing to Sanshirō.
He remained deeply troubled.

“I should’ve signed properly as Sasaki Yojirō instead of using that obscure ‘Yamaimo’ pseudonym.
Honestly, nobody but me could’ve written that essay anyway.”

Yojirō was earnest.
He might actually be the one troubled, having had his authorship of The Great Darkness usurped by Sanshirō.
Sanshirō felt utterly absurd.

“Did you tell the Professor?” he asked.

“Ah, there’s the rub.”
“Whether you or I wrote The Great Darkness hardly matters—but since this now concerns the Professor’s character, I can’t stay silent.”
“Given how he is, he’d just say ‘I know nothing about this—must be some mistake.’ We could claim it was written anonymously by an admirer to reassure him, and that would settle things neatly enough. But we can’t take that approach now.”
“No matter what, I must clarify my responsibility.”
“When things go smoothly and you can play dumb, it feels satisfying enough—but when you’ve botched it and keep quiet, it becomes unbearably disagreeable.”
“First off, having started this myself and dragged such a decent man into trouble, I can’t just stand by calmly watching.”
“Setting aside thorny questions of right and wrong—I simply feel wretched about it. It’s unbearable.”

Sanshirō thought Yojirō was an admirable man for the first time.

“Has the Professor read the newspaper?”

“It’s not the newspaper delivered to his house. So I didn’t know either. However, since the Professor goes to school and reads various newspapers there. Even if he doesn’t see it himself, someone will probably tell him.”

“So he already knows then.”

“Of course he knows.”

“Hasn’t he said anything to you?”

“He hasn’t said anything.”
“Though really, we haven’t had a proper chance to talk—that’s likely why.”
“I’ve been running around nonstop with this theater business since last week—ah, I’m sick of it all now.”
“Maybe I should just quit.”
“What’s so fun about slathering on makeup and prancing around on stage anyway?”

“If you tell him, you’ll get scolded.”

“I’ll get scolded.”
“Can’t be helped if I do—but I feel wretched about it.”
“Meddling where I shouldn’t have.”
“The Professor’s got no hobbies at all, see.”
“Doesn’t drink, doesn’t—” he began, then cut himself short.
The sheer volume of philosophy the Professor exhaled through his nostrils like tobacco smoke amounted to staggering quantities when tallied monthly.

“He smokes quite a bit, but there’s nothing else to him. Doesn’t fish, doesn’t play Go, no family life to speak of. That’s what’s unbearable. If he had children maybe... But no—he’s all dried-up austerity through and through.”

Yojirō crossed his arms at that.

“Occasionally when I try to offer comfort and put in some effort, it backfires like this. You should go see the Professor too.”

“It’s not about me going. Since I also share some responsibility, I’ll come to apologize.”

“You don’t need to apologize.”
“Then I’ll come to explain.”

Yojirō left with that.

After getting into bed, Sanshirō repeatedly tossed and turned.
Being in the country made for easier sleep.
The false article—Professor Hirota—Mineko—the impressive man who had come to fetch Mineko and taken her away—there were all sorts of stimuli.

11-4

He had slept soundly since midnight.
Waking at his usual hour felt terribly arduous.
While washing his face, he encountered a fellow humanities student.
Their faces were mutually familiar.
Within that brusque "Shitsurei" greeting, he sensed the man had likely read the infamous article.
Yet the other naturally avoided broaching the subject.
Sanshirō too made no attempt at explanation.

As he caught the scent of warm broth, another letter from his provincial mother reached him.
Once again, it appeared interminably long.
Finding it bothersome to change out of his Western clothes, he simply donned hakama over them, tucked the letter into his pocket, and departed.
Outside glimmered with faint frost.

When he came out onto the street, almost all those walking were students. They were all heading in the same direction. All of them were hurrying along. The cold thoroughfare was filled with young men’s vitality. Amid them appeared Professor Hirota’s long shadow clad in a frock coat dusted with frost. The professor who had blended into this procession of youths was already an anachronism in his gait—when compared left and right, front and back, he appeared markedly sluggish. The professor’s shadow vanished within the school gate where stood a great pine tree spreading its branches like a titan’s parasol to barricade the entranceway. When Sanshirō reached the gatefront, nothing remained visible ahead but this pine and above it the clock tower whose hands were ever erratic—or had ceased entirely.

After peering briefly into the gate, Sanshirō repeated the word “Hydriotaphia” twice under his breath. This word was one of the longest and most difficult foreign terms Sanshirō had ever memorized. The meaning was still unclear. He intended to ask Professor Hirota about it. When he had once asked Yojirō about it, Yojirō said it was probably something like “Dātafuabura.” But from Sanshirō’s perspective, there was a tremendous difference between the two. Dātafuabura seemed like something meant to leap about. Just memorizing Hydriotaphia alone took time. When he repeated it twice, his pace naturally slowed. It made a sound as though people of old had crafted and set it aside specifically for Professor Hirota’s use.

When he arrived at school, he felt as though all eyes were upon him as the author of "The Great Darkness."
He tried to go outside, but finding the outdoors unexpectedly cold, remained in the hallway.
Then, during the lecture, he took out his mother’s letter from his pocket and read it.

There was a command for him to return home during this winter break, just like when he had been in Kumamoto. In fact, such a thing had happened when he was in Kumamoto. A telegram had arrived telling him to return home even though it wasn’t clear whether school would be closed or not. Convinced his mother must be ill, he rushed home in alarm, only to find his mother, for her part, was overjoyed that he was unharmed—so much so that she didn’t even say, "Well, that’s a relief." When he asked why, she explained that since he hadn’t returned no matter how long she waited, she had made an inquiry at Inari-sama and received an oracle stating he had already left Kumamoto, so she had been terribly worried that something might have happened to him along the way. Recalling that incident, Sanshirō thought he might be subjected to another divine inquiry this time as well. However, the letter made no mention of Inari-sama. There was something like a marginal note added that Miss Okata of Miwata was also waiting. Miss Okata had apparently left Toyotsu Girls' School and returned home. It also said that a padded garment Miss Okata had sewn for him would be arriving by parcel. It said that Kakuzō the carpenter had been gambling up in the mountains and was robbed of ninety-eight yen—the details of which were described at length. Because it was troublesome, he read it carelessly. Apparently, three men who said they wanted to buy some mountain property came in, and while Kakuzō was guiding them around the area, he ended up getting robbed. Kakuzō returned home and tried to explain to his wife that he didn’t know when he had been robbed. Then, when his wife said, "In that case, you must’ve been drugged or something," Kakuzō apparently replied, "Yeah, now that you mention it, I did smell something like that." However, the villagers are all rumored to have been robbed after gambling. Even in the countryside it’s like this, so there was an admonishment that you, being in Tokyo, must truly take great care.

As he was rolling up the long letter, Yojirō came up beside him and said, “Ah, a letter from a woman.”
He seemed more spirited about making jokes now compared to last evening.
Sanshirō,

“It’s from my mother,” he answered curtly and stuffed the entire envelope into his pocket.

“Isn’t it from Miss Satomi?”

“No.”

“Have you heard about Miss Satomi?”

“What about?” Sanshirō was asking in return when a student came to tell Yojirō that someone wanting tickets for the theatrical performance was waiting downstairs.
Yojirō immediately went downstairs.

11.5

Yojirō thus vanished.
No matter how much they tried to catch him, he wouldn’t appear.
Sanshirō reluctantly put effort into taking lecture notes.
After the lecture ended, he stopped by Professor Hirota’s house as promised the previous evening.
It was as quiet as ever.
Professor Hirota lay stretched out asleep in the tearoom.
When he asked the housekeeper what had happened, she said it likely wasn’t anything serious—he had stayed up too late last night and felt sleepy, so upon returning earlier, he had immediately lain down.
A small night robe covered his lengthy frame.
Sanshirō asked the housekeeper again softly why he had stayed up so late.
She replied that he always kept late hours anyway, but last night’s delay wasn’t due to studying—he had been talking at length with Mr. Sasaki before going out.
That studying had been replaced by Sasaki didn’t explain the afternoon nap, but at least it clarified that Yojirō had told the professor about that matter last evening.
He wanted to ask how Yojirō had been scolded too, but there was no way the housekeeper would know that, and crucially, he had let Yojirō slip away at school anyway. Judging by how energetic Yojirō seemed today, the matter probably hadn’t escalated into anything serious.
Admittedly, Yojirō’s psychological workings remained utterly beyond Sanshirō’s grasp—he couldn’t begin to imagine what had truly occurred.

Sanshirō sat down in front of the long brazier.
The iron kettle was chiming softly.
The housekeeper politely withdrew to the servant's quarters.
Sanshirō sat cross-legged, held his hand over the iron kettle, and waited for the professor to wake up.
Professor Hirota was fast asleep.
Sanshirō felt calm and at ease.
He tapped the iron kettle with his fingernail.
He poured hot water into a teacup, blew on it repeatedly, and drank.
Professor Hirota was sleeping facing the other way.
It appeared he had gotten a haircut two or three days prior, as his hair was quite short.
The ends of his beard were thickly grown.
His nose was also facing the other way.
His nostrils whistled.
He was sound asleep.

Sanshirō, intending to return it, took out the Hydriotaphia he had brought and began reading.
He read here and there.
He found it quite difficult to understand.
It said that flowers were thrown into graves.
It said that the Romans affected roses.
Though he didn't fully grasp its meaning, he supposed it probably translated to something like "to favor."
It said that the Greeks used amaranth.
This too was unclear.
Still, it was undoubtedly a flower's name.
When he moved a bit beyond that part, it became utterly incomprehensible.
He lifted his eyes from the page and looked at the professor.
He was still asleep.
He wondered why anyone would lend him such an impenetrable book.
Then he wondered why this baffling text—which he couldn't understand—still held his interest.
In the end, he concluded that Professor Hirota was Hydriotaphia incarnate.

Then Professor Hirota abruptly sat up.
He lifted his head fully and looked at Sanshirō.

"When did you get here?" he asked.
"You should sleep a bit more," Sanshirō advised.
He hadn't actually been bored.
Professor Hirota,

“No, I’ll get up,” he said, sitting up. Then, as was his custom, he began to exhale philosophical smoke. The smoke coalesced into a rod that rose through the silence.

“Thank you. I’m returning the book.”

“Ah—did you read it?”

“I read it, but I couldn’t understand it at all. I couldn’t even make sense of the main title.”

“Hydriotaphia.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know what it means either.”
“Anyway, it seems to be Greek.”

Sanshirō lost the courage to inquire further.
Professor Hirota yawned.

“Ah, I was sleepy.”
“Slept well.”
“Had an interesting dream.”

Professor Hirota said it had been a woman’s dream.
Just as Sanshirō thought he would elaborate, Hirota proposed going to the bathhouse instead.
The two took hand towels and left.

11-6

After getting out of the bath, the two stepped onto a device set up in the wooden-floored room and tried measuring their height.
Professor Hirota was five shaku six sun tall.
Sanshirō was only four sun five bu.

“You might still grow,” Professor Hirota said to Sanshirō.

“No, I’m done growing. It’s been like this for three years now,” Sanshirō answered.

“Hmm, perhaps,” Professor Hirota said.
Sanshirō thought he must still consider him very much a child.
When they returned home, Professor Hirota opened his study door—saying Sanshirō could come in to talk if he had no pressing business—and entered first.
Sanshirō followed inside, feeling obliged to settle that matter regardless.

“It seems Sasaki hasn’t returned yet.”

“He said he’d be late today and had declined.”
“Lately he’s been rushing about with this theater event business—whether out of meddlesomeness or sheer love of bustling around, the man remains utterly incomprehensible.”

“He’s kind, you know.”

“His intentions might have some kindness to them, but given how unkindly his mind works, he never manages anything worthwhile.” At first glance, he seemed to grasp the essentials. If anything, he grasped them too thoroughly. But when it came to conclusions, whatever purpose that grasp of essentials had served dissolved into utter chaos. “No matter how much you tell him to fix it, he won’t change—so just leave him be. That man was born into this world to cause mischief.”

Sanshirō thought there must be some way to defend him, but with such clear evidence of disastrous results, nothing could be done. He changed the subject.

“Did you see that newspaper article?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Did you not know anything about it until it appeared in the newspaper?”

“No.”

“You must have been surprised.”

“Surprised? Well, it’s not that I wasn’t surprised at all."
“But since I think everything in the world is like that, the younger people are, the less genuinely surprised they’ll be.”

“It must have been a bother for you.”

“It’s not that it hasn’t been a bother.”
“But for someone like me—an older person who’s lived long enough in this world—there aren’t many who’d see that article and immediately take it as fact. So even so, I don’t feel as genuinely inconvenienced as younger people might.”
“Yojirō says he has connections at the newspaper, so he’ll ask that man to write the truth, track down whoever submitted that article and punish them, and publish a thorough rebuttal in his own magazine—he’s spouting all sorts of nonsense about remedial measures. But if you’re going to go through such a hassle, it’d be far better not to stir up unnecessary matters in the first place.”

“It was entirely out of consideration for you, Professor.”
“There’s no malice in it.”

“Do you think I’d tolerate this if there were malice behind it? First off, when people campaigning for me take arbitrary measures or set policies without consulting my intentions from the start, isn’t that fundamentally mocking my very existence? You might never realize how much more convenient it would be for preserving dignity to simply be ignored.”

Sanshirō had no choice but to remain silent.

“And then writing that preposterous ‘great darkness’ nonsense. The newspaper claims you wrote it, but in truth it was Sasaki.”

“That’s right.”

“Last night, Sasaki confessed.”
“You’re the one who’s troubled.”
“No one but Sasaki would write such an idiotic article.”
“I read it too.”
“It has neither substance nor dignity—it’s exactly like a Salvation Army drum.”
“It can only be thought that he wrote it for the sole purpose of provoking readers’ ill feelings.”
“It’s constructed thoroughly and intentionally from start to finish.”
“If someone with common sense were to look at it, they would inevitably conclude that it was drafted with an ulterior motive.”
“If that’s the case, people would say I had my disciple write it.”
“When I read that, I indeed thought the newspaper article was justified.”

11-7

Professor Hirota ended the conversation there. He blew smoke from his nose as usual. Yojirō claimed one could discern the professor’s mood by how this smoke emerged. When it spurted thick and straight, it meant he had reached philosophy’s highest peak; when it dissipated limply, his mind was calm—though there might be danger of mockery. When smoke lingered beneath his nose, seeming reluctant to leave his mustache, he entered meditation. Or there was poetic inspiration. The most fearsome was the vortex at the hole’s tip. When a vortex formed, someone was severely scolded. Since this came from Yojirō, Sanshirō naturally didn’t take it seriously. But given the circumstances, he carefully observed the smoke’s shapes. Yet not a trace of the distinct smoke Yojirō described emerged. Instead, what came out possessed nearly every conceivable quality.

Since Sanshirō remained standing deferentially no matter how long he waited, the professor began speaking again.

“Let’s drop what’s already done. Since Sasaki apologized thoroughly last night, he’s likely out there today as cheerful as ever, bustling about like usual. No matter how much people criticize his misconduct behind his back, it’s pointless if he’s nonchalantly selling tickets around town. Let’s talk about something more interesting than that.”

“Yes.”

“When I was napping earlier, I had an interesting dream.”
“You see, it’s rather like something from a novel—how I suddenly met again in a dream a woman I encountered just once in my life. But hearing about that would surely be more pleasant for you than newspaper articles.”

“Yes.”
“What sort of woman was she?”

“A beautiful girl of twelve or thirteen.”
“With a mole on her face.”

When Sanshirō heard “twelve or thirteen,” he felt slightly disappointed.

“About when did you meet her?”

“About twenty years ago.”

Sanshirō was surprised again.

“So you’ve grasped that woman’s matter quite thoroughly now.”

“It was a dream.
“Because it’s a dream—of course it makes sense.”
“And that’s why dreams are so wonderfully strange.”
“I was walking through a vast forest.”
“Wearing that faded summer suit, you see—and that old hat.”
“At that moment, I was pondering something rather abstruse.”
“All cosmic laws remain unchanging, yet everything governed by those laws must inevitably change.”
“Therefore, those laws must exist outside material things.—Awake, it seems trivial, but within the dream I earnestly contemplated this as I walked beneath the trees when suddenly I encountered her.”
“Not a chance meeting.”
“She stood perfectly still.”
“When I looked—there was her face unchanged from before.”
“Her clothes unchanged from before.”
“Her hair unchanged from before.”
“The mole still present of course.”
“In short—a girl of twelve or thirteen utterly unchanged from when I saw her twenty years prior.”
“When I told her ‘You haven’t changed at all,’ she replied ‘You’ve aged tremendously.’”
“Then when I asked ‘Why do you remain unchanged?’ she answered ‘Because I love this face’s year, these clothes’ month, this hair’s day most of all—that’s why I stay like this.’”
“When I asked when that was, she said ‘Twenty years ago—when we first met.’”
“Then wondering why I’d aged so myself—she taught me ‘Because you keep wanting to move toward things more beautiful than what you were then.’”

"At that moment when I told the woman, 'You are a painting,' she replied to me, 'You are a poem.'"

"What happened after that?" Sanshirō asked.

"Then you arrived," he said.

"When you say you met her twenty years ago—that wasn't a dream? It actually happened?"

"What makes it interesting is precisely that it's factual."

"Where did you meet her?"

The professor's nose emitted smoke again.
He contemplated the smoke and remained silent for some time.
At length, he began speaking.

11-8

"The promulgation of the Constitution was in Meiji 23, wasn't it? At that time, Minister of Education Mori was assassinated. You wouldn't remember. How old are you now? Right—in that case, you were still a baby at the time. I was a high school student then."

"They told us we were attending the minister's funeral, so a large group of us went out shouldering rifles. I thought we were heading to the cemetery, but that wasn't the case. The gymnastics teacher marched us into Takebashi and made us line up along the roadside. We stood there in formation to send off the minister's coffin."

"In name we were paying our respects, but really it was no different from being spectators. It was bitterly cold that day—I remember it still. When I stood motionless like that, my feet throbbed inside my shoes. The man next to me kept staring at my nose and muttering 'red...red.' Eventually the procession arrived."

"It stretched endlessly before us. Through our chilled gaze passed carriage after quiet carriage, rickshaw after rickshaw. Among them was that young girl I mentioned earlier. Even now when I try to recall that scene clearly, it stays hazy—refusing to come into sharp focus."

At least this woman I remember.
That too had gradually faded over the years.
Nowadays, I rarely even think about it.
Before I saw her in today’s dream, I had completely forgotten.
However, at that time, it left a vivid impression on me, as though burned into my mind.
“—How strange.”

“And have you not met that woman at all since then?”

“Not at all.”

“So you have no idea who she is or where she’s from?”

“Of course I don’t know.”

“Didn’t you try to find out?”

“No.”

“Professor, are you her husb—” He suddenly choked up.

“Her husband?”

“Are you her husband without being married?”

The professor burst out laughing.

“I’m not that romantic of a person. I am far more prosaically made than you.”

“But if that woman had come, you would have married her, wouldn’t you?”

“Hmm,” he said after a moment’s consideration. “I suppose I would have.”
Sanshirō wore a pitying expression.
Then the professor began speaking again.

“To say I was compelled to remain single because of that would equate me being crippled for that woman’s sake. Yet there exist those born with physical impediments making marriage impossible. Others face various circumstances rendering matrimony difficult.”

“Are there truly so many circumstances in the world that hinder marriage?”

Professor Hirota was watching Sanshirō intently through the smoke.

“Hamlet probably didn’t want to get married. There may be only one Hamlet, but there are many people like him.”

“For example, what kind of people?”

“For example,” he said, and fell silent.
Smoke was rising incessantly.
“For example, suppose there is a man here. Suppose his father died early, and he was raised relying solely on his mother. Then his mother falls ill again, and on the brink of taking him into her care during her final moments, tells him that when she dies, he should rely on someone. She names someone the child has never met or even knows. When he asks the reason, his mother gives no answer. When he pressed her for an answer, she replied in a faint voice that actually someone was his real father. Well, this is just a story, but suppose there is a child with such a mother. Then, that child would naturally cease to place faith in marriage.”

"Such people must be rare."

"They may be uncommon, but they do exist."

"But yours isn't such a case, is it?"

The professor laughed, “Ha ha ha.”

“You did have a mother, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And your father?”

“He died.”

“My mother died the year after the Constitution was promulgated.”

Twelve: Part One

The entertainment event was held during a relatively cold period.
The year was finally drawing to a close.
People had spring within sight, less than twenty days away.
Those who lived in the city were likely busy.
The plans for the new year fell upon the heads of the poor.

The entertainment event, amidst this period, welcomed all those who were leisurely, those with means, and those oblivious to the distinction between spring and year's end.
There were quite a number of them.
Most were young men and women.

On the first day, Yojirō shouted “Great success!” to Sanshirō.
Sanshirō had a ticket for the second day.
Yojirō told him to invite Professor Hirota to come along.
If asked whether the tickets were different, he would naturally say they were.
“However,” he explained, “if left alone, he’d never go on his own—so you need to drop by and drag him out.”
Sanshirō agreed.

When he went in the evening, the Professor was under a bright lamp with a large book spread open.

When he asked, “Won’t you come?” the Professor smiled slightly and, without a word, shook his head.
He acted like a child.
But to Sanshirō, that seemed scholarly.
His silence was probably found comforting.
Sanshirō was half-standing and dazed.
The Professor’s refusal made him feel sorry.

“If you’re going, let’s go together.”
“I’ll walk there as part of my stroll.”

The professor put on a black coat and went out.
It seemed like he had his hands tucked into his coat, but it was hard to tell.
The sky hung low.
It was a starless cold.

“It might rain.”

“That would be inconvenient if it rains.”

“It’s the coming and going, you see.
“Japanese theaters have a shoe-check system, so even on nice days it’s extremely inconvenient.”
“So the air inside doesn’t circulate, tobacco smoke fills the place, causing headaches—it’s amazing how everyone endures that.”

“But holding it outdoors instead isn’t really an option either, I suppose.”

“Kagura is always conducted outdoors.”
“Even in cold weather, they conduct it outdoors.”

Sanshirō, thinking this discussion wasn’t going to lead anywhere, decided to withhold his response.

“I prefer the outdoors—neither too hot nor too cold—where I can breathe clean air under a clear sky and watch a beautiful play. Something pure and simple, like transparent air itself... That seems achievable.”

“Even a dream you’ve had, Professor—if adapted into a play—might become something like that.”

“Do you know Greek theater?”

“I don’t know much about it. They were indeed held outdoors, weren’t they?”

“Outdoors.”
“Midday.”
“I imagine it must have been quite a pleasant state of mind.”
“The seats are natural stone.”
“They are grand.”
“Someone like Yojirō—if you take him to such a place and let him see it a bit, it’d do him good.”

Once again, criticism of Yojirō surfaced.
That Yojirō was now inside the cramped venue, working himself ragged as he bustled about mediating things while looking terribly self-satisfied—it struck Sanshirō as rather comical.
If he didn’t bring the Professor along, the man truly wouldn’t come.
Even though attending such events would clearly benefit him, he remained oblivious.
No matter how much I told him, he wouldn’t listen.
What a nuisance—and precisely because I felt compelled to sigh about it did the whole situation grow all the more amusing.

The professor then explained the structure of Greek theaters in detail. Sanshirō heard from him explanations of terms like Theatron, Orchêstra, Skênê, and Proskênion. He learned that according to some German scholar's theory, the theater in Athens had seats for seventeen thousand people - considered small compared to the largest ones accommodating fifty thousand. There were admission tickets made of ivory and lead resembling medals, he was told, with embossed patterns or carvings. The professor even knew their prices: twelve sen for single-day performances, thirty-five sen for three-day spectacles. As Sanshirō murmured acknowledgments, they reached the entertainment venue's entrance.

The electric lights were shining brightly.
Attendees continued to stream in.
The bustle exceeded even what Yojirō had described.

"How about it? Since we're here, won't you come in?"

"No, I won't go in."

The professor turned and headed back toward the darkness.

Twelve-Two

Sanshirō watched the professor’s retreating figure for a while, but upon seeing people who had arrived by carriage hurriedly enter—seemingly reluctant to spare even the effort of taking their shoe-check tickets—he too quickened his pace and went inside. It was the same as being pushed forward.

At the entrance stood four or five people with nothing to do. Among them, the man wearing hakama received an admission ticket. When he peered over the man’s shoulder into the venue, the interior suddenly opened up wide. Moreover, it was extremely bright. Without so much as adjusting his brow, Sanshirō took his seat as directed. While squeezing into a narrow spot and looking around, his eyes were dazzled by the colors people had brought. It wasn’t because he was moving his eyes. It was because the colors clinging to countless people were ceaselessly and freely moving, each to their own, within the vast space.

The performance on stage had already begun. The characters who appeared were all wearing ceremonial headdresses and leather shoes. Then they carried in a long palanquin. There were those who halted it at center stage. When they unloaded the palanquin, another person emerged from inside. The man drew his sword, pushed back the palanquin, and began fighting—Sanshirō had no idea what was happening. True, he had heard an outline from Yojirō. But he had listened half-heartedly. He had thought watching would make things clear and kept murmuring vague affirmations. Yet looking at it now, he couldn’t grasp any meaning whatsoever. All that remained in Sanshirō’s memory was the name Minister Iruka. Sanshirō wondered which one was Iruka. He simply couldn’t tell. So he watched the entire stage assuming everything pertained to Iruka. Then whether it was the crowns, shoes, tube-sleeved robes, or even their speech—everything somehow began reeking of Iruka. Truth be told, Sanshirō had no concrete conception of Iruka. He had studied Japanese history too long ago and ended up forgetting about this ancient figure entirely. It might have been Empress Suiko’s era. Or perhaps Emperor Kinmei’s reign—he couldn’t be sure. He felt certain it couldn’t belong to emperors like Ōjin or Shōmu.

Sanshirō was left with nothing but a mood steeped in Iruka. Thinking this sufficient for watching the play, he gazed at the Chinese-style costumes and scenery. Yet he couldn't grasp the plot at all. Soon the curtain fell.

Just before it fell, the man beside him had criticized his own neighbor—saying the actors' voices sounded like a parent and child conversing in a six-mat room—while condemning their complete lack of training. The neighbor beyond had complained about the actors' poor posture, declaring every one of them unsteady. Both men knew all the actors' real names by heart. Sanshirō listened intently to their conversation. They wore splendid attire—likely famous people, he thought—though he suspected Yojirō would surely object were he to hear this talk. At that moment, someone in back shouted loudly, "Bravo! Quite good!" The two men turned around and fell silent altogether. Then the curtain fell.

Here and there, people were rising from their seats.
From the hanamichi to the exit, figures bustled about in great commotion.
Sanshirō half-rose and swept his gaze around him.
The person who should have come was nowhere to be seen.
To tell the truth, he had been watching as attentively as possible even during the performance.
Since that proved futile, he had privately resolved to wait until intermission.
Sanshirō felt slightly disappointed.
With no alternative, he returned his eyes to the front.

The group next to him appeared to be men of considerable social standing; they kept looking left and right, incessantly naming well-known figures—who was over there, who was here. While moving away from each other, a few exchanged greetings. Thanks to this, Sanshirō came to recognize some of the wives of these prominent figures. Among them were also those who had recently married. This must have been a rare sight even for one of the neighboring men, for the man deliberately wiped his glasses clean and kept muttering, “Indeed, indeed,” as he looked on.

Then, from the far end toward this side in front of the stage with its curtain lowered, Yojirō came hurrying over at a trot.
He stopped about two-thirds of the way there.
Leaning slightly forward and peering into the dirt-floored area, he said something.
Sanshirō used that as a guide to look ahead—from Yojirō, who stood at the edge of the stage, Mineko’s profile came into view two or three ken away in a straight line.

Twelve-Three

The man beside them had his back turned toward Sanshirō.
Sanshirō inwardly hoped that by some chance this man would turn his way.
Just then, the man stood up.
Apparently having grown tired of sitting, he perched on the edge of a box seat partition and began surveying the venue.
At that moment, Sanshirō clearly recognized Mr. Nonomiya's broad forehead and large eyes.
As Mr. Nonomiya stood up, Yoshiko's figure behind Mineko also became visible.
Sanshirō tried to determine whether there were others besides these three.
But from a distance, it was simply a tightly packed mass of people; if one were to call it a group, the entire dirt-floored area appeared as a single group, leaving nothing to be done.
Between Mineko and Yojirō, conversation seemed to be exchanged intermittently.
It appeared that Mr. Nonomiya occasionally interjected.

Then suddenly, Mr. Haraguchi emerged from between the curtains.
He stood side by side with Yojirō and peered intently into the dirt-floored area.
Their mouths were undoubtedly moving.
Mr. Nonomiya nodded his head vertically like a signal.
At that moment, Mr. Haraguchi struck Yojirō’s back from behind with the flat of his hand.
Yojirō spun around and ducked under the curtain’s hem, disappearing somewhere.
Mr. Haraguchi descended from the stage, wound his way through the crowd, and came up beside Mr. Nonomiya.
Mr. Nonomiya stood up and let Mr. Haraguchi pass.
Mr. Haraguchi suddenly plunged into the crowd.
He disappeared near where Mineko and Yoshiko were.

Sanshirō, who had been observing every move of this group with greater interest than the performance itself, suddenly found himself envious of Haraguchi’s mannerisms at this moment.
He had never thought of using such a convenient method to approach someone.
He thought he might try imitating it himself.
However, the very awareness that he was imitating someone had already sapped his courage to act; moreover, the consideration that no matter how much he squeezed in there would likely only be space for about six people meant that Sanshirō’s backside remained stubbornly glued to his original seat.

Then the curtain opened, and Hamlet began.
Sanshirō had seen a photograph at Professor Hirota’s house of Hamlet dressed by a certain Western actor.
The Hamlet that now appeared before Sanshirō’s eyes was dressed in nearly the same costume as this one.
It wasn’t just the costume.
Even his face resembled it.
Both had their eyebrows drawn together in a figure-eight shape.

This Hamlet’s movements were entirely light and nimble, and the overall effect was pleasing to the senses.
He moved vigorously across the stage and set it into vigorous motion.
It was vastly different in flavor from the Noh play Iruka.
In particular, there were moments when he stood at the center of the stage, spreading his hands wide or glaring up at the sky—times when he delivered such an intense stimulus that it left no room in the audience’s eyes for anything else.

Instead, the dialogue was in Japanese. It was Japanese translated from a Western language. The delivery had modulation. There was rhythm as well. In some parts, it came out so fluently that it seemed overly eloquent. The text was splendid too. And yet, it failed to engage. Sanshirō thought it would have been better if Hamlet had said something more Japanese. At the point where one might say, "Mother, wouldn't that trouble Father?" they suddenly brought up Apollo or some such reference and carelessly concluded the matter. And yet, the expressions on both parent and child looked as though they were about to burst into tears. However, Sanshirō only dimly felt this contradiction. He lacked the courage to decisively conclude that it was not boring at all.

Consequently, when he grew tired of Hamlet, he looked toward Mineko.
When Mineko became hidden by people’s shadows, he watched Hamlet.

When Hamlet came to the part where he tells Ophelia, “Go to a nunnery, go to a nunnery,” Sanshirō suddenly thought of Professor Hirota.
Professor Hirota had said:
“Can someone like Hamlet get married? Indeed, when you read the book, that seems to be the case.”
“Yet in the play, it appears perfectly acceptable for him to marry.”
“If you consider it carefully, the fault must lie in how he delivers that ‘Go to a nunnery’ line.”
“As proof—Ophelia being told ‘Go to a nunnery’ doesn’t elicit the slightest pity.”

The curtain fell again.
Mineko and Yoshiko stood up from their seats.
Sanshirō also stood up.
When he came out into the corridor, the two were in the middle of it talking to a man.
The man leaned halfway out of the doorway to the left-side seats accessible from the corridor.
When he saw the man’s profile, Sanshirō turned back.
Without returning to his seat, he took his footwear and went outside.

12-4

By nature, it was a dark night.
When he passed through the artificially lit area, he thought it seemed like rain was falling.
The wind rustled the branches.
Sanshirō hurried back to his boarding house.

The rain began at midnight.
Sanshirō lay in bed listening to the rain, using the line "Go to a nunnery" as a central pillar around which his thoughts circled endlessly.
Professor Hirota might also be awake.
What kind of pillar was Professor Hirota embracing? Yojirō must be buried formlessly in the great darkness...

The next day, he had a slight fever.
His head felt heavy, so he stayed in bed.
For lunch, he sat up in bed and ate.
When he fell asleep again, this time he broke into a sweat.
His mind grew groggy.
Just then, Yojirō came barging in with great vigor.
“Since you didn’t show up last evening and didn’t seem to attend lectures this morning either, I wondered what had happened and came to check on you.”
Sanshirō expressed his thanks.

“Well, I went last evening.”
“I went.”
“I knew you came out on stage and were talking with Miss Mineko from afar.”

Sanshirō felt as if slightly intoxicated.
When he began speaking, the words flowed smoothly.
Yojirō reached out and pressed Sanshirō’s forehead.

“You’ve got quite a fever.”
“You must take medicine.”
“You’ve caught a cold.”

“It’s because the theater was too hot and too bright, and then when you go outside, it suddenly becomes too cold and too dark. That’s not right.”

“Even if you say it’s wrong, there’s nothing to be done about it, is there?”

“But even so, it’s still not right.”

Sanshirō’s words grew gradually shorter; as Yojirō half-heartedly tended to him, he finally drifted off to sleep. After about an hour, he opened his eyes again. Seeing Yojirō,

“You’re still here?” he said.
This time, he seemed more like his usual self. When asked how he felt, he only said his head was heavy.

“It must be a cold.”

“It must be a cold.”

Both said the same thing. After a while, Sanshirō asked Yojirō, “You asked me the other day if I knew about Miss Mineko, didn’t you?”

“About Miss Mineko?”
“Where?”

“At school.”

“At school?”
“When?”

Yojirō still seemed unable to recall.
Sanshirō had no choice but to explain in detail the circumstances of that time before and after.
Yojirō,

“Well, that might have happened,” Yojirō said.
Sanshirō thought Yojirō was quite irresponsible.
Yojirō also began to feel somewhat sorry and tried to recall.
Eventually, he said this.

“Well, it’s nothing, right?
Isn’t it just the talk about Miss Mineko getting married?”

“Has it been settled?”

“I heard it was settled, but I’m not really sure.”

“Is it Mr. Nonomiya?”

“No—it’s not Mr. Nonomiya.”

“Well…” he started, then stopped.

“Do you know?”

“I don’t know,” he declared.
Then Yojirō leaned slightly forward.

“I really can’t quite figure it out.
“There’s something strange about this.”
“Unless we wait a little longer, there’s no telling how things will turn out.”

Sanshirō thought Yojirō should just come out with this mysterious matter right away, yet Yojirō remained unperturbed, keeping it to himself and puzzling over it alone.
Sanshirō endured for a short while, but finally grew impatient and requested Yojirō to tell him all the facts concerning Mineko without hiding anything.
Yojirō laughed.
And then, whether to console him or for some other reason, he abruptly steered the conversation in a completely different direction.

12.5

“What a fool you are, thinking about a woman like that.
“It’s no use thinking about her.
“First of all, isn’t she about the same age as you?
“Falling for men your own age is a thing of the past.
“That’s romance straight from Oshichi’s time.”

Sanshirō remained silent.
But he couldn’t quite grasp Yojirō’s meaning.

“Because, you see,
“Take a man and a woman, both around twenty years old, and line them up side by side.
“Women are better at everything, you see.
“Men just get made fools of.
“Even women don’t want to marry a man they look down on, you know.
“Though of course, women who think they’re the greatest in the world are exceptions.
“If they don’t marry someone they despise, they’ve got no choice but to stay single.
“Aren’t there plenty of rich daughters like that—ones who marry into families of their own will but end up scorning their husbands?
“Miss Mineko is far superior to her husband.
“But since she’d never consider marrying someone she can’t respect as a husband from the start, he has to be prepared for that.
“Which means the likes of you and me don’t qualify to be that woman’s husband.”

In the end, Sanshirō found himself lumped together with Yojirō. However, he remained silent as before.

“But you and I are far greater than that woman.”
“Even between us, right?”
“But unless five or six years pass, our greatness won’t even register in her eyes.”
“And she’s not about to wait around five or six years.”
“So you marrying her would be like horses mating with oxen!”

Yojirō had deployed this idiom about horses and oxen in a rather peculiar context.
Then he laughed alone.

“Nah—in five or six years, someone way better than her will show up.”
“In Japan these days, women outnumber men.”
“No point catching a cold and working yourself into a fever over it.”
“Ah, the world’s vast—nothing to fret about.”
“Truth is, I’ve got my own troubles too.”
“Things got too bothersome on my end, so I told her I had official business in Nagasaki.”

“What’s that?”

“What do you think? A woman I was involved with.”

Sanshirō was surprised.

“What do you mean, a woman? She’s the type you’ve never even gotten close to.”
“So I told her, ‘I’m being sent to Nagasaki for germ research, so it’s no good for now,’ and turned her down flat.”
“But then she insisted on bringing apples to see me off at the station—I was really in a fix!”

Sanshirō grew even more astonished.
He listened wide-eyed.

“So, what did you do?”

“Who knows what happened? She was probably waiting at the station with apples.”

“You’re a cruel man. How can you do something so awful?”

“I know it’s wrong and pitiful, but there’s nothing to be done.”
“From the very beginning, step by step, I was led there by fate.”
“Actually, I’d already become a medical student long before that, you see.”

“Why do you tell such unnecessary lies?”

“Well, each and every one of those has its own circumstances, you see.”
“And then, when the woman got sick, there was a time I was asked to diagnose her and got into trouble.”

Sanshirō found himself amused.

"Back then I looked at her tongue, tapped her chest, and faked my way through it, but when she asked if she should go to the hospital to get properly examined, I was stumped."

Sanshirō finally burst out laughing.
“Since there are plenty of such things, you might as well relax,” Yojirō said.
He didn’t understand what this was about.
But he became cheerful.

It was then that Yojirō first explained the mystery concerning Mineko.
According to Yojirō’s account, Yoshiko also had a marriage proposal in the works.
And Mineko also had one.
If that were all, it would be fine, but the person Yoshiko was going to and the person Mineko was going to seemed to be the same.
That was why it was so strange, apparently.

Sanshirō felt somewhat made a fool of.
Yet Yoshiko's marriage at least was certain.
He had indeed heard that conversation himself nearby.
Perhaps he had confused it with Mineko's story.
Still, Mineko's marriage didn't seem entirely false either.
Sanshirō wanted definitive clarity.
Seizing the moment, he asked Yojirō to explain properly.
Yojirō agreed without hesitation.
"I'll arrange for Yoshiko to visit—ask her directly then," he said.
It was a clever scheme.

“So you must take your medicine and wait.”

“Even if I recover, I’ll keep waiting in bed.”

The two parted with laughter.
As he left, Yojirō made arrangements with a neighborhood doctor.

12-6

When evening came, the doctor arrived.
Sanshirō had no recollection of summoning a doctor himself, so at first he was slightly flustered.
Eventually, when his pulse was taken, he finally realized.

He was a young, polite man.
Sanshirō judged him to be a substitute doctor.
Five minutes later, the illness was determined to be influenza.
The instruction was to take a dose tonight and avoid exposure to wind as much as possible.

When he awoke the next day, his head felt much lighter.
If he lay still, he was almost back to normal.
Only when he moved away from the pillow would he feel unsteady.
The maid came and said the room was quite stuffy.
Sanshirō lay on his back staring at the ceiling without even eating.
At times, he would grow drowsily sleepy.
He was clearly in a state gripped by fever and exhaustion.
Sanshirō, remaining gripped and unresisting, found a certain pleasure in yielding to nature as he drifted between sleep and wakefulness.
He thought it was because his illness was mild.

As four or five hours passed, he gradually began to feel bored.
He kept tossing and turning.
It was a fine day outside.
The sunlight striking the paper doors gradually shifted its shadows.
Sparrows chirped.
Sanshirō thought it would be nice if Yojirō came to visit again today.

Just then, the maid opened the sliding door and announced that there was a lady visitor.
Sanshirō had not anticipated Yoshiko arriving this early.
Yojirō had been quick to act.
Lying still with his eyes fixed on the open entrance, he soon saw a tall figure appear at the threshold.
Today she was wearing a purple hakama.
Both feet were in the corridor.
She seemed to hesitate slightly before entering.
Sanshirō raised his shoulders from the floor and said, “Please come in.”

Yoshiko closed the shoji and sat down by the pillow.
The six-mat room was in disarray, and since it hadn’t been cleaned that morning, it felt even more cramped.
The woman said to Sanshirō,

“Please come in while I stay lying down,” he said.
Sanshirō laid his head back on the pillow.
He alone was calm.

“Does it smell bad?” he asked.

“Yes, a little,” she said, but didn’t particularly make a face.
“You have a fever.
What could it be, your illness?
Did you have the doctor come in?”

"The doctor came last evening. It’s influenza, apparently."

"Early this morning, Mr. Sasaki came and said, 'Ogawa is ill, so please go visit him.' He didn’t know what illness it was, but it didn’t seem to be anything mild. When he said that, both Miss Mineko and I were so surprised."

Yojirō had exaggerated a bit again.
To put it harshly, it was as if he had drawn Yoshiko out.
Sanshirō, being too kindhearted for his own good, couldn't help feeling bad.
"Thank you," he said while lying there.
Yoshiko took out a basket of oranges from the cloth-wrapped bundle.

"I bought these because Miss Mineko suggested it," she stated frankly.
It was unclear whose visit this truly was.
Sanshirō made sure to express his gratitude to Yoshiko.

"Miss Mineko was supposed to come up too, but she's been rather busy lately... Please do give her your..."

“Did something particularly busy happen?”

“Yes. It did,” she said. Large black eyes rested on Sanshirō’s face against the pillow. From below, he looked up at Yoshiko’s pale forehead. He recalled for the first time having met this woman at the hospital. Even now, she still looked listless. Yet at the same time, she was lively. She brought all the comforting reassurances one could rely upon to Sanshirō’s pillow.

“Shall I peel an orange for you?”

The woman took out a piece of fruit from between the blue leaves. He thirstily drank the sweet dew that gushed with fragrance.

“It’s delicious, isn’t it? It’s a get-well gift from Miss Mineko!”
“That’s enough.”

The woman took out a white handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped her hands.

“Mr. Nonomiya, how are your marriage prospects coming along?”

“That’s as far as they went.”

“I hear Miss Mineko also has marriage prospects, doesn’t she?”

“Yes, they’ve already been settled.”

“Who is it—the one she’s marrying?”

“The one who said he’d take me.”
“Heh heh, isn’t that funny?”
“He’s a friend of Miss Mineko’s brother.”
“I’ll soon have a house with my brother again.”
“Once Miss Mineko leaves for good, I won’t be able to keep imposing anymore.”

“Aren’t you getting married?”

“I’ll go if there’s somewhere I want to go.”

The woman dismissed the remark and laughed pleasantly.
It was clear there was nowhere he wanted to go.

December 7th

From that day onward, Sanshirō did not leave his bed for about four days.
On the fifth day, he cautiously took a bath and looked in the mirror.
He had the visage of a ghost.
He resolutely went to the barber.
The following day was Sunday.

After breakfast, he layered undershirts under his coat to stay warm and went to Mineko’s house.
Yoshiko was standing in the entryway and was about to step down into the shoe-removal area.
She said she was on her way to her brother’s place.
Mineko was not there.
Sanshirō left together with her.

“Is everything completely better now?”

“Thank you. I’ve recovered.—Where did Miss Satomi go?”

“Brother?”

“No, Miss Mineko.”

“Miss Mineko is at the church.”

This was the first time he had heard of Mineko attending church. After having Yoshiko tell him where it was located, Sanshirō parted from her. Turning down three side streets, he came out right before it. Sanshirō was a man wholly unconnected to Christianity. He had never even peeked inside a church. He stood before it and gazed at the building. He read the sermon notice posted there. He paced back and forth by the iron fence. At times he leaned against it. Sanshirō was determined to wait for Mineko’s emergence no matter what.

Before long, the sound of hymns could be heard. He supposed they must be what people called hymns. It was an occurrence inside the closed high windows. Judging by the volume, there seemed to be a considerable number of people. Mineko's voice was among them. Sanshirō listened intently. The hymn ceased. The wind blew. Sanshirō turned up his overcoat collar. Clouds of the kind Mineko favored appeared in the sky.

There had also been a time when he had looked at the autumn sky together with Mineko. The place had been Professor Hirota’s second floor. There had also been a time when they had sat by the edge of the stream in Tabata. At that time too, they had not been alone. Stray sheep. Stray sheep. The clouds were shaped like sheep.

Suddenly, the church door opened. People came out from inside. People return from heaven to the floating world. Mineko was fourth from the end. Wearing a striped Azuma coat and looking down, she came down the entrance steps. Appearing cold, she hunched her shoulders, clasped her hands in front, and minimized her interaction with the outside world as much as possible. Mineko maintained this unresponsive demeanor all the way to the gate. At that moment, as if noticing the bustle of the street for the first time, she raised her face. The shadow of Sanshirō’s removed hat was reflected in the woman’s eyes. The two of them approached each other at the place where the sermon notice was posted.

“What’s the matter?”

“I just came by your house a moment ago.”

“Oh. Then please come in.”

The woman half-turned to leave.
She was still wearing low geta.
The man deliberately leaned against the church fence.

“Meeting you here is enough. I’ve been waiting outside for you to come out.”

“You should have come inside instead. You must have been cold.”

“I was cold.”

“Has your cold cleared up? If you don’t take proper care, it’ll come back. You still don’t look well.”

The man didn't reply but took out something wrapped in Japanese paper from his overcoat's inner pocket.

"This is the money I borrowed.
Thank you for your patience.
I kept meaning to return it but ended up delaying."

Mineko glanced briefly at Sanshirō's face yet accepted the paper-wrapped package without protest.
However, she kept holding it in her hand and staring at it without putting it away.
Sanshirō stared at it too.
The conversation paused momentarily.
Soon Mineko spoke.

“You aren’t in any difficulty, are you?”

“No, I had this amount sent from my hometown some time ago, so please take it.”

“I see.
“Then I’ll keep it.”

The woman put the paper-wrapped package into her bosom.
When she withdrew her hand from the Azuma coat, she was holding a white handkerchief.
Holding it to her nose, she looked at Sanshirō.
She also seemed to be sniffing the handkerchief.
Before long, she suddenly extended her hand.
The handkerchief came before Sanshirō’s face.
A sharp scent wafted strongly.

"Heliotrope," the woman said quietly.
Sanshirō involuntarily drew his head back.
A bottle of heliotrope.
Dusk in the fourth block.
Stray sheep.
Stray sheep.
A high sun hung bright in the sky.

“I hear you’re getting married.”

Mineko dropped the white handkerchief into her sleeve.

“You knew?” she said while narrowing her double-lidded eyes and looking at his face. Her gaze kept Sanshirō at arm’s length yet betrayed excessive concern for his distance. Only her eyebrows remained distinctly composed. Sanshirō’s tongue adhered to the roof of his mouth.

She studied him awhile before releasing a sigh too faint to hear properly. Then she placed her slender hand upon her thick eyebrows and spoke.

“I know my transgressions.
“My sin is ever before me.”

It was a voice so quiet it was nearly inaudible.
Sanshirō had clearly heard it.
Sanshirō and Mineko parted ways in this manner.

When he returned to his lodgings, a telegram from his mother had arrived.
When he opened it, the time of dispatch was stated.

Thirteen

Mr. Haraguchi's painting was completed.
The Tanseikai displayed it on the front wall of a room.
And they placed a long bench before it.
It was for resting.
It was for viewing the painting.
It was for resting and contemplation.
The Tanseikai thus provided convenience to the many viewers lingering before this masterpiece.
This was special treatment.
It was said to be because the painting was of exceptional quality.
It was also said to be because the subject matter caught people's eyes.
A minority said it was because it depicted that woman.
A few association members explained it was entirely due to its large size.
It certainly was large.
When they attached a gold frame measuring over five sun in width, it appeared remarkably larger.

Mr. Haraguchi came briefly the day before the opening to inspect the venue.
He sat on the bench and spent a long time gazing at it with a kiseru pipe clenched between his teeth.
Before long, he abruptly stood up and made a meticulous round of the exhibition space.
He then returned to his former bench and leisurely smoked a second pipe.

From the very day of the opening, a crowd gathered before "Woman of the Forest".
The carefully prepared bench became a superfluous fixture.
Only those who were tired rested there without looking at the painting.
Even so, there were those who, while resting, discussed "Woman of the Forest".

Mineko came on the second day, accompanied by her husband.
Mr. Haraguchi guided them.
When they came before "Woman of the Forest," Mr. Haraguchi looked at the two and said, "What do you think?"
Her husband said, “It’s splendid,” and stared intently from behind his glasses.

“The posture of standing while holding up this fan is excellent.
“As expected of a professional—it’s in a class of its own.”
“You’ve really taken notice of this part here.”
“The way the light hits the face is well-executed.”
“The gradation between shadow and sunlight is clearly defined—even in the face alone, there’s a remarkably intriguing variation.”

“Oh, no—it’s all according to their own preferences.
“It’s not my doing.”

“Thank you,” Mineko said in gratitude.

“I too must thank you,” Mr. Haraguchi said in return this time.

Hearing that the credit belonged to his wife, the husband also appeared pleased.
Among the three, it was the husband who offered the most courteous thanks.

On the first Saturday afternoon after the opening, a large group came together—Professor Hirota, Mr. Nonomiya, Yojirō, and Sanshirō.
The four of them bypassed everything else and headed straight into the room housing “Woman of the Forest.”
“That’s it, that’s it!” said Yojirō.
A large crowd had gathered.
Sanshirō hesitated slightly at the entrance.
Mr. Nonomiya entered with detached composure.

From behind the crowd, after just peering in, Sanshirō stepped back.
He leaned against the bench and waited for the others.

“They’ve painted something splendidly large,” said Yojirō.

“It seems they intend to have Sasaki buy it,” said Professor Hirota.

“Starting with me—” he began, but when he looked, Sanshirō was leaning against the bench with a sullen expression.
Yojirō fell silent.

“The color composition is rather stylish.”
“If anything, it’s an audaciously spirited work,” commented Mr. Nonomiya.

“It’s somewhat overdone in its cleverness.”
“Then he ought to admit he can’t paint something that resonates like drumbeats,” Professor Hirota remarked.

“What do you mean by a ‘thump-thump painting’?”

“It’s a painting that’s as carefree as a drumbeat and rather amusing.”

The two of them laughed.
The two of them only commented on the technique.
Yojirō raised an objection.

“If someone were to paint Miss Satomi, no matter who does it, they couldn’t make her look carefree!”

Mr. Nonomiya reached into his inner pocket to find a pencil for marking symbols in the catalog.
There was no pencil—instead came a letterpress-printed postcard.
When he looked at it, this was Mineko’s wedding invitation.
The reception had long since concluded.
Mr. Nonomiya had attended together with Professor Hirota in frock coats.
On the very day Sanshirō returned to Tokyo, he found this invitation atop his desk at the boarding house.
The date had already passed.

Mr. Nonomiya tore up the invitation and threw it on the floor.
Soon, he began discussing other paintings with the professor.

Yojirō came to Sanshirō’s side.

“What do you think of Woman of the Forest?”

“The title ‘Woman of the Forest’ isn’t good.”

“Then what would be a good one?”

Sanshirō did not answer anything.
He merely repeated “stray sheep, stray sheep” under his breath.