Pathway to Japanese Literature

By: Edogawa Ranpo

I

The only question remaining was when, where, and how he would die.

Aoyama Kōichi sat on the sea-facing lawn of what had once been Hamarikyu Gardens and gazed vacantly at the anchored steamships.

Behind him blazed a giant crimson sun.
The surroundings swiftly deepened into twilight hues.
Whether due to the weekday or not, aside from occasional young couples passing through, not a soul remained visible.

The hundred thousand yen stolen from his uncle's secret savings had been utterly depleted over twenty days of wandering.
In his pocket now lay only just enough to scrape together that night's lodging fee.

Wandering from hot spring to hot spring, he had tried everything possible for a twenty-one-year-old, yet now reflecting on it all, nothing proved worthwhile.
That mountain and this valley; that woman and this woman—ah! What tedium! A world utterly devoid of value.

He could never return to his uncle's house. He didn't want to go back to work either. Just remembering the cluttered desk at the bicycle dealership and the grimy ledgers lined up before it made him nauseous.

As he stared vacantly at the darkening sea and sky, that vision surfaced again. A naked woman filling the sky. Floating in white clouds above the mast of a distant steamship. She resembled the Madonna from Western paintings yet differed somehow—more resplendent, more sensual. Radiating carnal desire. Kōichi wanted her to devour him. To swallow him whole like a whale gulping its prey.

Truth be told, he had been haunted by this fantasy since his boyhood.
He had often seen it in his dreams.
During a group school trip in junior high, when he saw the Great Buddha of Nara, he grew so ecstatic he nearly felt dizzy.
The Great Buddha of Kamakura felt more visceral.
He couldn’t forget the sensation of entering its interior—he had gone to Kamakura three or four times for that reason alone.
He thought how wonderful it would be if he could live inside that womb.

“Finally cornered... There’s nothing left but suicide.”

Kōichi muttered aloud.
Even while traveling between hot springs, even when embracing a heavily powdered, round-faced woman, he had constantly thought of suicide.
That contemplation held a certain sweetness.

He stood up, walked to the edge of the lawn where it met the cliff, and stared fixedly at the bluish-black sea before him, but couldn't bring himself to jump.
He thought there was still a little time before the final moment arrived.
That brief postponement felt indescribably languid and pleasant, like burrowing into a warm futon after hearing the alarm clock's ring.

It grew so dark that the sea and sky were indistinguishable.
The lights atop the masts of nearby and distant steamships began to sparkle and glitter beautifully.
That familiar loneliness of being utterly alone in this world pressed in until it hurt.

This morning, he arrived at Ueno Station and watched two movies in Asakusa and Yūrakuchō.
The movie theater crowds were creatures from an entirely different world than his own.
Then he walked back and forth along Ginza-dori from Kyōbashi to Shinbashi about three times.
The people passing through there also looked like foreigners with whom he shared no common language.

It was getting a little colder.
It was nearing the season of falling leaves.
Kōichi began walking with a vacant expression.
Walking aimlessly, letting his feet carry him where they would, he came upon the bustling intersection at Shinbashi.
The distance from Hamarikyu Gardens to Shinbashi was surprisingly short.

He walked toward Owarichō, mingling with the sidewalk crowd, wanting to dissolve into this mass of people and vanish. He thought how wonderful it would be if he could keep walking like this forever. But he knew that when night deepened, Ginza-dori would transform into a ruin where only the train rails gleamed coldly. That was terrifying.

When he noticed, there was something of outlandish colors mixed into the crowd before his eyes.
A man wearing a morning coat and top hat, his face plastered wall-white with powder beneath a false mustache, strode leisurely while holding up a placard.

Two or three hours earlier, when Kōichi had walked along Ginza-dori, this was the same Sandwich Board Man who had stood on some street corner, using his cane to point in one direction while opening and closing his eyes and mouth in unison.

"If I became a Sandwich Board Man, I could make myself vanish from the world," he thought.
But he would have to go to the advertising company, borrow the costume, and collect his wages.
True disappearance was impossible.

Kōichi walked while observing the top hat and the broad shoulders of the soiled morning coat. Then, the Sandwich Board Man stopped before a large pane of glass. On the other side of the glass, a Western-style building crafted from white sugar glittered brilliantly. Beyond it, several human heads were visible. They sat under bright electric lights drinking tea.

The face of one woman among them burned into Kōichi’s retina. Her hair was styled in Western fashion—a beautiful Western-clad figure. Before committing any misdeeds, he had met her three times in passing through Ginza. He remembered clearly it being three times. Once he had picked up a black glove she dropped. At that moment, with her beautiful lips she said “Thank you” and stared intently at his face. She seemed like the wife of some luxurious household, but her face and figure remained unforgettable.

Kōichi staggered unsteadily into the café.
He went near the woman and took a seat at the adjacent table.
And he stared fixedly at the woman's face.
Then something uncanny occurred.
Like something out of a fairy tale, an uncanny event occurred.
The beautiful woman smiled gently at Kōichi.

“We’ve met two or three times before, haven’t we?”
“You remember well, don’t you?”

Kōichi was flustered.
He had never imagined she would speak to him in such a familiar tone.
Moreover, realizing she had remembered him so clearly, a high-pitched ringing filled his ears.
He was conscious of his face turning red.

"Won't you come over here?
“Your eyes look different today.”
“Did something happen?”

Having been signaled with a look to come to the adjacent chair, Kōichi moved there.
The woman had no companion.

“So something happened, didn’t it?
“Your eyes... They’re the eyes of loneliness.”
“Eyes that say there’s nothing worth living for.”
“Hey, what’s the matter?”
“You got fired, didn’t you?”

Every time the woman spoke or moved, a pleasant scent drifted over.
He felt as if the scent were seeping from her beautiful gums and rose-colored lips.

“It’s worse than losing a job.”

Kōichi felt he could tell this woman anything.
Outside the show window, the same Sandwich Board Man was still standing.
From within the wall-like white powder, garish false eyelashes—eyes—were staring fixedly this way.

“Worse things?”

The woman laughed through her lips while contriving a slight frown.
Her face was terrifyingly alluring.

“I’m a thief. I stole it.”

“Oh…”

The woman feigned a sharp intake of breath, though in truth she didn’t seem particularly surprised.

“And I’ve spent all that money.”

“So you’re desperate then.
That’s why you have that look in your eyes.
You look like you’re about to kill yourself. Now—you can’t do that here. Come to my place.
Let’s take our time and talk.
That’s fine, isn’t it?
In your current state, you’d follow me anywhere, wouldn’t you?
That’s right—wouldn’t you?”

"But I don't want to meet anyone else."

Kōichi thought about the woman's husband, children, and servants.

“Of course I know that.”
“I don’t have any family.”
“I’m all alone in the apartment.”

The woman stood up, leaving her drink about half-finished.
Kōichi hadn’t even ordered a drink yet.

As the woman walked toward the counter, Kōichi stood up mechanically, but directly before him was a glass window facing the alleyway. Beyond the glass, a large human face peered inward. It was a startling visage. Kōichi gave it only a fleeting glance as he hurried after the woman toward the entrance, yet even while moving he recognized it - that wall-like face plastered in white powder belonged to the Sandwich Board Man.

II

The woman hailed a car and ordered, "Near the Kōjimachi Hitokuchizaka tram stop."
Inside the car, they hardly spoke.
Kōichi was captivated by the soft warmth seeping through the fabric of their clothing.

It was an apartment resembling a luxury hotel.
Passing the caretaker’s room with its small window and climbing the stairs brought them to the woman’s room at the end of the second-floor corridor.
The woman extracted a key from her handbag, opened the door, and flipped the light switch.
Plush armchairs flanking a sofa, three or four gaudy cushions scattered about, a crimson-patterned carpet—this constituted the living room. Beyond lay what appeared to be the bedroom, where the footboard of an ornate bed stood visible.

“Wait here for a moment.”
“Sit there.”

The woman disappeared into the bedroom.

After making him wait for a while, when she emerged, she had changed into a black velvet gown.
And she held a small silver tray bearing a Western liquor bottle and two glasses.
She sat in the chair facing Kōichi, poured Western liquor into glasses with practiced ease, and as she extended one toward him—suddenly—

“You—what about your parents?”

she asked.

The velvet gown had a bright red silk lining.
Every time she moved, the lining flipped up to reveal glimpses of her arms and legs.
She appeared to wear nothing beneath the gown, her entire body’s contours visible through the supple velvet. What a magnificent body, he thought.
Suddenly, that colossal statue of a nude woman—resembling the Virgin Mary yet more sensual—flashed through Kōichi’s mind.

"I don’t have any parents."

The strong liquor from the glass burned Kōichi’s throat as he grew entranced by the fragrant scent emanating from the woman’s body. He became the protagonist of a fairy tale. In fairy tales or movie scenes—what gestures would this stand-in for Kōichi make?—he found himself wondering.

"I have neither parents nor siblings. I was raised by my uncle, but he’s a bachelor too. My aunt died young. This uncle and I never got along. I worked at a bicycle wholesaler’s shop—that place horrified me to my core. So I just... snapped."

“So you stole the money?”

"It was my uncle’s secret savings."
"It was my uncle’s entire fortune."
"My uncle owns a single paper bag pasting machine and barely makes ends meet."
"It was money my uncle had painstakingly saved—more precious to him than life itself."
"I found the bankbook and seal that uncle had hidden."
"There was about 100,000 yen."

“So you’ve spent it all up. Did you enjoy yourself?”

“I was always one step away from suicide. The thought that I’d kill myself once this was gone felt so sweetly indulgent, didn’t it?”

At that moment, the woman formed a strange faint smile.
It was a smile of kinship.
The reason Kōichi could speak so freely before her was that he too had intuitively recognized this shared affinity.

“How long has it been since you stole it?”

“About twenty days.”

“It’s a wonder they didn’t catch you.”

“Uncle might not have told the police.
But losing his entire fortune must have shocked him into illness.
He might truly be bedridden from it now.”

“Do you feel sorry for him?”

“That’s pitiable. But I don’t ever want to see that person’s face again. I hate him so much it horrifies me.”

“You’re strange,”
“The person closest to you is the one you hate most... What about friends?”

“I don’t have any.”
“Everyone’s different from me.”
“There’s not a single person who understands how I feel.”
“Mrs.—even you couldn’t possibly understand my feelings.”

“Oh my—‘Mrs.’?”
“Do I look like a ‘Mrs.’ to you?”

“Then what are you?”

“A lonely woman, just like you.”
“I haven’t told you my name yet, have I?”
“I’m Aikawa Hitomi.”
“An eccentric living off money inherited from my parents.”
“I’ll be your friend.”
“You seem so terribly lonely and pitiful.”

The woman stood up and moved to the sofa where Kōichi was sitting.
At that moment, the unfastened front of her gown fluttered open like a blooming flower, revealing a fleeting glimpse of her peach-pink form.
As expected, she wore nothing beneath.
That first sight struck Kōichi like an electric shock, every fine hair on his body standing erect.

He felt the woman's hands clasping his shoulders.
Kōichi pressed both palms against his face and stayed silent for a long time.
Then his shoulders quivered abnormally, a sound resembling a girl's laughter escaping through his hands.
And from between his fingers, glistening droplets began to seep forth.

The woman remained silent, watching it.
She let him do as he wished.

Kōichi finally stopped crying and lifted his tear-drenched face.
Then he said in a low nasal voice, sounding embarrassed.

“Do you know why I cried? ……Because I love you.”

He was trembling violently from the intensity of his emotions.

“That’s enough now.”
“Don’t cry.”
“I understand your feelings perfectly.”
“I’m fond of you too.”
“Your tear-drenched face looks completely different.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Do you know your own beauty? …I’ve never met someone like you before.”

The woman was toying with Kōichi's hair.
That sensation, like electricity, reverberated through to his heart.

“Shall I tell you the truth?”
“Yes, go ahead and say it.”

“I’ve been seeing you in my dreams since I was a child.”
“I see you even when I’m awake.”
“I saw you again today.”
“I was gazing at the sea in Hamarikyu Gardens.”
“Then your naked body appeared, filling the entire sky.”
“It was as beautiful as an aurora.”
“That is my god.”
“My god since childhood.”
“Hey, Ms. Hitomi—may I call you that?—I want to enter your body.”

“My, how do you plan to get in?”

“I should become small.
And if you would grow large like your usual vision.
Then I could enter through your beautiful mouth into your stomach.”

“How adorable.
How truly adorable you are.”

He realized her arms were tightening around his chest with a forceful squeeze.
Kōichi twisted his neck to look at the woman’s face.
Too close to see her entire face, but there they were—lips like a flower, glistening with moisture.

At that moment, the two jerked their faces apart as if startled, their eyes locking.
The bell was ringing piercingly.
They finally noticed what had been ringing continuously since earlier.

“The phone. Wait here for a moment, okay?”

The velvet gown with its pleasant texture billowed as the woman vanished into the bedroom.

In a stifled voice, two or three words.
She had already appeared at the door.
She grimaced as if troubled.

“I had completely forgotten about it.
“I had plans with a friend.
“They say they’re coming now.
“They’re already nearby.
“For that friend, it’s an important matter—I can’t stand them up.
“Won’t you come tomorrow night?”

The woman appeared terribly flustered.
She hurriedly turned back into the bedroom, took something in her hand, and came before Kōichi.

“Here’s some spending money—stay somewhere tonight.”
“And this—the spare key to this room.”
“No need to announce yourself at the entrance.”
“Just go up quietly to the second floor and open this door.”
“Tomorrow night at nine.”
“Don’t come early or late.”
“Exactly nine o’clock.”
“Understand?”

There were about ten 1,000-yen bills.
And a lovely silver spare key.
If the woman was going to be in the room tomorrow night, there seemed no need for a spare key.
Or was there some reason?
Or was this some romantic game where “handing over a spare key meant handing over one’s heart”?
Kōichi didn’t mind either way.
The clandestine nature of spare keys appealed to him.
Moreover, tonight he could no longer endure the ferocity of his passions.
Tomorrow night would be better.
He had finally encountered the visions from his childhood.
For this once-in-a-lifetime sacred feast, he needed to slowly prepare his heart.
In fact, having a full day to prepare was even preferable.
However,

“A male friend, right?”

“Oh my, you’re jealous.”
“I’m glad.”
“But that’s not it. A woman.”
“The person I like most among women.”
“It’s an urgent matter related to that person’s circumstances.”
“I can’t put it off.”

The woman’s velvet arm wrapped around his neck.
Lips made direct contact.
Warm, wet petals heavy with fragrance pressed relentlessly forward until he couldn’t breathe.
His entire body numbed, consciousness threatening to slip away.

“Exactly nine o’clock.* There’s a reason.* Don’t forget.”

*Note: Asterisks should be italics for emphasis per instruction

Escorting him outside the door, she whispered it repeatedly by his ear.

Three

That night, Kōichi stayed at a small hotel near Yasukuni Shrine, but didn't sleep a wink and cried through until morning.
Tears kept flowing endlessly, one after another, and he couldn't do anything about it.
His body trembled as if with fever.
The next morning, he managed some sleep, though not deep.
In the afternoon, he bathed, visited the barber, changed his underclothes and shirts, and spent the time restlessly.
From when daylight still lingered, he fought the urge to go see that apartment, enduring steadfastly as he waited for the appointed hour to arrive.

A little before nine at night, Kōichi walked along the road to Aikawa Hitomi’s luxury apartment without glancing aside.
The dark mansion district lay completely devoid of pedestrians.
Yet at a certain street corner, he stopped abruptly, startled.
Even to his nearly trance-like eyes, something bizarre—impossible to ignore—stood there dimly illuminated by a distant streetlight.
It was the Sandwich Board Man in morning coat and top hat.

Kōichi suspected he might be seeing a hallucination.
The idea of a Sandwich Board Man standing at a dark, deserted street corner was unthinkable.
He involuntarily stopped and peered intently in that direction.
The face was deathly pale with an apparent fake mustache, but Kōichi couldn’t tell whether it was the same man from last night.

A glaring standoff in the darkness persisted briefly.
Then the Sandwich Board Man’s left hand snapped up horizontally.
That hand gripped the familiar cane.
Like a signal, he used it to indicate the rightward direction.
Next he bent his right arm at a perfect right angle and began pumping it up and down before his chest.
Simultaneously, the eyes with their false lashes and crimson-painted lips must have been mechanically opening and closing.
Though too dark to see clearly, Kōichi perceived this through prior associations.
Like an automaton, the figure maintained these motions ceaselessly.

This Sandwich Board Man might be out of his mind.
Kōichi, frightened, retreated from the spot as if fleeing, but unable to shake his concern, glanced back after walking a short distance only to find the street corner now completely empty.
Then, when he thought he might have actually seen a ghost after all, an indescribably strange sensation came over him.

He reached the apartment as if running.
As instructed, he offered no greeting to the caretaker's small window at the entrance, abruptly climbed the stairs, and stood before the familiar room.

The door might not be locked.
First he knocked lightly, then more forcefully.
There was no response.
It was hushed and deathly still.
He tried turning the knob, but it wouldn’t open.
As expected, it was locked.
Surely she wasn’t absent.
Was she deliberately holding her breath to make me use the spare key in accordance with some seductive protocol?

He took out the spare key and opened the door.
Anticipating she might be hiding in the wall beside the door, he opened it gradually and cautiously.
There was no resistance.

“Ms. Hitomi.”
He tried calling in a whisper.
It was deathly quiet.
He entered the room and closed the door behind him.

“Ms. Hitomi, it’s me.”

This time, he raised his voice slightly.
His voice echoed hollowly off the walls.
The space felt unnervingly vacant.
He checked his wristwatch.
It showed just past nine.
Could she have gone out?
She wouldn't break our arrangement.
Had some mishap occurred?

A sinister thought abruptly crossed his mind.
“Have I fallen into a trap for her sake?”
For no particular reason, he became concerned about the next room.
He felt as though something that would entrap him was lying in wait there.

The door to the bedroom was open about six inches.
It took courage to open it any wider.
However, Kōichi resolutely pushed the door.

On the floor before the bed lay a person.
It was a man.
Kōichi felt the blood drain from his head.
It was just as I thought.
This man must be dead.
I’m going to be made the culprit.
Aikawa Hitomi’s conspiracy now seemed glaringly obvious.
The apartment room might have been rented temporarily for just a few days for this purpose.
And that woman might have already vanished somewhere, never to return there again.
I had been loved solely to be made the culprit.
……Suspicions raced further and further ahead.

Kōichi peered down at the sleeping man from above.
The gray suit was still new.
The red-striped necktie had splashed back onto the cheek, the fat face ashen.
The vest was sodden.
The white shirt beneath was stained bright red up to his neck area.
He must have been stabbed in the chest.
He was a grossly overweight man in his fifties.
The ashen head had its scalp exposed, with only a few remaining strands of hair resembling tangled silk threads.

His approach may have been the stimulus.
At that moment, something terrifying happened.
The fallen man’s eyelids began to move.
And then—snap—his eyes flew open so wide they seemed ready to burst from their sockets.
He thudded onto his side.
And with both hands clawing at the floor, he began to struggle violently.
The manner of his convulsions was so terrifying it left him drenched in sweat from head to toe.

Because of his corpulent body, a strange scream escaped—like that of a rubber doll being crushed.
He was saying something.
The bulging eyes were fixed on Kōichi’s face.
Eyes of entreaty.

“Kill me.”
“It hurts.”
“Kill me quickly.”

It was not human speech.

If someone had been a police officer, at this moment they would have barked, “Pull yourself together—who’s the culprit? Hey, who did this to you?” they would have doggedly demanded.
But Kōichi had no intention of verifying such things.
He himself had been set up as the culprit.
That was the wish of the fragrant sky-filled visionary nude woman.
It was the will of his flower-like god.
To become her sacrifice was Kōichi’s supreme joy.
That he could become the culprit for her sake filled him with such joy he wanted to weep.

Kōichi loathed the struggling, ugly middle-aged man.
However, his bulging eyes of entreaty were terrifying.
There was no way to save him anymore.
He was half-dead.
And he was entreating him to quickly put an end to this suffering.

He darted his gaze around the area.
On the small table beneath the bed's pillow sat a compact desk lamp.
Its bronze base appeared heavy.
He suddenly grabbed it and stood straddling the thrashing man's head, legs spread wide.

Kōichi would carry that scene in the depths of his eyes until death.
He couldn’t tell whether the thought had flashed through his mind in that instant or been associated later, but the scene from that moment and his distant childhood memory remained tightly bound together and inseparable.

Around seven or eight years old, he had chased a stray cat together with the neighborhood ruffians.
The cat hid itself within the hedge.
Everyone threw stones.
Someone’s stone struck the cat’s face.
The cat fell down on the spot and thrashed in terror.
One eyeball had popped out of its socket and dangled limply near its mouth.

The mischievous boys had all fled.
Only Kōichi did not flee.
It was because he was terrified by the cat’s agony.
Because he felt sorry for it and couldn’t bring himself to abandon it there.
To save it from this agony, there was no choice but to kill it in a single decisive act.
Otherwise, the pitiful animal would have to struggle in agony forever.
The young Kōichi could not endure that cruelty.

He picked up a large rock and stood straddling the cat's head with legs spread wide.
And with his heart leaping into his throat, he squeezed his eyes shut and hurled the boulder down toward the cat's head.
There came the sound of a skull being crushed.

[Note] The Middle Part was written by Mr. Kōyama Shigeru, and the Latter Part by Mr. Washio Saburō.
The First Part, Middle Part, and Latter Part were published all at once.