Shimaki Kensaku - "Leprosy" (1934)

Jeff E. Long, Commonwealth University-Bloomsburg [About | Email]

Volume 24, Issue 3 (Translation 3 in 2024). First published in ejcjs on 13 December 2024.

Abstract

This is the first short story of Shimaki Kensaku (1903-1945) who emerged as one of the prominent writers of tenkō bungaku (tenkō literature [ed: conversion literature]) in the 1930s. In “Leprosy” Shimaki explores the meaning of tenkō on a personal level, and writing in the shishōsetsu style of first-person narrative, this story draws on Shimaki’s experiences and observations as a communist activist imprisoned following the Japanese state’s crackdown on the Leftist movement in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Keywords: Shimaki Kensaku, tenkō, prison life, Hanson’s Disease, literature, censorship

Translator's Introduction

Shimaki Kensaku (his real name was Asakura Kikuo, 1903-1945) emerged as one of the prominent writers of tenkō bungaku (tenkō literature) in the 1930s, despite having little previous experience writing fiction. Most of the other tenkō writers besides Shimaki had some experience writing fiction, particularly since many of them were former members of the proletarian literature movement such as Murayama Tomoyoshi, Nakano Shigeharu, and Hayashi Fusao. However, Shimaki turned to literature seeking some means of expressing and coping with the inner turmoil he experienced as he moved away from communism and his political activities with the communist party. Today, he is remembered more for his short stories produced toward the end of the Asia-Pacific War while bed-ridden and in the final phase of his illness.
 
Born in Sapporo, Shimaki’s mother raised him after his father’s premature death, Shimaki struggled for every bit of education he received during his youth. He twice attempted to establish himself in Tokyo, but both times, circumstances forced him back home. The first time in 1920, he caught tuberculosis, and the second time in 1923, he was injured during the Great Kantō Earthquake. In 1925, he entered Tohoku University in Sendai without a higher school degree, but Shimaki became active in the radical student movement and left Sendai the year after to pursue work with the farmer's cooperative in Kagawa Prefecture of Shikoku. Shimaki formally joined the Japan Communist Party in 1927. He had been working in a farmer's cooperative in Shikoku when the police arrested him in the wake of the March Fifteenth round up of communists in 1928. While imprisoned at Takamatsu prison, he remained in solitary confinement, and authorities encouraged Shimaki to make a formal declaration renouncing his ties to the communist party and pledging to forgo political activities. Shimaki did this at his trial in 1929, but the court convicted him, nonetheless, of violating the 1925 Peace Preservation Law (Chian Iji Hō) and sentenced him to four more years in prison. The police transferred Shimaki to Osaka prison where he served three years. With his case of tuberculosis growing steadily worse, the authorities commuted his prison sentence in March 1932.
 
Shimaki completed “Leprosy” in January of 1934 and gave it to a friend, Yonemura Masaichi, to read. Yonemura took the story to the editors of Bungaku Hyōron (Literary Criticism), and they published it in their April issue. The main character of the story is Ōta Jirō, a communist who was active in the farmer’s cooperative in Shikoku before his arrest. Ōta is serving a five-year sentence in solitary confinement when his illness, tuberculosis, flares up. He is moved to the isolation wing and placed with the Hansen’s Disease patients instead of the other tubercular patients because of the nature of his crime. While in the isolation wing, Ōta is further traumatised by his surroundings, begins to hallucinate, and shows signs of a nervous breakdown. At this point, a new prisoner arrives in his cellblock; the prisoner is Okada Ryōzō, a once highly placed member of the communist party who has since contracted Hansen’s Disease. Okada remains firm in his beliefs and encourages Ōta to do the same. However, Ōta, his physical and mental condition deteriorating rapidly, resigns himself to the fact that he will never achieve the resolve and determination to sustain his beliefs like Okada. The story ends with Ōta being carried out of the prison, his sentence commuted. Nevertheless, the question of Ōta’s tenkō persists with no clear resolution. This would be the first of five short stories Shimaki wrote that were collected and published as Goku (Prison) in 1934, establishing him as an important writer in the incipient tenkō bungaku (tenkō literature) genre of the 1930s.[1]
 
Shimaki’s “Leprosy” was first translated into English by George Furiya, a second-generation Japanese-American, for the magazine New Masses in 1938.  Prepared just four years after publication for the premier American Marxist magazine on political and cultural affairs of the Communist Party USA, Furiya in his translation provides an interpretation of the censored parts of the short story and of the circumspect wordings Shimaki employs to avoid censorship. Furiya did not provide the formal title of the short story in the Literary Section of the magazine, perhaps to emphasise the brutal description of prison life for the overseas audience reading the story. This translation retains the fuseji (censorship markings) Xs used by editor Itō Sei in Nihon Gendai Bungaku zenshū to denote one character that was deleted by the censors in the 1934 edition, which was not subsequently restored in later editions of the short story. Where Itō has restored passages that were excised in the 1934 original with ellipses, this translation will denote those censured passages using the strike through feature. Finally, this translation will also include Furiya’s interpretations of these passages in the notes for the reader’s reference.

Acknowledgements

This work owes much to the support and guidance of Dr. Lucy Lower who patiently commented on the translation and made countless suggestions for improving the manuscript from start to finish. In addition, this translation benefitted from Dr. Teruko Craig’s meticulous reading and insightful observations on translating key sections of Shimaki’s short story.

Texts consulted for translation

Shimaki Kensaku. “Rai.” Bungaku Hyōron (April 1934): 130-170 [written January 1934].
 
———“From a Japanese Prison.” Translated by George Furiya. New Masses 26, no. 7 (February 8, 1938): 57-70. https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-masses/1938/v26n07-[plus-Lit-Sup]-feb-08-1938-NM.pdf.
 
———“Rai.” In Nihon Gendai Bungaku zenshū. Vol. 80, Takeda Rintarō, Shimaki Kensaku shū, edited by Itō Sei, 191-214. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1963.

—•—

"Leprosy" (1934) by Shimaki Kensaku

Chapter One

Ōta had just been taken to this town’s prison on the hill, when for the first time since his imprisonment, he had to face the full force of summer. Ōta was not sure of the reason for the move, but in early July he alone was abruptly sent from the prison in a sleepy little town along the Inland Sea, where the climate was always mild, to this place. Ōta changed from orange into blue prison clothes and boarding a small ferry he crossed the Inland Sea, watching the green mountains seemingly recede in the distance of the summer morning. Then he spent half a day in a jarring train ride on the Tōkaidō line. It was already nearing evening when he arrived at the newly built prison on a high hill close to a major city. By the time Ōta had been led round and round through the vast building and could at last relax in the solitary cell assigned him, he was so exhausted he could scarcely move for a while. He was worn out from the excitement of contact with the outside world and by the unaccustomed train ride after such a long time, and for three days after that he had trouble sleeping. Changing living quarters may have been one reason for his insomnia. But Ōta, sitting in his cell, also had trouble letting go of the vision of the beautiful rural landscape along the Tōkaidō line, and the figures of people from the outside world riding the train that flashed before his eyes, day and night, as if he were still swaying in the train. And he also could not help but lick his lips even now when he thought of how good the boxed lunch he had eaten on the train had tasted after so many years. He had been given the lunch when the train stopped at a small station just past S city, and he remembered how he had wolfed it down in front of all those people on the train. —
 
However, after about a week all of these memories sank to the bottom of his consciousness, and he returned to his dull, everyday existence. The gray monotony of his life again became reality, and with this Ōta regained his composure to the extent that he could really take in his new surroundings.
 
The window in Ōta’s cell opened to the west. The sunlight flowed in through the barred window after lunchtime and baked the concrete wall. About two or three in the afternoon the sunlight would shine directly on a person sitting in the middle of the room; then, drawing a gentle arc as it moved quietly, gradually it would cast its pale light against the other walls as the Western sky turned red. Because the prison was constructed of concrete and red clay, it retained the heat from the noonday sun through the night, seeming to cool off only slightly just before dawn. There was no opening on the opposite wall allowing cross ventilation, and Ōta would wake many times during the night. When he awoke, he would noisily gulp down the warm water straight from the kettle’s spout. But he had to ration the water since it and his water for washing were all he had until noon the next day. The water he drank soon drenched his body in a greasy, but cooling, sweat. When he rubbed his hand over his skin in the early morning coolness, it felt rough from the salt that remained on his skin. —
 
For a brief time, his hands and feet, which had turned purple and cracked from frostbite during the winter dryness, seemed to return to normal, though dark spots remained, and the coating of oil on his skin made it look young. Now heat rash spread from his back to his chest and then down to his thighs, finally covering his whole body. Ōta was always wiping off the sweat with the stiff cotton cloth provided him, but his skin, having lost its toughness, soon reddened and he began to look like he had a bad case of eczema. —
 
The temperature in the cell was probably over 100 degrees and when the humid stink of fermenting excrement in the corner mingled with dried sweat, Ōta would pause in the middle of sealing an envelope and wonder how many other vigorous men like himself lived in this enormous prison, rotting away from the overpowering heat and stench that surrounded them. Unconsciously he let out a deep sigh and looked up at the faraway sky; the little square of it visible through the iron bars of his window overflowed with sunlight like white flames, so bright his weakened eyes could hardly bear it.
 
Within a month Ōta came to appreciate the world of sounds in his monotonous, everyday life. He lived on the second floor in cell number 65 at the midpoint of a long corridor. Due perhaps to the construction of the building, all sounds in the corridor of the building seemed to gravitate naturally toward the centre of it. The building felt like a gigantic box with many internal partitions; when a sound arose in one corner of the building, it echoed eerily off the four walls and flowed toward the centre, then eventually faded away. —The sounds of men padding along the corridor in straw sandals, two or three men whispering furtively as they try to pass unnoticed, the creaking of the wheel on a wagon, the sound of utensils tossed on the table in preparation for the meals, and the quiet steps and rattling sword of the guard making his rounds all were sounds that Ōta never tired of hearing. —This jumble of sounds converged into a single, pleasant melody to him. This was a world where human conversation was strictly prohibited. The gray walls of his cell, and the colour of the sky that he could see through the barred window: these were all that he saw day in and day out. However, it could be said that even in the world of sounds that were naturally generated there, each tone had its own complex colouring. In addition, because extreme silence was rigorously maintained even the smallest sound had its own distinctive rhythm. —
 
Many sparrows had built their nests in corners of the eves and the rain gutters running around the building. In early spring, the sparrow’s eggs hatched and before long the young sparrows began flying. By the middle of summer there were hundreds of young sparrows flying around. When the sky whitened in the morning or when the setting sun turned the sky a brilliant red, the sparrows would gather among the leaves of the paulownia tree that reached up to Ōta’s barred window, and begin to sing all together. Even a heart hardened by terrible cruelty, one that concealed, unsmiling, the XXXXX that burned brightly within, must warm faintly at the sound of these adorable little birds, however.[2] Somehow the sound of birds was linked to distant memories from Ōta’s youth. —
 
From time to time one of the still unfledged sparrows would lose its footing and fall down into the rain gutter. As the mother sparrow flew crazily around the rain gutter, men with white cloth covering the sleeves of their blue prison uniforms would take long bamboo poles and thrust them into the rain gutter, shouting loudly. From his high window Ōta could often observe the scene, and even this small distraction sufficed to let him forget his present circumstances for a while. —Five years was a long time, but Ōta sometimes tried to believe that he would not go insane so long as he had this world of sound.
 
However, what truly gladdened his heart, what gave him strength and solace, was the sound of human voices, the voices of his fellow prisoners. He heard their voices twice a day, morning and night, rain or shine. In the morning the wake-up bell echoed through tile halls. After getting up and washing his face he soon heard the inspector calling roll. Even now Ōta would be overwhelmed by humiliation as he turned, on his thin, bony knees, to face the door and responded loudly with his assigned number. Even though his lungs were so congested with blood he could hardly bear it, Ōta’s one means for venting his feelings was his voice. Could others fathom the feelings submerged in his voice? Ōta was soon able to distinguish the characteristics of each voice of his fellow prisoners. —
 
In 193X, the single cells in this prison, close to the Orient’s number one industrial city, were filled with prisoners imprisoned for the same crime as Ōta. Because of his well-developed sensitivity, Ōta was soon able to learn that just about every other cell along the corridor held one of his fellow co-conspirators. Some of the voices he heard had a youthful lightness while others were oppressed by melancholy. He could usually figure out from a voice who its owner was and what he was doing. Sometimes one of the voices he knew and remembered would disappear. He could not suppress a smile when after two or three days he heard the same youthful voice again in a corner of the third floor. But, there were also voices that he never heard again. Ōta wondered where those voices had been dragged off to. —Twice a day, morning and evening, these waves of feeling swelled and broke across every corner of the box-like building.

 
Chapter 2

It was not long before the sunlight took on a yellow cast, and lost dragonflies strayed into Ōta’s cell more frequently alerting him to the impending autumn. During the afternoon of one such day, Ōta worked hard preparing bundles of one hundred letters that he had just finished sealing.

This was a small number compared to the day when he had prepared about 3,000 letters. But as he was busy writing, his body bathed in the intense sunlight of late summer, the right side of Ōta’s chest became ticklish. At the same time, he felt one lump form in the middle of his chest. He had just begun to move his upper body when that lump tightened and in the next instant burst from his mouth and landed on the bundles of letters he had been preparing. It was blood.

The lump of blood landed squarely on the letters, spraying the area around it with blood. He had not been coughing at all; thus, it seemed that the lump had formed by itself waiting until it was ready to come out of him. But after he had spit it out, he was overcome by coughing. Ōta instinctively grabbed the sink and thrust his face in it. He could not stop coughing, and threw up more blood into the sink. Blood began to pour out of his nose, blocking his nasal passages and causing him to cough even harder.
 
When he raised his head, he thought he was going to pass out, and staring at the bottom of the sink he saw that a pool of blood had filled it. Small bubbles of air rose to the surface of the pool of blood and then burst. Ōta stared in amazement at the liquid that had until seconds ago warmed his body. He thought he had regained his physical control, but his heart was beating so fast it seemed ready to explode. Ōta also thought his face had turned white and dry from the coughing. He got up quietly, pushed the button for help, and then fell flat on his back.
 
He could hear footsteps, and after a while they came to a stop in front of his cell. He could hear the sound of the alarm going off, and then he saw the guard’s eyes looking at him through the peephole in the door. “What’s going on?”, the guard asked him. But lying on the floor he could not reply. The guard asked again, “Hey, what’s going on in there?” Perhaps because of the sunlight, the guard could not see what was happening in the prison cell. Next, he heard knocking, followed by an impatient, mocking voice grumbling, and finally the sound of the key as the door opened. The guard walked in and said, “Oh, pretty boy is sprawled out on the floor, eh? What the hell is wrong with you?”
 
Ōta did not speak, but pointed at the sink near his pillow. The guard’s face turned pale as he stared at the sink. He quickly took out a handkerchief and covered his face; retreating from the cell the guard walked hurriedly away.
 
Soon after, a doctor came and examined him. He then asked Ōta if he could walk. Ōta nodded, stood up and started walking to show the doctor he was alright. As he walked out of the cell he suddenly glanced back in and noticed that the blood in the sink had already hardened and turned black under the white rays of the summer sun. The smell of old blood also lingered in the air.

When he went out into the sunlight, Ōta thought he was going to faint. The red clay was hot, and he could feel it burning his feet right through the thin sandals he wore. It was a long walk to the prison hospital, and all the buildings looked the same as he passed them. He walked across a wide yard and past another dark building before reaching the hospital. When he arrived, he was assigned a room right away and made to lie flat on his back with a bag of ice on his chest.
 
For seven days Ōta did nothing but doze off and on in his bed. During that time, he continued to cough up the blood that had gathered in his chest. He did not even try to think about the sudden misfortune that had befallen him. Perhaps this was because he had not had time to reflect upon his present state or events were still too fresh in his mind for him to think clearly about them. There was the expectation deep in Ōta’s consciousness that when he regained his senses he would recognise how wretched was his present situation. After living on a diet of rice gruel and pickled plums for seven days, he was still only able to move his upper body slowly and massage himself here and there to check his physical condition. His body felt as though he had been sleeping for a year. Stroking his chin with its thin beard, he thought that he would very much like to see his face. He crawled over to the glass door and looked into it, but because of the glare he could not see himself. He then felt the urge to urinate so he pulled himself over to the toilet where he relieved himself. It was in that dirty water that he first saw the reflection of his thin and haggard face.
 
On the morning of the eighth day an attendant came to his room to check on him. Two days later in the evening, after he had finished dinner a prison guard swiftly opened the door to his room and ordered him out. The guard added that he could take those things he was permitted to have with him. Seeing how almost no one was allowed out after dinner, Ōta stood upright stiffly and looked suspiciously at the guard.
 
“You are changing rooms; hurry up,” said the guard as he quickly left the room. Ōta put on his straw hat, tilting it slightly back and followed the guard on his still-wobbly legs. —

He thought this corner he was eventually led to would be a gloomy and quiet place. He could certainly feel the silence permeate the whole building, but even in this building could there be such a lonely corner isolated from the rest of the prison as this one? The interior of the prison seemed an endless maze, and in unexpected places unexpected things turned up; resembling XXX coming here certainly reminded him of another place.[3] Autumn had come, and the days were getting shorter, so it was already dusk outside and dim lights shone down the corridor. The corridor was long and narrow and ran between the two wings of the building. The outer walls of the corridor had been painted a strange white shade giving them an eerie appearance. Ōta was put in the corner cell of the building’s south wing. Even without knowing anything about his new surroundings he felt somehow unsettled, and rushed to the door when he heard it being locked, only to hear the guard shuffling away down the long passage.
 
Everything in Ōta’s cell was clean and in good order. On the right side of the cell from the door was a bed made of wood and in the corner on the same side was a toilet built separately from the bed. The sink was made of stone, and there was even running water. To test the sink, he turned on the water and watched it gush out of the faucet. The window was large, and even when sitting on the bed he could see outside. For three years Ōta had been moved from one cell to another, but he had never set foot in a cell so clean and well organised. Rather than filling him with joy this sudden change confused and bewildered him. What kind of place is this? Where am I? Such were the questions that filled his mind.
 
The surroundings were quiet, and he thought he was the only prisoner there since he could hear no other sounds of life. This feeling lasted a good thirty minutes after the guard had gone away, and Ōta did not even hear the footsteps of a guard on patrol. In this case not hearing the sounds he had become accustomed to did not make him feel at ease, but rather made him more uneasy.
 
Ōta got up from his bed and once again stood at the door and looked our His mental state was such that he had become highly agitated and fidgety. There was a glass pane in the door and through it he could see the cold mist creeping across the ground attempting to overtake the dusk. …
 
Feeling the presence of someone unexpectedly Ōta started. Two cells down and across from his, there was a large cell that accommodated several prisoners. The cell was twice as big as the usual prison cell, and it had a large window that allowed Ōta to see into one part of the cell. He fixed his eyes on the weak light that illuminated the corridor and looked over at the cell where he saw a large man standing by the window. The man stared unblinking at Ōta, but his face was so horribly distorted that Ōta winced. An icy feeling ran down Ōta’s spine. Just looking at the man, Ōta sensed a vague, malicious hostility. However, despite this feeling Ōta tried to talk to the man. “Good evening.”
 
At first there was no response, but after a moment the man asked abruptly, “Hey, what’s wrong with you? Is it your lungs or leprosy?”
 
Ōta could not comprehend what he was being asked, but soon the man asked again, “You came here because you were sick, right? So, what’s wrong with you?”
 
Ōta replied, “Oh, I see. I think there is something wrong with my lungs.”
 
“There’s something wrong with your lungs, huh?” said the man dejectedly, and Ōta heard the sound of somebody spitting on the floor.
 
“Are you sick, too? What’s wrong with you, and how long have you been here?” Even as Ōta asked these questions in rapid succession, he knew that he was patronising the man with his suddenly timid and helpless tone of voice.
 
“I’ve been here five years,” said the man.
 
“Five years?”
 
“Yeah, once you come here the only way out is when they carry away your ashes.” “Are you sick, too? What’s wrong with you?”
 
The man did not answer. He turned his head and seemed to be talking to someone in his cell. While the man was talking, Ōta noticed that the man’s right sleeve was dangling loosely at his side, and it appeared to be empty.
 
The man turned back and said, “My sickness, huh?”
 
“What?”
 
“I am a leper.”
 
“What?”
 
“I have leprosy.”
 
In a loud, hoarse voice the man spoke boldly, as if throwing something away. He then began to laugh in a mocking tone as if to say, “It serves you right for asking such a question. Were you surprised by the answer?” The laugh lasted a long time before it slowly faded away in Ōta’s cell. With that outburst the once quiet cell came to life with shouts as the cellmates started talking to each other. Ōta returned to his bed with an overwhelming feeling of wretchedness. Before long sweat began to dampen his forehead and back. He put his hand under his arm, and it was extremely hot. For the next two or three minutes he walked around his small cell before lying down with a wet washcloth on his head. Ōta slept until daybreak, dreaming all the while.

Chapter 3

The red of the phlegm he coughed up day and night changed to pink, then darkened, and finally two weeks later had cleared, and Ōta was able to go out for light exercise on nice days. It was then that Ōta was able to appreciate his new surroundings better. He also understood the meaning of the question the large man from across the hall had abruptly asked him, “Is it your lungs or leprosy?” In this isolation ward there were two wings; the north wing was for tuberculosis patients, while leprosy patients were locked up in the south wing. Ōta was the only patient with tuberculosis to be put in the leprosy wing; he alone was put on the eastern end of the south wing.
 
Being in prison, Ōta was already forgotten by and isolated from society, but here was a world even more isolated and forgotten. Above all, the sense that he was regarded differently and being treated differently had an impact on a newcomer like himself made hypersensitive by illness. Even the guards, who normally made their rounds every ten minutes, kept their distance and rarely showed themselves in this corner of the building. Even when one did come by, he stood at the far corner of the corridor and took a hasty look around the area before quickly retreating. The guard in charge of the isolation ward was nearly sixty, and he would generally put his chair in the middle of the yard and sit in the sunshine motionless and half asleep. It was easy to imagine how the rules were being broken inside the cells. But the extreme neglect that the guards displayed was by no means in the nature of tolerance of letting the prisoners do as they pleased. On the contrary, it was a sign of contempt and disgust toward the prisoners that showed in the guards’ every word and action. If a guard was signaled by a prisoner, it would take thirty minutes to an hour for him to come. And when he came he would stand some distance away and ask what he had been called for. He would nod his head yes, but the matter was never taken care of the first time. —
 
An incident that took place sometime later illustrated this; Ōta called for a prison chaplain in order to borrow some books to read, as the few books in his cell were old Buddhist texts that had broken backs and tattered pages, making them difficult to read. The chaplain seemed amenable and nodded; after he left, one of the prisoners, Number 30, who was cleaning the wing asked Ōta, “What did you ask the chaplain to do for you?”
 
"I asked him to loan me a few books, that’s all.”
 
“You are wasting your time asking him for anything. Once a year he disposes of the books he doesn’t need any more here, and besides, who would ever lend books to someone with tuberculosis? Why ask for something from a Buddhist priest? Aren’t you a Communist? If you are going to ask anybody, ask the prison warden. When the warden comes around don’t be shy, just say, ‘I beg your pardon’ and ask him what you want.”
 
There was nothing Ōta could say to such sharp criticism, coming as it did from a man with five previous offenses, and indeed it was as he predicted. The books Ōta had requested never arrived. The second time they met, the chaplain pretended to have forgotten Ōta’s request, and while stroking his fresh-shaven chin proceeded to lecture Ōta on why he could do nothing on his own to help Ōta. —
 
There were no books, and even though some of the prisoners had regained their strength to a certain degree, there was nothing to do to pass the time. At the end of each day the sick patients paced their dark cells distractedly, wandering one step away from madness.
 
Healthy inmates from other parts of the prison scorned the sick ones even more than the guards. When a janitor cleaned the building, he would always find some excuse to avoid coming by. Thus, there was no choice but to have one of the healthier patients sweep and mop the wing. It was also unheard of for one of them ever to receive a change of decent clothes when he asked for it. From prison uniforms to hand towels, they always received what had outlived its usefulness elsewhere. The sick patients ambled aimlessly in their orange uniforms with the seat of their pants ripped or the edges of their sleeves in tatters. This discrimination carried over to the three meals they ate every day. They never received more than half a bowl of miso soup, and even the portion of rice always seemed smaller than for others. The idea that sick patients eat less is simply wrong. They do have erratic appetites, however, sometimes eating much and sometimes needing nothing. One time a patient with tuberculosis was able to grab the man handing out the soup and demand that the portion given him was unfair, but the man shouted, “What! So now our soup isn’t good enough for you, you little shit.” As he shouted, the man whacked the inmate over the head with the handle of the soup ladle. As a result, the young patient was in bed for three days, and after the incident, though he would grumble behind their backs, he never raised his voice again.
 
The sick inmates were greatly despised, yet that contempt at its most extreme came out less in words than in actions, such as the prison staff ignoring the patients’ requests and giving them the cold shoulder. The watchman and janitor would sometimes look at each other and snicker deliberately to get on the nerves of the patients watching them. All of this exasperated the helpless patients, but they could still tolerate being hated and scorned to a certain extent. To be hated and scorned at least showed that the others acknowledged their existence. But to have others lose interest in one’s existence, to be forgotten like a rock on the wayside, to be ignored altogether is intolerable for any living person.
 
From time to time the prison newspaper would come around. There was much welcomed news in it. A new radio had been installed in the prison, and the prisoners were allowed to listen to it; the prison reading room was being expanded; sometime in the near future a circuit photographer was to come by, and so on. However, none of these events ever touched the inmates in this part of the prison. As patients their daily task was sleep. They were supposed to be grateful for the expensive medicine they took every day and for being allowed to lie around all day, despite having committed crimes. —
 
To celebrate the successful completion of Safety Week in the prison all inmates were supposed to have received some sugar-filled candy, but for some reason the isolation ward alone did not receive its share. Afterward the rumour was that both the head cook and the infirmary supervisor had forgotten about them when the candy was passed out. At long last the pent-up frustration they all felt came tumbling out in the words of one young prisoner. “What, forgotten! Well then, I will make you remember!” This weakened young man in the number three double cell, who had been flat on his back with tuberculosis for two months, suddenly stood up. Ignoring his dumbfounded cellmates, he folded his emaciated hand into a fist and smashed the window in the cell. The glass splinters scattered onto the floor with a horrendous crash. One of the men in the cell, fearing the consequences of the young man’s actions, tried to restrain him, but the youth tossed him aside effortlessly. Surprised at hearing such commotion the guard and janitor came running to the cell, but the young man thrashed around the cell half-crazed until they finally subdued him. His hands, now bound behind him, were stained with blood that oozed from around the glass splinters still stuck in his knuckles. He was taken away immediately and kept elsewhere for three days before being returned to his cell. He was unable to escape punishment even though a patient. Yet, perhaps his punishment was lighter because of his illness. His face was pale on his return, and when he entered his cell he slumped over his bed, supporting himself with his arms for a short while. This youth, who already spoke little, became even more silent, and although his strength was gone, he stared piercingly into others’ faces. Shortly after, before winter set in, he died.
 
As stated previously, Ōta was living in the same wing as the leprosy patients. Partly from horror and partly from curiosity, he began to pay closer attention to the lives of these extraordinary men. When the exercise period began the four lepers who lived together filed out into the sunshine of the broad prison grounds. It was then that Ōta got his first clear look at each of the men’s features. They would walk around lethargically with their faded prison uniforms open in front; one would crouch, perfectly still; one would suddenly try to run in short, quick steps as if he had suddenly remembered something; one would struggle to stifle a laugh as if he had thought of something unbearably funny. Their appearance, out in the open and in the bright Indian Summer midday sun, was truly terrifying.
 
Two of the men were young, while one was middle-aged and the other looked as if he were old, past fifty. The faces of the two younger men had an unnaturally shiny cast, with splotches like large, red bruises on their necks and cheeks. When one of them looked at someone else, he would squint as if in a bright light, but on closer examination Ōta could see the pupil already drifting to one side. Both young men seemed barely past twenty; they had most likely become sick while still children, and thus did not truly comprehend the horror of their disease. Their air of taking for granted that this was what the world was made others readily sympathise, and their open and joyful manner stirred one’s pity all the more to see them laughing happily.
 
The middle-aged man had a surprisingly stout build, and his large head, from which the eyebrows had fallen out, was supported by a bull-neck and seemed improbably sunk into a chest as deep as it was broad. His large, protruding eyes were those of a rotting fish. And they were bloodshot. His sturdy body notwithstanding he was one-armed, and because of his sickness the bones in his right arm were deformed and his hand shrunken so that he could not hold his chopsticks properly. In his cell he would sometimes seem to have remembered something, let out a groan and stand up. He would wave his arm and raise his legs and begin to exercise naked, all the while calling out in a loud voice. He had a great appetite, and would finish off every grain of rice left by his cellmates; as fall turned to winter he frequently took rice away from his cellmates by force, and for the two younger men this increased their suffering as the chill of the autumn wind began to blow. —
 
At times the middle-aged man would ask, as if it had just occurred to him, whether food or a woman would be better. Turning to his other cellmates he would ask, “If you could choose between having any kind of food you wanted right now and sleeping with a woman all night which would you choose?” The oldest man smiled without answering, but one of the youths began to think it over a little too seriously. After hesitating for a while, the youth said, “I’d take the food,” and the other youth chimed in, “The same goes for me.” Upon hearing this the man began shouting at the two youths with a voice that sounded like a cracked bell. “What, food is better? How can you say such a thing! Everything you have told me about your lives on the outside has been lies. We are not hurting here for food. We get three meals a day, and even if they kick us around we can still get candy sometimes. That’s not the case with women. “The hell with it! Every night I jack off, but you two don’t even know why I spend so much time getting off.” With a voice full of emotion, he would sigh about how much he wanted a woman. The others would laugh out loud at him, but he did not care and continued muttering to himself.
 
The last man was an old man over fifty, and usually extremely quiet. His face was shrivelled, and bleary eyed with mucus always running out of them. The flesh was hanging off the toes of both feet, and he could not wear his straw sandals. He would tie a string to each sandal and around his feet to wear them. Maybe he had no sensation in his feet at all, since he wore the sandals caked with mud into his cell all the time. He said that while still young, he had one day taken a nap by the fireplace in a farmhouse, but by that time the disease was already advanced, and he had lost all sensation in his toes. His feet fell in the fireplace and smoldered without him realising it. All five toes of his right foot were melted together during the accident that left him permanently scarred. Shortly after he turned twenty, the first signs of his sickness began to show, and starting with Miike Prison where he spent eighteen years, he had spent most of his life in this dark world. Yet, perhaps because he had nothing more to lose, he said little and always had a smile on his face. Sometimes, however, according to a rhythm of its own, what lurked in the depths of his heart exploded, and when it did it was always the middle-aged man in the same cell who bore the brunt of the old man’s attack.
 
These four men were in the double cell two doors down from Ōta’s room. The single cell next door was unoccupied, or so he thought at first. That is how quiet and still the cell was, but in reality, there was one person in it also. One day when Ōta was leaving his cell to go exercise he casually glanced into the room. The light shining in from outside just then made it hard to see the interior of the cell. Ōta drew closer to the door of the cell, and when he looked inside he saw a man with close-cropped hair sitting silently in the corner of the room staring back at him. Ōta gasped and walked on by the cell.
 
The next day when Ōta was on his way back from exercising the man was standing in front of the door and as Ōta walked by he bowed his head politely as a greeting. For the first time he was able to see the man’s whole face. He appeared to be still in his twenties. Ōta recalled having read somewhere that the so-called “lion-face” was one of the distinguishing features of this disease, but this was the first time Ōta had ever seen that type of face up close. His eyes, nose, mouth, in fact his whole face, were grotesquely enlarged and flattened, giving Ōta the impression that it could not be that of a human being. More pitiful, however, was that both the man’s eyelids were turned inside out so that Ōta could see clearly the red flesh underneath.
 
Shortly after Ōta had returned to his cell he heard the man rapping on the wall, and finally he heard the man go to the door of his cell and call out to him, “Mr. Ōta?” The man knew his name, perhaps from having overheard the guard use it sometime.
 
“Do you mind if I talk to you? Actually, up until now I hesitated to bother you.”
 
The tone of his voice indicated he was definitely human, and Ōta was soon sure that he was sincere and of good character. Considering the setting, his extreme politeness sounded natural, not forced.
 
Ōta did his best to answer him naturally in order to make him feel at ease, “You’re certainly not bothering me. As it is, I am bored and weak anyway.”
 
“The first time they brought you here you were probably very surprised, weren’t you? —You are a communist, aren’t you?”
 
“How did you know that?”
 
“Anybody could figure it out. Besides you are wearing red clothes which is a dead giveaway. I was temporarily put in here just as the Communist Incident was big news. And as a rule, the tuberculosis patients are placed in the number one wing of this building. Those tuberculosis patients put over here in the number two wing are thought criminals who are not supposed to have contact with the others. However, the guards’ haphazard way of maintaining order here is approved personally by the top prison officials. By the way, you are in the cell that Kobayashi of the Guillotine group was in until two years ago.”
 
Ōta knew that name. In his room there were two or three worn out books, and on the back cover someone had scratched a passage from a revolutionary song on it with a bent nail or something like that.[4] He now knew who had written it.
 
“Really, Kobayashi was here. Well, what happened to him?”
 
“He died. I don’t want to upset you, but he died in the cell you are in now because there was nobody to look after him. He was banging a medicine bottle on the edge of the bed and singing a revolutionary song or something when he died.”
 
Ōta was drawn to that darkness of heart in the last moments, so like an anarchist. He wanted to ask this man about his illness, but he was afraid his questions might be painful. Yet on the other hand it might comfort the man to be able to talk to him, to have a chance to tell someone what he felt, to wash his wounds with tears. Ōta decided to go ahead and ask him anyway, “When did you come here, and how long have you been ill?”
 
“It has been three years since I came here. I was at the number three factory in the second district before. It was a cabinet-making factory. I was working there when my illness suddenly flared up. No sooner did I notice that my fingers and toes were becoming numb, than the illness began growing worse. Of course, just because I hadn’t been aware of it doesn’t mean my condition had not been slowly deteriorating from a long time before. Somebody asked me about my hand, and it was then that I noticed how thin the flesh was becoming around the base of my thumb and the back of my hand. If you saw a childhood photo of me you would see a completely different person from a photo of me at age twenty. I was really cute as a child.”
 
“There is such a thing as a wrong diagnosis. Did the doctor check you over good?”
 
“Yes, at the point when my fingers and toes became numb I prayed that the doctor’s first diagnosis might be mistaken and even when my face first began swelling up I did not lose hope, but now there is nothing that can be done. Now, well, you saw me, didn’t you, Mr. Ōta. Yes, you saw me, and I’m sure you were shocked at my appearance. My eyes, they are turning inside out. They are turning red. It’s just like when kids taunt someone by pulling their eyelids down and yelling akan bei. From that time, I had already given up. It’s a scary illness, isn’t it? While my body is still living, it is also rotting away. But somehow there are two ways it manifests itself. The older man from the group of four, his flesh was burnt and now it’s dried up and falling off. But that’s better than the other way when your skin begins to literally rot off. That seems to be what’s happening to me. Even so, there’s nothing wrong with me. On the contrary, my stomach and everything else is fine. For one person I eat a terrific amount. But, I’m a hungry ghost. Really, a hungry ghost. It’s retribution. Some kind of bad karma.”
 
His voice became very tense when his words ended abruptly. He seemed to be crying. There was nothing Ōta could say to him now that would not seem frivolous, yet he stood up touched by the deeply troubled heart of this man. Just at that moment, he heard footsteps that stopped in front of the man’s door. The door was opened, and the man was told that he had an interview now.
 
The man left the cell. Where was he going to have an interview at? Come to think of it there was no place to have an interview at in this place. They were going to make do with the corner of the yard that did not attract so much attention. The person who came for the interview was an old lady bent over and using a cane for support. The weak sunlight cast their silhouettes across the yard as they met in the corner. While the old woman kept dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief, it looked like she was repeating something over and over again. After about fifteen minutes the guard standing by them looked at his watch and stepped between them. He guided the old woman out of the yard. The man, standing in the shadow of the wall, watched her go, but another guard yelled at him, and he returned to his cell.
 
“Mr. Ōta, Mr. Ōta,” the man called to him in a faltering voice soon after entering his cell. “Grandmother, my grandmother, told me that even if my body does rot I must not die until I get out of prison. She told me that she would live on until that time, and then when it is time to die we can both die together, so she begged me not to do anything rash.”
 
He then quit talking and started to cry. —Out of the broken conversation Ōta learned that the man’s name was Murai Genkichi and that he had been convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to five years in prison. Ōta asked him hesitantly what happened, and he said, “It was over some trifling woman, but before I knew it, the situation developed into one of bloodshed.” After saying that he shut up for good and did not speak about his past or what had transpired during the incident again.
 
Mr. Ōta, you know I told you that I had given up hope, but I can’t give up. I just turned twenty-five the other day, and I haven’t done anything yet. Just when all I am thinking about is getting out of here, I catch this disease. I’ll do exactly as my grandmother said. I’ll make it out of here alive somehow, and for just three or four days even, I’ll live it up and act crazy. Then I’ll go out into the middle of the street and throw myself in front of a train or something and die. It’s not a lie. I’ll do it, I tell you.
 
He seemed completely set on it, and his words, spoken in a voice choked with tears, struck home and chilled Ōta’s heart. He stood at his door without speaking for some time.

Chapter 4

Winter faded into spring and summer came around again. In the tuberculosis patients’ cells, the sick collapsed one after another. The practice of going out for exercise was suddenly stopped, and the prisoners stayed in their beds all the time. One would see a nurse going into a cell with a syrupy candy wrapped around a wooden chopstick. Other prisoners, watching, would whisper to each other, “He’s sucking on the candy now, so it won’t be long.” Through the midsummer nights, when the heat gathered oppressively in the cells, they could hear an agonised voice call out, and resting, could see from cell-door windows someone in white walking swiftly down the hall. Those mornings always brought news of another death. When there were two critical cases, one would die shortly after the other. A prison death was not good publicity for the prison. The warden’s office would send a telegram telling the patient’s relatives that the patient was in critical condition. But for every ten who were notified perhaps one would show up, and even then, the patient would generally pass away in the vehicle on the way. —
 
A man who died in prison was treated like a piece of baggage. Cotton was stuffed in his nose, mouth and anus and he was taken to the city hospital in a box and dissected.
 
The tuberculosis patients stricken by the heat uniformly lost their appetites, and as a result the garbage can in the corner of the yard was always filled with a mountain of leftover rice. The rice would soon spoil, and give off an unbearable stench. Whenever somebody would pass nearby, a swarm of flies would start with a tremendous noise. The janitor, cleaning up, would mutter, “The leftovers and the crap of these tuberculosis patients will not even make good fertiliser.” The four lepers in the large cell cast greedy glances at the mountain of leftover rice and licking their lips said, “It serves them right, but damn, what a waste of good rice! For every ten of them, one bowl of rice is leftover. They are absolutely worthless bastards.” Thus, when mealtime came around, they grabbed hold of the server and tried to talk him into cutting down the portions of rice for the tuberculosis patients and giving them more, since the others did not need the extra rice anyway. Sometimes when one or two of the tuberculosis patients did not want their lunch the server took pity on the four lepers and gave them the extra rice. They would scramble to grab it with fawning smiles on their faces. At these times, how happy they must have been: as there was no time limit for meals the four of them would take over an hour savouring their lunch. They would fight over portions for some time, but later after the cell quieted, Ōta felt a cold shiver run down his spine when he heard the sound of them slurping down their meal through the cell window. —
 
They did not appear to have changed at all, but upon closer observation there were slight differences in their physical features as winter turned to spring and spring into summer. Though the windows were left open during the summer the distinctive, animal smell of their illness collected in the cells so that when he came in from outside Ōta would be hardly able to stand it. Even the old guard in charge of the wing hated to open their door, and frequently would not even bother to let them out for their exercise period. Then they would stamp around in the cell and start shrieking in strange voices.

 
Chapter 5
 
Ōta awoke in the middle of the night.
 
What time was it? He was thinking that he had slept a little when he looked up at the light hanging over him, and in the middle of his room filled with the quiet of the prison night he sensed that the light was swaying back and forth ever so gently. Looking closer, he noticed an astonishingly large white moth from the summer night clinging to the pullcord. A somewhat queer feeling came over him, and he had just turned over to go back to sleep when he was struck by a premonition that “it” was coming again. He paled, and his body shook with fright. He sat up and hunched over, unmoving, to calm himself. And then finally, “it” came. Inside his own body he heard the roar of something like a tidal wave bearing down on him from afar; it grew slowly closer and bigger, until he thought his heart was beating so wildly it seemed it might burst. All the veins in his body shrieked together in response, and he could hear the blood as it drained from his head. As he clenched his teeth, trying to bear it, his eyes dimmed, and even he knew that he was losing consciousness. —
 
After a while, when he returned to himself as though awakening, the wild pounding of his heart had subsided considerably, but as he returned to normal he in turn felt inexpressibly lonely and vaguely uneasy. Obsessed by the idea that he might be going crazy, Ōta felt that he could no longer lie still, that he wanted to scream, and in one motion he slipped out of bed and began walking quickly around the room. He walked energetically swinging his feet and hands, holding back the tears that threatened to fall. He remained thus for perhaps twenty minutes until at last deeply tired as well as relieved that he felt closer to normal, he listlessly went for the window and took a deep breath. He felt the cool night air fill his lungs. He could not see the moon from his window, but it was a beautiful starry night. —
 
It was that summer that Ōta was first troubled by the increased pulse rate that might be considered a sign of severe mental stress. It happened regularly during the night once every week or ten days. Concerned about his condition Ōta tried physical exercise and meditation techniques. But still he could not escape what was happening to him. Though he knew full well that neither exercise nor meditation techniques would be of any help he gave himself up to them in willing delusion. He could attribute the psychological neurosis that produced these fits solely to the fact that his mental state was weak because of his illness and his life in confinement. Though not the whole of it, Ōta realised that a major cause of the fits was indeed himself. —
 
At some point, unbeknownst even to himself, a dark, painful shadow had enfolded the young, communist Ōta, and his uneasiness gradually increased. He began to realise himself that his heart, so full of conviction, was beginning to waver, and it was from just about the time that this began to trouble him that he began to suffer from these fits.
 
What was the meaning of this uneasiness that had grown up somehow in Ōta’s heart? His inability to understand clearly sowed the seeds of his anxiety. But, if “wavering” were interpreted as having capitulated in his defense of those convictions he had held, that he had surrendered to the arguments against them, then he could say that the shadow that engulfed his heart did not mean that. It was something that had billowed up as naturally as the clouds in the summer sky while he lived here among the leprosy and tuberculosis patients, observing their daily lives. It was difficult to grasp, but the feeling was no less strong for all that he could not quite put his finger on it. In other words, Ōta was being overwhelmed by the brutal reality of his current situation. He was still young for a communist and was, moreover, merely an intellectual; he had not yet forged that self-confidence that comes from personally experiencing the rigours of real life. Ordinarily that would have been alright, but having once come up against the complexity and cruelty of life, he found that the ideas that he had held dear were powerless, and crushed by the weight of reality he could feel nothing but pity for himself. Faced with cruel reality he lost the will to fight and fully surrendered. He came to the painful realisation that those beliefs, the knowledge he had stood upon until now, had not become a part of him but had remained superficial. How frightened, and how unhappy, an individual who has reached that point must feel. One who, though maintaining as he always has his conviction of the truth of his arguments, yet unable to live by them; one who, keenly aware that he is like this, yet in the end is still unchangeably himself—might others not expect someone who feels this way to kill himself?
 
Ōta, now himself confronted with the tormented, unhappy world of reality, thought [so]. This lonely, harsh, and cold situation, in which he was manipulated and trifled with, was the true image of his present reality. Yet, was not the greatest duty of a communist to try and penetrate this kind of blind will, to subdue chaotic reality, with a fixed order constructed by man? And was not that what Ōta had fought for up to now? —With these thoughts in his head Ōta’s first impulse was to evade his duties to the party and run away from this painful reality. He had no desire to live constructively and had lost interest in all things. He was completely disgusted with the present and idled away each day while in his mind he imagined himself living the life of a carefree hermit. These thoughts were caused by the illness that sapped his strength and in turn his will to live. —However, there were still times when the youthful feelings from his past would race through him like a violent gust of wind. Ōta would clench his fist and while he felt his cheeks flush, his emotions would tumble forth in the dark cell. But then, an ill-tempered whisper would say, “What’s all this going to do for you when death is chasing at your heels?” In an instant his youthful vigour would fade, and the fire in his heart would be extinguished.
 
This was the state Ōta was in, but across the hall the four lepers, he saw day in and day out, were full of energy even though their bodies were continuing to rot away! They had several times the appetite of most people and often started fighting over the food given them. It was also difficult for them to curb their sexual impulses. One summer night after telling endless lewd stories to amuse themselves, one of them got down on all fours and imitated the figure of an animal during the mating season. Ōta saw the others laughing heartily over the man’s actions and let out a gasp as he was struck by the strength of man’s blind, sexual impulses. After a while he was disgusted by their actions and shuddered at the base nature of life.
 
One morning during that summer a sixty-year-old man who had been sick with tuberculosis for three years died. The dead body was carried away, and when Ōta looked in the dead man’s room he saw that half of the tatami mat on the floor had rotted away. No one had helped take care of the old man, and white mold was growing between the tatami mat and his futon. Dried excrement was encrusted on the futon,[5]  and the old man’s cellmates were intent upon getting as much of the syrupy candy that was left by the old man’s pillow as they could. What a despicable picture of human nature it was.
 
Ōta lived every day with nothing to brighten his mood or comfort him. He thought the day would soon come when, his physical illness notwithstanding, the pain of living in these conditions would lead to his death. He was certain of this and whenever he thought about it he trembled. —But, there are many unexpected encounters during life and some of them seem fated to happen. It was just at this time when Ōta felt he had fallen into a quagmire with no way out that he met Okada Ryōzō, an old comrade of his, who brought him out of his gloom.

Chapter 6

He heard the faint sound of a cell door being opened just as he began to doze off. The sound of footsteps mingled with what seemed to be the sound of something being carried into the cell. His whole body was somehow feverish, and Ōta, who often spent most of the day sleeping, thus heard the faraway sounds half in a dream. He thought vaguely that it sounded like the noise was coming from cell number one, and that they were putting a new patient in that group cell that had until now remained empty.
 
Just then he heard Murai, his voice struggling to suppress his excitement, “Ōta, there is someone new in cell number one.” It was a fact that for these patients, passing the monotonous days, the arrival of a new patient brought greater excitement than anything else. So next morning when it came time for the exercise period, Ōta looked at the new patient, eyes bright with anticipation. The second he glimpsed the man he was startled; his heart throbbed and he stood still by the door. It was a beautiful autumn day and the many flowers the prisoners had planted in the yard were blooming. A path between the flowers served as a walkway during the exercise period, but the sun’s reflection on the glass door of the corridor prevented anyone in the cells from seeing well those walking along the path. Furthermore, the window in the cell door was small, limiting one’s view, and just as someone would enter one’s field of vision he would quickly disappear. —Ōta had stood at the door under these conditions for some time when he saw the new patient and started, unwittingly.
 
The man was most certainly a leper and his appearance suggested that the illness was already advanced. He seemed still young. The illness alters one’s features so that it is hard to tell someone’s age, but the way he moved his arms and legs had a youthful air. The man’s face was almost completely purple and swollen all the way down to his neck. The hair on his head had thinned and his eyebrows were hardly visible from a distance. He had a stocky build and was not particularly underweight.
 
Ōta stood rapt at the door of his cell all the while the man was exercising, and found it hard to calm down even after he had returned to his cell. From that day on he observed with unusual interest the new man’s every move. —He had definitely seen that man’s face somewhere. Every time he saw him something made Ōta’s heart shudder, yet what it was he could not readily recall. As the days passed, that face seared its image into Ōta’s heart; when he closed his eyes, every disfigured line of it hovered clearly before him and began to weigh oppressively on his heart. —
 
It was night and Ōta and four or five others were sitting in a room. Perhaps it was in a coffee shop somewhere in Osaka along a brightly lit boulevard. They were on their way home from some kind of meeting. People in loud voices were arguing about something, but the argument did not seem to be going anywhere. Again, Ōta and four or five other men were walking abreast along a dark road in the suburbs. A muddy, foul smelling stream flowed sluggishly beside the road. The smokestacks of the factory they were headed for stood out sharply just where the muddy stream turned aside. Each of them had several copies of pamphlets hidden under his clothes, and they walked with long strides, saying little as they tried to suppress their excitement.
 
These sorts of random images, of a life outside from which he was now utterly cut off, flickered through Ōta’s memory, and he felt that it was somewhere in these images that he might somehow recall the man’s face. The images passed through his mind like the shadows of birds, and among them there was one that his mind had grasped and would not let go of. Beginning with this one image Ōta tried to follow the thread of his memory from one image to another, but whenever he attempted to solve the riddle of the man’s face from that image, he became impatient. It was not unlike trying hurriedly to untangle a ball of string. However, his brain assaulted by the fever of illness, had no patience for these persistent notions, and he soon grew tired. He soon lost the thread of the thoughts that had so preoccupied him and turning over on his back, slipped into a deep sleep.
 
During the middle of the night Ōta suddenly would open his eyes again. As the dim electric light struck his eyes, he would have the sense that he had just discovered something. Perhaps he had been dreaming. He would see the faces of his old comrades whose very names he was beginning to forget, and one of them, he felt, was a match for this new man’s face. But the feeling would last no more than a second. In the end he was left with nothing. Full of regret at having lost once again what he had seemed to grasp at last, Ōta would spend the rest of the night sleepless, waiting for dawn.
 
There were many things about the new patient that seemed strange. From the day he arrived here he had seemed calm; one could feel nothing about his thoughts because of his poker-faced façade. The other patients in the [leprosy] wing showed an unusual interest in the new patient, and gossiped about what his real name might be and what crime he had committed. Particularly during the exercise period, they would watch his behaviour, staring fixedly as they gripped the iron bars of the window. And then, turning away, one of them would suggest that he had seen the man at one of his places of work, and in low voices they would each offer their own guess as to the man’s identity gossiping about him for a long time after.
 
Usually new patients would try to make the first move, but they would be rebuked by stony silence. Then eventually, one of the old inmates would ask him a question, and in a sad, moving tone he would proceed to satisfy the questioner’s curiosity with a flood of personal information about himself and why he was in prison. However, this new patient was completely different. He always had a serene air about him that seemed out of place, and he walked quickly through the path in the yard without so much as a glance at his surroundings, almost as if he had been there before. The other inmates, who had expected him to look uncertain about being brought to a strange place, or look around questioningly were disappointed by his attitude. He was a quiet man, but he seemed to look upon the other inmates as if they were not even there; the other prisoners felt uncomfortable with his attitude. Before he realised it, Ōta, too, came to feel a slight distaste for the new patient’s somewhat haughty behaviour and began to look coldly and suspiciously at the man’s familiar profile.
 
The new patient led an extremely quiet life. If not for his daily exercise period and an occasional bath it would have been easy to forget he existed at all. What could he have thought about, passing day after day in that huge prison cell by himself? There were no books and nothing to entertain the eye or ear. All that was left for one to do was to fold his arms and watch his body waste away painfully and to no purpose. If not for someone to talk to once in a while, a man would go insane here. Yet, this new prisoner had not spoken a word to anyone, nor had he rung the bell for the guard. Was he satisfied with everything given him or could he just not want anything else? There was no particular expression of irritation on the man’s disfigured face when Ōta saw him during the exercise period. He just moved his arms and legs around effortlessly, full of youthful vigour.
 
Ōta was puzzled by this one man being placed in the large cell that had previously been empty. Since the cell that housed the four men was large enough for eight men with ease, a new man ordinarily would have been put there. Must it not be because of the nature of his crime that the new man was put in a cell by himself? Yet, the man in the cell next to Ōta, Murai Genkichi, could be moved into the larger cell with the four men, and the new man could be put in a single cell since Murai’s crime should not have dictated that he be placed in solitary confinement.

Having come this far, Ōta once again felt a certain uneasiness in the back of his mind, as it occurred to him that he knew the man, that he had seen him before. He shuddered to find the realisation he had until now suppressed rising clearly to his consciousness. However, the nature of the man’s crime must have been the same as Ōta’s or else he would have been placed in the cell next to him. There was no other explanation. The new leprosy patient must have been a comrade. And he and this comrade whose appearance had so drastically changed must have known each other before!
 
Ōta tried many times to shake this notion that the new patient had been a comrade. He tried to deny it on all sorts of grounds, tried to dismiss it as delusion. He tried thus to reassure himself. Ōta felt that he could not bear to give in to the pain of acknowledging this wretched-looking leper as his comrade. For days, Ōta wore himself out completely in the struggle between these two perspectives. All the while the face that he was about to remember, but could not, was there exercising every day.
 
But regardless of how he would have it, the day came at last when the matter was resolved. A little over a month after the new man had come, Murai, who had gone to mail a letter, returned and called urgently to Ōta in a hushed voice.
 
“Ōta are you awake?”
 
“Yes, I’m awake. What’s up?”
 
“The man in cell number one, I know his name.”
 
Ōta instinctively leaned forward and asked, “What, you know his name? How did you find out? And what is it?”
 
“Okada, his name is Okada Ryōzō. I just saw a postcard with his name on it.”
 
“Okada Ryōzō, you say.”
 
Murai had gone out into the corridor to write a postcard, and had accidentally seen the postcard the other man had written. Out of aversion to anything written by the leprosy patients, the person in charge of the mail would stick the postcards to a board and lay it out in the sun to be disinfected. That is how Murai had seen the postcard. Murai sensed the admiration in Ōta’s voice, as he repeated the man’s name.
 
“What is it, Ōta? Do you know Okada?”
 
“No, it’s just that I seem to have heard the name before.”
 
With this nonchalant reply, Ōta retreated to his cell. He was dizzy as if he had been hit on the back of the head, and his legs were unsteady; he held onto the side of the bed to support himself and stood for a long while, not moving. Finally, he lay down on his bed, and staring at the familiar stains on the wall he felt his heart beginning to calm down. Again, he began to turn the name, Okada Ryōzō, over in his mind. —Could that pitiful leper really be what was left of his old comrade, Okada Ryōzō?
 
As he slowly returned to a calmer state, Ōta’s memory took him back five years. At that time, he was working as a secretary for a farmer’s cooperative in Osaka. One day as Ōta was preparing to go home after finishing his work, a comrade of his by the name of Nakamura visited him unexpectedly. He said that he had something to talk about with Ōta. They left the office together.  As they walked in the direction of Shikanjima, where Ōta rented a room, Nakamura brought up the real reason for his visit. — “Actually, a comrade has just returned from KUTV.[6] When he left Japan three years ago, the police had him under tight surveillance immediately after a large strike had taken place. That is why for the time being he must remain undercover. Just now we want to have him taken in by someone known in the movement, but it’s not possible for anyone connected with the labour union; you are from the farmer’s cooperative and you seem to sleep over at the office most of the time. So, most people don’t know about the room you rent at Shikanjima, making it a good hideout for him. How about it—can you put him up for just a month?” Ōta answered in the affirmative, and Nakamura led him to the coffee shop where they were to meet the man at six o’clock. The man, in kimono, was waiting for them and smiled broadly when he saw the two of them. “I’m Yamamoto Masaō; nice to meet you,” the man greeted him in response to Nakamura’s introduction. As they talked, Ōta could hear the Tohoku accent in Yamamoto’s speech. Ōta was moved by the man’s simple style, but it was not until much later on when he learned that Yamamoto’s real name was Okada Ryōzō.
 
At the time Ōta was renting a room from a distant relation on Shikanjima. He was using two small rooms on the second floor and offered one of them to Okada. Even though their rooms were next to each other they did not talk to each other often. Ōta left the house early and often came back late, so there were not many chances for them to talk. When Ōta returned late Okada was usually asleep, but sometimes he could see the weak light of a lamp bent close to the floor and hear the sound of Okada writing. There were also times when Okada got up before him and seemed to spend all day out. This continued for about a month when one cold, November morning Okada left without waiting for Ōta to return. —
 
There was probably some reason for his leaving, but Ōta thought that maybe it was out of consideration for him that Okada had moved to another place. The morning he left Okada peeped into Ōta’s room, and upon seeing him wrapped up in his thin futon had let out a gasp of surprise. Ōta had loaned Okada his other futon to use the morning before since it was cold. Ōta was a little worried so when he met Nakamura two or three days later he asked him what had happened. Nakamura was very apologetic saying, “I was just going to talk to you about him. You don’t need to worry about him. He has settled in at another place, but thanks for putting him up for such a long time.” —With great resolve Okada Ryōzō returned to Japan and stayed hidden until November of 192X when at last he took up an important post in the Japanese communist party.
 
It was just about this time that Ōta had left Osaka and had gone to a village in the countryside to work. In the spring of that same year, the repercussions of the financial scare that rocked Japan were being felt even in the villages. Ōta led many of the strikes in the countryside and formally became XX.[7] He expressed his opinions ceaselessly to the higher-level organ that he believed to exist in Osaka; he looked up to the leadership of the complex and fragmented farmers’ movement. But the response he received to his communications astonished him every time. What powerful theory, and what an enviable fusion of theory and practice! When the positions he had set forth, racking his brains to polish them until he felt they were faultless, were returned to him fundamentally discredited, the self-confident Ōta felt something akin to an indignant rage. But after due consideration, he invariably found his correspondent’s opinion to be the correct one, and it saddened him to realise that compared to this man, his own abilities were so limited. But at the same time Ōta also chuckled to himself. Even in Japan there were some real thinkers. He had just cleaned his room, but from somewhere the soot had got in again, reminding him of all the neighbourhoods of Osaka, with thin tarnished windows. Ōta could feel the indomitable will of those people continuously striving in the far corners of those districts and from deep within him the courage to carry on sprang forth. Ōta learned when he was being interrogated that the person who answered his letters was none other than Okada Ryōzō himself.
 
Ōta’s recollection of Okada’s face was not that clear in any case, and Okada was one of those who escaped the March fifteenth arrests. Thus, it was only natural that Ōta, who knew nothing of his later arrest, would not immediately recognise the new leprosy patient as Okada even though he felt there was something familiar about him. Once his surprise and excitement over learning who the new patient was had subsided, Ōta began to wonder when Okada had been arrested and when he had contracted leprosy. Did Okada know who he was even though he gave no sign of it? How should he approach Okada, or should he approach him at all? Such questions ran through Ōta’s mind, confusing him all the more.
 
The next day Ōta waited impatiently for the exercise period, and with a measure of fear he had not felt before, looked at the man’s face. At first Ōta only hesitatingly glanced at him, but gradually he became riveted. Now that Ōta knew who he was, he could see how the leper looked like Okada. However, without taking a close second look, Ōta would never have recognised him as the Okada who had shared his room so many years ago. After Ōta had regained his composure and took a good look at him, he could see a faint resemblance of Okada in the man’s prominent forehead and the way his eyes and eyebrows were drawn together. Before, that broad forehead along with the long hair that dangled over it gave people who saw him the impression of superior intelligence, but now, with his hair thinning and patchy and his eyebrows almost nonexistent, on the contrary he looked if anything almost like an idiot. The dark, purple swelling on his face had a queer lustre and one of his eyes had almost swollen shut. The shoulders of his faded prison clothes were thickly patched, and his big feet hung over the heels of his wooden sandals making him look all the more wretched. Yet, Okada walked as briskly as he always had, sometimes even breaking into a light jog, and seemed to enjoy his brief exercise period every day. It was already mid-autumn, and Okada hunched over as a cold breeze blew through him. Ōta, watching Okada, now so changed, walk away, could not stand to watch it anymore. He left the window, lay down on his bed, and covered himself with the quilt, and for a time managed to control himself. But at last the tears spilled over, and Ōta lay there sobbing.
 
It would be difficult to count the tragedies visited upon the class-based political criminals.[8] Ōta remembered clearly the case of an imprisoned comrade whose wife, also a comrade, left him and their baby for another man who was a class enemy. Ōta recalled that ultimately the man died from the emotional shock, but not even the pain of losing one’s parent or wife or child while in prison, nor any other terrible kind of experience, could compare to the pain that Okada was going through. For the others, time would heal all wounds. When they dream of their future release from prison, desire is rekindled and their hearts leap with expectation. But that is not the case for Okada; for him, everything is already finished. Ōta wondered what Okada thought about every day. Knowing that he was doomed as a leper, how could he go on day after day? He who had lived for his work with the communist party, had he lost his faith in [commun]ism? Had he given in to religion? Hadn’t he considered committing suicide?
 
Ōta was curious, yet a cold chill also ran through him when he thought about all these unanswerable questions. Worn out from worrying, Ōta resolved to speak to Okada. He thought it might seem cruel speaking to Okada in his terribly changed state, but Ōta could not bear the thought of the two of them living side by side as strangers for who knew how many years. Once resolved, he imagined confronting Okada, and he went pale with excitement.

Chapter 7

Because Ōta passed directly underneath Okada’s window while he was exercising he thought the best time to speak to Okada was during the exercise period, but the right moment had not come yet. The old guard who supervised Ōta during his solitary exercise period did not pay much attention to him. He usually occupied himself with the potted plants or he went to the yard by the prison hospital to get some cut flowers. The guard did not keep a strict time limit on the exercise period, but somehow the chance to talk to Okada did not immediately present itself either. However, when it was time to transplant the autumn chrysanthemums blooming in the prison hospital yard, Ōta thought his best chance to contact Okada had come. One day while Ōta was exercising, three or four orderlies came in carrying pots of chrysanthemums, and the old guard, liking flowers as he did, followed them. Thinking perhaps he had taken the opportunity to go to the toilet, Ōta, seeing Okada standing just beside the glass window, screwed up his courage and walked directly over without hesitation. He stood beneath the window.
 
When their eyes met Ōta was conscious of his strangely stiff expression, but he forced a smile anyway.
 
“Are you Okada?” His heart full, Ōta could only say his name. He was silent for a moment, then continued, “I am Ōta. Ōta Jirō. I was a XX in the XXX.[9] Do you know me?”
 
Everyday Ōta imagined repeatedly what it would be like the first time the two of them met and thought about what he should say to Okada. But now that the time had come Ōta felt confused, and the words he had intended to say would not come. Okada answered Ōta with a broad smile that showed his white teeth. His straight white teeth were all that was left of the old Okada, and now they seemed unnatural.
 
“Of course, I do. We meet in a strange place, don’t we?” His voice was calm and relaxed. He went on, “It truly has been a long time, hasn’t it? I realised it was you the day after I got here, but I didn’t say anything. Looking like I do now, I thought it would be wrong to shock you.”
 
Hearing Okada’s words, Ōta was relieved to know that yes, it was true, it was Okada. Until the moment he had heard Okada himself say clearly who he was he had felt it might be a lie or that there had been a mistake; in his heart of hearts he had half believed, half doubted.
 
“When did they pick you up? You were still free after the March Fifteenth incident, weren’t you?”
 
“It was that August. It took them less than six months, and actually they got me rather easily.”
 
He said this smiling all the time, and Ōta was surprised at how much of the old, upbeat spirit of Okada was still left in him. Compared with how his external appearance had changed, the way in which his manner struck his listener was unchanged from before. “Your illness ...” Ōta began haltingly. Then he gathered his courage and asked, “When did you get sick?”

Okada replied, “The symptoms appeared on my skin for the first time in the spring of the year I was arrested. But, for some reason the disease went into remission quickly, and so, I didn’t pay it much attention. Then in the summer of the year my appeal trial started, it was readily apparent, and I was diagnosed with leprosy.”
 
“The movement outside has changed considerably, hasn’t it?”
 
Ōta broke in with the completely irrelevant question as if hoping to cut off Okada’s words. Going too deeply into the matter of his illness was somehow horrifying. So, he spoke of two or three bits of news that he had happened to hear since arriving at the prison. But in the midst of telling about them, he realised that this was not the old Okada, and that he was proudly expounding on such things to someone who had lost all hope of returning to that world. Ōta quickly shut up.
 
“Are there any books in your cell?”
 
“None at all.”
 
“Then, what do you do every day?”
 
“I just sit quietly,” Okada’s toothy smile returned. “I hear that you are having trouble sleeping at night. It’s probably partially due to your illness, but you need to relax more. But, of course, it won’t do to say it’s just a matter of temperament.” —Ōta had been bothered by insomnia for a while and had asked for some sleeping pills from the doctor, and somehow Okada already knew about it. Okada advised him, “As for me, I eat more than most and I sleep well at night. You probably think too much.” He continued, “If I told you to stop thinking at all, you would probably take me too seriously, but there are a lot of things it’s pointless to think about here. You get an idea you think is wonderful but you try to bring it out in the open and you fall flat. That’s because this is a dead world, while the outside is a living, growing world. I realise that this is something I don’t need to tell you, but it is something I learned the hard way after serving a year in prison for rioting a long time ago.
 
Just at that moment Ōta had a feeling that the old guard was returning, and as he casually retreated from underneath the window he asked about one more important matter that he had previously forgotten. “How many years were you given?”
 
“Seven years,” answered Okada.
 
Startled by those words, “Seven years,” Ōta returned to his cell. The fact that he was given a seven-year sentence meant that he had not committed tenkō, that he had not given in to the enemy.[10] According to Okada his leprosy had already been diagnosed when his appeal trial started. But his attitude at the trial prevented any alteration of his sentence based on his illness. Ōta thought about his talk with Okada carefully, and in his admonition about not being able to sleep and the riddle of his last words Ōta felt the presence of the old Okada. He was so excited that he scarcely slept that night.
 
From that day Ōta looked forward to waking up every morning and felt encouraged to live every day with a renewed vigour. The fact that Okada was living in the same wing of the prison hospital as he gave him strength to carry on. After that day Okada remained as quiet as ever and did not make any real attempts to initiate contact with Ōta. However, during the exercise period when their eyes met, they smiled with real emotion. The serenity Okada now evinced clearly did not result from despair; it was, rather, the strange serenity that comes from seeing clearly into the profundities of human destiny. But what could possibly have resulted in this serenity? That Ōta could not understand even after having spoken with him. It would probably remain a riddle forever. —Thereafter, Ōta had a chance to talk to Okada two or three more times, though only briefly. When they talked, they took up the same tone and manner of speaking as long ago. “I really want to understand what you are going through now.” Ōta had tried hard to think of just how to express this question, but when the time came he simply asked it. Okada smiled and said, “What am I going through now, uh?” His expression was thoughtful as he continued, “Oh, there are things there I would have to ponder to understand them myself. Besides, there’s really no way we can talk, and no way I can really express it in words.”
 
“There is only one thing that is clear, and I can say to you. Even though my body is rotting away I absolutely have not forsaken my beliefs. It’s not something I’m forcing myself to do, nor is it because of stubborn pride. With the condition of my body now, pride would be a pitiful reason for keeping the faith. It’s just natural for me. If it weren’t, I couldn’t go on living another day—you can understand that, I’m sure. And no matter what happens I will not hang myself, while in prison. I am determined to live on as long as my body holds out. Okada said just this, in his quiet way.
 
 
About a week after this exchange three men wearing white jackets over their clothes, and who one knew at a glance were doctors, suddenly visited Okada’s cell. They opened the door, and they seemed to be noisily debating some matter when finally, one said, “It would probably be better to go outside in the sunshine where it’s warmer.” With Okada in the lead the four of them disappeared down the hall toward the yard. In the yard they had Okada strip to his loin-cloth and stand still. It was in the corner just in front of the cell of the four lepers, and in the bright sunlight. Ōta could see them from his cell if he stretched his neck a little, and he caught his breath as he watched.
 
Two of the doctors Ōta had not seen before, while the third was the prison doctor. The older of the two new doctors thoroughly checked Okada from head to toe. Okada was told something, and he turned around. When Ōta caught sight of his back, he gasped involuntarily. From his neck all the way down his back Okada was covered with large, deep red spots that looked like bruises. Against his pale, naked skin the bruises floated like the petals of a peony.
 
The doctor said something, and Okada shut his eyes, “Tell me the truth, now. Do you feel this? Do you feel this?” The doctor was saying. Looking closer, Ōta could see that Okada had his hands stretched out in front of him, and the doctor was repeatedly brushing the tips of his fingers with a writing brush. They were probably checking to see if he had any feeling in his fingertips. When the doctor asked him if he could feel it, Okada shook his head no. Of course not, then the doctors reminded him to relax while they began to massage the damaged parts of Okada’s hands and feet. They seemed to be checking the lymph glands all over Okada’s body. At times the doctor would say something, and Okada would shake his head yes or no.
 
This went on for about half an hour and then they checked his eyes and had him open his mouth. When they had examined his entire body, the three doctors left. “What happened the other day? Did they come to check you again to see if they had made a wrong diagnosis?” Ōta thought this was the case, but he then felt that thinking the doctors had diagnosed Okada’s illness wrong was also a vain hope. Okada responded as if that had never crossed his mind. “Rather than checking to see if they had made a mistake, they were probably confirming the original diagnosis. By this time, it’s clear enough, but they brought in two doctors from a leprosarium outside of Osaka. In other words, they had specialists look me over one more time. The leprosy germs seemed to have shown up in the mucus of my nose. According to the doctors that is where the germs of this disease show up most frequently. So now it’s over, I’ve been given something akin to a death sentence.” —After that, Ōta never had another chance to talk to Okada.

Chapter 8

How long would life go on like this, drab and gray, mired and stagnant? Even if he cried or complained there was no response. A new year began and then gave way to spring and then to the humid monsoon season. The number of bedridden who were patients had markedly increased, and even though it happened every year it darkened the heart of each patient in the prison hospital. —A Korean named Kim, who had served out four years of his five-year sentence, went crazy suddenly one day when the sun came out after the rain. He bashed his head through a window and was covered with blood. He ran about screaming incoherently. He was bound so tightly the rope cut into his wrists, and his bony shoulders thrust pitifully out of his shredded prison uniform. He was dragged off, but from that night Ōta began to hear bloodcurdling shouts and screams that seemed wrung from a man’s throat coming from the cells of the insane which were nearby. It was Kim’s voice, and his screams of aigō, aigō eventually subsided into low moans.[11] It sounded like a beast howling in the distance. —On such nights the night herons calling softly flew across the sky. —On a moonlight night Ōta could even see them from his window.
 
From the time the monsoon season set in Ōta was bedridden. After the monsoon lifted and the intense summer heat began, Ōta continued feverish for a long time. He felt he could even hear the sound of tuberculosis bacteria flowing through his veins. Ōta also began to have frequent diarrhea. He had only to eat a bite of something that irritated his stomach, and the diarrhea would last one week, then two weeks; when it continued an entire month, he at last realised the illness had begun to affect his bowels. The doctor who came to examine him, after finishing the examination, tilted his small head to one side and left without a word.
 
Around that time Ōta came to feel the dark shadow of death wrapping itself around him. When he tried to get up, his anemia would make him faint, and he began to hallucinate frequently. When he turned on his side and stared at the peeling plaster on the wall, shadows like small insects danced before his eyes. When his eyes tried to follow them, they grew absurdly large until they were as big as the wall. Most of them were the shadows of mysterious apparitions, and Ōta suppressing his fear stared fixedly into them. They would then break up into two, then three, then four shadows floating on the wall. Each one of those shadows would then turn into the faces of his old mother and his older brother who seemed even then to be in his hometown. While staring at the shadows he would usually awaken from his dream world and return to the real world. When he went to bed at night, in his dreams he would see the events of his past speed by him in a moment like a revolving lantern. During these times he would be waked by his own painful, inner scream. Ōta was face to face with the gaining shadow of death, and he thought it strange that he could feel such unexpected calm at this time. In some books he had read how death in prison had been described in romantic and theatrical terms, but it was cold, cruel reality that stayed with Ōta now. His illness had been transformed into the irresistible force of nature, and the power of the state weighed on him like a boulder.[12] Thinking that he too would die here, Ōta contemplated the sweetness of the syrupy candy that the attendant would bring him as he had to all the others before him melting on his tongue. He was surprisingly calm at the thought. Whether it was their fate to die in prison from sickness or at the gallows, he was caught up in a strange intoxication that was not the excitement he had felt talking with his comrades long ago, nor was it rebellion, nor the confused longing to live on no matter what. It was simply a deep feeling of resignation that pervaded his whole being. Where this feeling came from, even Ōta did not know. Ōta also frequently saw Okada’s face in his dreams during this time. Perhaps because he realised how much he had learned from Okada and how moved he had been by him in a way difficult to express in words.
 
For Ōta, Okada Ryōzō was someone to be revered. Yet in such words there was no knowing what might really have been in the heart of hearts of someone subjected to such a cruel fate. Losing one’s freedom prevented it. For Ōta there was nothing but a sad resignation. —He could see that Okada’s one phrase, “I have not forsaken my beliefs,” told the whole story. No matter how painful one’s inner struggle, the matter, as always, came down to this sort of resolution. “I have not forsaken my beliefs…” Ōta did not for a moment doubt that Okada had said these words freely and under pressure from no one. The ideas that sustained Okada were a part of him, flowed in his own warm blood, were inseparable from his very life and lived vitally in him. What an enviable state to be in! To have stood fast for even a short time under pressure, to have been unable to abide abandoning that resolve no matter what: that was clearly where he had failed. And yet even were it not so, for example if Okada, his flesh rotting, were to fall dead by the wayside, he would still be the supreme victor! Ōta was in awe of Okada, and he envied him. Yet he knew he could not achieve in his heart what Okada had. Okada’s world was one Ōta could only dream of. This too left him feeling a sad resignation.
 
A rumour reached him that during a meeting of the prison administrators Ōta and Okada being put in the same wing had raised some eyebrows. Apparently, the head guard had once been making his rounds of the prison and seen them talking together during Ōta’s exercise period, and he had warned the guard on duty about it. It was decided that the two of them would be separated to suitable cells. But, this precaution turned out to be unnecessary as Ōta’s illness significantly worsened.
 
A week passed with Ōta unable to swallow even gruel, when the hospital director one day suddenly opened the door to his cell. Two orderlies coldly, wordlessly, got him up, took off his prison uniform, and slipped his arms into the sleeves of a yukata.[13] Only dimly conscious, Ōta nevertheless recognised instinctively the smell of a yukata from his mother at home.
 
When Ōta was dressed and ready they moved him to a stretcher and the two orderlies carried him out of the building. The fat director followed behind them with his face downcast. By the gate at the far end of the yard, Ōta could see the warden waiting probably to convey the order commuting his prison sentence. As he was being carried away Ōta forced himself to raise his head and look back toward his cell. He thought he saw the swollen, sagging face of Okada Ryōzō straining to see him off as he gripped the iron bars of the cell window, but his consciousness faltered and he fell into a deep sleep.
 
(January 1934)

Notes

1. For a critical study of “Leprosy” in English see Jeff E. Long, “Crossing the Void: Shimaki Kensaku’s Search for Meaning in ‘Leprosy’ and ‘Blindness,’” in Tenkō: Cultures of Political Conversion in Transwar Japan, ed. Irena Hayter, George T. Sipos, and Mark Williams. Nissan Institute/ Routledge Japanese Studies Series (London: Routledge, 2021), 171-184, and Mark Williams, “Expedient Conversion? Tenkō in Transwar Japanese Literature,” in Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature, eds. Rachael Hutchinson and Leith Morton (New York: Routledge, 2016), 141-153. For more on George Furiya please see Larry Tajiri, “Nisei America: An Unpublished Novelist,” Pacific Citizen, January 17, 1948, https://pacificcitizen.org/wp-content/uploads/archives-menu/Vol.026_%2303_Jan_17_1948.pdf. For translations of Shimaki’s later works, see A Late Chrysanthemum: Twenty-One Stories from the Japanese, trans. Lane Dunlop (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1986), 64-92.

2. Here Furiya translates the missing passage as “a will burning red” in his translation.

3. Here Furiya translates the missing passage as “a labyrinth of horrors” in his translation.

4. Here Furiya translates the phrase kakumeika as lnternationale in his translation.

5. A tatami mat is a type of traditional Japanese flooring made of dried rush grass woven around dried rice straw. Futon refers to the traditional Japanese bedding set of a padded mattress (shikibuton), a quilt (kakebuton), and a pillow (makura).

6. In 1921 Stalin through the Communist International (Comintern) founded a college in Moscow to help educate East Asian communists and workers. KUTV is the acronym of the college’s name in Russian, referred to as the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in English. See Talia Lux, “The History of the Soviet Union’s KUTV” Peace, Land, & Bread June 20, 2021, https://www.peacelandbread.org/post/the-history-of-the-soviet-union-s-kutv for more information. Here Furiya leaves KUTV untranslated, instead writing that “One of our comrades returned from abroad” in his translation.

7. Here Furiya translates the missing passage as “Communist” in his translation.

8. Here Furiya translates the phrase kaikyūteki seiji hannin as “Communist” in his translation.

9. Here Furiya translates the missing passage as “of S prefecture” in his translation.

10. Literally the two characters that compose the ideogram for tenkō mean “a change of direction,” but in this specific historical context, scholars have translated the term as a political and/or ideological renunciation of the Communist Party and its affiliated organisations, activities, and ideas. Here Furiya translates tenkō as “Okada had not rejected his beliefs” in his translation.

11. Aigo or Aigoo is an exclamation word in Korean expressing shock, frustration, surprise, and other similar sentiments depending on the situation.

12. Here Furiya translates the phrase kokka kenryoku as “pressure of a capitalist state” in his translation.

13. Yukata is a light cotton kimono worn in summer or sometimes like a bathrobe.

About the Author

Jeff E. Long received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Hawaii, Manoa where his doctoral studies focused on the role of tenkō (political/ideological conversion) in the thought and literature of Hayashi Fusao (1903-1975) and Shimaki Kensaku (1903-1945).  He is currently researching writer Shimaki Kensaku’s set of 1934 short stories, which fictionalise his prison experiences for “thought crimes” and scrutinise the role of tenkō in splintering the interwar Leftist movement.  His publications include Stories from the Samurai Fringe: Hayashi Fusao’s Proletarian Short Stories and the Turn to Ultranationalism in Early Shōwa Japan. Cornell East Asia Series, no. 190. Ithaca, NY: East Asia Program, Cornell University, 2018; “The Japan Proletarian Writers’ League’s ‘Greatest Enemy’: Miyamoto Yuriko Denounces Hayashi Fusao’s ‘Youth.’” in Japanese Studies (Spring 2021); a book chapter on Shimaki’s first short stories entitled “Crossing the Void: Shimaki Kensaku’s Search for Meaning in ‘Leprosy’ and ‘Blindness’” (Routledge 2021); and a translation of Hayashi Fusao’s short story “Apples” in For Dignity, Justice, and Revolution: An Anthology of Japanese Proletarian Literature, edited by Norma Field and Heather Bowen-Struyk (University of Chicago Press, 2016).  Long is a Professor of History in the Department of History, Philosophy, and Political Science at Commonwealth University-Bloomsburg, where he teaches courses on East Asian history.

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