Maruyama Kenji - "Deeper Snow"

Translator's Introduction

The threads that run through the work of Maruyama Kenji are the threads a reader might expect from a writer who is resolutely individual: independence, ruggedness, a love of solitude, a love of nature. In fact, so relentlessly present are these threads in the stories in this volume that we might almost forget that Maruyama is Japanese—a citizen of a country which for many outside of it seems to represent the pinnacle of urban, technological, and collectivist development. Of course this image is ludicrously incomplete; but it is nonetheless persistent, even in works of Japanese popular culture themselves. Anime, for example, thrives on the presentation of futuristic urban environments where robots rub shoulders with high school students, yet artists such as Miyazaki Hayao and Shinkai Makoto create images of Japan that exude peaceful, green forests, strong family connections, and enduring spiritual and community traditions. Japan is of course rich and varied in its landscapes—natural and urban—and ways of life—high-tech and alienated but also interconnected and stable. For Maruyama Kenji, however, Japan is a land of nature and individuals who live within it as individuals, as solitary beings who strive for liberation from all manner of restraint and restriction, and who do so regardless of age or occupation. In this Maruyama himself is a unique artist, and a universal one in ways which some of his contemporaries may not be. Kawabata Yasunari, for example writes of the snow country of Nagano, as does Maruyama, but as a place in which the dramas of domesticity play out—dramas which are dependent on specific values of and attitudes toward the family which are indeed ‘collectivist’ in that they place the individual within a strong context of obligation and belonging. Abe Kōbō writes of individuals who stand in opposition to that ‘collectivist’ sense, but does so in a resolutely urban setting—even the interpersonal conflicts of his perhaps most well-known novel, Suna no onna, could be transposed to an apartment building (as he himself did in his play, “Tomodachi”) with relatively little loss of force, so ‘absent’ is nature from that work—and this urban setting itself plays with an image that is decidely, although stereotypically, Japanese, with sprawling, endless districts of concrete and secret currents of alienation. Kirino Natsuo, Yoshimoto Banana, Midorikawa Yuki, Suzuki Kōji—violent, urban, supernatural, but all writing of characters seeking redemptive integration into a larger human community. For Maruyama Kenji, the community into which his characters seek entrance transcends the human, and that entryway—as it is for the protagonist of Kafka’s parable, “Before the Law,” is personal—for them alone.

Maruyama Kenji was born in Nagano Prefecture in 1943 and has lived, except for a brief time in Tokyo in the mid-1960s, most of his life there in Omachi City, surrounded by the Japanese Alps—forests, peaks, wildlife, and snow. This backdrop is a consistent one in his writing, and it is against this backdrop that his characters seek out their own independent paths to happiness. Whether they succeed in finding those paths or their goals—which they do as often as they do not—in some ways is irrelevant. It is the search, the challenge, that compels these characters and motivates their actions. Maruyama is a writer of many things: of nature, of the silences and sounds of the mountains and valleys of Nagano, of the sparkling waves of Japan’s west coasts; but he is primarily a writer of individuals: loners, not anti-social as much as asocial, without need of social approval, position, or permission.

Interestingly, for a writer who sets his works so firmly in the world of nature, Maruyama does not make the same use of this setting as do many writers from Japan’s long literary history. For the poets of pre-modern Japan—from Ki no Tsurayuki writing in the 10^th Century, to Matsu Basho writing in the 17^th, and Yosano Akiko in the 20^th, nature provides both the setting for their expression of human emotions as well as the vehicle for the same. It is through natural imagery that classical Japanese poets establish the depth of their emotional expressivity, as if human beings would become simply emotionless masses if they were separated from nature. In his kana preface to the Kokinwakashū, the first imperial anthology of Japanese poetry from 921, Ki no Tsurayuki writes that Japanese poetry takes the human heart as its seed and transforms this into myriad words, just as do the nightingales that sing among the flowers and the frogs that sing in the water—all these creatures, human and animal alike, sing out the poetry of their beings, and in this way are intimately interconnected and rooted firmly and inextricably in the natural world. Poetry is one manifestation of that great circulation of community which forms the basis of the Shinto world view, in which human beings, kami (the gods), and nature all operate as equal parts of the vast system of and cycle of existence. There is a tremendous reassurance in this world view: nature and kami and humans can all cooperate and support each other; indeed, they must do so, because they all form a community.

For Maruyama Kenji, however, his human characters, while existing within nature and able to draw strength and inspiration from it, stand separate from the conception of an integrated, integrative community—or, at least, they form communities with nature in which they are the sole human participants. Even the kami of traditional Japanese belief are separate from Maruyama’s human protagonists, upon whom they look with detachment, even bemusement. The Shinto world view which is so fundamental to the films of Miyazaki Hayao, for example, is absent here; for Maruyama, nature and kami may form a community, but it is one which has no need of, in fact is perfect without, human participation. Nature may dazzle Maruyama’s human characters with its light and its beauty, but it doesn’t necessarily care about them as beings it hopes to rescue, to welcome into itself. There are moments of profound exchange in Maruyama’s stories between human and natural, even supernatural, beings, but these are often exchanges of appreciation between equal, and equally, independent entities rather than partners or cooperators. When we do meet human and animal characters who love and need each other, those relationships are poignant and short, and tragedy soon comes to them. When nature—the stars or the blossoms or the waves off Japan’s wind-swept coasts—looks down on human life and human characters, it does so as an observer, imperturbable and aloof, if not completely cold and immobile. Nature is a backdrop, a stage, and the life of nature is something, Maruyama argues in his work, which continues to unfold beyond the comprehension of the merely human characters who form the centre of Maruyama’s own attention. But to these characters Maruyama, too, while paying attention, offers a sympathy which indicates limitations and detachment: as their creator, Maruyama gives these characters freedom from a cloying community that would include even himself, the author, so consistent is his love of independence and autonomy.

We have characters who assert their subjectivity in many ways—by wandering alone across miles of empty countryside before entering the realm of the supernatural, by stealing motorcycles and riding them along mountainous paths to destiny, by living alone in solitude in their twilight years, by taking advantage of unexpected train-stops to seek freedom in the conflagration of the memories of their pasts. For all these characters, though, it is this assertion—this opportunity to be agents of their own destinies, regardless of what those may be, that is their basic, indispensible goal. These characters do not seek out belonging in families that may have misunderstood them, or stability—economic, reputational, political—in towns that may not have welcomed them… Indeed, we read often in Maruyama’s stories of towns that are themselves dying because of Japan’s aging, shrinking population—a real and increasing problem far away from any simple solution. No: the characters here seek out themselves, opportunities to declare themselves autonomous, whole, and free, willing and happy to face off against the rest of the world at any cost so long as they can stay as they are, live as they wish to, and die as and when they themselves may choose. This is the ideal hero in Maruyama’s work: the being able to stand alone and walk alone and live alone, and even die alone, because this is the character whom Maruyama’s own life in nature has helped him form. This character is a thoroughly Modernist one—the individual fighting against a system that would subjugate him, control him, and dictate to him his part in its machinery. In this way Maruyama’s work takes its place among, and contributes to, the great writers of world literature, those writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Mann, and Jean-Paul Sartre who write of the freedom of the individual to be as his choices constitute him. Maruyama is not alone amongst Japanese artists who also champion freedom—indeed, in the world of film, for example, such disparate directors as Kurosawa Akira, Oshima Nagisa, and Itami Jūzō all create characters which also seek this in varying degrees—but he is unique in the consistent devotion to this ideal which runs through his writing, and his insistence that this freedom exists best in the world of nature, against a backdrop of stunning beauty and purity which Japan’s industrialisation has graciously spared. We have very, very few indoor scenes here, and such as they are, are short, serving only as opportunities for characters once again to go outdoors. All the key dramatic moments happen out of doors—in woods, overlooking cliffs or rivers or rocky coasts, underneath canopies of stars, or bathed in the sunlight of spring or the colours of autumn leaves—and this is far from accidental, for these are the locations most conducive to human independence and freedom from the interference of other human beings. Unlike the woodblock prints of Hiroshige, for example, who sets his human travellers along the Tōkaidō road within a nature that is accessible and safe because of the human dwellings that are never too far distant, or Hokusai whose great wave will not drown the fishermen in their boat even if it does seem about to crash over them, Maruyama’s nature allows human beings the gift of true isolation—villages are invisible, buried behind walls of autumn leaves, or the night blocks out prying eyes by providing darkness and silence to those whom its starlight can seduce into meandering journeys towards fate.

Nature, free of artifice, free of pretense, free of constraint and convention: this is the ground upon which Maruyama’s characters stand, upon which they build their own demonstrations of independence, and in which they find their moments of redemption for whatever sins towards which human society may have pushed them. Independence here is not callous, not heartless; freedom here is not cruel, not cold. These are ideals which are transcendent, necessary, vital, and glorious: they are inspirational; they require courage, determination, philosophy, and sincerity. They are ideals which Maruyama presents as existing within the purity of nature, and which are available to all beings who are able to live naturally, to live fully as themselves.

These are also universal ideals, and they are what makes Maruyama’s work in many ways more accessible than that of Hayashi Fumiko, Endō Shūsaku, or Kawabata Yasunari, for example. Maruyama Kenji is a writer of the individual—unapologetically, courageously, even naively individualistic; not as an example for others, necessarily, but perhaps for himself first and foremost, in that he, like his characters, chooses to live his life without compromise and with a minimum of social interference. In his characters I feel a profound respect for the Humanist value system that encourages this relentless individualism to create strong individuals who have the courage to imagine and then enact life in ways which may be solitary but not lonely, isolated but not inaccessible, natural but not crude, and simple but not devoid of profound meaning. For me, Maruyama’s writing resonates with the best, most celebratory aspects of Humanism and individualism, not as an affront to the human community—quite the contrary—but as an inspiration to it, an invitation to his readers to imagine, to dream, a life of independence, and a suggestion, insistent and confident, that they too have access to the courage necessary to build it. In this, for me, Maruyama is a tremendously important writer whose work is worthy of being read, carefully and widely.

—•—

Deeper Snow

 

Just when I thought the comings and goings of the various trains would repeat forever without break, the special express finally started out; I’d given up on the Shinkansen—it wasn’t good in this weather—and had switched to a regular train, having made a desperate, huge detour as a last resort; but sure enough, I’d had to return in failure; according to the on-train announcement, the outlook for the snow-clearing operations wasn’t good at all, and the likelihood was that the situation, with nothing able to move, would probably continue at least till morning.

Before long, milk and bean-paste buns and blankets were distributed; this didn’t seem to perplex the passengers especially; they had resigned themselves to the high possibility of this well beforehand; because there was no one who especially needed the conductor for anything, the near-empty car once again soon fell silent.

In no time the sounds of sleeping breathing mixed with the sounds of the heating system; I’d thought that I would probably fall asleep within an hour, being worn out from this return home from my business trip; and yet, I was bound up from an odd tension as a result of my accumulated fatigue, and held by a baseless elation; my head was emptily clear, and I simply couldn’t sleep.

The sales results of the new product that was my assignment, and mine alone, weren’t satisfactory; I’d distributed samples and emphasised the differences between our line and those of any number of similar products, but in spite of it all, there hadn’t been any progress in settling on a contract; not even one company, at least, had seemed tractable, and in the end there wasn’t even a single favourable response.

I wasn’t the least concerned about being in a station with stopped trains; I didn’t even want to know the name of the station; the drink I’d had about two hours earlier may have still been working, but I wasn’t especially worried about being in the right place; just before I fell asleep, and in spite of the fact that I didn’t even have much awareness of where I was in this snowy area surrounded by chains of mountains, for some reason I wanted to check on the look of the snow, and I pressed my forehead against the train window; when I did so, the name of the station flew out at me.

And at the same time I gasped—my drunkenness cleared at once—my spirits suddenly jumped—and my sleepiness swiftly flew away.

Of course I had known full well that if I were to ride this train, I’d be passing this town, and yet, because it was a station I hadn’t expected an express to stop at, I hadn’t made sufficient plans; and as a result, my dismay was fully realised.

Surely if I were to be stuck having to spend a night in such a place—my own birthplace to which I hadn’t even come near, even once, in the thirty years since I’d left, the place that I loathed even thinking about…!

The town which I’d long ago erased from the map in my mind breathed solemnly beneath the falling snow and the deepening night; I couldn’t rely on any of the lights flickering and glittering everywhere there to disappear; the unshakeable fact that that was, indeed, my own hometown wouldn’t budge—even with a lever.

I couldn’t help but curse my boss who’d ordered me on this business trip; I cursed myself for having thought of this detour; and when I thought with a start about how my fortunes had begun to follow a distinctly downward curve since early on in the new year, my intuition began to work that this might be an omen that I would be thrown into adversity…

Without thinking too much about how good it would have been to get through these few hours drunk out of my right mind, and regretting that I hadn’t thought it important enough to have at least bought more liquor at the first station, and not sure what I would do with the milk and the bean-paste bun, all I could do was resign myself to the situation; I pulled the curtain tightly closed, and did whatever I could to call to mind the next town—any town—trying my best to pull through; I put my feet up on the seat in front of me, covered my head with the blanket, feigned tranquility, and tried to calm my breathing.

And so, my thoughts ran towards the woman I could marry at any time, if I were to feel so inclined; she was a comfortable thirty-five year old, and treated me, still single at forty-five, very well; and if I were to straight up propose, well, then, exactly this year all those thoughts of all those long years could finally come true…; but if by chance I were to miss this opportunity, I’d probably fall into a fix, a lonely life that anyone would think of as empty—I’d be an easy prey to that loud-mouthed bunch…

And at that I was defenseless against the recollections from more than thirty years before that suddenly ambushed me; my efforts were all to no avail, and my mind fell to pieces; before many minutes had passed I felt like a passenger on a sinking ship, begging for rescue; I couldn’t face my fears, bound up with feelings of nostalgia; I lost any sense of relaxation and my breathing became ragged.

I had expected that my spirit would have been fully waterproof; that I could be at least a little bit proud; but I began to be covered in a sorrow that drew heartrendingly near to me; I fell into despair; the kind of self-alienation that total despair, absolutely impossible simply and lightly to float along with, pushed me towards; and what should be seated right behind all of that?—nothing other than limitless self-disintegration…

The snoring around me suddenly stopped, and when I realised that I had been the cause of the disturbance to the other passengers’ slumbers, I cried out once again; I myself, who had raised such an unintentionally-hysterical cry, didn’t know what to do so I tried to cover up by clearing my throat to an unnatural extent; to make it seem like that was the reason for it all, there was nothing left but for me to run away to the toilet; I was nearly suffocating from the violence of my emotions, and didn’t want to do anything to make matters worse, but still unable to calm the clouds of confusion I felt, I next took myself to the washstand.

Reflected in the mirror was the mere shadow of a pitiable salaryman frantically trying to stifle his emotions and defend his isolated fortress—that, or a fool only weakly connected to his relatives and at the extremity of loneliness, made to carry the fate of having to seek out the reason for his very existence till death.

For a while that guy washed his face in his hands, but when he took his handkerchief out, his expression completely changed; his features looked as if he had discovered something that forcefully complained to his eyes; he quickly stuffed that small object—that he must have forgotten he’d picked up after another passenger must have dropped it—back in his pocket, together with his handkerchief.

With my heart ringing an alarm bell and feeling just as if I were being blamed for shoplifting, even after I returned to my seat I couldn’t calm down; I didn’t lie down, I didn’t cover myself with the blanket; my back was stretched stiff with tension; even when I had a loud-mouthed business contact in front of me I was never so rattled!

Moving just my eyes, I checked all around me, and then carefully put my right hand into my pocket, and with my fingers examined what I’d just picked up; right from the start I knew it was just a cheap thing I didn’t have to feel guilty about, but still, for some reason I kept persistently rechecking it; I just couldn’t understand what had attracted me in this used-up lighter; I’d been a smoker more than ten years ago, before I’d started wishing for a better lifestyle.

But while I was toying with this, wondering what was going on, my vague thoughts cleanly coalesced; I would surely have never dreamed that the power to console myself was hidden in something like this; I wasn’t experiencing mere pacification; I flung open wide the curtains I had just closed, and holding my memories, which had accumulated in the depths of the snow, my courage to confront this town was reborn.

Looking upon my birthplace with hatred and sorrow, my hostile gaze pierced through the thick tempered glass window.

The way the snow fell was just right; with a force to isolate the entire town, the roofless platform, the tracks, the trains, and even the station building were all completely sealed up by the menacing, tremendous snow; but even with that being the case, I didn’t feel overwhelmed by the deep snow; I dressed myself, getting ready to go outside.

I changed into the spike-soled boots that I’d specially prepared for my winter business trip to this northern territory; I put on my water-proof, insulated coat, and my quilted gloves; I forget all dedication to my work, I left aside my briefcase and my suitcase stuffed with samples, and at once left my seat; standing before the door that I could open manually, and muttering, “Well, maybe I’ll just go and see for a bit,” I put up my hood, and headed towards the the ticket window.

There were no station staff to warn off any travellers like me, so I could go out without encountering anyone at all; but it was a disappointing place with nothing but liquor vending machines that met my eye when I got outside; I just bought a tin of hot coffee in the waiting room, and while I stood drinking it I cast my gaze over the familiar scenery, completely comprehensible even though I could neither speak about nor relate everything that was carved so vividly in my memory—all those memories of all those features that were such a particular part of this snowy country.

There was a pile of accumulated snow in the open space in front of the station, and white piles on each of the old shops selling the local speciality, sasamochi, and on the cheap resturant, named the Sleeping Bird, and on the round public washroom, and on the post office, its roof like a pointy hat.

Even though I could clearly feel the presence of life as a result of what I’d done, I couldn’t look on that view; I couldn’t see a single taxi, or a single person, or even a stray dog on the track of a bitch in heat; there was a creepy windlessness, and a stillness that appealed, limitlessly, to the imagination filled the whole area; when my ears caught the sound of the snow falling itself, I was made to realise that—like it or not—I was someone from this town.

Next, as if pulled by gravity, or else as if I’d found a temporary rest, I took my first step into the white world, white the only colour, a world of extremely poor visibility.

The steet and gate lamps tinged the lonely night road a pale yellow, and even the signs that had been set up as landmarks for the snow ploughs were buried; most of them had become useless; even the roads that should have been cleared before and after sunset had become knee-deep in snow; I could guess from not being able to see any headlights moving that the highway was pretty much blocked.

But I wasn’t one to falter at such a trifling matter; I had passed fifteen years of direct experience in this snowy country to back up my confidence; and besides, my thoughts about my youth, spent in ups and down, were aroused; my only worry was that I just couldn’t grasp my own intentions.

This was no hometown for which I’d yearned, having mistaken it somehow, and even though no nostalgia for the past thrirty years even for a moment passed through my thoughts, why on earth had I now started wandering like this, in this place that would be no benefit whatsoever to me; I felt my desire to walk—just walk—intensify, leaving it completely up to my feet where I went.

When I’d walked about the space between three electrical poles, I had to shake my whole body to knock the accumulated snow from my coat; that’s the way, I said to myself—surely that’s how the mountain forces make avalanches happen…

Walking once again in my home town after thirty years had to feel more or less weird; to put it in a colder, more detached way of speaking, I just couldn’t think of this as a place where people building a life in this world could get on; I simply couldn’t believe the fact itself that people kept living in such a town in this day and age, controlled to this extent by such a harsh nature.

A lifestyle this inconvenient, stretching out over long years, like a wretched chain—no matter how industrious a life, or how high a character one had, it would undoubtedly and decidely end in a coarse outcome—this was definitely possible.

I could understand why, for the population, the number of temples and shrines was so excessive; if you didn’t fortify yourself through reliance on the gods and Buddhas, you’d never survive in this harsh environment; and all the anecdotes from city people saying how much they liked purifying their hearts living and breathing in these white snows were all just outrageous lies; the truth was the exact opposite.

Before I’d gone on for long I realised that I’d had a secret understanding with the snow at the very foundation of my spirits itself; it was a psychology neither old nor new, something that only someone born and raised here could understand, something I couldn’t easily explain; before long, a detestable stupidity that sinks into the people of this land, and an arbitrary way of thinking which accompanies it, would come vividly back to life.

With that my will to survive, something I’d always thought I had up until now, was crushed, and I fell into a miserable mood, as if I were a quitter; I thought about that day when I’d walked along this road to leave here; the ways things looked then came freshly back to life, and with a single step the fragments of the past that I thought I’d long forgotten came floating back to me.

Somehow or other I would simply have to make my own living, I had thought to myself, and so, in the early dawn the day after I’d graduated from middle school, I’d set out on my own; even though I hadn’t found a job or a place to stay, I took off on the first train of the day.

I fled completely from all the annoyances of changing my residence certificate, settling up my household affairs, saying goodbye to acquaintances, and announcing my intentions of entering the highschool I’d settled on; I stuffed all the money I had left, along with my determination for self preservation, into my pockets, and put the town that I’d known behind me.

I didn’t have much feeling of parting, but neither did I have any deep emotions nor even a sense of unease; but I also didn’t have much excitement at the thought of facing a promising future of happiness and encouragement; setting out on this journey with no one to see me off, and the clanking, grinding sounds of the trains, suggested to me that I should live now like a human being—and that image gradually undid the binding spell that had held me.

With a feeling as if—but at the same not quite as if—I might just end up an orphan in a distant land, I was wrapped in relief—I had painfully escaped from the destiny that had intended to crush my freedom to death, been able to free myself from wretched and futile hours; with all my strength, I’d pulled through, and now whatever happened with past or future would be fine; as we had passed through the final tunnel, and around when we were passing over the first metal bridge, I was struck by a frightful sleepiness; I passed long hours in a state of near collapse, but when I awoke, I’d already been placed in a different world.

On the first day when I’d arrived in the heart of the city, dyed crimson by the setting sun, I’d had my fortune told—having been called to stop by a fishy-looking old man with a goatee; he talked on and on with a fairly indifferent tone, and the content of his long speech was relatively meagre; in short, the lesson was the usual one: don’t turn around!

Things didn’t go quite as far as that fake fortuneteller had predicted, but in those days, and these days, too, I had no regrets for my decision then; it was the right decision that happened because of my human sincerity, by virtue of the workings of some natural force that seeped out from inside.

If not for that, then I probably would have faithfully followed the path that my father had followed, as my hopes in life were all extinguished, being driven towards certain death.

Whether it’s regrettable or not, be that as it may, but my father hadn’t lived to the age I am now; but then, I suddenly thought, since he hadn’t been fatally injured, or suffered from a terminal illness, even if he’d lived in a place unconnected to these deep snows, his life probably wouldn’t have been very different.

• ••

Piling up with the snow was a feeling of disgust that I knew I would not be able to shake off, no matter what I were to do—but even so, there was no hesitation in my legs at all; I had not the least thought of going back to the heated station, there to get tired of waiting for the train to set out; I carried on with my walk towards the past as if I were possessed.

I’d already lost my sense of direction—but of course, evern though I was roughly aware of where I was in the town, I didn’t have a perfect grasp of my position; but more than that, and more than anything, was that I didn’t have any concerns at all about the question as to where I was about to go; as a result, as if it were an inevitability, as if I were following Divine Will, I walked filled with confidence.

I pushed forward with the strength of a snow plough for a while when a memory came back to me, from when I’d only ever lived in this town; I thought of the day my grandmother calmly met her death; from having thrown my energies into this tremendous snowfall, the memory of that time that had been misty and vague suddenly became vivid—and in proportion the pain, too, doubled.

Both the season and the time were just about the same as then; the only difference was that there hadn’t been these dancing snowflakes; the moonlight had been clear and shining, the stars had glittered and twinkled; on the deep night overflowing with a beauty that you could almost inhale, I went to visit my grandmother.

She had laid her senile self down on thin bedding that looked more like a cushion than a mattress; and to her grandchild stuck beside her pillow, staring frozen at her on her deathbed—that is, to the only person in the house—she said nothing at all.

She’d become quite disabled, and so her passing away was not unexpected, but while she still had strength to talk, there would have been plenty of time left for a visit; but even so, I didn’t go to see her on her death bed.

To someone like me, even though I certainly didn’t want her to hurry up and die, at the same time I didn’t think I’d especially wanted to prevent her death, either; I didn’t call to our family doctor, thinking it better to watch over her myself; I calmly—well, coldly, rather—watched the progress of everything.

Well, in that situation—in every situation, actually—I had the habit of tring to keep a strict boundary between myself and others, and so even though she was my mother’s mother, and had in fact actually raised me for several years, I didn’t feel at all any sense of closeness to her—she was just an indespensible relative with whom I’d lived for a long time; or, to say it a bit more properly, at most, that was the only sense I had of her.

My grandmother, too, seemed to think in the same way, and I couldn’t really see in her the idea that I was her reason for living or someone on whom she depended; she wasn’t an especially warm person, either, and I had the feeling she had a very dutiful way of thinking about me, as the child her daughter had had, and so she would—more or less unwillingly—look after me.

Around that time I had gotten used to the sorrow that would come from her passing away, and so, even though I was a middle school student, I managed her funeral on my own; even when I think about it now, I can be pretty proud of the way I handled everything back then.

My associations with my relatives—not to mention with people in the neighbourhood—were quite slight, so I didn’t follow the usual funeral service; I had the simplest, plainest burial I could manage, and a person I knew from when my father had died helped out a lot with the legal formalities for the deceased and the arrangements.

I buried my grandmother almost as if I were abandonning her in the same grave as my father, in the mountain temple that had burned down before I’d been born but hadn’t yet been rebuilt, and on that last night, when I had finally started to feel a bit lonely, I stuck my votive candle and incense stick in the snow, extinguished their flames, and shut the door of the butsudan knowing full well that I would never open it again; and with that, I was no more the kind of youth who would pine and cry for a dead relative.

My father, of course, and my grandmother, and my long-lost mother had all faded into the distant past.

Next, ignoring the blizzard that had begun at sunset, I threw open everything even remotely like a window in the house to air out the lingering scent of the incense and the stink of ruin; and just then, I realised that—by grace of being alone—I had obtained limitless freedom.

And so—I turned the TV and radio up loud and immersed myself in joy; I bounced from room to room at full force, shouting out glittering words and war cries that weren’t much different from the roars of wild animals; when I think about it now, that may have been my effective declaration of independence; it may have been the abnormal shrieks that surged up beyond my endurance in my burning chest, vowing that whatever happened, I would do it all on my own—I was clearing up all the gloomy thoughts that had piled and piled and piled up over fifteen years…

While I was shouting, I made up my mind: I would travel; it was such an easy decision; the idea of leaving town flashed through my mind.

Outside, the snow storm was so wild that I could barely see the nearby street lamps; but no matter what kind of a blizzard it was, and even having no idea when it would stop, it wasn’t enough to kill my excitement, having just been freed from the bonds of family; I decided it would be a good time to change the air in all the rooms, so I once again closed the windows, turned on all the elements on the stove that we only rarely used, not to waste electricity, and started to look for funds to escape from my hometown.

I knew that we had some amount saved away; my grandmother, worried by the extravagances of her daughter and by the death of her son in law, had worked hard at piecework, and I had two newspaper routes, in the morning and evening; I also helped out at nearby farms, and so added to our household finances; it was a pretty mixed income, but we could get by, and it had even been possible to save up a fair amount.

As I’d imagined, the cash was in the store space above my grandmother’s closet; when I opened a small cedar box, like the kind used for sweets, bills and coins were all jumbled together; when I counted it, it was more than I’d thought; it looked like I could shuffle off to a town where I didn’t have to rely on anyone, rent a cheap apartment, and stave off starvation for the time being even if I didn’t find work for a while.

When I carefully transferred the money to my wallet, I felt for the first time in my life that fate might be on my side; and then I thought over the worthless fifteen years of waiting for everything to be ready for me to grab my freedom; I decided that, at the same time as my graduation from middle school, I would leave town and disappear into the wide world.

In the thirty years since then I hadn’t once reminisced about my long-gone grandmother; even when I see people of about the same age or the same appearance, I never connect them with her; that is, it’s not much different than as if from the first she had never really existed in this world; as much as possible, that’s the conception I have—I intend to bury the people near to me in the past.

My grandmother must be having an amazingly lucky after life, with me being stuck in a blizzard once again in this town, and her not being here; her own daughter abandonned her own child, no matter what might have happened to the family, running off with some lover, but my grandmother had been able to pass her days in indifferent negligence.

Even when she suffered from her daughter’s wasteful spending, or withdrawing her savings without permission, she never got depressed, right to the end; she never lost her resilience in life; even though my mother, who had inherited my grandmother’s bloood, couldn’t get along with her at all, in the end mother and child resembled each other; and it’s just possible that maybe even my grandmother hid a secret, accidental sentiment deep inside…

If she had been able, in her own self, to hold on to the energy she’d assimiliated and reflected from the wild life of her extremely loose daughter, she might have bluntly asserted that there was nothing equal to sex—having been manipulated by the madness of lust—and maybe she would have tried to get to know the other sex through her crotch; maybe she would have wanted to spend her life in sexual indulgence.

But no matter how much my grandmother may have longed for this, my grandfather wasn’t the sort to make his wife act in such a shamfeul way; my grandfather was a difficult obstacle for my grandmother—the exact opposite of my father—someone it was simply impossible for her to fight against.

He may have been just a blue collar worker, not engaged in brainwork, or even able to read a newspaper, but my grandfather had a dusty moral sense as his first principle; he lived stiffly, and overflowed with a far more than overbearing traditional traction; at least he was no good-for-nothing who couldn’t be saved from being led by the nose by his wife and daughter.

And yet, he could extinguish with a glance the dangerous games of female passions; he kept his masculine majesty and never lost his leadership and his controlling power as the head of the household right up till he died; if he hadn’t been crushed by the snow falling from our roof, our lives would have been completely different—leaving aside what other kind of outcome he might have called for himself.

The winter I turned ten, on the night my low-paid father went all out and bought a Christmas cake, my grandfather was crushed to death by at least two metres of packed snow; he died instantly; his neck was twisted 180°, his face was turned out towards his back, his ribs were all smashed, and his torso was cruelly crushed; I still clearly remember my father muttering—as if to make sure he was really dead—“What a Hell of a way to die…”

And then, I still have in my memory the picture of the winter full moon, a horrible, poisonous colour, floating in the heavens above the sheet-iron roof from which a huge weight had been cleanly swept away.

My grandmother, facing the sudden death of the husband she’d been married to for so many years, didn’t shed a single tear; as a woman who perceived married life as nothing but submission, it was all just annoyingly troublesome; she must have been wishing that somehow or other he could have found a way to die much sooner…

When the thread of my grandfather’s life, he who had treated women as beings several grades inferior to men, was so abruptly snapped, my grandmother had already passed the age when the passions burned strongly; as a woman, she’d already dried out—no matter how much she may have longed for sexual pleasure, her body was no longer in a condition to make it happen.

However, my mother could still be appreciated for her true value as a woman; she was still at the age when, if she just had the mood, she could try her luck with as many men as she felt like; and so, as soon as my old-fashioned grandfather passed away, she quickly began to act young, and her oppressed charm quickly began to ripen; she didn’t even try to hide her violent heat, and the obscene sparkle she so plainly gave off was clear even to a child like me.

The cause of this rapid transformation of my mother was my father; because my father was the exact opposite of my grandfather, he had none of the strait-laced stubbornness that would have made people think he was an oddball; he was slow and taciturn but good-natured, and comfortable with being a bit pitiful; he might have been speechless in front of tears, but he could raise his voice, too, and no mistake; from the start he was, after all, the kind of man who was destined to become the son in law of this family, its fortunes in decline.

When the snow that had killed my grandfather had melted away without a trace, and the season of greenery had come to the hills and the fields, the smiles that floated on my mother gradually became coquettish and seductive; she didn’t even try to look modest, and in the pure light of spring, she fully showed herself as a sensual woman who liked men; like a calm sea that had begun to storm, or a dormant volcano that had become active, she became ferocious…

And so, when the fresh green of the trees and grasses began to darken, and glorious summer arrived, my mother’s make up, too, got heavier, and her clothing got flashier, and she went out more, and she spent wildly, and she began to show a lot more interest in men other than her husband, and first-hand stories of her reputation as a loose woman began to fly about.

The first one to become aware of the wicked rumours spreading in this small town—and, really, to say it was a place of good character was no mere flattery—was not my grandmother, not even my father; it was me; in broad daylight with electric clouds bubbling and boiling up, walking along the blazing embankment on my way home from playing in the river, my bathing suit stuck to the end of a pole to dry, I heard the sounds of sex coming from a thicket of reeds.

That was my first direct experience of seeing a man and woman in this bestial act, and even if that alone would have been a pretty intense shock, the fact that the woman was none other than my own mother raced down from the top of my head through my whole body; I got dizzy and almost collapsed; but even so I kept a strong hold on myself and couldn’t stop staring; or, rather, for some reason I just couldn’t turn away from these actions that were so outside of a child’s understanding, that I should have shoved aside…

The male my mother was riding like a horse was a kid of twenty-something, but he was well known amongst us hungry, growing children; he was a man who went about selling steamed buns from a horse drawn cart; his flat features may have looked like he was suffering from some pretty rough treatment, but the voice that escaped him was that of joy itself.

The cries of blood-boiling delight; the passion, tinged with a madness that had no concern for the other; the rough breathing that seemed as if it would suck up all of the air in the river bed; the movement of the light-skinned buttocks, like a boat floating on the waves—these all dissolved in the summer light, and flew off into the distant heavens, and when the lascivious, warm breezes that capriciously blew through the reed beds fluttered the flower-patterned dress hanging on the young black-locust tree, it made it look like the movements of real flowers…

But to my eyes, this was nothing else but an inexpressibly miserable scene; unbearable thoughts—there was no way to forgive this!—pushed me over the edge, and I rushed off blindly, madly, falling over myself, towards a nearby field; the beautiful image of a horse running along a small path sheltered from the wind came to mind, and at last I found the courage to go home.

This memory of embodied intercourse poured rain into my heart without break, day after day and night after night; for a while, I couldn’t get a wink of sleep; even after I could somehow sleep again, I was silent all through to the end of summer vacation, as if I’d been struck dumb; no matter how I tried, I just couldn’t look my mother in the face, and for a long while afterwards I couldn’t go anywhere near the riverbed—it had become repugnant to me.

And besides—I could feel something inside me that sounded like it was collapsing; I could clearly feel myself falling into the abyss of my soul—my heart had taken a terrible blow and had at once become hollow; and in horrible response, the world everywhere overflowed with things I could no longer endure.

But even so the speed of my recovery surprised even me; when I would see young people walking hand in hand, something that took a fair amount of courage in a rural town in those days, I’d immediately get red in the face; but at that, the anger and sorrow which I alone had to deal with would pale and be flavoured by a painful sweetness.

When that summer ended, I began slowly to ignore my mother’s sins, as if I’d seen nothing; but still, I didn’t think I wanted to go back to perfect family get-togethers and quiet talks between parent and child…

But that wasn’t the case for my father; no matter how warm and gentle a personality he may have had, no matter how opposite from distant and disinterested he was, it was clear to everyone that he’d become the very soul of anger; what the melancholy looks that my father threw behind my mother’s back acutely conveyed was nothing other than a profound dissatisfaction and despair that went completely against his original nature.

On one of those days, my father’s anger suddenly exploded; a terrible fight that really showed the ugliness of this couple raged over three days and three nights, unfolding without concern at all for what their child was seeing; my father rattled on and on, using hateful expressions, just like an ogre—something unusual for him—and cross-examined my mother severely; my mother was just coolly dismissive, no matter how much she was criticised, and no matter how many incontrovertable proofs were thrust at her, she just repeated the same excuses that wouldn’t even fool a child; she brazenly lined up lie after lie, nonchalantly and without shame.

And not only that; she also tried to shift the blame by spilling out her daily resentments; for example, she tried to say that everything was because he couldn’t understand her situation—he couldn’t understand the feelings of his own wife, and didn’t she tell him, time after time, that she wanted to live in a town where there was no snow?

My grandmother maintained an attitude of non-intervention; she didn’t even try to mediate, probably because things hadn’t developed to the point of actual violence yet; or perhaps it was because she saw again the close family resemblance between herself and her daughter, unable to repress her lust and immersed in the troubles to which her desires had brought her.

When the fight had entered into its fourth day, midway through everything, my father became hesitant to say anything; his attitude changed, as if he was leaving everything up to his own breathing; before long, he grumbled on in a subdued kind of way, a gloomy look on his face and his eyes, in the end, wet with tears.

After a good long cry, trying to make up with his wife, he began to speak out his own shallow feelings, but it was nothingh more than the finishing touch to his shame; abandonned by the wife who had run out of love for him, he was a truly pathetic figure.

My mother, who had been imperious from start to finish, clearly showed her disillusionment; with a curt command that he could do as he liked, she unilaterally cut off the pointless exchange.

And yet even at that, the reason my father didn’t completely break off living with my mother wasn’t out of consideration for the blow a divorce might give to his child or any kind of parental thinking like that; no; it was simply because by nature, he liked the kind of woman who made him shake with fury, the kind of woman he just couldn’t bear; no matter what I might have thought then, this is what I’ve decided, now.

• ••

When I turned back I couldn’t see the lights of the station, but still the snow that was enough to frustrate one’s ability to think clearly kept falling; but because of the white that blanketed the town, the night hadn’t sunk into darkness; I wasn’t anxious what might happen if I were to get lost, so I kept on going.

Where on earth was I going?; and what was waiting for me, wherever my reminiscences were leading me towards?; was it a point where my heart was filled with serenity?; or was it a kind of indicator that there would no longer be any mistakes?

But at once another conjecture struck me, and that was, that I wasn’t just wandering around meaninglessly; it was obvious that I was searching for a spot where the past and the present held each other tightly; that is to say, this was different from rambling out of a fascination for nostalgia; even if I couldn’t clearly see its shape yet, without a doubt something more than pure—something dangerous—was developing inside me.

I went along a street that paralleled the river, where there was a line of old-fashioned warehouses; I turned left at the next intersection, and ran straight into a compressed version of my fifteen years from thirty years previous; worrying whether I would have the same feelings as then, it was I myself who whispered in my ear and then quickly ran away, “If you’re going to turn back, now’s the time to do it…”

My strange exaltation still wasn’t diminished; as if I still held some ambition, my pace faltered, in response to the volition that compelled me—both body and mind—to move forward; before long I came to a stop, and with my hands, numb from the cold even though I was wearing gloves, stuck into my coat pockets, I stood still directly under a street lamp, awash in its warm light, not moving a muscle.

The weight and quality of the incessantly falling snow spoke obviously of a rapid drop in temperature, and deep in my heart a small tremor was born, and the contradictory thoughts that maybe I’d come far enough, or that having come this far, maybe I should push on a bit farther,  beset me bewilderingly; in the end, the latter pushed me onwards.

While carving out clear footsteps in the new snow, and then having them instantly erased by more new snow, I muttered over and over, “For what purpose?”; going back into the depths of those ancient days, even my memories of them were hazy; going upstream once again towards a time for which I had no affection; I finally noticed that my way of walking on this snowy road closely resembled that of my father, and for a moment I was caught by the illusion that I had become him; relativity and the absolute jumbled together, and I felt this moment of great mystery as ultimate reality.

My mother, living brightly in the tears my father had shed, began greedily and boldly to hunt for men.

My mother, out walking the streets, neglecting everything at home—no concern at all whether they were younger, or older, or single, or married, filled with indiscriminant love; when she got home, her eyes were deeply shadowed, her hair was a mess; without eating, without bathing, she just went straight to bed.

My grandmother didn’t trouble herself about the strain from her daughter’s marital quarrels; she set herself to the cooking, laundry, cleaning, and shopping, and managed everything spectacularly; I suspect that unless she’d had the fairly warped notion of preparing her daughter—immersed in lewdness—as a substitute for herself, she couldn’t by any means have managed to persevere.

Even while he was being tormented by a stereotypical bad wife who no longer thought of her husband as her husband, my father—at least superficially—was still being a tolerant man; at least, I couldn’t sense any signs that he would, for example, become any trouble for the police or anything like that—like getting some liquid courage and visiting the house of the other guy to have a talk with him, with an edged weapon hidden in his pocket…

While it was inconceivable that he could actually forget his fury, it also seemed unreasonable to think he would actually abandon her as the very core of his suspicions and jealousies; and the proof of that was that even when he would get stinking drunk, he would almost spasmodically pull back from quarrelling with his wife; when he might be ready to scream at her to get the hell out, he’d next treat her gently, scraping his forehead on the tatami begging for their married life together to carry on.

When my harsh-eyed mother so much as caught sight of her husband like that, she’d throw poisonous words at him without forgiveness; and after she’d said as much as she’d wanted to, she’d stare out the window at the tedious clouds drifting by, looking as if she were dreaming some hidden, vehemently furious dream…

Like my grandmother, I too stuck to a policy of “seeing no evil;” other than this, there was no way of escaping from the stream of unpleasant days; even when, passing by the house diagonally across from ours, I could hear criticism and scorn directed towards my problematically good-natured father, or even when I would catch sight of some dumbstruck man come flying out of my mother’s hastily-opened bedroom window and racing away, I began to just grit my teeth and pretend I didn’t know a thing.

No matter what sort of situation he might happen to encounter, really—what could a ten-or-so year old say, anyway?

For someone like me, who already had his hands full just avoiding being inundated with the kinds of squalid messes that happen in the world of stuff that even adult men and women don’t talk about, I was probably just trying to maintain some kind of balance in me, by feeling ever more strongly a need to keep my relatives at bay.

It was around then, too, that the desire to travel started to bubble up in me; but it was my mother who ended up leaving home; one day when the voice of autumn filled the fields and the hills, she finally ran away; even though previously she’d always come home, no matter how late things might have gotten the night before, on that morning there was no sign of her; for me, I felt as if she’d gotten the jump on me.

Even though it was pretty understandable in my father’s case, I was still amazed at how upset my grandmother got; mind you, that was because she had gone off with all the money they’d had; she’d heartlessly withdrawn the full amount from their two bank accounts.

My grandmother, her eyes wet with tears, complained to her son-in-law that this had all happened because he wasn’t worthy of being called her daughter’s husband; to this irrational storm of complaints and condemnations, my father as usual turned deaf ears, determined to ride everything out, hoping that time would bring a resolution.

This incident was the trigger for my grandmother to start saving cash at home; she was constantly changing the hiding place, but through this, and staying busy with daily affairs, somehow or other she gradually got back her peace of mind; in time she regained enough extra to be able to relax a bit.

It was probably because, so long as her son-in-law, drawing his monthly salary, didn’t fly into a rage and leave home, things could more or less carry on; but this was really a household built on self-interest, in short on a foundation of money issues; in fact there was no meaning in the three of us living together, and we just kept going on because of habit; neither my father no grandmother could go anywhere, and faced with that unforgivable infidelity, having exposed such regrettable but unstoppable feelings, even though they were wrapped in miserable distrust, they couldn’t abandon their ways of living.

A few days after my mother left I learned that my father had no family home; according to my grandmother’s scandalous explanation, my father had begun life as an abandonned baby at the front gate of a mountain temple; the head priest and his wife who had adopted him had both passed away in succession in an epidemic, and right after that, the temple had been lost in a suspicious fire; my father, who had graduated from part-time high school through extraordinary effort, was employed by a parishioner who operated a small printing press; after he became a full-fledged printer, he married my mother, having been introduced by another parishioner.

One night after we’d determined that my mother had indeed run off, after ten days had passed, my father—with who knows what in mind—had a super-solemn, super-pious talk with me, a primary school student; people, all, are smeared in sin, and share the same destiny, to degenerate to the level of beasts and sink down to the bottom of Hell, he said; after that he quickly fell silent, holding his chopsticks and bowl in his hand; for a ong while he listened to the sounds of the boiling pot of yudoufu.

My father just couldn’t give up on my mother, no matter what happened; if he had free time he’d go looking for wherever he had an idea she might be, and on his days off he even went as far as the nearby towns and cities and villages; even though he could never get hold of a single clue, he never got fed up with the whole mess and just ran away; when he’d get home, heartbroken and his shoulders sagging, he’d grumble about his unhappiness, crying away, and drink himself into a shameful state for a man.

Even though we hadn’t particularly wanted to open up about our situation at home, everything about my father’s tragi-comedy had become known at his work, and he’d become a bit of joke out of pity; even I was teased now and then by people in my grade; well, that was how small a town it was.

As everyone knew, it was a travelling salesman specialising in bamboo goods who’d run off with my deeply problematic mother; an older man who’d made getting in and out of hospital his only purpose in life who lived nearby told my grandmother the story; according to him, any number of townspeople had seen them getting on the train together.

If that were the guy, even I knew him; he was young with a solid physique, an affable smile, and a lot of charm in his salesman’s voice; he was an outsider who generally gave a good impression.

Of all the guys my mother went around with, he was the one who seemed most upright, the one whom you most wanted to forgive for things; even though he was used to being a drifter, I just couldn’t feel that he knew much of the world; he had an elegant air, as if he were the descendant of a good family; when the image of my mother selling bamboo goods all over the country with that guy came to my mind, for some reason my heart softened, and I began to feel even a kind of longing for that irresponsible freedom.

But no matter who had stolen away my mother, my father’s way of dealing with things had reached an excessive situation; he looked visibly haggard and wretched, he hardly slept at all, and he’d completely lost his appetite; in the end, nothing but drink went down his throat.

Because my father, even like this, looking like a semi-invalid, didn’t take a break from work, there was a sharp drop in his reputation as a company man; he was at a critical point to avert disaster; my grandmother said that she would see his pathetic figure sometimes when she was out shopping—on his way to or from work, he’d go to the station, as if he had some hugely important purpose, setting out from the ticket window to the platform, stubbornly looking everywhere…

When my grandmother told me this, I could see an unexpected glitter and warmth of longing in her eye; like a sparkler, a plain and crude longing for sex came bursting up, and there was no way I could avoid feeling the bottomless karmic sin of being a woman; I was made to realise the reality of being such a fearful organism that lay coiled in the depths of this wrinkled face, still able to smile so complacently.

When late one night someone appeared at our gate, my father raced to the edge of the porch, and even after he figured out it was just a neighbour with a circular, he kept walking restlessly around the garden, his arms folded; he was on the alert for even the sounds of dogs trotting by, always waking up when he heard them and opening the window—with all this going on even I couldn’t get enough sleep!

Faced with a son in law like this, my grandmother always cut him off with a single curt word, and she wasn’t any less cold to me, either; my father was pretty far away from the image of a man who would do what had to be done in the normal course of events, and his position as head of the household was pretty much over-shadowed, too, as someone fairly self-destructive; his mind was stuck at that acute angle that was impossible to amend, where love and hatred are inextricably intermixed, and so he inclined towards self-ruination.

The snow that winter mocked my father bitterly; a first-class cold front completely dessicated his foolish soul, but even so, he was still no matter what one of the living, and the fact of the matter was he still had to carry on in this world, the basic tone of which was now pure white; as a result of being shut off for months at an end by freezing snow, even his sorrows began to freeze, and his flowing sweat from shovelling the almost living snow more or less sorted out his confused feelings.

Or, if not that, then my father seemed to be awaiting the return of his wife as if he were awaiting the tidings of the flowers—he seemed firmly to believe that when spring came, like the cherry blossoms that would necessarily bloom, without a doubt his wife too would necessarily come home; no matter what, I just couldn’t guess what my father was thinking; his resolve was just way too bad; I think he’d been polluted by the oppressiveness of that snowy country, and because he was so phlegmatic, there was robably no help for it.

And yet there was some worth in his having waited: even though it wasn’t quite together with the blossoming of the cherries as he’d expected, around the time when the young bamboo shoots appeared, my mother suddenly appeared, like a mirage; she approached our house like she was swimming in a sea of haze; she didn’t seem to feel the eyes and speculations of the world one little bit; it was a magnificent homecoming.

My father was out at work then, and my grandmother was at the dentist, and I was at home because on that day for some reason or other the school had decided to cut our classes down to just a half-day; my mother had probably chosen a time when she’d thought no one would be around because she’d probably wanted to be resettled in her place as wife, as daughter, and as mother, an innocent look on her face, when everyone came back home.

I was playing, climbing the pine trees at the side of the door; I could only think of this reality of my mother appearing suddenly on the other side of the road, my mother from whom we’d had no news at all for half a year, as if she were a phantom brought about by a fever; but when my realisation that this was indeed real sank in, I felt an intense nausea; if it wasn’t self-consciousness, it must have been because of how over-excited I was.

But almost at once this was replaced by an uncontrollable feeling of disgust; I thought I had to make sure whether she’d really come back alone; I looked level-headedly far, far behind my mother, to make sure—but I could see no sign of anyone travelling with her; just the floating spring light, and the wild wind, and the dust from the fields all dancing crazily together.

My mother was empty-handed, and had neither luggage nor even souvenirs, and so she gave me, her son, a hug when I appeared before her very eyes, flying down from the tree, but I could feel no display of maternal effection; she was probably too surprised at the moment to think about it…

So, from my side, I didn’t try to cling to her, as I would have usually; I could feel the falseness in her; and then again, her slightly dirty clothes, her slightly sour body odour, her untidy hair—all of these made me keep her at a distance.

But so, too, my mother didn’t show any true feelings; she was formal, somehow, and I couldn’t feel she had any intention to share any deep-rooted love with me, or any of the profound bonds between parent and child; so, her first words were “If I don’t get into the bath…!” and she hurried into the house, promptly getting everything ready.

While the water was heating, she took off all the clothes she’d been wearing when she left home, too, and tossed them all into the washing machine; then, completely naked, she went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator and took out absolutely everything that looked like it was ready to eat, and voraciously wolfed down everything like a starving stray dog; I couldn’t watch—I was terrified, and fled into the garden.

The group of neighbourhood ladies quickly sniffed out news of my mother’s return, and came en masse to peek at how things were; they shared intoxicated whispers speculating about this and that; no one was troubled by this particular topic of conversation—everyone was extremely satisfied with it, and all their faces shone vividly.

My mother called me to the bathroom to wash her back; I hadn’t done that sort of thing since kindergarten, so I was shy, somehow, but on the other hand I felt a kind of nostalgia; even though this fairly gaunt body wasn’t a feast for the eyes, the way her grimy skin took back its white lustre was absolute refreshment itself.

I could feel no misstep of affection in the skin from which steam was rising; the fresh tooth marks that still remained, from shoulder to breast, were the proof that the insatiable pursuit of pleasure and the dreams that a lascivious woman created would never end…

The huge amount of grime that floated in the bathtub meant that there was no way I wanted to use it after my mother had gotten out; there was choice but to refill it with fresh water and reheat it; even though I hadn’t been told to do it, I wanted to get it done quickly before my grandmother and father got home.

What I couldn’t understand was why even after my father and grandmother got home there wasn’t a strained atmosphere; my father’s attitude towards his wife who had suddenly returned was the same as my grandmother’s, and both were remarkable: in short, their reaction was that there was nothing especially surprising in this; neither of them were angry, and at least on the surface they both received her with apparent feelings of sympathy.

That was because they’d each decided there was nothing else to do but to keep her, wife and daughter, close at hand.

For my grandmother, she took precautions against her daughter who’d come back without even a single letter—she immediately hid her purse; for my father, who didn’t ask about anything, who just kept saying that everything was fine, it was as if just at the moment his hunger had increased to the point where even a single bowl would have been too much, from that night on, he would have second helpings.

My brazen mother, too, ate well, and chattered well, and was in great high spirits, saying silly things like a little girl; there was nothing but to be amazed by the rapdity of her transformation; she straightened her posture and said how she’d reflected on everything and rehabilitated herself—but about the truth of her leaving home, she was silent and said nothing.

And so, on my way to and from school, I was attacked with questions from gossip-loving adults, and I was teased horribly by my classmates; it wasn’t even all that unusual for me to be treated like an outcast; my report card for that term said that I had better fix my hot temper…

• ••

For about a year and a half, life carried on without any great tempests; for that time, as if she were making up for her past mistakes, my mother stopped being a fickle woman crazy about men, and acted intently like a deeply modest woman; she did her best to stop going out unless she had some specific errand, and she devoted herself to housework; she didn’t complain at all about grandmother doing just the shopping, or even about not being allowed to look after any cash.

My father, so as not to hurt my mother’s feelings, was always checking her expression carefully, and paying close attention to what she said and did; he didn’t show any suffering over her having run away, and seemed to be taking great pains to have her understand that he wasn’t harbouring any suspicions at all.

As of he’d been given the secrets to matrimonial satisfaction by his boss or someone, my father gave up drinking and started to bathe with his wife; my mother’s seductive voice, joined with the rhythmic sounds that escaped from the bathroom, at least for now guaranteed the stability in our home, and at the same time hinted at a happiness that would burn out sooner or later…

But in point of fact, relations between my parents were plunging on towards a definitive breakdown.

It was around New Year’s, and my mother, who, while she seemed to be a respectable housewife, for some reason was still being treated like a houseguest, was about to eat zōni soup; she didn’t know which way the wind might be blowing, but she did her best to sit and behave humbly and properly, speaking humbly and saying truly meek things.

Even though a fair amount of time had passed since her running away, she vowed never again till the end of time to act in such a way that would cause trouble for the family; in tears, she apologised, and even to me she bowed her head deeply; that was when, even though it was a bit belated, I was tortured by the suffering of my parents, and even though I was just a child, I thought she just couldn’t help but promise to correct her behaviour.

Faced with my mother being so deeply repentent, my father, crying in sympathy in spite of himself, didn’t try to get a humble confession out of her; he showed great magnanimity, and remonstrated with her that everyone, so long as we were human, had some faults; that there was no need to bring up again talk of things long past; in the end, he went so far as to say that on reflection, after all even he himself might not have been the most suitable of husbands.

Even though only a short while had passed, they seemed to have shared their feelings remarkably; I could feel that they had to come to a true understanding about their matrimonial affections, and if this were so, then I, too, was deeply satisfied; but in contrast with this pleasant atmosphere, there was a clear expression of disappointment on my grandmother’s face.

Thinking about it, I suspect that this was because my grandmother had already made up her mind that her own daughter was not the sort of woman to give in so completely to passion and burn herself to a cinder; she didn’t at all want to see her daughter lose herself in the name of being a housewife, of being a woman in these half-hearted, desultory days.

Or, in another sense, she seemed to feel a certain relief; from that day on, she started to trust her daughter with her purse once again; and yet, whether she was upset about being entrusted with the family finances, or whether the revival of that situation had been something for which she’d been aiming all along, as soon as my mother got hold of enough money to leave, she changed dramatically, without wasting any time.

If from the outset she didn’t feel as if she had joint ownership of the family and affection, she also didn’t feel any invisible bonds; and so, without leaving any time even to think things were going a bit strangely, a few days after New Year’s, with remarkably greedy cruelty, once again she ran off.

A huge amount of snow had fallen that day, and so we gave up our New Year’s vacation to work all together to clear away the snow; my mother was working hard on the road that faced our entranceway, using the heavy, metal snow shovel that was popular in those days; my father had climbed onto the roof on the opposite side, and was pushing off the metre of snow that had fallen; my gradmother and I were shovelling the heavy snow into the creek behind of house.

It was when we’d moved to clear away the snow from the side facing the road that we realised my mother had disappeared; there was no sign of anyone there, just the abandonned, bright-red snow shovel; but of course we didn’t think right away that she’d run off again; we thought she’d probably gone to buy sweet buns at the shop around the first corner; that was our routine whenever we all shovelled snow together.

If we hadn’t heard first-hand from the nosiest granny in the neighbourhood we might not have known anything till about noon; but even if we’d known two hours earlier, we still couldn’t have done anything; and if my mother had set out on foot for the station, there might still have been a chance to catch her, but after all things hadn’t gone that way.

According to the account of this granny who fed on the unhappiness of others, things were roughly like this: a freight truck had come suddenly from the north and had parked a little ways away from our house; it had started up again soon, and when she’d run to the road to see, my mother had already gone; even though she hadn’t seen her getting in and riding away, there was no other explanation.

Indeed, as we’d guessed, the tire-marks of the truck and the signs of its having stopped and set out again, and even the marks from my mother’s shoes, that stopped suddenly right there, were all still there in the snow; they wouldn’t permit of any other explanation.

The aged but still sharply observant first-hand witness said that she’d even clearly seen the truck driver’s face; but she couldn’t rely on the power of her memory, and so couldn’t give any kind of forceful testimony that would add to the settlement of the matter; she couldn’t say whether he’d been a young man with an affable face or an old man with a peculiarly straight nose; she couldn’t give us any essential points—she couldn’t even recall either the type of truck or even its colour.

Turning to my furious father, who wanted to call a taxi and follow the truck, my grandmother straight off poured cold water on his plans; she said that since he didn’t know where she was going, there was nothing he could do about, and and top of that, since he’d given her his wallet to look after, he couldn’t even pay the taxi fare; but even after making sure that the money she’d been tucking away in her dresser was still okay, she didn’t say anything about using that to cover the cost of the chase.

My grandmother, being worn down by domestic concerns, was probably not wanting to spend money wastefully; but in addition to this, she probably wanted to let her daughter do whatever she wanted, to whatever extent; whether she was consciously aware of it was another matter, but she probably had the fairly warped desire to live vicariously through her daughter, who lived just as her instincts led her.

But it was nonetheless a puzzle how my mother had come to meet a new man; and so we had no idea who that driver was or where he was from; at least, it was the general view that he wasn’t anyone local; the basis for this was that even after a few days had passed there were no rumours of a man having disappeared from town at around the same time.

They would probably live in a city where people didn’t pay much attention to others, or else they would move around from rented house to rented house, not putting down roots anywhere—one or the other of those; at least, if it was her, that’s what she herself would do, said my grandmother, her dirty eyes blazing, every bit as warped a soul as her daughter.

My father’s gentleness and what-not just couldn’t compete against the raging fires of lust that had been planted in my mother’s brain; even if he’d had the taxi fare and had been able to bring her back then, in the end she would have repeated the same thing over and over till she would have completed her transformation into a disgraceful monster.

So, in short, my father endured unendurable troubles; through weeping and crying, we could never become a family living in harmony; my mother was just too extreme a woman, remarkably short of moral feelings, and our hopes were just too honest for her; if not that, then maybe she was just the universal archetype of Woman.

My father was pretty harsh about it, but he said that holding on to that unmistakable whore would have been trying to rebel against Fate, and so, not completely giving up on her would probably turn him into a pigheaded loser.

My father’s sorrow, tearing him up to his very soul, made my own heart ache without reproach.

Because she’d come back once, we thought she might come back a second time; as soon as she ran short of food and clothing she’d have no choice but to come back—that was the sort of selfish spirit that grabbed her, and so long as it did, how else could she live; and yet after that my father hit a rough patch and even gave up hunting for her as he had the last time.

Half a year passed, then one year, but my mother didn’t come back; she was a stone thrown out towards infinity, and accordingly, there was no dramatic reunion; for me, I soon began to forget the looks of the parent who had given birth to me; I stopped holding myself back from annoying and arrogant behaviour—and I stopped climbing the pine tree and staring out towards the road…

Together with my increasingly energetic sense of independence came a drop in the shallow pity I had for my father; I started to prefer the peacefulness of not having a mother, and I gradually got used to the curious looks of people who were fixated on my family’s embarrassment.

And no matter what, everything that could ruin our reputation was already well known; there was no longer anything to be afraid of.

For a while time passed, and the months flowed on until, with his wife gone, both legally and in the eyes of the world my father could divorce; one day my grandmother said a remarkable thing to my father: she urged him to remarry; she herself had forgotten all about her own bitch daughter and so there was no need to hesitate; to show that she really meant it, she herself would start the marriage talks.

She showed him a picture of a young woman whose husband had died; she said he should cut off all relations with this family and set up a new one; she herself would look after her grandchild; she said, persuasively, trying to stir him up, that no matter what we did we all had only one life, and so he should live however he liked; but my father had no wish to marry a second time; his interest in the oposite sex was limited to my mother alone, and he didn’t waver at all.

In no time, my father had broken his vow to give up drinking; if you ask me, he was pretty slow in doing so; his spirit was already well along to becoming so coarse that he wouldn’t be any the worse off for drinking; he’d argue for the sake of argument the most trivial theories, just like an idealist or someone superstitious; he’d lament his married life, and endless chain of disappointments; and while carrying on a continuous monologue with himself, he’d drink himself to sleep; he could only truly exist now at the bottom of a profound slumber.

After a while the more he drank the more he complained about how he felt; maybe troubles never come alone, after all, but my father, who’d never been sick in his life, began to complain of indigestion, and before my eyes he started to waste away; even at work he started to slow down, and at home or at work, he was more and more ostracised, and more and more looked down on.

Because he was an orphan, my father had thirsted for affection from blood relatives, and even after he’d been able to have his own family, whenever he imagined himself being alone, uneasiness and fear took him so strongly that he’d begin to tremble.

The continuing development of this situation that was dangerous to my father’s health created a distance between him and his family, step by step; seeing this as his son I could understand it very well; I could easily imagine him hurting his health and suddenly collapsing; and yet rather than his body, it was his spirit that began to give way first; I realised this in the rainy season, around the time the rivers would start to open up; I heard about his death in the staff room at school; my grandmother, using the telephone at the police station, gave me the unexpected news in a completely emotionless voice.

My father, defeated by days of despair, had cut short his own life; he himself probably understood better than anyone that there was no need for a suicide note; even if I myself hadn’t expected it, my grandmother had long been ready for this; he’d jumped from the iron bridge into the rapids; he’d swallowed so much water his belly bulged; but even when I was faced with my father’s pitiful figure, I still didn’t lose my philosophical attitude to human life.

With his stiff corpse and its ghost-like face before me, all I could do was vomit.

I think that, just before he met his death, with however much hatred and loathing he was filled, as he was falling into the river swollen with rain, my father felt death brush beside him, and for the first time he truly despised my mother.

No matter how much I threw up, there was no one to rub my back for me; even while I was throwing up I thought of what my father had muttered as soon as he saw my grandfather, crushed to death by the snow that had slipped off from the roof, and I, too, muttered just like he had.

“What a way to die”; the overcast sky sucked up this phrase; how much sadness had my father felt—the question turned to rain and fell onto my face; with this as my excuse, the dam of my tears burst.

On an evening hazy with light rain my father, who had ended his short, happy or unhappy life, was taken to the mountain temple where he’d been found as a baby; he was buried in our plain burial plot by my grandmother, expressioinless, and me, for some reason cheerful; the incense disappeared from the burning end; among the offerings of flowers—the only things that seemed vital—our reminiscences of the deceased were rapidly used up.

• ••

When my body began to demand rapidity—because my heart couldn’t take any more of these memories—my pace suddenly slowed down; I never came to a complete stop, but kept on wandering in my birth place, where the drifting snows were making mountains here and there and everywhere; no, ‘wandering’ isn’t the right word; more like, I was pulled near by a force that was pretty much the exact opposite of love of my hometown.

I already knew that if I went straight on for a while there’d be something there; I was pretty well prepared for the shocks I was sure I’d get at that point; even before then, I too had realised that I had forgotten myself and was about to be absorbed into foolishness.

The snow kept falling without a break; I’d stopped brushing it off, so I was completely white; maybe I’d blended completely into the snowscape, and become a being whom others could barely perceive; if that were the case, what a piece of good luck; I could use the snow to my advantage, and could do what I had in mind more easily.

It wasn’t just because my blood circulation was good from walking like a snowplough that I didn’t feel the deepening of the cold; the useless advice that the lighter I’d picked up in my pocket was giving so enthusiastically to me, as an ordinary company employee, and the heat born from my conflicts with that advice, were keeping my body warm; in no time, what I’d been expecting became clear before me; I understood everything that had burned my body, and I was pierced by a flaming excitement.

I couldn’t stand being covered in any more filth from my memories; I wanted to punish those bygone days which didn’t have so much as a single beautified experience that would dispel all the personal grudges I had at that time; if I could, I wanted to kill them all for all eternity.

If I didn’t, I’d probably end my grey, ash-coloured life without any single celebratory event, an indecisive man never able to take the plunge into marriage, never able to reclaim my true self, always locked away in my own private prison.

On this night, so completely extraordinary, and as a result of so many overlapping coincidences, even though it hadn’t been my original intention, having my special train unavoidably stopped in this town was nothing other than proof that I was operating under the control of Fate; even picking up that used lighter was probably one part of the whole.

That was why this was the all or nothing moment—if I couldn’t muster all my courage and push through with the purification of my own soul, I’d never be able to move on to my new life; the rest of my life would sink to the level of those whose hands were stained with misfortune, those who got nothing but pity.

I’d long suspected that the person who’d burned down the mountain temple was none other than my father, but now, thirty years later, my suspicions turned to certainty in my home town covered in snow; my father had probably decided that if he didn’t do it, he wouldn’t be able to be reborn and move on into his next life; he must have resolved to do it with determination.

By erasing that temple from the face of the earth my father had gotten married, produced a child, and somehow been able to live in something like harmony with he surroundings.

It was clearly an error to think that my father had died the way he had as punishment for having repaid kindness with enmity by burning down the temple where he’d been raised; on the contrary, it was precisely because he’d done that, that he’d been able to live as long as he had; if he hadn’t done it, his life would have ended much sooner; he probably would have left this world without anyone being aware of it, like one of those isoltated youths you hear about sometimes who commit suicide.

That my father lived well and got as far as he had was because of his strenuos effort, fully deserving of praise.

I had been able to live longer than my father because I’d been wholly blessed by the conditions of my upbringing; for my father, who did his best to get through with the wounds in his heart, who hadn’t known even the faces of his parents, those wounds had touched the very centre of his soul.

I couldn’t deny the possibility that my father’s soul had taken hold of my will when the train I was on had crossed the iron bridge from which he’d flung himself; and after all, it wasn’t inconceivable that my father had drawn me here; for that reason, it may not have been me but my father who had wanted to do it; but in any case it was me who intended do it, and not my father.

I hurried on, fully aware of myself, fully aware of wanting to set fire, carrying neither arrows nor shield; and then, in one corner of the darkness of my heart, a crimson ember suddenly began to flicker and burn.

Over the thirty years when I’d been away, the street had changed considerably, with new buildings and renovated buildings and additional buildings; but still, it didn’t mean that there wasn’t a single house that was familiar from the past; when I passed before the stone wall and gate light that I remembered, a nostalgia as strong as suffering began to smoulder and burn in me.

If that house were still there, if it still remained, without flaw or defect, filled with my father’s deep hatred, and if daikon radishes were out drying under the eaves, and if the rain shutters weren’t closed tight, and if the image of a woman shining in the firelight were reflected distinctly on the shōji screens, or if my mother, not having known aging, were taking warmth from a charcoal fire with a young man I’d never seen before, or if that woman who deserved punishment by her own hand were even now still alive…

If I didn’t feel like trying to escape into nostalgia, I also had no desire to try to satisfy my curiousity; what I did have was just an unstoppable desire for revenge to clarify the reason for my existence; whether or not my father was existing inside me just then wasn’t such a big problem.

If somehow or other I weren’t to obliterate the house where I’d been born, then, one day not too far off, my heart would congeal; I’d become an increasingly exclusive person, and in the end I’d become cold and distant even to myself.

To be frank, there was no other way for me go on with my life other than what I intended to do, despite my denials—to return the house of my birth through raging flames and smoke to ashes and dust; if I didn’t do it, it was inevitable that even while still living, I’d end up in Hell.

When I got close to my destination, I wanted very much to stand still in front of the house for a while; I hid my face and moved forward, staring at my feet; my head was filled not with fantasies that would never come to fruition; I had no worries about danger or sinfulness; all I had was a spectacular action, like setting out in a small boat on a raging seas, that no one else could ever, by any means, understand.

When I got near my destination, I thought, “This is it!”; I lifted my head and glared straight at the object that made my anger rage; at that, I became confused, as if I’d found my way to somewhere infamous; disturbance was born in my breathing…

Clutching the used lighter in my coat pocket, I gazed intently at that House of Sorrow and Hatred that could exist only here, that had followed me like a shadow for the past thirty years, so intimately tied to my soul; yet no matter how much I had to stare at it, and even taking into consideration my state of excitement, after all the shape of the house was greatly distorted; even though there was no doubt it was that house, it had already lost its original form; one part of it had already been transformed into a mysterious, inorganic world.

The thickly-accumulated snow taught fear; it was the highest form of mechanics—it showed exactly what would happen if there were no one to clear the snow from the roof: the pillars and beams had snapped, the very walls were crushed as flat as flat could be, and even the pine tree that I had scrambled up in fun had collapsed.

But to me, raised in this snow country, it wasn’t a sight that surprised me very much; as someone who had seen this kind of disaster any number of times, I could easily surmise the destruction of the house; at least, the dull roar of its destruction didn’t seem like it had come tonight; I could guess, from the entirety of the structure being buried in the snow, that it had happened a few days before.

There was no room for doubt that it was vacant, just like a deserted house; the proof was that the electric and telephone lines had been cut; the anti-climax wrapped up my anger, and my curses gradually withdrew; that enemy that I’d had to confront directly was no longer alive; in short, the house in which I’d been born was now completely dead; it was nothing more than a cruel hill not even worth cremating.

My anxieties disappeared without a shadow or a trace; the past that had drawn my footsteps was now settled; and so, the will that I’d had, to use the lighter and make absolutely sure, also vanished.

A feeling like having sunk into the ocean depths continued for a while, and time, that seemed able to comprehend the fullest truth, flowed on; in that interval I was placed into a condition of nothingness; I had neither memories of the past nor yearnings for the departed; I didn’t even scorn those people living in this harsh land, generation after generation, as beasts in permanent residence; I just held onto myself in a kind of dumbfounded stupefaction.

At some point, the I who had been vindictive and filled with excessive attachment flew off towards the snow; and the I who had a plain and simple disposition that wouldn’t foolishly mislead itself, returned; and as a result, I was able to find a settled state of mind.

And then, from the vicinity of the ruined house before me, my father’s voice came to me, saying “You’re someone else;” I didn’t mumbe a single word; there were no feelings in my chest; and I gently withdrew from that spot so remarkably lacking in poetic beauty.

No matter what pocket I checked, I couldn’t find that old lighter.

The swirling snows that fell from way off high in the sky may have made me hallucinate about my home town, deep in the night, while I was here in a town I was visiting for the first time; or perhaps this was a deeper snow, nonchalantly boastful; no matter; I walked back with slow but certain steps towards the station, where my own reality was waiting for me.

Article and Translation copyright Timothy Iles

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