Japanese Literature

　At the beginning of the new school year, the mountain cherry blossoms, along with their sticky brown new leaves, open their gorgeous blossoms against the blue sea. I didn’t study very hard for the entrance exam, but I was able to enter a junior high school in the Northeast where the sandy beach of cherry blossoms is used as a schoolyard. The logo on the school cap and the buttons on the uniforms both had cherry blossoms on them.
　My father had chosen the school with the sea and cherry blossoms for me, partly because there was a distant relative’s house near the school. I was left in the care of the family, and since the school was very close by, I was quite a lazy junior high school student, running to school after hearing the bell ringing for the morning assembly.
　For the first time in my life, I went to another region, but it seemed to me that this other region was a much more comfortable place than my birthplace. It may be explained that this was because I had finally mastered my clowning and no longer needed as much trouble as before to mock people. But more importantly, there is a difference in the difficulty of acting between family and strangers, between home and abroad, which cannot be overlooked by any genius, even by Jesus, the Son of God. The most difficult place for an actor to perform is the theater in his hometown, and in a room where all his family members are sitting together, any great actor would not be able to perform. But I did act. And it was quite a success. There was no way that such a great actor could go to another country and fail to perform.
　My own fear of humanity was as fierce and strong as it had ever been, but my acting was very spontaneous, and I was always making the class laugh. The teacher would cover her mouth with her hand and laugh. It was so easy for me to make even that thunderous officer of mine laugh.
　Just as I was about to be relieved that I had completely concealed my true identity, I was unexpectedly stabbed from behind. The man who stabbed me in the back was, of course, the poorest student in the class, with a pale face and an overly long upper garment with sleeves like those of a Prince Shotoku that had been handed down to him by his parents. It was a student who looked like a moron. As I expected, I didn’t even recognize the need to be wary of this student.
　That day, during gymnastics time, the student (I don’t remember his last name, but I think his first name was Takeichi) was observing as usual, while we were being made to practice the bars. I deliberately put on my most solemn face, yelled at the bars, jumped, and then flew forward like a broad jump, landing on the sand with a thud. It was all a premeditated failure. As I was getting up and dusting the sand off my pants, I heard Takeichi poke me on the back and whisper in a low voice, “That was intentional.
“It was intentional.
　I was shaken. It had never occurred to me that Takeichi would be able to see through my intentional mistake. I felt as if I were watching the world burn up in hell in an instant.　I felt as if I was about to scream and go crazy.
　I struggled to suppress the feeling that I was going to go crazy.
　On the surface, I was still acting like a sad clown and making everyone laugh, but suddenly I let out a heavy sigh and thought that no matter what I did, Takeichi would see through me like a leaf, and that he would surely go around telling everyone about it sooner or later. When I thought about it, my forehead began to sweat and I looked around in vain with a strange look in my eyes like a madman. If I could, I would have stayed by Takeichi’s side at all hours of the day, morning, noon and night, watching him to make sure he didn’t reveal any secrets. I wanted to make every effort to make him believe that my clowning was not intentional, but real, while I was still attached to him, and if possible, become his best friend. If this was impossible for all of us, we could do nothing but pray for his death. However, I could not bring myself to kill him. In all my life, I had many times wished to be killed by others, but I had never wanted to kill anyone. I never wanted to kill anyone, because I thought it would only bring happiness to the person I feared.
　In order to win him over, I would first put a fake Christian “gentle” smile on my face, bend my head to the left about 30 degrees, lightly hold his small shoulders, and in a sweet voice that sounded like a cat’s paw, I would often invite him to come visit me at my boarding house. But he always looked blankly at me and kept quiet. One day after school, in early summer, it was raining white in the evening and the students were having trouble getting home. When we arrived at the house, I asked my mother to dry their coats, and succeeded in luring him upstairs to my room.
　In the house, there was an over fifty year old woman, and a thirty year old, tall, bespectacled, sickly looking older sister and daughter (she had been married off and then returned home again). The family consisted of only three members: a tall, sickly woman with glasses (I called her Anesa, after the locals), and a short, round-faced younger sister, Setchan, who seemed to have recently graduated from a girls’ school. The main source of income seemed to be the rent for the fifty-six row houses that her late husband had built and left behind.
“My ears hurt.”
　Takeichi said as he stood up.
“They hurt when they get wet in the rain.
　When I looked at him, I saw that both his ears were badly sore. When I looked at them, I saw that both ears were badly stained, and pus was about to flow out of the ear shells.
I thought, “This can’t be good. It’s going to hurt.
　I said, exaggerating my horror.
“I’m sorry for dragging you out in the rain.
　He then went downstairs to get some cotton and alcohol, put Takeichi on his knees as a pillow, and carefully cleaned his ears. Takeichi did not seem to notice that this was a hypocritical scheme. He said
“You’ll make a woman fall in love with you,” he said, flattering himself with his ignorance while sleeping on his lap.
　However, in later years, I realized that this was like a horrible prophecy of the devil that even Takeichi was unaware of. The words “to fall in love” and “to be fallen in love with” are so vulgar, joking, and disrespectful that no matter how “solemn” the occasion, if even a single word of these words were to appear, the whole complex of melancholy would immediately collapse, and you would feel as if you were just a flatulence. However, if you use a literary term like “anxiety of being loved” instead of a slang term like “pain of being loved,” it does not seem to destroy the complex of melancholy, which I find strange.
　At that time, I just blushed and laughed and didn’t answer anything, but actually, I had a faint idea. But to write that I had a faint idea about the shy atmosphere created by such a vulgar word as “fallen in love,” would be like expressing such a silly sentiment that it would hardly be a line from a young master of rakugo. I am not saying that I “had some ideas” with such a joking and reluctant feeling.
　To me, the human female was several times more difficult to understand than the male. In my family, there were more women than men, and my relatives also had many girls, as well as maids of honor for “crimes. But I was also treading on thin ice when I met these women. I had almost no idea what to expect. She was in a fog, and sometimes she made the mistake of stepping on the tail of a tiger, and suffered a terrible wound, which, unlike the whip she had received from the men, was extremely uncomfortable, like internal bleeding, and was difficult to heal.
　I had already made various observations about women since I was a child, such as: women draw you in and then let you go; women belittle you when you are in the presence of others, and hold you tightly when no one is around; women sleep deeply as if they were dead; women live to sleep, don’t they? I had already made various observations about women since I was a child, and although they were like human beings, they seemed to be completely different from men. The words “to be loved” and “to be liked” were not at all appropriate in my case, and “to be bothered” might have been a better description of my situation.
　Women seemed to be even more at home with clowns than men. I knew that if I acted as a clown and the man laughed too much, I would fail, so I always made sure to end the clowning at an appropriate point. But women don’t know moderation, and they demand that I clown them forever and ever, and I am exhausted from the endless encores. In fact, she laughed a lot. In fact, women seem to be able to take more pleasure than men.
　Whenever I had a spare moment, my sister and her daughters would come upstairs to my room, and I would jump up and down in fright every time.
“Studying?
“No.”
　”No,” she smiles, closes her book, and says
No,” he smiled, closed the book, and said, “Today, at school, there’s a geography teacher named Combo.
　”Today, at school, there was a geography teacher named Kongbo.
“Try on your glasses, leaf.
　One night, my sister Setchan came to my room with Anesa, and after making her play the clown, she said something like that.
“Why?”
“Just put them on, and borrow Anesa’s glasses.
　The clown was always in such a violent and commanding tone. The clown obediently put on Anesa’s glasses. Immediately, the two girls burst into laughter.
“You look just like him. You look just like Lloyd.
　At that time, a foreign movie comedian named Harold Lloyd was very popular in Japan.
　I stood and raised one hand.
“Gentlemen.”
　and said.
I stood up, raised one hand, said, “Gentlemen,” and tried to say, “I’d like to introduce myself to my Japanese fans at…”
　After that, I went to see Lloyd’s movies every time they came to the theaters in my town, and secretly studied his facial expressions.
　One autumn night, while I was reading a book in my sleep, Anesa came into my room as quickly as a bird, suddenly collapsed on my comforter, and cried.
She suddenly collapsed on her comforter and cried, “You’re going to help me, aren’t you? You’re right. It would be better for us to leave this house together. Please help me. Help me.”
　She cried again, saying such exasperated words. However, this was not the first time I had seen such an attitude from a woman, so I was not surprised by Anesa’s radical words, and instead, I felt awakened by her banality and insignificance. I handed it to Anesa. Then Anesa ate the persimmon with a squirm, and said, “Do you have any interesting books?
“Do you have any interesting books?　Give it to me.
　I’ll give it to you.
　I picked out a book called “I am a Cat” by Soseki from my bookshelf.
“Thanks for the food.
　Anesa smiled shyly and walked out of the room. Not only Anesa, but wondering what kind of feelings women had in their lives was more complicated, annoying, and creepy to me than trying to figure out the thoughts of a worm. However, I knew from my own experience from an early age that when a woman cried out so suddenly, if I handed her something sweet, she would eat it and be in a better mood.
　My younger sister, Setchan, would even bring her friends to her room and make them laugh fairly because of her example, and when her friends left, Setchan would always say bad things about them. Setchan would always tell them to watch out for her because she was a delinquent. If that’s the case, why didn’t he just bring her all the way here? Thanks to this, almost all the guests in my room were women.
　However, this was still not the realization of Takeichi’s flattering “being loved”. It was not until several years later that Takeichi’s ignorant flattery began to take on an ominous shape, living on in the form of a vague prophecy.
　Takeichi had also given himself another important gift.
“It was a picture of a ghost.
　One day, when Takeichi came to visit me upstairs, he proudly showed me one of his original color illustrations and explained it to me.
　Oh?　I thought. At that moment, I felt as if my path to fall was decided, and in later years, I could not help but feel that way. I knew what I was doing. I knew it was just a self-portrait, like Van Gogh’s example. When I was a boy, French Impressionist paintings were all the rage in Japan, and this was usually the first step in appreciating Western art, and even junior high school students in the countryside were familiar with the paintings of Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, and Lunar. I had also seen many of Van Gogh’s original color prints and was fascinated by their interesting touch and vivid colors, but I had never thought of them as paintings of ghosts.
But I had never thought of it as a painting of a ghost. “Well, how about this one? Maybe it’s a ghost.
　I pulled out a book of Modigliani’s paintings from the bookshelf and showed Takeichi a portrait of a beautiful nude woman with burnt red copper skin.
“It’s amazing.
　Takeichi rolled his eyes and marveled.
“It looks like a horse from hell.
“Is it a ghost?
“I wish I could draw a picture of a ghost like that.
　I wish I could paint such a ghost. These painters, after being hurt and frightened by the monster that is man, finally believed in visions and saw monsters in nature in broad daylight, and instead of clowning around, they made an effort to express what they saw. I was so excited that I started to cry.
I was so excited that I cried and said, “I’ll draw one too. I’m going to draw a picture of a ghost. I’m going to draw a picture of a ghost, and I’m going to draw a horse in hell.
　I’ll draw a picture of a ghost, a horse in hell,” I said to Takeichi in a very quiet voice.
　Ever since I was in elementary school, I have loved to draw and to look at pictures. However, the pictures I drew were not as well received by the people around me as the way I spelled them. I never really trusted human words, so my spelling was just a kind of clownish greeting to me, which delighted my teachers in elementary school and junior high school. However, I was not amused at all, and the only thing I could draw (apart from cartoons, etc.) was the subject matter, which I took some pains to express in my own young way. The models in the school’s art classes were boring, the teachers’ drawings were poor, and I had to devise my own various ways of expressing myself in a completely haphazard manner. When I entered junior high school, I had all the tools for oil painting, but even if I had looked to the impressionist style as a model for my touch, my paintings would have been as flat as a piece of washi paper. However, through Takeichi’s words, I realized that my previous attitude toward painting had been wrong. I had been naive and foolish to try to express beautifully what I felt was beautiful. I was given a primitivist’s guide to the art of painting by Takeichi, who told me that the Meisters create beauty out of nothing, or vomit out of ugliness, but do not hide their interest in it, and bask in the joy of expression. Takeichi gave me a primitivist’s tome on how to paint, which he says is full of joy of expression, and in other words, is not influenced by human thoughts in the slightest.
　I was surprised at how gruesome the picture turned out to be. However, I secretly affirmed that this was my true self that I had been hiding deep inside, that although I was smiling cheerfully on the outside and making people laugh, I actually had such a gloomy heart, and that there was nothing I could do about it. However, I did not show the picture to anyone except Takeichi. I didn’t want anyone to discover the depths of my clownishness and be suddenly alarmed by my petty ways, and I also feared that they might not even know who I was and think of me as a new-fangled clown and make fun of me. So I immediately put it away deep in the closet.
　Also, during art class at school, I kept the “haunted method” to myself and continued to draw with the same ordinary touch that I had always used to draw beautiful things beautifully.
　I had been showing my fragile nerves to Takeichi without hesitation, and I felt comfortable showing him my latest self-portrait, and he praised me greatly.
“He continued to draw two, three more ghosts, and received another prediction from Takeichi: “You will become a great painter.
　I got another prediction from Takeichi that I would become a great painter.
　After receiving these two prophecies, one that I would be loved and the other that I would become a great painter, from the idiot Takeichi, I came to Tokyo.
　I wanted to enter an art school, but my father had already told me that he intended to send me to a high school and make me a government official. I had had enough of the cherry blossoms and the sea, so instead of moving on to the fifth grade, I took the entrance exam to a high school in Tokyo and was accepted. I asked the doctor to write a certificate for pulmonary infiltration and moved out of the dormitory to my father’s villa in Uenosakuragi-cho. I couldn’t live in a group, for the life of me. In addition, words like “the thrill of youth” and “the pride of youth” gave me chills, and I couldn’t really follow the high school spirit. The classrooms and the dormitory seemed to be a dumping ground for distorted sexual desires, and my near-perfect clowning was of no use to me there.
　My father only stayed at the house for a week or two a month when he was not in session, so when he was away, it was just the three of us in the large house, the elderly couple who kept the villa and myself. When my father came to Tokyo, I stayed at home reading and drawing all day long. When my father came to Tokyo, I would rush to school every morning, but there were times when I would go to the art school of Shintaro Yasuda, a Western-style painter in Sendagi-cho, Hongo, and practice drawing for three or four hours. Once I escaped from the dormitory of the high school, I felt as if I was in a special position, like an auditing student, even though I attended classes at school. Throughout elementary school, junior high school, and high school, I was unable to understand what school spirit was. I never even tried to learn the school song.
　Eventually, at art school, one of my art students introduced me to alcohol, cigarettes, prostitutes, pawnshops, and leftist ideology. It was a strange combination, but it was true.
　He had graduated from a private art school, and since he didn’t have a studio at home, he went to this art school to study Western-style painting.
“Can you lend me five yen?
　We only knew each other’s faces, but we had never spoken to each other before. I stammered and offered him five yen.
I stammered and offered him five yen, “All right, let’s drink. I’ll buy you a drink. It’s a good chigoe.
　Unable to refuse, I was dragged to a kafue in Horai, near the art school, and that was the beginning of my friendship with him.
I’ve had my eye on you for a while,” he said. I’ve had my eye on you for a while,” he said, “and that sly smile, that’s the look of a promising artist. Here’s to getting to know you!　Kinu, isn’t this guy a beauty?　Don’t fall in love with him. Now that he’s here, I’m afraid I’m the second most beautiful man in the school.
　Horiki was a dark-skinned, neat-faced man who wore a proper sebiro, a rarity for an art student, with a modest taste in neckties, and a head of hair that he wore in a pomade.
　The place was unfamiliar to me, and I was already frightened. I crossed and uncrossed my arms and smiled slyly, but as I drank a couple of beers, I began to feel a strange sense of freedom and lightness.
“I was thinking of joining an art school, …….”
“No, it’s boring. No, that place is boring. School is boring. Our teacher is in nature!　Paathos to nature!”
　However, I did not feel any respect for what he said. I thought he was an idiot and must be a bad painter, but he might be a good person to play with. In other words, for the first time in my life, I saw a real urban yokozuna. He may have been different from me in form, but we were certainly the same in the sense that he was completely detached from the activities of human beings in this world and was lost. He did this without consciously thinking about it, and he was completely unaware of the misery of this clowning, which was essentially what made him different from myself.
　I always despised him, thinking that he was only playing with me, and that I was only seeing him for fun, and sometimes I even felt ashamed of my friendship with him.
　At first, however, I thought he was a good guy, a rare good guy, and my fear of human beings caught me completely off guard, and I thought I had found a good guide in Tokyo. In fact, I was afraid of the conductors when I took the train alone, afraid of the ushers standing on both sides of the scarlet carpeted staircase at the main entrance to the Kabuki-za Theater, and afraid of the waiters standing quietly behind me waiting for me to finish my plate when I entered the restaurant. When I went into a restaurant, I was horrified by the waiters who stood quietly behind me, waiting for me to finish my plate, and I was especially horrified when I paid the bill. I couldn’t walk around Tokyo alone, so I spent most of the day lounging around the house.
　When he handed his wallet to Horiki and walked with him, Horiki bargained a lot, and was very good at playing around, making the most out of the little money he had. He also avoided the expensive yen taxis and used the train, bus, and pompon steam to get to his destination in the shortest time possible. On the way back from the whore’s place in the morning, he would stop by a restaurant to take a morning bath and have a light drink with hot tofu, which was inexpensive but made him feel luxurious. He also assured me that there was nothing better than electric blanc for getting drunk quickly.
　Moreover, what saved me from having to deal with Horiki was the fact that he would ignore the thoughts of his listeners and just let his so-called “passion” (or maybe passion means ignoring the other person’s position) erupt in idle chatter all the time, until we got tired of walking together and fell into an awkward silence. I had no fear of falling into awkward silence. I had always been wary of the horrible silence that would appear when I came into contact with other people, so I had always been a heavy talker and had always tried my best to clown around. I didn’t even bother to reply, just listened and laughed occasionally, saying, “No way.
　I soon realized that alcohol, cigarettes, and whores were all very good ways to take my mind off my fear of humanity, even if only for a moment. I even began to feel that I would be willing to sell all of my possessions to find such a means.
　The whore seemed to me to be neither a human being nor a woman, but a moron or a madman, and in her bosom I felt completely at ease and was able to sleep well. They were all so pathetically devoid of any real desire. Perhaps it was because they felt a sense of kinship with me, but I was always shown a natural, uncomfortable degree of fondness by the whores. There were nights when I actually saw the light of Mary in those moronic or crazy whores.
　However, as I went there to get away from my fear of human beings and to seek a quiet night’s rest, and as I played with whores of my own kind, I somehow began to feel an unconscious and unpleasant atmosphere all around me. This was a so-called “extra appendix” that I hadn’t even thought of, but gradually the “appendix” came to the surface, and when Horiki pointed it out, I was astonished and had a bad feeling about it. In a vulgar way, I had been training myself as a woman with a prostitute, and recently I had become very good at it, and I heard that training with a prostitute was the hardest and most effective way to train a woman. He was already surrounded by the scent of “womanizer,” and women (not just whores) instinctively sniffed it out and came close to him.
　For example, I remember receiving a poorly written letter from a woman at a coffee shop. Whenever I went out to eat beef, even if I didn’t say anything, the maids at the restaurant would look at …… the box of cigarettes handed to me by the girl at the tobacconist who always bought them. Also, when I went to see a Kabuki play and the person seated next to me said, …… Also, when I was drunk and asleep on the streetcar late at night, …… Also, when I unexpectedly received a thoughtful letter from a relative’s daughter in my hometown, …… I was drunk asleep on the tram late at night, and I received an unexpected letter from a relative’s daughter in my hometown. …… Also, an unknown girl gave me a doll that seemed to have been made by her while I was away. …… I was extremely reluctant to talk about it, so it was all a one-time story. However, I couldn’t deny that there was something about me that made women dream, and it wasn’t just a joke. The fact that someone like Horiki had pointed this out to me made me feel a bitterness akin to humiliation, and it also suddenly awakened my interest in playing with prostitutes.
　One day, because of his vainglorious modernity, Horiki took me to a secret study group called the Communist Reading Group (I don’t remember if it was called R.S. or something else). For someone like Horiki, a secret communist meeting may have been just another one of Rei’s “tours of Tokyo”. I was introduced to the so-called “comrades,” was forced to buy some pamphlets, and received a lecture on Marxian economics from a young man with an ugly face sitting above me. However, it seemed obvious to me. That must be true, but there is something even more incomprehensible and frightening in the human mind. I don’t know what it is, but I have a feeling that there is something more than just economics at the bottom of the human world, something like a ghost story. I was so frightened by the ghost stories that I naturally affirmed the so-called materialism as if it were water flowing downhill, but I could not use it to free myself from the fear of human beings, open my eyes to the green leaves, and feel the joy of hope. However, I attended the R.S. (I think it was called R.S., but I may be wrong) without missing a single meeting, and I couldn’t help but find it amusing that my “comrades” were all stiff-faced, as if it was a big deal, and were indulging in almost elementary arithmetic theories, such as “one plus one is two. I couldn’t help but think it was hilarious that they were all so stiff-faced and indulging in the study of almost elementary arithmetic theories such as “one plus one is two,” so I tried to make the meeting more relaxed with my own clowning. These simple-minded people may have thought of me as a “comrade” who was as simple and optimistic as they were, but if that had been the case, I would have mocked them from beginning to end. I was not a comrade. I was not a comrade, but I always attended the meetings without fail, and served as a clown to everyone.
　It was because I liked them. Because I liked them, because I liked them. But it wasn’t necessarily an affinity that was based on Marx.
　Illegal. For me, it was a ghostly pleasure. In fact, I was comfortable with it. I couldn’t sit in that windowless, chilly room, and even though it was an ocean of illegality outside, it seemed easier to jump in, swim, and eventually die. It seemed more comfortable for me to jump in, swim, and eventually die.
　There is a word, “shady person. I feel that I have been a shade from the time I was born. When I meet someone who has been pointed out by the world as being a shade, I always feel a kind heart. Then, my “kind heart” was so kind that I was enchanted by it.
　There is also the word “culprit consciousness. In this world of human beings, I was tormented by this consciousness all my life, but it was a good companion like my wife Kasu-Nuka, and playing with her alone in a shabby way may have been one of my attitudes toward life. The wound naturally appeared on one of my shins from the time I was a baby, and instead of healing over time, it only grew deeper and deeper until it reached my bones. For such a man, the atmosphere of the group of the underground movement was very safe and comfortable, and he felt that the pain of the wound was like a whisper of the wound’s living feelings or even love. In other words, he felt that the skin of the movement suited him better than its original purpose. In Horiki’s case, he was just a foolish hanger-on who went to the meeting once to introduce himself, but he never came back to the meeting, saying that Marxists needed to study the production side as well as the consumption side. When I think about it, at that time, there were many things that I wanted to do. When I think about it, there were many different types of Marxists in those days. Some, like Horiki, called themselves Marxists out of vanity and modernity, while others, like myself, just sat there because they liked the smell of illegality. If the true believers of Marxism were to find out, both Horiki and myself would have been angrily attacked and driven away as traitors. However, neither myself nor Horiki were expelled, and I was able to behave more freely and in better health in the illegal world than in the legal world of gentlemen. As a result, I was able to behave in a so-called “healthy” manner, and I was asked to do various things as a prospective “comrade” that were so overly secretive that I wanted to burst out. In fact, I never turned down such an errand, I accepted anything without hesitation, and I never got into any trouble because of the suspicious questioning by the dogs (as the comrades called the police), laughing and making people laugh. They were nervous as if it was a big deal, and even did a poor imitation of a detective novel, using extreme caution, and the work they asked me to do was so trivial that it made me feel dumb. But they were doing what they called their job, and they were doing it correctly. At that time, I was fine with being a member of the Party, even if it meant being arrested and living in prison for the rest of my life. I even thought it might be easier to stay in jail than to groan in the hell of sleeplessness every night, terrified of the “real life” of people in the world.
　However, my father was so vexing and frightening that I was thinking of leaving the house and taking up lodgings somewhere, but I could not bring myself to say anything about it.
　My father’s term of office as a member of the Diet was about to expire, and he must have had a number of reasons for doing so, but it seemed that he had no intention of running for office any longer. Moreover, he had built a retreat house in his hometown and had no desire to stay in Tokyo. Anyway, the house was soon sold to someone else, and I moved into a dimly lit room in an old boarding house called Senyukan in Hongo Morikawa-cho.
　Until then, my father had handed me a fixed amount of pocket money every month, which would disappear in a few days, but I always had cigarettes, sake, cheese, and fruit in the house.
　Suddenly, I was living alone in a boarding house, and had to make do with a fixed monthly remittance, which threw me for a loop. The money disappeared within a couple of days, and I began to shudder and go crazy with anxiety. I sent telegrams to my father, brother and sister asking for money alternately, and letters to Isaihumi (the circumstances complained of in the letters were all clownish fictions). He thought that the best way to ask someone for money was to make that person laugh first), while Horiki taught him how to run a pawn shop.
　After all, I was not capable of making a living by myself in a boarding house that I had nothing to do with. I felt horrible sitting alone in my room at the boarding house and felt as if I would be attacked and shot at any moment. In November of my second year at high school, I was involved in an amorous death with a woman who was older than me, and my situation changed drastically.
　Although I had been absent from school and had not studied even a little, I still had a strange tendency to write well on exams, and it seemed that I had been mocking my relatives back home. So my eldest brother began to send me long, sarcastic letters on behalf of my father. But more than that, my direct pain was the lack of money and the fact that my work for the Rei Movement had become too strenuous to be done in a playful manner. I had become the head of the Marxist student action team for all the schools in Hongo, Koishikawa, Shimotani, Kanda, and the central district, or whatever district it was called. When I heard about the “armed uprising,” I bought a small knife (now that I think about it, it was a small knife, not even big enough to sharpen a pencil), put it in my pocket, and flew around from place to place to make so-called “contacts. I want to drink alcohol and sleep well, but I don’t have any money. In addition, P (I think that’s what they used to call the Party, but I may be wrong) sent me so many requests for help that I didn’t have time to breathe. My sickly body could no longer handle it. In the beginning, I had only been helping the group out of an illegitimate interest, and when the work became so hectic, as if it were a joke, I secretly felt a sense of annoyance, as if to say, “That’s not the right thing to do, why don’t you let your direct descendants do it? I couldn’t stop myself from feeling a sense of annoyance, so I ran away. I ran away, and as I expected, I didn’t feel good, so I decided to die.
　At that time, there were three women who had a special fondness for him. One of them was the daughter of Senyukan, where he was staying. After she had gone to bed without eating, she would always come to my room with an envelope and a fountain pen.
“I’m sorry. She would always come to her room with her stationery and fountain pen and say, “I’m sorry, but my sister and brother are making so much noise downstairs that I can’t even write to them.
　I’m sorry, but my sister and brother are so noisy downstairs that I can’t even write a letter.
　I should have just pretended to be ignorant and gone back to sleep, but the girl seemed to want to say something to me, so I showed my spirit of passive service, and although I really didn’t want to say a word, I put a lot of energy into my exhausted body, crawled on my stomach, smoked a cigarette, and said, “I love you from a woman.
“He crawled on his stomach, smoked a cigarette, and said, “I heard that a man took a bath because of a love letter from a woman.
“Oh, no. “Oh, no, it’s you, isn’t it?
“I’ve boiled milk and drunk it.
“I’m flattered. Have a drink.
　I can’t wait for him to leave. I can’t even see the letter. I wonder if he’ll leave soon.
“Let me see it.
　He was so happy that it was almost embarrassing, and it only woke me up. Then I thought to myself, “Why don’t I just tell him I have to run an errand for him?
I thought to myself, “I’m sorry, but could you please go to the drugstore on Train Street and get me some Calmotin?　I’m too tired, my face is all hot, and I can’t sleep. I’m sorry. The money is at …….
“No, I don’t need money.
　I’m happy to stand. I knew that asking a woman to do an errand was not a way to discourage her, and in fact, women were always happy when a man asked them to do an errand.
　The other was a so-called “comrade” who was a literature student at the Women’s Higher Normal School. I had to meet this person every day, even if I didn’t want to, because I had to do something for the Rei Movement. Even after the meeting was over, the woman kept walking with me and kept buying things for me.
“You can think of me as your real sister.
　I shuddered at her insolence.
“That’s what I intend to do.
　I’m going to do that,” she replied with a melancholy smile on her face. Anyway, I’m afraid of upsetting her, so I have to do something to cover it up. One summer night, I couldn’t get him to leave me, so I kissed him in the dark of the city, just to get him to go home. I was so excited that I called a car and took her to a small western-style room that looked like an office in a building that was secretly rented for their campaign, and we had a big party until morning.
　I couldn’t avoid her as I had done with many other women in the past, and my anxiousness led me to do my best to keep them in a good mood, until I felt as if I were tied up in a knot.
　At the same time, I had also received an unexpected favor from a lady who worked at a large café in Ginza, and even though I had only met her once, I was still obsessed with that favor and felt so worried and scared that I could not move. By that time, I was able to get on the train by myself, go to the Kabuki-za theater, or even wear a kasuri kimono and enter the Kafue without having to rely on Horiki’s guidance. In my heart, I was still suspicious, afraid, and troubled about human self-confidence and violence, but on the surface, little by little, I was able to greet others with a straight face, no, no, I could not greet others without the bitter smile of a defeated clown. “I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve been running around exercising or because I’m a woman.　Or of women?　Or alcohol?　But it was mainly because of the lack of money that I had almost mastered it. I was frightened wherever I was, and I thought that if I could blend in with the many drunken customers, wives, and boys at the big kafue, it would calm my ever-chasing mind.
“He walked into a large cuff shop in Ginza by himself with ten yen, and said to the waiter, laughing, “I only have ten yen, so be careful.
　”Don’t worry.
“Don’t worry.
　There was a hint of a Kansai accent in her voice. I could hear the Kansai accent in his voice, and it strangely calmed my trembling heart. No, it wasn’t because I didn’t have to worry about money anymore, but because I felt like I didn’t have to worry about being around that person anymore.
　I drank myself to sleep. I drank my drink in silence, hiding the fact that I was so comfortable with the person that I didn’t feel like clowning around.
“Do you like this?”
　The woman placed a variety of dishes in front of him. I shook my head.
“Do you only drink?　I’ll have a drink with you.
　It was a cold autumn night. It was a cold autumn night, and I remembered that Tsuneko (I think she was called that, but my memory is fading and I’m not sure. (I don’t remember the person’s name, but I clearly remember how bad the sushi was…) I did what Tsuneko told me to do, and went to a sushi stall behind Ginza, and ate some not-so-tasty sushi. Later, when I was on the train, I thought about how I had seen him before, and realized that he looked like the old man of the sushi shop. There were many times when I laughed when I realized that I looked like the old man from the sushi shop. The fact that I could remember his name and even his face so accurately that I could draw a picture of his face, even now that his name and even his face have faded from my memory, suggests that the sushi was so bad that it must have given me a cold and painful feeling. Originally, when I was taken to a place that served good sushi, I never thought it was good. It was too big. (I always wondered if it was possible to make it as big as my thumb.
　He rented the second floor of a carpenter’s shop in Honjo. On the second floor, I drank tea, holding my cheek with one hand, as if I were suffering from a severe toothache, without hiding my gloomy mind. The person seemed to like my appearance. She, too, was a woman who seemed to be completely isolated, with only the falling leaves dancing around her in the cold withering wind.
　While we were having a good night together, she told me that she was two years older than me, that her hometown was Hiroshima, that she had a husband who was a barber in Hiroshima, that they had run away together to Tokyo last spring, but that he hadn’t been able to do any real work in Tokyo and was in jail for fraud. I used to go to the prison every day to bring him something or other, but I’ll stop doing that from tomorrow,” she said. I don’t know if it was because the woman was a bad storyteller, or if it was because the story was told in the wrong way, but in any case, it was always a complete bore to me.
　It was shabby.
　I expected to feel more sympathy for a single word than for the ten million words of a woman’s personal story, but I found it both strange and strange that I had never heard a single word from any woman in this world. However, she did not say “wretched” in words, but she had a silent and terrible wretchedness in the outline of her body, like an air current about an inch wide. “Like a dead leaf falling on a rock at the bottom of the water, I was able to get away from fear and anxiety.
　The night I spent with the wife of the fraudster was a night of happiness (I will not use such an exaggerated word without hesitation in my memoirs) and liberation, quite different from the feeling of sleeping peacefully in the shelter of the whores (the prostitutes were cheerful, after all).
　But it was only one night. In the morning, I woke up, sprang up, and found myself as the frivolous clown I used to be. A weakling fears even happiness. They get hurt by cotton. Happiness can hurt you. He was so anxious to get away from it all before it hurt him that he put up a smokescreen of clownishness.
“When money runs out, it’s the end of a relationship, but that’s the other way around. When a man runs out of money, he gets dumped by a woman. When a man runs out of money, he will naturally become dejected and useless, and even his laughter will lose its power. I know how you feel. I know the feeling, too.
　I seem to remember saying something stupid like that and making Tsuneko spout off. I quickly left without washing my face, thinking that there was no need to stay long and that I should not be afraid. At that time, I said that the end of the money was the end of the relationship, which was a bullshit remark that later became an unexpected sticking point.
　After that, I did not see my benefactor that night for a while. As the days passed, my joy waned, and I began to feel horrible for having received such a trifling favor. I began to feel that Tsuneko, like the girl in the boarding house and the female high school teacher, was only trying to intimidate me, and even though we were far apart, I was constantly frightened of Tsuneko. I was extremely reluctant to meet him, but this reluctance was not due to any cunning on my part, but rather to the fact that women do not make even the slightest connection, not even a speck of dust, between what happens after they rest and what happens after they wake up in the morning. This was because I had not yet fully comprehended the strange phenomenon of living with the two worlds completely disconnected.
　At the end of November, I drank cheap sake with Horiki at a food stall in Kanda, and even after we left the stall, my bad friend insisted that we drink somewhere else, even though we had no more money. Even though we had no more money, we insisted on having a drink.
“Okay, then, I’ll take you to dreamland. I’ll take you to a dreamland.
“Kafue?
“Yes.
“Let’s go!”
　So they got on the streetcar, and Horiki was so excited.
“I’m thirsty for a woman tonight. I’m thirsty for a woman tonight. Can I kiss the wench?
　I didn’t like the idea of Horiki acting so drunk. Horiki knew this, so he made sure he did.
“Okay. I’m going to kiss you. I’m going to kiss you, and I’m going to show you how to kiss the lady who sits beside me. Do you mind?
“I don’t mind.
“Thank you!　I’m thirsty for a woman.
　I got off at Ginza 4-chome and walked into the so-called drunk and thirsty kafue, almost penniless, with Tsuneko as my trusty rope, and sat down on a vacant box facing Horiki. Then Tsuneko sat down beside Horiki, which made me jump. Tsuneko was about to be kissed.
　I didn’t feel like I was missing out. I didn’t have much desire for possession, and even though I occasionally felt a faint sense of regret, I didn’t have the energy to boldly assert my ownership and fight with others. Later, I even watched in silence as my common-law wife was raped.
　I didn’t want to get involved in human conflicts as much as possible. It was frightening to be caught in the vortex. Tsuneko and I were only together for one night. Tsuneko is not mine. There was no way she could have such greedy desires. But then, I realized something.
　I was struck by the thought of Tsuneko being kissed fiercely by Horiki right in front of my eyes. For a moment, I was flabbergasted at Tsuneko’s misfortune, thinking that she would have to leave me after Horiki had soiled her, and that I didn’t have enough positive heat to keep her there. He looked at Horiki and Tsuneko and smiled.
　But then, unexpectedly, things took a turn for the worse.
“I quit!
　Horiki said, his mouth twisted.
“Even I can’t stand this poor woman. ……”
　He folded his arms and stared at Tsuneko with a wry smile on his face.
“I’ll have a drink. I don’t have any money.”
　I whispered to Tsuneko. I wanted to drink as much as I could. To the eyes of a philistine, Tsuneko was not even worthy of a drunkard’s kiss, she was just a shabby, poor woman. Surprisingly, unexpectedly, I was struck down by a bolt from the blue. I drank as much and as often as I could, getting drunker and drunker than I had ever done before, and I looked at Tsuneko and smiled at each other sadly, thinking that she was just a very tired and poor woman. At the same time, the affinity between people without money (I now believe that the discord between rich and poor is one of the eternal themes of dramas, even though it may seem trite) filled my heart with such a sense of affinity, and I longed for Tsuneko. I threw up. I threw up. That was the first time I had ever been so drunk that I lost my mind.
　When I woke up, Tsuneko was sitting by my bedside. I woke up to find Tsuneko sitting by my bedside in the upstairs room of a carpenter in the main building.
“I thought she was joking when she said that the end of a relationship is the end of money, but she was serious. I thought you were joking, but you were serious. What a complicated situation. Can’t I help you?
“No.”
　The woman rested, and at dawn, the word “death” came out of her mouth for the first time. The woman seemed to be exhausted by her life as a human being, and she, too, was afraid of the world, the hassle, the money, the exercise, the women, the schoolwork.
　However, at that time, I was not yet ready for a real “death”. Somewhere, there was a playfulness lurking in me.
　That morning, the two of us were wandering around the six wards of Asakusa. They went to a coffee shop and drank some milk.
“You can leave it.
　I stood up, pulled a coin purse out of my pocket, and opened it to reveal three copper coins. I was struck by a feeling of horror rather than shame, and what immediately came to my mind was my room at Senyukan, with only my uniform and futon left, a desolate room with nothing left to pawn.
　Because I was so confused, the woman also stood up, looked into her purse, and said, “Oh, is that all?
“Oh, that’s it?”
　It was an absent-minded voice, but it was also painful to the bone. It was the first time I had ever heard the voice of someone I was in love with, and it hurt. Not only that, but three copper coins were not money at all. It was a strange humiliation that I had never experienced before. It was a humiliation that I could not live with. At that time, I had not yet broken free from the mold of being a rich boy. At that time, I made up my mind in my heart that I was willing to die.
　That night, we jumped into the sea in Kamakura. The woman told us that she had borrowed this sash from her friend at the store, so she untied it, folded it, and placed it on a rock, while I took off my cloak, placed it on the same spot, and entered the water with her.
　The woman died. I was the only one who survived.
　Since I was a student at a high school, and my father’s name had some so-called nuance, it seemed to be a big issue in the newspapers.
　I was admitted to a seaside hospital, and a relative from my hometown rushed to my house to take care of everything, and told me that my father and the rest of the family were furious, and that I might have to leave my family for good. He told her that Kuni’s father and the rest of the family were furious and that she might have to leave her birthplace. She was the only person I had ever really liked, that poor Tsuneko.
　I received a long letter from my lodger, in which she had written fifty tanka poems. “It was a long letter from my lodger, containing fifty tanka poems, all beginning with the strange words, “Please live. There was also a nurse who came to my hospital room to play with the nurses, laughing merrily, and squeezed my hand before leaving.
　At the hospital, I was found to have a problem with my left lung, which turned out to be very convenient for me, and I was taken from the hospital to the police on a charge of “assisting suicide.
　In the middle of the night, an elderly patrolman who was on duty in the room next to the protection room gently opened the door between us and said, “Hey!
“Hey!”
　He called out to himself, “Hey!
“Hey!” he said to himself, “You must be cold. Come here and get warm.
　He said, “It must be cold.
　I purposely and reluctantly walked into the lodging room, sat down on a chair and sat on the brazier.
“You must still miss the dead woman.
“Yes.”
　Yes,” he replied in an especially thin, muffled voice.
Yes,” he replied in an especially faint voice, “that’s what humanity is all about.
　He became more and more serious.
“Where did you first have relations with the woman?
　Where did you first have relations with a woman? He seemed to think that I was a child, and that he wanted to pretend as if he were the chief interrogator on a wandering autumn night, in order to get some obscene statement out of me. I quickly sensed this and struggled to resist the urge to erupt. I knew that I could refuse to answer any of the officer’s “unofficial questions,” but in order to add interest to the autumn night, I tried to keep my mind focused on the fact that the officer was the chief interrogator, and that the decision on the severity of the punishment was based solely on his wishes. He gave a lax statement that only slightly satisfied his curiosity.
“Well, that’s pretty much it. If you answer anything honestly, we’ll have to make some adjustments.
“Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I look forward to working with you.
　It was almost an act of divine intervention. It was a powerful performance that did nothing, not even one thing, special for me.
　At dawn, I was summoned by the chief. This time, it was a formal interrogation.
　As soon as I opened the door and walked into the chief’s office.
“Oh, you’re a good man. It’s not your fault. It’s your mother’s fault for giving birth to such a good man.
　It was a young, dark-skinned, college-educated chief. When he suddenly said that, I felt miserable, like a cripple with a red bruise all over my face.
　The interrogation by the chief, who looked like a judo or kendo player, was very simple, a far cry from the secretive and obsessive “interrogation” of the old officer late at night. After the interrogation, the chief prepared the documents to be sent to the prosecutor’s office.
You have to be strong,” he said. You seem to be producing blood sputum.
　He said.
　That morning, I had been coughing a lot and every time I coughed, I would cover my mouth with a handkerchief, but there was blood on the handkerchief, as if red hail had fallen on it. But it was not blood from my throat, it was blood from a small boil I had picked up under my ear last night. However, I suddenly felt that it would be more convenient if I didn’t say anything about it, so I just said
“Yes?”
　So I just said, “Yes,” with downcast eyes and an auspicious look in my eyes.
　The chief finished filling out the paperwork.
The chief finished the paperwork and said, “The prosecutor will decide whether you will be prosecuted or not, but I suggest you send a telegram or call to your personal representative and ask him to come to the prosecutor’s office in Yokohama today. I’m sure you have someone, a guardian or a guarantor.
　I remembered that my father’s guarantor for my school was a stocky, single man of forty named Shibuta, a calligrapher and antique dealer from our hometown who had been a frequent guest at my father’s villa in Tokyo. My father always called him “flounder” because his face, especially his eyes, resembled a flounder, and I had gotten used to calling him that.
　I borrowed the police phone book and searched for the phone number of Hirame’s house, and when I found it, I called Hirame and asked him to come to the Prosecutor’s Office in Yokohama.
He said, “Hey, you’d better disinfect that phone right away. You’d better disinfect that phone right away, because it’s spitting out blood.
　After I was taken back to the protection room, the loud voice of the police chief telling the officers to disinfect the phone reached my ears as I sat in the protection room.
　A little after noon, I was tied up with a thin rope, which I was allowed to cover with my cape, but the young officer was holding the end of the rope tightly, and together we took the train to Yokohama.
　But I felt no anxiety at all, and I remembered the police protection room and the old officer.
　However, even in the midst of my nostalgic memories of that period, there was one tragic mistake that I will never forget: I broke out in a cold sweat. In a dimly lit room of the prosecutor’s office, I was briefly interrogated by the prosecutor. The prosecutor was a quiet man of about 40 years of age (even if I had good looks, they must have been so-called “evil good looks,” but the prosecutor’s face had an air of intelligent tranquility, as if I wanted to call it “correct good looks”), so I was not alarmed at all. He seemed to be a man of unconcerned character, so I was not alarmed at all, and was making a vague statement, when all of a sudden, Rei’s cough came out, and I pulled out a handkerchief from my embankment, looked at the blood, and thought that this cough might also be useful for something. He covered his mouth with a handkerchief and glanced at the prosecutor’s face, just in time.
“Are you sure?”
　He smiled quietly. I broke out in a cold sweat, and even now, I want to do a full-on dance. It’s no exaggeration to say that this feeling is more than what I felt when that idiot, Takeichi, poked me in the spine and kicked me down to hell when I was in junior high school. This, that, and the other two are the records of my biggest acting failures in my life. Sometimes I even wish I had been sentenced to ten years in prison rather than face such quiet contempt from the prosecutor.
　I was given a reprieve from prosecution. I sat on a bench in the anteroom of the prosecutor’s office, waiting for the arrival of my caretaker, Hirame, but I was not happy at all.
　From the high window behind me, I could see the sunset sky, and a seagull was flying in the shape of the character for “woman.