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(2026年6月18日-6月23日) The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald, translated by Michael Hulse  I read from chapter 8 until the end today, with pauses between each chapter. I woke up at 5am, and after failing to go back to sleep for a little longer for thirty minutes, I decided to continue reading this, and then could not focus because I was overtaken by the urge to attend to chores. So I did them and then read the chapter, and realising I had only two chapters remaining thought I might as well finish the rest today. Thus after a few hours I decided to read chapter 9, but before that I wanted to eat something, so I went to the kitchen to set a pot to boil. Bug was meowing at me so I picked her up and walked out of the kitchen to the front room, where I saw through the front window that the sky had greyed and rain had begun to fall. I walked over to watch it with Bug in my arms, and when she began to squirm set her on the ironing board I put in front of the window so that she could look outside. Without my glasses the scenery was a collection of smudges, distinct enough for me to make out different objects but not enough to make out any details. All there was was the dull green of the leaves, the grey of the concrete, and the grey sheet of rain. After staring at it for a few minutes I suddenly felt a sense of being timeless and placeless, unreal, not unlike what Sebald described in chapter 8 at the abandoned military research facility. Then I went back to the kitchen.
 It feels like so much of what I read has something to do with walking for a long, long time. This book is a long, long walk; Dazai walks in Return to Tsugaru for a long time to reach Tappi; Yoko walks for a long time through the neighborhood in Plainsong; Matsuo Basho walked for a long time in his Narrow Road to the Deep North; the narrators of Grass for My Pillow and Black Rain walk for a long time. In Japan I would walk aimlessly around Nagoya at night for at least an hour multiple times a month, culminating in the night I walked for nearly four hours; when I visited Tappi I walked around the area for hours; everywhere I went I walked and walked and walked. When I travelled I did not listen to music while I walked, but when I walked Nagoya at night I did. When I walk everything ceases to matter: the trees are not trees the birds are not birds and I am not me but just something that has been walking for a very long time. My thoughts are ephemera, my past and present and future are ephemera, my surroundings are ephemera, and all that matters is the rhythm of my feet on the pavement. I'm everyone that ever has and ever will take a walk. For me it's a comfort like nothing else. Here I don't walk, because for lack of sidewalk or pedestrian-friendly infrastructure I would probably get hit by a car.
 There is so much to say about this book and I can't put any more of it into words. Simply I loved it.
Much as in this continuous process of consuming…  Much as in this continuous process of consuming and being consumed, nothing endures, in Thomas Browne's view. On every new thing there lies already the shadow of annihilation. For the history of every individual, of every social order, indeed of the whole world, does not describe an ever-widening, more and more wonderful arc, but rather follows a course which, once the meridian is reached, leads without fail down into the dark. Knowledge of that descent into the dark, for Browne, is inseparable from his belief in the day of resurrection, when, as in a theatre, the last revolutions are ended and the actors appear once more on stage, to complete and make up the catastrophe of this great piece. As a doctor, who saw disease growing and raging in bodies, he understood mortality better than the flowering of life. To him it seems a miracle that we should last so much as a single day. There is no antidote, he writes, against the opium of time. The winter sun shows how soon the light fades from the ash, how soon night enfolds us. Hour upon hour is added to the sum. Time itself grows old. Pyramids, arches and obelisks are melting pillars of snow. Not even those who have found a place amidst the heavenly constellations have perpetuated their names: Nimrod is lost in Orion, and Osiris in the Dog Star. Indeed, old families last not three oaks. To set one's name to a work gives no one a title to be remembered, for who knows how many of the best of men have gone without a trace? The iniquity of oblivion blindly scatters her poppyseed and when wretchedness falls upon us one summer's day like snow, all we wish for is to be forgotten.
The almost universal practice of cremation…  The almost universal practice of cremation in pre-Christian times should not lead one to conclude, as is often done, that the heathen were ignorant of life beyond death, to show which Browne observes that the funeral pyres were built of sweet fuel, cypress, fir, yew, and other trees perpetually verdant as silent expressions of their surviving hopes. Browne also remarks that, contrary to popular belief, it is not difficult to burn a human body: a piece of an old boat burnt Pompey, and the King of Castile burnt large numbers of Saracens with next to no fuel, the fire being visible far and wide. Indeed, he adds, if the burthen of Isaac were sufficient for a holocaust, a man may carry his own pyre. Browne then turns to the strange vessels unearthed from the field near Walsingham. It is astounding, he says, how long these thin-walled clay urns remained intact a yard underground, while the sword and ploughshare passed above them and great buildings, palaces and cloud-high towers crumbled and collapsed. The cremated remains in the urns are examined closely: the ash, the loose teeth, some long roots of quitch, or dog's grass wreathed about the bones, and the coin intended for the Elysian ferryman. Browne records other objects known to have been placed with the dead, whether as ornament or utensil. His catalogue includes a variety of curiosities: the circumcision knives of Joshua, the ring which belonged to the mistress of Propertius, an ape of agate, a grasshopper, three-hundred golden bees, a blue opal, silver belt buckles and clasps, combs, iron pins, brass plates and brazen nippers to pull away hair, and a brass jew's-harp that last sounded on the crossing over the black water. The most marvellous item, however, from a Roman urn preserved by Cardinal Farnese, is a drinking glass, so bright it might have been newly blown. For Browne, things of this kind, unspoiled by the passage of time, are symbols of the indestructibility of the human soul assured by scripture, which the physician, firm though he may be in his Christian faith, perhaps secretly doubts. And since the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man is to tell him he is at the end of his nature, Browne scrutinizes that which escaped annihilation for any sign of the mysterious capacity for transmigration he has so often observed in caterpillars and moths. That purple piece of silk he refers to, then, in the urn of Patroclus—what does it mean?
Vologda, he wrote in summer 1863 to his Zagórski cousins…  Vologda, he wrote in summer 1863 to his Zagórski cousins, is a great three-verst marsh across which logs and tree trunks are placed parallel to each other in crooked lines; the houses, even the garishly painted wooden palaces of the provincial grandees, are erected on piles driven into the morass at intervals. Everything round about rots, decays and sinks into the ground. There are only two seasons: the white winter and the green winter. For nine months the ice-cold air sweeps down from the Arctic sea. The thermometer plunges to unbelievable depths and one is surrounded by a limitless darkness. During the green winter it rains week in week out. The mud creeps over the threshold, rigor mortis is temporarily lifted and a few signs of life, in the form of an all-pervasive marasmus, begin to manifest themselves. In the white winter everything is dead, during the green winter everything is dying.
Our spread over the earth was fuelled…  Our spread over the earth was fuelled by reducing the higher species of vegetation to charcoal, by incessantly burning whatever would burn. From the first smouldering taper to the elegant lanterns whose light reverberated around eighteenth-century courtyards and from the mild radiance of these lanterns to the unearthly glow of the sodium lamps that line the Belgian motorways, it has all been combustion. Combustion is the hidden principle behind every artefact we create. The making of a fish-hook, manufacture of a china cup, or production of a television programme, all depend on the same process of combustion. Like our bodies and like our desires, the machines we have devised are possessed of a heart which is slowly reduced to embers. From the earliest times, human civilization has been no more than a strange luminescence growing more intense by the hour, of which no one can say when it will begin to wane and when it will fade away. For the time being, our cities still shine through the night, and the fires still spread.
The Rubaiyat was published in 1859…  The Rubaiyat was published in 1859, and it was also in that year that William Browne, who probably meant more to FitzGerald than anyone else on earth, died a painful death from serious injuries sustained in a hunting accident. The paths of the two men had first crossed on a walking tour of Wales, when FitzGerald was twenty-three and Browne just sixteen. In a letter written immediately after Browne's death, FitzGerald recalled how deeply moved he had been when, on the morning after he had conversed for a while with Browne on the steamer from Bristol, he met him again in the Tenby boarding house where they had both taken quarters and how Browne, with a chalk mark from playing billiards on his face, had seemed to him then like someone he had missed for goodness knew how long. In the years that followed that first meeting in Wales, Browne and FitzGerald often visited each other in Suffolk or Bedfordshire, driving cross-country in a gig or rambling over the fields, lunching at inns, watching the clouds as they drifted eastward, and perhaps feeling the wing of time brush their temples. A little riding, driving, eating, drinking etc. (not forgetting smoke) fill up the day, FitzGerald wrote. Browne would have his fishing rods with him, his shotgun, and watercolour requisites, whilst FitzGerald would take a book which he scarcely read because he could not take his eyes off his friend. We do not know whether he allowed himself, then or at any other time, to ponder the nature of the desire that moved him, but his constant anxiety for Browne's health was itself indicative of the depth of his passion. For FitzGerald, Browne was the personification of an ideal, but for that very reason he seemed overshadowed by mortality from the start, and prompted fears in FitzGerald that perhaps he will not be long to be looked at. For there are signs of decay about him.
But the closer I came to these ruins…  But the closer I came to these ruins, the more any notion of a mysterious isle of the dead receded, and the more I imagined myself amidst the remains of our own civilzation after its extinction in some future catastrophe. To me too, as for same latter-day stranger ignorant of the nature of our society wandering about among heaps of scrap metal and defunct machinery, the beings who had once lived and worked here were an enigma, as was the purpose of the primitive contraptions and fittings inside the bunkers, the iron rails under the ceilings, the hooks on the still partially tiled walls, the showerheads the size of plates, the ramps and the soakaways. Where and in what time I truly was that day at Orfordness I cannot say, even as I write these words. All I do know is that I finally walked along the raised embankment from the Chinese Wall Bridge past the old pumphouse towards the landing stage, to my left in the fading fields a collection of black Nissen huts, and to my right, across the river, the mainland. As I was sitting on the breakwater waiting for the ferryman, the evening sun emerged from behind the clouds, bathing in its light the far-reaching arc of the seashore. The tide was advancing up the river, the water was shining like tinplate, and from the radio masts high above the marshes came an even, scarcely audible hum. The roofs and towers of Orford showed among the tree tops, seeming so close that I could touch them. There, I thought, I was once at home. And then, through the growing dazzle of the light in my eyes, I suddenly saw, amidst the darkening colours, the sails of the long-vanished windmills turning heavily in the wind.
If today, when our gaze is no longer able…  If today, when our gaze is no longer able to penetrate the pale reflected glow over the city and its environs, we think back to the eighteenth century, it hardly seems possible that even then, before the Industrial Age, a great number of people, at least in some places, spent their lives with their wretched bodies strapped to looms made of wooden frames and rails, hung with weights, and reminiscent of instruments of torture or cages. It was a peculiar symbiosis which, perhaps because of its relatively primitive character, makes more apparent than any later form of factory work that we are able to maintain ourselves on this earth only by being harnessed to the machines we have invented.
Today, as I bring these notes to a conclusion…  Today, as I bring these notes to a conclusion, is the 13th of April 1995. It is Maundy Thursday, the feast day on which Christ's washing of the disciples' feet is remembered, and also the feast day of Saints Agsthon, Carpus, Papylus and Hermengild. On this very day three hundred and ninety-seven years ago, Henry IV promulgated the Edict of Nantes; Handel's Messiah was first performed two hundred and fifty-three years ago, in Dublin; Warren Hastings was appointed Governor-General of Bengal two hundred and twenty-three years ago; the Anti-Semitic League was founded in Prussia one hundred and thirteen years ago; and, seventy-four years ago, the Amritsar massacre occured, when General Dyer ordered his troops to fire on a rebellious crowd of fifteen thousand that had gathered in Jallianwala Bagh square, to set an example. Quite possibly some of the victims were employed in silk cultivation, which was developing at that time, on the simplest of foundations, in the Amritsar region and indeed throughout India. Fifty years ago to the day, British newspapers reported that the city of Celle had been taken and that German forces were in headlong retreat from the Red Army, which was advancing up the Danube valley. And finally, Maundy Thursday, the 13th of April 1995, was also the day on which Clara's father, shortly after being taken to hospital in Coburg, departed this life. Now, as I write, and think once more of our history, which is but a long account of calamities, it occurs to me that at one time the only acceptable expression of profound grief, for ladies of the upper classes, was to wear heavy robes of black silk taffeta or black crêpe de chine. Thus at Queen Victoria's funeral, for example, the Duchess of Teck allegedly made her appearance in what contemporary fashion magazines described as a breathtaking gown with billowing veils, all of black Mantua silk of which the Norwich silk weavers Willett & Nephew, just before the firm closed down for good, had created, uniquely for this occasion, and in order to demonstrate their unsurpassed skills in the manufacture of mourning silks, a length of some sixty paces. And Sir Thomas Browne, who was the son of a silk merchant and may well have had an eye fo rthese things, remarks in a passage of the Pseudodoxia Epidemica that I can no longer find that in the Holland of his time it was ucstomary, in a home where there had been a death, to drape black mourning ribbons all over the mirrors and all canvasses depicting landscapes or people or the fruits of the field, so that the soul, as it left the body, would not be distracted on its final journey, either by a reflection of itself or by a last glimpse of the land now being lost for ever.

(2026年6月8日-6月17日) Injurious to Public Morals: Writers and the Meiji State by Jay Rubin
6月12日  I read chapter 9 today. I've been thinking about how this book has been offering insight into the views and beliefs of authors I'm familiar with that I might never have known about otherwise. Recently, somewhere or another I saw someone say that some people claim misogyny didn't exist in Asia until US Americans brought it over. Obviously not true, but I've been thinking about it because the amount of casual, breath-taking misogyny from basically everyone mentioned in the book really makes me feel a certain way. A number of men took great pride in deciding to hate all women and claim that they were all evil, stupid whores. I wonder how many of the "girl math" people today would agree? I was already aware of the fact that in this time and long before it was said that fiction was for women and children, but this really put that into perspective. Other than that, of course I know it was the early 20th century, but reading about just how conservative Japan and its people were is also really something. That no one could even imagine a society where censorship wasn't a thing at all…. This book also mentions the free love movement, which I had never heard about before. As a person alive in 2026 the words 'free love' call to mind homosexuality, but for this time period in Japan, apparently the free love movement was for the right to marry for love. I knew that love marriages were much less common in the past across the world, but somehow I never thought it'd be controversial enough to be a movement opposed by the government itself. But I started writing this entry because the chapter I read today talked about Ougai and how, upon his return from Germany, he was actually strongly opposed to naturalism, and belonged to the group of people who labelled it pornography. The book informs us that this is something that changes later, but it was surprising for me because in that same period of time he was apparently anti-naturalist literature, he was writing essays defending nonsexual nudity in visual art. On Storygraph some time ago I came across a book that was comprised of interesting stories about various famous Japanese authors' lives, which intrigued me, but in a way I almost prefer the candid detail on these authors' lives written in this book.

(2026年5月30日-) 夏目漱石『こころ』
6月2日 　私は月の末に東京へ帰った。先生の避暑地を引き上げたのはそれよりずっと前であった。私は先生と別れる時に、「これから折々お宅へ伺っても宜ござんすか」と聞いた。先生は単簡にただ「ええいらっしゃい」といっただけであった。その時分の私は先生とよほど懇意になったつもりでいたので、先生からもう少し濃かな言葉を予期して掛ったのである。それでこの物足りない返事が少し私の自信を傷めた。
　私はこういう事でよく先生から失望させられた。先生はそれに気が付いているようでもあり、また全く気が付かないようでもあった。私はまた軽微な失望を繰り返しながら、それがために先生から離れて行く気にはなれなかった。むしろそれとは反対で、不安に揺かされるたびに、もっと前へ進みたくなった。もっと前へ進めば、私の予期するあるものが、いつか眼の前に満足に現われて来るだろうと思った。私は若かった。けれどもすべての人間に対して、若い血がこう素直に働こうとは思わなかった。私はなぜ先生に対してだけこんな心持が起るのか解らなかった。それが先生の亡くなった今日になって、始めて解って来た。先生は始めから私を嫌っていたのではなかったのである。先生が私に示した時々の素気ない挨拶や冷淡に見える動作は、私を遠ざけようとする不快の表現ではなかったのである。傷ましい先生は、自分に近づこうとする人間に、近づくほどの価値のないものだから止せという警告を与えたのである。他の懐かしみに応じない先生は、他を軽蔑する前に、まず自分を軽蔑していたものとみえる。

(2026年5月26日-5月28日) Toddler-Hunting and Other Stories by Kono Taeko, translated by Lucy North
5月26日  As a child, Hayako had never been conscious of any undue severity from her mother. Perhaps her attention had been absorbed by the inconsistencies posed by her assumed age and true aptitudes, and by her uneasiness and suspicion. Perhaps there was little chance for her to make any comparisons in treatment since her only sibling was a brother four years older.
 Nevertheless, she had to admit, her mother had been cruel to her. And she hadn't changed, even after the truth of their relationship had been revealed.
 Whenever her mother was upset, she would go two or three days without speaking to Hayako. Even when Hayako begged her for money to go to school, she would be met with silence.
 Hayako remembered once arriving home late for dinner and starting to fumble for apologies in the kitchen. "Oh, so it's excuses now, is it?" her mother interrupted, her back turned. "Take your time. Sit down right there, so you can think about what to say." Hayako had to sit on the kitchen floor with an empty stomach until late into the night.
 Another time, one summer vacation, Hayako had arranged to go with friends to the seaside the very day her mother decided to clean the house. When she expressed doubts about canceling the trip, her mother grabbed the dyed calico tablecloth Hayako had just finished for the fall school exhibition. "So you're happy to go off and leave me with all this work! In that case—" And she tore the cloth into shreds.
 Hayako had felt humiliation and rage. It was surprising, considering these incidents, how rarely she had longed for her real mother.
……
 There was no doubt that her brother was her mother's child, but time and again Hayako had the impression that she too shared her mother's blood. Not the thick, rich blood that flows peacefully through the veins, but the blood they sucked and licked from the scratches inflicted on each other when they fought tooth and nail—so passionate was their attachment.
 Here was a woman who had been forced to raise the daughter of her husband's mistress, and with the same name as her own baby—who she'd murdered with her own hands. It was only natural to vent her frustration on Hayako. At first, she must have looked at her adopted daughter with pure hatred; but as time passed, as she saw how Hayako, forced to suffer under her emotional outbursts, shared her unhappiness, she had come to feel a certain pleasure in her—a certain intimacy and love. Hayako remembered her mother telling her later, just as if they were secretly savoring some delicious tidbit of food, how tiny she had looked at kindergarten amongst the other children; how, on the day when she'd first been brought home as a little baby, she had wanted to hold Hayako, but her arms hadn't obeyed.
 Hayako felt that her mother was the mainstay of her tenuous existence. Her father had been the one to rescue her from the garden that snowy day, but her impulsive violent mother occupied a special place in her heart.

(2026年5月25日) Of Dogs and Walls by Tsushima Yuuko, translated by Geraldine Harcourt  I liked both stories, but A Watery Realm by far left the biggest impression. It touched on a lot of things I deal with and feel about my own mother. I saw a review that said this story was aimless and said nothing, but that person was completely wrong and should be ashamed. Even without what it meant to me I still think it's beautiful and well-done story.
 Two specific things remain in my mind now. Tsushima writes, I had thought at the time that those memories must be uncomfortable for my mother now that she'd set her heart on being a kind granny, but the possibility that she'd clean forgotten had never crossed my mind. One of my earliest memories, although I couldn't say how old I was, is sitting in the house I was born in, learning how to tell the time from a digital clock. I kept making mistakes, and after yet another one, my mother lost her patience and threw the TV remote at me. There the memory cuts off, clean: I don't remember anything before or after, and with time the memory has taken on the tinge of a half-remembered dream. I mentioned this memory to my mother just once, and she said she had no memory of such a thing. Sometimes I doubt my memory, but then, what reason should a child that age have to dream of their mother throwing things at them?
 Later Tsushima writes of her dream where she brings her mother's umbrella back to her. I have the same dream. In my dreams, I'm back in one of my two childhood homes, or some other strange space. My mother is always there, and she whispers about me behind my back, or hurtles abuse at me, or otherwise upsets me. I snap and shout at her the years of grievances, fear heavy at the back of my throat all the while. Sometimes she dies. Sometimes she haunts me, and I hide away in fear. Sometimes I run and run from her pursuit. Rarely, I dream of another world where she supports me. In reality I haven't spoken to her in almost a year. She didn't have Signal, so when my number changed in Japan, she was unable to contact me for months, until she suddenly downloaded it and told my brother to tell me to contact her, her anger that I had been 'ignoring her messages' clear even in my brother's secondhand words. I said I was busy and would do it later and, of course, never did. She doesn't know I'm in the country at all because I asked my family to hide it from her. Now my brother's graduation ceremony is in a few weeks and I'm afraid of attending, because I don't want to hear her vitriol and accusations and the entreaties about how I don't love her. I don't. Sometimes I wish she'd just die; sometimes I wish she'd go and get better, without involving me in it at all.
 I've tried again and again to write about it without being able. I have too much to say and no idea how. At times I think that everything I feel about her is all a large overreaction: after all, she never hit me or touched me or anything like that. Giving me the silent treatment every time I did something she didn't like or saying some mean words isn't that big of a deal. At the same time, I remember so little of my life, and I wonder whether that's because she was always home and involved with my life. I have a very vague memory of having a meltdown in 2020 that my mother and father were involved in. My father says he walked in and found her 'spewing poison' at me and then they argued. I don't remember any of it even a little bit; I only know that it happened because of my father mentioning it. A few years before that, in seventh grade, I told her I was suicidal and she brushed me off and said not to tell anyone about it because it would cause problems for our imminent move. No matter how I try, I can't summon a single positive memory that involves her. I don't know how to measure my pain against others. Many say it's a worthless endeavor. But for the moment, though what Tsushima dealt with in her childhood is different than mine, her feelings and mine are much the same and I could feel something like relief that they had been understood and put into words.
A major accident occurred at a coal mine.  A major accident occurred at a coal mine. Some of the miners were rescued from deep below ground, but many others were given up for dead and water was pumped into the shafts to prevent further gas explosions. Many tons of it, until it filled the pit. The bodies were to be recovered after the water level receded in five or six months’ time. Even now, those people lie in the water’s deep embrace. A hundred days are a hundred years. Time passes silently; water is a seamless world. The water spreads through the earth, and the people in its embrace are now rivers, now the sea. Because we on terra firma sense the watery realm close by us, while knowing that it is out of our reach, we make it the bearer of some wish or hope – of feelings that might be called prayers. I do this, and so does my child. For we can never forget the watery realm, even though we haven’t the remotest idea what it’s like.
The first time I was taken to visit my father's grave…  The first time I was taken to visit my father’s grave, I must have been about three. As he had died two years before that, it would have been the second anniversary observance. But this is a surmise based on a photograph; I have no memory of the day. I visited my father’s grave for the next special anniversary, too, four years later. On one of those visits, I don’t remember which, the paths among the graves were so wet and slippery that I refused to take a step further and was left behind by the adults to wander, alone and lost, through alleys that were like tunnels to a child. The dread of those moments stayed inside me, coming back to me in any graveyard I visited after that. The one next to our house was my father’s. Just as my mother belonged in the kitchen, my father belonged in the graveyard.
 At some time or another, I had come by the knowledge that my father died in water, not on land. I guess I picked that up the way children do. When I was about ten, I also learned the difficult word jusui (‘entering water’), an indirect term for suicide by drowning. It was a weight off my mind to think that my father hadn’t died on land. To me, a death on land and a death in water were not the same thing. Dying underwater didn’t count.

 My mother has left her umbrella behind again. She is in her seventies, it’s true, but she gives the impression she’ll be going strong for another thirty years, if not forty. Why is it always her umbrella she forgets? It drives me nuts. I keep seeing it out of the corner of my eye, every day, in the stand just inside the front door, yet I haven’t even let her know I have it, and it certainly never occurs to me to take it to her. I just leave it sitting there.
 The long black plastic handle of that one umbrella juts out of the stand it shares with mine and my child’s, leaning at an angle, cluttering up the narrow hallway. Preferring to have as little as possible to do with my mother’s umbrella, I leave it there–and this makes me all the more aware of being stuck with it.
 There was another umbrella of hers I ended up keeping like that. Seeing as how she has no way of getting them back unless she happens to notice them herself when she comes over, they’re obviously going to remain on my hands; but, unable to bring it up, I’ve carted that first umbrella along each time I’ve moved, and eventually, in exasperation, I’ve hidden it someplace out of my sight.
 I expect she has missed the latest one, but it apparently never dawns on her that she left it in her daughter’s apartment. Or is she so sure she couldn’t have that she won’t even ask?
 It is, admittedly, a silly thing to care about. Which is why it irks me.
 Perhaps, in a generous gesture, she wants me to have the umbrella she knows she left at my place. One can never have too many umbrellas, yet they’re actually quite expensive to buy, thus it will be a great help to her daughter, who, let’s face it, is still leading the kind of life where an umbrella, once broken, never gets repaired.
 If that is how she sees it, then I don’t want her to think I’m being stubborn over some old umbrella out of pride, and I’m equally afraid of letting myself in for an earful of personal comments of this kind by returning it to her. I can see myself blowing my top, and that’s what I’m afraid of.
 Or maybe, in her old age, she is protecting herself by ruling out the very idea of such a lapse. It’s true she’s never been forgetful; even now, she never leaves anything else behind. It’s only umbrellas so far. Hence, perhaps, her reluctance to think she could have been absentminded. Especially not at that scatterbrain of a daughter’s, the one she always used to scold for forgetting things; perhaps, in her view, the umbrella has therefore simply evaporated.
 I can’t tell what she is really thinking. Maybe, like me, she is bothered by it but can’t say anything, for fear of a daughter who is liable to blow her top over an umbrella. I have never once understood my mother’s feelings. At all. And so I can’t return a lousy umbrella.
 On rainy Sundays, my mother remembers her daughter, who left her dreams in the care of some man who already had a wife and family and is now bringing up the child of that involvement on her own, and she sets out from the house where she, too, lives alone. If it’s still raining when she starts for home again, she will take her umbrella. Sometimes it will have stopped and she’ll leave the umbrella with her daughter. That umbrella disturbs and frightens her daughter, while she herself is disturbed and frightened at having forgotten it. When it’s nothing, really. When it really doesn’t mean a thing.

(2026年5月3日) 宮沢賢治『猫の事務所』 　こんな工合で、猫にはまあ便利なものでした。ところが今のおはなしからちやうど半年ばかりたつたとき、たうとうこの第六事務所が廃止になつてしまひました。といふわけは、もうみなさんもお気づきでせうが、四番書記のかま猫は、上の方の三人の書記からひどく憎まれてゐましたし、ことに三番書記の三毛猫は、このかま猫の仕事をじぶんがやつて見たくてたまらなくなつたのです。かま猫は、何とかみんなによく思はれようといろいろ工夫をしましたが、どうもかへつていけませんでした。
　たとへば、ある日となりの虎猫が、ひるのべんたうを、机の上に出してたべはじめようとしたときに、急にあくびに襲はれました。
　そこで虎猫は、みじかい両手をあらんかぎり高く延ばして、ずゐぶん大きなあくびをやりました。これは猫仲間では、目上の人にも無礼なことでも何でもなく、人ならばまづ鬚でもひねるぐらゐのところですから、それはかまひませんけれども、いけないことは、足をふんばつたために、テーブルが少し坂になつて、べんたうばこがするするつと滑つて、たうとうがたつと事務長の前の床に落ちてしまつたのです。それはでこぼこではありましたが、アルミニユームでできてゐましたから、大丈夫こはれませんでした。そこで虎猫は急いであくびを切り上げて、机の上から手をのばして、それを取らうとしましたが、やつと手がかかるかかからないか位なので、べんたうばこは、あつちへ行つたりこつちへ寄つたり、なかなかうまくつかまりませんでした。
「君、だめだよ。とどかないよ。」と事務長の黒猫が、もしやもしやパンを喰べながら笑つて云ひました。その時四番書記のかま猫も、ちやうどべんたうの蓋を開いたところでしたが、それを見てすばやく立つて、弁当を拾つて虎猫に渡さうとしました。ところが虎猫は急にひどく怒り出して、折角かま猫の出した弁当も受け取らず、手をうしろに廻して、自暴にからだを振りながらどなりました。
「何だい。君は僕にこの弁当を喰べろといふのかい。机から床の上へ落ちた弁当を君は僕に喰へといふのかい。」
「いいえ、あなたが拾はうとなさるもんですから、拾つてあげただけでございます。」
「いつ僕が拾はうとしたんだ。うん。僕はただそれが事務長さんの前に落ちてあんまり失礼なもんだから、僕の机の下へ押し込まうと思つたんだ。」
「さうですか。私はまた、あんまり弁当があつちこつち動くもんですから…………」
「何だと失敬な。決闘を………」
「ジヤラジヤラジヤラジヤラン。」事務長が高くどなりました。これは決闘をしろと云つてしまはせない為に、わざと邪魔をしたのです。
「いや、喧嘩するのはよしたまへ。かま猫君も虎猫君に喰べさせようといふんで拾つたんぢやなからう。それから今朝云ふのを忘れたが虎猫君は月給が十銭あがつたよ。」
　虎猫は、はじめは恐い顔をしてそれでも頭を下げて聴いてゐましたが、たうとう、よろこんで笑ひ出しました。
「どうもおさわがせいたしましてお申しわけございません。」それからとなりのかま猫をじろつと見て腰掛けました。
　みなさんぼくはかま猫に同情します。
……
　かま猫はあたりまへの猫にならうと何べん窓の外にねて見ましたが、どうしても夜中に寒くてくしやみが出てたまらないので、やつぱり仕方なく竈のなかに入るのでした。
　なぜそんなに寒くなるかといふのに皮がうすいためで、なぜ皮が薄いかといふのに、それは土用に生れたからです。やつぱり僕が悪いんだ、仕方ないなあと、かま猫は考へて、なみだをまん円な眼一杯にためました。
　けれども事務長さんがあんなに親切にして下さる、それにかま猫仲間のみんながあんなに僕の事務所に居るのを名誉に思つてよろこぶのだ、どんなにつらくてもぼくはやめないぞ、きつとこらへるぞと、かま猫は泣きながら、にぎりこぶしを握りました。

(2026年5月1日) A Japanese Writer in Micronesia: Nakajima Atsushi's Experiences of 1941-42 by Nobuko Miyama Ochner  When it talked about Nakajima's endeavors to learn a number of languages and his translations of Robert Louis Stevenson, I thought again about my very lacking efforts to learn Japanese… I keep up with vocabulary study everyday, listen to Japanese music, and play some games in Japanese (simple ones, however, like トモコレ or ポケモン), but I almost never read books in Japanese, which is the main thing I should be doing. I know I should, and yet I continue to choose not to. I put in the minimal amount of effort. I could make some excuses for myself with depression or whatever, but it would be just that: excuses. It's the same cycle of disappointment every time. So many modern Japanese writers were fluent in at least one other language despite the much smaller number of resources available compared to now, and here I am… finding excuses every day not to read…. In January, I downloaded an app to learn a bit of Mandarin and while learning those basics, I remembered the joy of learning another language that I had forgotten. Because I've done it so slowly, for so long, and heard so many comments about my learning it from other people, the slow progress I make and whatever skill I possess in Japanese has become tied up in my self, and the positive emotion I feel when I realise I know more than before is quickly extinguished by the disappointment I feel when I remember I am still so far behind where I want to be. I will obviously never stop learning, but I wonder whether I can make it an enjoyable process again rather than a hellish one.
 It's been four years now since I read the Nakajima collection I have, and although I still remember bits and pieces of some of the stories, the meanings seem to have been lost on me then, because I found Ochner's descriptions of the themes of his stories very relatable, not to mention Nakajima's own thoughts. It's not all that surprising that I feel differently, though, since I was still in high school then. I read so many important works back then and can't remember any of them at all now. I don't even remember why I started reading them: I think I considered my introduction Cat Town back then, because I have a vague memory of writing something about it for a class, but I'm not sure whether it's even accurate (I feel like I remember Kokoro coming first), and I've got no clue how I found any of the other stuff I read, even Nakahara Chuuya, who is so important to me now. I don't remember most of my life, and if given the choice I think it's more likely that I'd choose to keep that ignorance, because I don't look kindly on any of my past selves and prefer they stay dead to the world forever (just like how I hope the me of now is erased one day too), but at the same time if I could keep anything I wish I'd retain my memory of books.
 Reading again the excerpts I put below, I'm thinking about fate again, specifically the words character whom fate treats harshly. Are some people destined to live out sad, difficult lives, while others are destined to live happy and fulfilled ones? There are a lot of ways you could answer that. One could argue that someone who happens to have been born into power and money is destined to live an easier life than someone born without either; yet the former person could suffer any number of things and end up living and dying miserably, while even if the latter person never comes into money or power, they may still find the means to live a life they find happy and fulfilling. Anything really could happen to anyone. But is there some invisible, guiding hand that causes this anything to happen to anyone? Is fate something intangible like a god, or something more tangible, like the power dynamics and structures of human society, or the natural limits of the human body?
 Once in high school I told my father that I believed that every bad thing that happened to the people around me was because I was in their lives and had cursed them. He told me that was a self-centred way to think.
In contrast to the bright tropical world of Hikari to kaze to yume…  In contrast to the bright tropical world of Hikari to kaze to yume, another work entitled Sangetsu ki (Tiger-Poet), also written before Nakajima went to Micronesia, portrays a more pessimistic world. Generally regarded as one of Nakajima's representative works, Sangetsu ki is derived from a Tang Dynasty tale of the supernatural, Ren-hu chuan (The Man Who Turned Into a Tiger). The protagonist, Li Zheng, an intelligent and proud man, passes the highest civil service examination at a young age, yet is unsuccessful in rising through the ranks of the state bureaucracy or in realizing his private ambitions in the field of poetry. He is finally driven to insanity by his inner rage and turmoil and is literally transformed into a tiger. By chance the tiger encounters his former best friend and reveals his suffering as a human spirit trapped in the body of a tiger. Even as a tiger, he cannot abandon his literary ambition. He regrets having wasted his time and talent through a paradoxical combination of excessive pride and diffidence while he was still a human being and still had the chance to try to achieve a modicum of success as a poet.
 Sangetsu ki is a reflection of the unfulfilled literary ambition of Nakajima, who projects on his protagonist parts of his personality—pride, diffidence, self-consciousness and sensitivity, as well as inner despair and rage. The protagonist wastes his life in a meaningless occupation because of what he calls his "timid pride (okubyo na jisonshin)" and "haughty diffidence (sondai na shuchishin)." He is too timid and proud to mingle with other poets of his age, for fear that by doing so he may find his poetic talent to be mediocre. He realizes that fear of self-exposure has kept him from achieving his life's goal, but this realization comes too late. The intensity of tone, arising from the author's self-projection, juxtaposed with the subdued lyricism of the last scene in which the grieving tiger-poet roars at the moon, creates a fine balance which is esthetically very effective.
 The theme of transformation in Sangetsu ki is used not simply to represent a case of retribution for wrongdoing as in the original Chinese tale, but also to symbolize the inhuman nature of the protagonist's intense preoccupation with his literary ambition: he first begs his friend to record for posterity the only poem of his own that he now remembers as a tiger; only after that does he ask his friend to look after the welfare of his bereaved family. The transformation also dramatizes the basic absurdity of human existence: in the words of the tiger, "It is the fate of us living beings to accept what is given to us and to live without knowing the reasons for existence."
Ri Ryo, Nakajima's last work of fiction…  Ri Ryo, Nakajima's last work of fiction, treats the question of how man faces fate and in so doing defines the meaning of his life. The Chinese cavalry commandant Li Ling volunteers to lead an expeditionary force of a small number of troops deep into the territory of the horse-riding nomadic people Xiong-nu (Japanese, kyodo), who periodically invaded and raided the Chinese land from beyond the Great Wall. Vastly outnumbered and lacking any backup, Li Ling's troops repeatedly fight the Xiong-nu until they are defeated. Li Ling is struck unconscious and captured. At the news of Li Ling's capture, the emperor flies into a rage. No one defends Li Ling except Si-ma Qian, who is punished for his impudence by castration. Pondering why he met with this insufferable predicament, Si-ma Qian eventually concludes that it was not the emperor or even the obsequious and unprincipled officials that were to blame, but the very fact that he existed was the root cause of all evil. This concept, which is Nakajima's, implies at least in part what we now call an existential view of man and the world. Only Si-ma Qian's attachment to his lifework of compiling a history of China keeps him from ending his shame by suicide. He ceases to live as a normal human being but lives only vicariously through the lives of the historical personages whom he describes. Thus he defines the meaning of his life through the act of writing a history. When the monumental task is completed, he suddenly suffers a total collapse, ages rapidly, and dies within a short time.
 The captured Li Ling is another character whom fate treats harshly. Not only does he initially incur the emperor's anger by his unavoidable capture but he also subsequently loses his family to execution, when a mistaken identity leads the emperor to conclude erroneously that Li Ling has betrayed him. Enraged by the unreasonable and cruel treatment by the Han court, and appreciative of the fair and just treatment he received from the Xiong-nu, Li Ling gradually shifts his allegiance, marries, and settles among the nomadic peoples. However, Li Ling must face his antithesis, Su Wu, the exemplar of steadfast loyalty, who had been a prisoner of the Xiong-nu longer than Li Ling, yet refuses any compromises. Wondering what enables Su Wu to survive in the harsh living conditions of the northern wilderness, Li Ling thinks that perhaps Su Wu is simply opposing fate by choosing to live despite hardships, and he marvels at Su Wu's fierce power of will.

(2026年4月29日) Universities and Students in Wartime Japan by Ben-Ami Shillony  Prior to the outbreak of World War II, Japan had obtained scientific information from the West, especially the United States and Britain, and its research institutions depended on cooperation with the Western scientific community. As late as 1940 physicist Iimori Takeo toured nuclear laboratories in the United States, where he was warmly received. Professor Ernest O. Lawrence of the University of California, Berkeley, showed Iimori his laboratory and even mentioned that nuclear energy might some day be used for military purposes (Teikoku daigaku shimbun, December 8, 1941). Little did they guess that within five years Lawrence would be a member of the government advisory panel of scientists that would recommend dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

(2026年4月27日) Methamphetamine Solution: Drugs and the Reconstruction of Nation in Postwar Japan by Miriam Kingsberg  Stimulants initially attracted prominent figures in the postwar creative world, including comedienne "Miss Wakana" (Kawamoto Kikuno) and writers Dazai Osamu, Sakaguchi Ango, Tanaka Hidemitsu, and Oda Sakunosuke. By 1955, these cultural luminaries had all succumbed to a death in which drugs were a contributing factor, and hiropon had passed into mainstream society (Lyons 1985; Nakano 1983; Okawa 2004; Slaymaker 2010). Free of the negative connotations of opium, the longtime scourge of mainland East Asia, methamphetamine spread rapidly through the population. Some students, factory technicians, company employees, entertainers, and night workers reported using stimulants to increase productivity and alertness on the job (philopon literally translates as "love of labor"). One drug expert attributed the taste for methamphetamine to the "hard-working Japanese national character" (Muro'o 1982, 41). Amidst the urgency of domestic economic recovery, some users may have viewed hiropon consumption as almost an act of patriotism. Others took stimulants to kill hunger pangs, alleviate boredom, and face the disappointment and despair of life under the desperate conditions of the immediate postwar period. In late 1954, police arrested the elderly Dr. Masui Ryuhei for drug possession. Masui, who had earned a doctorate at the University of Chicago more than three decades earlier, was a renowned tuberculosis specialist. The war destroyed his world: his wife died of illness and his hospital was bombed into rubble. Unable to continue his career as a physician, he supported himself by selling drugs, and at some point became dependent on them. By the time Masui was picked up by police, he was living as a vagrant in a Tokyo park (Asahi shinbun December 1, 1954).

(2026年4月5日-5月24日) Not a Song Like Any Other: An Anthology of Writings by Mori Ougai
5月22日  Read the plays in section 5. Thinking about Nanoriso a day later and finding myself grateful for how the times have changed….
 I was "born as" a woman and am still seen as such by many people in my life and by society as a whole. I don't identify as such, and I'm not ashamed of that, but I don't discuss it with many people, because it's difficult to get people to understand when many don't think of nonbinary identities as real, and most people will always look at others with preconceived notions of gender because of the way our society is. So although I don't think of myself as a woman, I speak little about it outside of transgender communities and all of my documents still mark me as one, so in essence I live in the world wearing the clothing of a woman and thus the battles of women are mine too. Reading Nanoriso makes me think of this & makes me feel grateful for the freedom I have now.
 In Nanoriso it's controversial that Teruko wants to choose for herself the man she will inevitably marry, that she is independent and opinionated, that she dons rider's clothes and rides a horse by herself. In the first place, I have little interest in men and marriage; I have lived mostly on my own for the past three years while attending university; I don't wear skirts or dresses and instead only wear pants and suits. Everything about my life now would have been a near impossibility not all that long ago. Some people say they wish they could have lived or been born in this or that time period, but I could never live in any time than the one I was born into, because I could never give up this freedom. As much as I hate so many aspects of the world now, I can't help but be thankful for the privileges I do have.
4月29日  Two more of the essays from part 4. For the essay on Kuroda Seiki, I found myself thinking again about how so many of the issues Ougai, who wrote most of these pieces between the 1880s and 1922 when he died, discusses are still relevant and being debated on today. The introduction for the essay on Kuroda says that when Kuroda painted the nudes for 智・感・情 (forgot the English translation, I'm writing this a day later), nudes were basically unheard of in Japanese art. The essay immediately makes it clear that people were debating on whether it was obscene or not to paint nudes. I think he makes his argument pretty effectively with the singular sentence "Obscenity and nudity are two different things; while nude paintings may not be obscene at all, fully clothed images can be quite obscene…." It's almost funny that we're still having the exact same debate to this day, the same as with the topic on appropriate subjects for art as discussed in the essay on Toyama Shoichi, except it's not funny at all because why is it still an issue? I sent pictures of some of the parts of this essay to N*A, who is Japanese and in art school for fresco/oil painting and has drawn women's nudes, because I found it kind of interesting that every essay Ougai wrote in this section has a relation to the art she does now. I couldn't find the original Japanese for it, though, so it might take some time until she reads it…
4月27日  Stopped reading it for a while before I came back to it. Read the first essay of part 4, On Toyama Shoichi.
 "Ultimately, the technical quality of a painting is determined by how well the artist's imagination and skill can make use of the materials, not by the subject matter itself. Those who hope to discuss the future of Japanese painting, as well as those who wish to examine the nature of contemporary Japanese painting, should give their attention to how the materials are used rather than to the subject matter itself. A painting of a riverbank with cherry blossoms in full bloom cannot mask an artist's technical immaturity, even if he adds a rickshaw and driver to the scene. Adding laborers on strike to a cityscape will not make up for a poor execution of the work itself. Those who are concerned about the future of Japanese painting and design need not demand even more variety or novelty, for there is more than enough of these qualities as it is…. Competition between artists should be in the realm of technique and creativity, not in the medium chosen and the subject matter."
4月5日  Instead of one of the three English books sitting on my nightstand, I started to read this on a whim, all the while thinking I should actually pick up that small Kunikida Doppo collection I found on JSTOR forever ago. Read the introduction and part 1 (The Author Himself). I didn't feel all that much for either Wild Geese or Vita Sexualis (although the latter makes more sense to me now with the added context from the introduction to this book and seeing the way he writes in these essays), so I was somewhat surprised at how much I enjoyed Ougai's voice in the essays.
 In the essay Saffron he writes the following: "The soil of the flowerpot was covered with scraps of dust, but if one noticed these fresh green leaves, any person, even a callous person like me, would feel compelled to give them a drop of water every now and then. Was that because the pleasure of feasting one's eyes on those leaves was a kind of egoism? Or was it due to altruism in which one loves things unselfishly? A person's motives in performing actions are too complicated for me to easily understand, just like the mystery of the way the saffron leaves grew so rampantly. It's not my intention to forcibly inquire into motives in the way that, as the popular saying has it, a frog when it gets a taste of nicotine will cough up its intestines and peer into them. In the same way that I'm now watering this flowerpot, should I try to do something I'd be called a busybody. And if I tried to back out of doing something, I'd be called self-righteous, quite cruel and merciless. That's the way people loudmouth others. If I took such people into consideration, I wouldn't know how to act at all." It had me thinking about something I'd been considering just earlier in the night. In the singular Discord server I'm in, some people were having a conversation about how being online nowadays can lead to people considering their every move far too carefully, because now one wrong move can have people sending you death threats and gore, or get you doxxed. This is particularly the case in certain younger communities on social media. Of course, those are exactly the kinds of communities I ran in around 14-17, a period of life in which one is particularly sensitive and malleable. Naturally I came away far more than scathed. Even now at 21 years old, I can't interact healthily with any sort of social media, or in fact even with people, because I'm constantly questioning my every act and what I might do wrong that will cause everyone to leave me because of my unsalvagable moral failings. Somehow Ougai's simple words provided me the realisation I'd never had before that I really cannot please everyone. Of course I had heard that specific phrase plenty of times, because it's repeated ad nauseam by everyone everywhere, but its simple truth did not reach me until I read the words if I took such people into consideration, I wouldn't know how to act at all. I'm always taking everyone into consideration, even on my own personal website, so I find myself unable to be genuine with anyone because, as Dazai may have put it, I'm always doing some sort of pose.
Yes, I too have joined the funeral procession and come to peer into his grave.  Yes, I too have joined the funeral procession and come to peer into his grave. I see the clean, red bits of clay that crumble and fall as they are scattered by the gentle hands of the young men and womenfolk who are the living members of his family. How heartwarming it must feel for the guest of honor, who is being laid to rest in the ground! What a contrast to the rain of stones and rocks that the literary world showered upon his grave! Was there any one among the members of the literary establishment who sought to be gentle and spare him in choosing the dirt they threw at him? Only the reporter for Hototogisu magazine and haiku poet, Masaoka Shiki, tempered his words when he said that "like myself, Ougai gave us so much in the past that now he has little to offer." Or something to that effect.
Whatever may be alleged, let me say what must be said on this particular occasion.  Whatever may be alleged, let me say what must be said on this particular occasion. Should it be asserted, for example, that I am not as skillful a writer as Tayama Katai, this in truth does not matter to me. I do not feel any difficulty should it be said that Katai, Tōson, or Hakuchō are all more skillful than I. And if I am a more skillful writer than they, this does not concern me either. Or if my own work is merely awkward, then never mind. I feel absolutely no sense of dissatisfaction at this situation.
 Suppose all these writers and I were gathered together, then ranked, as in some grade school class. If I were to sit at the foot of this class and bow to the others, I would surely do it with complete indifference. And if my critics don't care for my fictional characters, such as Major Ishida, I would never say that I could not bear up under the strain. I am truly indifferent to such things.
 In my own view, I remain myself, and I simply do those things that satisfy me. In this way I can feel content. If I am not placed at the head of the class, I am not troubled; even if I am put at the very bottom, I am not concerned.
For the sake of argument…  For the sake of argument, let us consider a hypothetical case in which archaisms are lifted from pseudoclassical texts and introduced into "the contemporary prose style" now in vogue. Or, to cite a more extreme example, let us consider what happens when they are incorporated into the new "vernacular style" that records modern spoken Japanese.
 No doubt this combination of the old and the new will be seen as a sacrilege in the eyes of those who love good writing. They will be outraged. They will argue that the spoken language can never qualify as prose. For the moment, however, let us set their argument aside. Yet even those who do not hold with this purist view, and are prepared to recognize speech as prose, will be loath to have archaisms appear in texts written in the vernacular. For them it is like putting a family heirloom in the hnads of a clumsy oaf. In such coarse hands, the treasures of the past will get broken for sure. And as for the authors of this destruction, what can we say? To wit, they are crude and vulgar types.
 What I have outlined here is the conservative point of view. It is a view to which I myself subscribe as I sit here at my desk and nod my head in assent. It is true. I loathe the random and careless use of time-honored words and phrases.
 Yet to reside forever within the safe confines of the conservative view is to lead a cramped and narrow life. I cannot bear the thought of it. Indeed I find there are times when, in taking up my pen to write in the contemporary prose style, I decide on the spur of the moment to insert an occasional archaic expression. Or when writing in the vernacular style that reflects modern spoken Japanese, I permit myself considerable license and—"lo and behold!"—I insert an archaic-sounding phrase. My diction is deliberate. It is also part of my overall design of the text.
 Whereupon I have to make excuses for myself, and they go something like this: I tell myself archaisms are treasures from the past. Or I tell myself what a terrible waste it is to submit slavishly to custom and keep these ancient gems under lock and key in the family storehouse. This is because an heirloom's value is rendered meaningless when it goes unseen and unused. It is as though, too valuable to be put on display, it is not allowed to have a life of its own. It might as well be dead. Or never have existed at all. For myself I prefer to pull out my treasures and, making the most of them, put them to good use. This is how I give new life to old and archaic words. Admittedly it means they lose the unique and special aura they possessed in the past, but this is the price we pay to imbue them with new vitality. Such are the excuses that I make to myself. As for what others may have to say in the matter, that is their business. For myself, I pay them no mind and never look back.

(2026年3月5日-3月18日) Stained Glass Elegies: Stories by Endo Shuusaku, translated by Van C. Gessel  At his Shinano-machi boarding-house, Konishi was unable to get to sleep until about 2 a.m., thanks to the searchlights that glanced off his window and the explosion of anti-aircraft guns in the distance. The next morning he learned from the Imperial Headquarters bulletin that part of the city had been indiscriminately bombed by a hundred and thirty B-29s. The information bureau of the Headquarters and the newspapers reported without comment that fifty of the enemy planes had been damaged and fifteen shot down. But that day as he set out for the factory on the sporadically paralysed train line, Konishi saw that nearly all of the downtown sector had been consumed by fire in the previous night's raid. At the plant, workers gathered in small groups here and there, talking in subdued voices. Many of the labourers they were used to seeing had not shown up for work. From the student work-force, Taguchi, Ueno and Fujimoto were absent. A supervisor appeared and roared at the group, 'Get back to work!'
 The ticket he had received from Inami was still carefully tucked into his train pass holder, but as he worked, Konishi began to have doubts that the concert would be held under the present circumstances. Besides, even if he tried to go to the concert, and there was another air raid like the one the night before, he would not be able to get back to his boarding-house. He decided it would be better not to go. When he reached that conclusion, though, he could hear Inami's plaintive voice echoing in his ears: 'I had to fight to get the ticket. Please go in my place.' He began to feel that wasting the brown ticket would be akin to betraying his friend. Without even asking, Konishi knew full well what sort of trials Inami was now enduring in the army.
 At five o'clock the long, heavy siren announcing the end of the working day blared out. Still uncertain whether or not to go to the concert, Konishi crowded into the bus for Kawasaki Station with the other workers, then transferred to the equally packed train. Those who had found seats and those who dangled from the straps all had their eyes closed, and their faces looked as if they belonged to overworked beasts of burden.
 It was pitch black at the deserted Yūraku-chō Station when Konishi got off the train and started walking towards Hibiya Public Hall. Along the way he took some of the paper-wrapped soya beans from his knapsack and chewed them. At the end of the day's labours his legs felt heavy and his stomach empty. When the dark hall at last came into view, he had to sit down on a rock in the park and rest for a while. Then he stood up and walked to the steps of the hall, where about fifty people had gathered by the entrance. Each of them wore gaiters and work pants and carried a knapsack on his shoulders.
 As it was nearly six o'clock and the doors still hadn't been opened, someone asked his neighbour in the queue, 'Is there going to be a concert or not?' Word of mouth had it that the fires caused by the previous night's air raid had driven both Mari and her accompanist Sapholo from their homes; their whereabouts were unknown, and the hall was presently attempting to contact them. Still no one made a move to leave; they all stood patiently at the entrance.
 Two men with stern faces, dressed in patriotic uniforms, appeared and bellowed, 'Hmph, what are you doing listening to enemy music in times like these? Go home, all of you!' The group lowered their eyes and said nothing. The men shrugged their shoulders and disappeared.
 Before long a timid, middle-aged employee came out of the hall and announced apologetically, 'We have not been able to make contact. The concert is cancelled. I'm very sorry.'
 No one protested. With shadows of resignation flickering on their backs, they silently began to disperse. Feeling somehow relieved, Konishi started to follow them out of the park. Just then a man at the front of the procession called, 'She's here!'
 Everyone stopped walking. A weary, long-haired girl dressed in men's trousers and carrying a violin case was walking towards the hall with a look of pain on her face. It was Ono Mari.
 'There's going to be a concert!' The shout passed from one person to the next like the baton in a relay race. The music enthusiasts turned on their heels like a flock of ducks and went back to the hall.
 It was a peculiar concert, the sort not likely to have been seen before or since. The audience filled only half of Hibiya Public Hall, so the patrons dressed in their working clothes picked out seats to their liking and waited eagerly for Ono Mari to make her appearance.
 Soon Mari came out onto the dusty stage, clutching her violin and bow in one hand. She had not had time to adjust her make-up, and the pained expression lingered as she stood in the centre of the stage. Exhaustion was etched into her face, and the renowned long hair and the wide, almost European eyes seemed agonizingly incongruous with the tattered men's trousers she was wearing. But no one laughed.
 'We were burned out of our house,' she apologized, the violin and bow dangling from her hands. 'The trains couldn't go any further than Yotsuya… I walked here from Yotsuya. I had to come… knowing this might be my last concert.'
 She bit her lip, and the audience knew she was choking down her emotions. There was not even a suggestion of applause. Everyone remained silent, pondering what she had just said.
 At that moment, Konishi thought, 'This may be the last concert I'll ever hear.'
 Mari shook her head vigourously to get the hair out of her face, tucked the violin under her chin, leaned forward, bent her slender wrist sharply, and adjusted her bow.
 From beneath that wrist the strains of Fauré's Elegy began to pour out. Not a single cough came from the audience. The tired, begrimed patrons closed their eyes and listened to the music, absorbed in their own private thoughts and individual griefs. The dark, low melody pierced the hearts of each one. As he followed the music, Konishi thought about the dying city of Tokyo. He thought of the scorched, reddish sky he had seen from the station platform. He thought of the drafted workers and students waiting i nthe chill winter wind for a bus to pick them up at Kawasaki Station. He remembered the thin face of Inami, the tear-stained face he had buried in his bedcovers the night before his induction. Perhaps the air-raid sirens would whine again tonight, and many more people would die. Tomorrow morning Konishi, the other members of the audience and Ono Mari might be reduced to charred grey corpses. Even if he did not die today, before long he would be carted off to the battlefield. When that happened, only the strains of this melody would remain to reach the ears of those who survived.
 When she finished the Elegy, Mari played Fauré's Aprés un réve, then performed the Saint-Saëns 'Rondo Capriccioso' and Beethoven's 'Romance'. No one even considered the possibility that at any moment the alarms might sound, that the sky might be filled with a deafening roar, and that bombs might start to fall with a screeching howl.

(2026年2月19日-2月21日) Life for Sale by Mishima Yukio, translated by Stephen Dodd  Since I left Japan, I've been thinking about my life a lot. What do I want to do with it? I have a certain goal, which is: go back and work in Japan when I graduate. I decided to keep living in order to reach that goal. But I can't help but wonder, is that something worth living for?
 In this book Mishima wrote: To say that human life had no meaning was the easy part. But Hanio was struck all over again by the huge amount of energy required to live a life filled with so much meaninglessness. I've thought life was meaningless for a very long time. Some people say that you have to make a meaning out of your own life, make your own purpose, but I've never thought that way about mine. I accepted that all life is meaningless and have since went on with that understanding. Once, I contemplated whether my life might have a purpose. If it did, I thought then, it would seem to be that my purpose was to be a stepping stone to something better for everyone around me. First I grew up being treated as a therapist by my mother who never cared for me otherwise, then I met many people who I cared about, who ceased to speak with me when they'd found someone better, or otherwise also used me as a therapist. It feels like the only compliment I have ever been given is you are a good listener. I feel like I can tell you anything without judgment. Since I had those thoughts, that pattern hasn't changed, but I believe in my life having a purpose as much as I did then, which is to say, not at all. If I did have a purpose, I'd rather it not be defined by what I do unwillingly for other people. Yet because I have no real purpose, because I've never found any meaning in my life, I have to wonder, what does it say that I keep making the choice to keep on living?
 It's not that I particularly enjoy being alive. Unfortunately, it's a little too similar to what Dazai writes in One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji: Before going to sleep I would quietly open the curtains in my room and look through the glass at Fuji. On moonlit nights it was a pale, bluish white, standing there like the spirit of the rivers and lakes. I'd sigh. Ah, I can see Fuji. How big the stars are. Fine weather tomorrow, no doubt. These were the only glimmerings I had of the joy of being alive…. There is something fundamentally wrong with me that makes every emotion distant—the only things I've ever felt all that strongly have been sadness and rage. Even in Japan, which I had dreamed of living in for so long, I felt little in my day to day other than the usual emptiness I first remember realising was abnormal when I was fifteen. When I feel something that I think is supposed to be 'happiness', it's never more than something like a buzzing beneath my skin, or maybe a lightness in my head, which lasts only for a brief period of time, and I'm not even sure is really happiness.
 Because I'm like this, I find myself constantly unfulfilled. Nothing is ever enough to genuinely make me happy. The most I can achieve is a kind of content, or peace. Even though I have this goal that I want to be determined to achieve, I can't help but wonder—when I get there, so what? I've never really been happy before, and I find myself doubting that I'll be happy then. I'll find something to be discontent with, I'll continue to feel as lonely as ever, and in the end, no matter where I go or what I do, I'll continue to be the same person. Even when I want to have hope for my future, hope for happiness, hope for genuine connections I can believe in the authenticity of, eventually it cracks beneath my constant emptiness, the neverending meaninglessness.
 Is it worth it to keep living a life that seems to be equal in importance to an individual piece of gravel on a mountain path? Hanio finally understood that he wanted to keep on living. But it seems that I'm still stuck seeing cockroaches instead of letters in the newspaper.

(2026年1月10日-1月17日) Black Rain by Ibuse Masuji, translated by John Bester
2026年1月13日  From around the 150s to 178. Started reading later in the evening, already feeling slightly nauseous and with random pulses shooting through my head. Everything in the book made me feel worse than the previous few days: terrible phantom smells in my nose, worsening nausea. I got to the part about the mayor and his grandchild, which reads: "The mayor, Mr. Kuriya, had died in the raid at his home, Tashiro told me. His deputy, Mr. Shibata, had been hurt on the sole of his right foot and could not walk on it properly. A fragmant of glass had also penetrated deep into his left calf, so that he had to go to the city hall on crutches. The mayor's house, being in Kako-chō, had of course been razed by fire. On arriving at work the morning after the day of the raid, Shibata had sent another official to inquire after the mayor at his home. In the ruins of what would seem to have been Mr. Kuriya's living room were found the partly burned bodies of an adult and a small child, lying together. The mayor had always been extremely fond of his grandchild; probably just as the bomb fell he had been lifting the child up in his arms to say good-by before he went to work." When I read it I felt tears spring to my eyes, the strongest emotional reaction other than horror I had felt so far. I couldn't stop myself from reading the words over and over… (abridged from my notes app which got too emotional)

(2025年12月17日-12月22日) Beauty and Sadness by Kawabata Yasunari, translated by Howard Hibbett  When reading last night, there was a part in which it was said that perhaps Otoko's love for her baby, her mother, and Oki had been transformed through time into a kind of self-love. I thought about how many different philosophies on love there are in the world: even I have my own thoughts on what it means to love someone. It seems like no matter the time, no matter the country, no matter the person, 'love' isn't something you can define with just a word or two. Love is something different for everyone. In English, all we have is that singular word to describe that endless array of experiences and feelings we have. In Japanese, there are the kanji 愛 and 恋, and you can even put them together to form 恋愛. I remember being told multiple times by my mother when I was younger that there are multiple different words in Greek to describe different kinds of love. Yet, no matter how many words we have in all of our languages, they don't seem to be enough: that's why we have music, why we have poetry, art, literature, theatre, handicrafts, food. It's all to express this experience, this feeling, we call love; and not only love, but every other emotion—whether happiness or sadness, anxiety or embarrassment, a mere word will never be enough. Yesterday, before reading those words, or thinking about any of this, I saw someone say that they always read literature as a form of communication. I had seen sentiments like that all the time: that all art is a form of communication with the viewer. I never understood it until now. Every form of art, every act of creation, is an expression of that person's feelings, of their self. How can we understand the enormity of that? Later on Taichiro and Keiko visit the ancient graves of some court nobles: "Except for the accompanying name tablets, they were no different from the gravestones of the unknown persons buried at the Nembutsu Temple in Adashino. The stones here were also old, mossy, earth-stained, worn out of shape by time. They were mute. Taichiro crouched beside Sanetaka's gravestone as if he were trying to hear a distant, faint voice from the past." I think it's nice to think that even though their voices and bodies are gone, the love someone had for them remains, because those stones were erected with love of them and their memory.

(2025年12月9日-12月16日) Grass for My Pillow by Maruya Saiichi, translated by Dennis Keene  Yet this rejection of the emotion only seemed to make it stronger. The idea of freedom so hastily denied began to flow through the whole of his being, a slow movement upward of the simple reflection that for so long now he'd been enslaved by something, something not yet clear to him; as if some floorboard over the deeper regions of his mind had been removed, carefully, nervously, and now he could find what had lain there concealed so long, as the light of the sun shone dazzlingly into that region of darkness, disclosing at last the sad, small jewel of freedom. Why had he never made use of it when it had been there all the while? Why, for example, couldn't he become, say, a TV repairman? Why did he think it was wrong? What was wrong with it? What was wrong with being free like that? Why, instead, had he never even thought of doing something like that? After all, was it really all that long ago that he'd been sitting by the wayside, surrounded by the cheerful voices of children, with the sweat gradually accumulating in his beard? Yes, it was long. It was twenty years ago. More than twenty years ago.
 He had a vision of what life could be, imagining it to the rhythm of his wife's quiet breath. He would be a mechanic, a repairman. He would only wear a collar and tie three or four times a year. And that would be all right. If it came to that, then it would be all right. It would be more than all right. It would be good. It would be more than good, for he'd always liked tinkering with machines. He must never forget that he'd broken the most powerful of all the commandments our society imposes, stronger than the commandment not to steal, stronger even than the commandment not to kill. He was a man who had gone against the stream. He had offended, and he had to be plucked out. He had gone against the state, against society, against the establishment, all there was to go against, and a man who has once rebelled in that way has to go on doing so until the very end. There is no other path for him. There is no way back. All he can do, forever and ever, is continue his perilous voyage, continue his restless journey, and lie down each night with only bamboo grass for a pillow.
 Yoko closed her lips, lips from which the lipstick had flaked off, and frowned, slowly raising her head as she gradually approached the moment of awakening. And at that moment he felt a mysterious uplifting of his troubled heart.

(2025年11月28日) The Barren Years: Japanese War Literature by Donald Keene

 The staff officer drew his unwounded leg under him and tried to sit in a formal posture. Then, with his eyes fixed forward, he began to pronounce in quiet tones the Imperial Rescript for Military Men.
 'Item. A soldier must consider loyalty as his absolute duty.'
 Item. A soldier must be correct in his deportment.
 Item. A soldier…'
 The staff officer was obviously not giving fresh thought to the meaning of the Rescript. Nor, probably, was he merely repeating it automatically, the habit he had formed as a soldier. It was clear that he must have something to cling to in order to achieve internal calm. This was the moment when, if he had been a samurai of the past, he would have recited Namu Amida Butsu. If he had been a Christian, perhaps he might have wanted to offer a prayer to God. But he had been formed in the mold of the military spirit, and knew no other way of preparing himself for death than by reciting the Imperial Rescript for Military Men that had long since become a part of him.

 For the staff officer and even for Dr Hamano, a sensitive, well-educated man, death had come to seem normal and living abnormal, so when the staff officer finally puts a bullet into his brain, Hamano stands by impassively.

(2025年11月17日-11月19日) A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki  After reading about zazen in this book today, I tried it twice. First, ignoring what Nao said about sitting with your spine straight, I laid curled on my side under my blankets, closed my eyes, and began counting my breaths. I struggled not to count my inhales and exhales as two separate breaths. Inhale, one, exhale, one; inhale, two, exhale, two; inhale, three, exhale, three. Such was how I counted while laying in my bed. At first, I took great, heaving breaths, but eventually they smoothed out and I breathed normally as I counted. I listened to the humming of the air conditioner, which is entirely off but continues to hum anyway, and the ticking of the clock I bought at Daiso back in June, because it is too quiet in my room without that ticking. My thoughts drifted here and there, always returning to my counting. It scared me and I wondered if I'd ever be able to stop counting. Eventually I fell into a light doze, which I only got up from when it was time to go to my guitar lesson. On the way back from 栄 I tried it again on the bus, hunched forward like usual, closing my eyes and counting my breaths. This time, I tried counting in Japanese. Inhale, 一, exhale; inhale, 二, exhale; inhale, 三, exhale. This time, the counting was immediately somehow frightening, as if I might get lost in it forever, and soon I stopped and traded it for looking outside of the window. It was some time during 11pm that I finished the book, and since then I've felt a sort of melancholy, I don't know what for. Maybe my entire life. This book was all about time, and I have the pervasive feeling, every day, that I'm wasting every moment of my life; that I'm going to die without having done anything, just drifted along afraid to commit myself to anything, afraid to be a human being with all that entails. I spend my days afraid of school, afraid of work, afraid of homework, afraid of hobbies, afraid of reading, afraid of people, afraid of doing anything. I just scroll and sleep and lay in my bed and dread waking up every morning, dread waking up from every nap. This sense of wastefulness, of dread, rarely inspires anything productive in me: instead every action piles itself upon my shoulders, growing larger and larger, until my back bends beneath its weight, crushes me down to my elbows and knees, and I lay there with my forehead pressed to the floor, a mockery of prayer, praying that someone else take the weight from me and bear it in my stead, or that I die from the pressure and never have to worry about anything ever again.
 Zazen reminds me of the times I've counted sheep while trying to calm my racing mind enough to allow me to sleep. Because counting in English is easy, I count them in Japanese. 一匹の羊、二匹の羊、三匹の羊。In these moments, I don't let my mind stray elsewhere, and counting sheep in another language requires just enough brain power for me to stay concentrated. Usually I get close to a hundred sheep before I fall asleep. I don't imagine any sheep leaping over fences or crossing prairies—there's just the words in the dark, empty expanse of my mind. Counting sheep isn't frightening, because it's for the express purpose of sleep. I'm not going anywhere scary. Just my dreams. Zazen is frightening, because I don't know what's inside me, and I'm afraid to find out. There's a cork keeping something contained deep inside me, and I'm not sure what'd come spilling out were I to pull it free. Sometimes I wonder if I even can.

(2025年9月7日-9月10日) Death on Gokumon Island by Yokomizo Seishi, translated by Louise Heal Kawai  "The more distant sounds are the mines," replied the priest. "The closer sounds are from that island over there. They're knocking down the military installations. As if toppling what is left of 'mighty soldiers' dreams'. Doesn't it remind you of that haiku? I'd like the great Basho to be able to see all this."
 It was a very bizarre situation in which to bring up Basho. Kosuke stared in surprise at the priest, who turned from the window to look at him.
 "This area isn't even the worst. If you head west—because we're close to China, the islands are full of big craters. They look like beehives. There was even one island that was secretly making poison gas. Now they have no idea how to deal with all the gas that's left there. On our island they built an air defence base with anti-aircraft guns. About fifty soldiers turned up and started digging up the mountain. They made holes all over the place. That's all very well, but when the war ended, they didn't make any effort to tidy up after themselves. They just upped and left. There's no way to clean it up properly. The poem goes, 'Destroy a country, but its mountains and rivers remain', but it's more like 'Destroy a country and completely mangle its mountains and rivers beyond recognition'…"

(2025年8月30日) No One Knows: Short Stories by Dazai Osamu, translated by Ralph F. McCarthy  I had a sudden urge to read Dazai, so I read a collection I had sitting on my ereader. The 12th Dazai I've read… somehow, he's ended up being the author I've read most by far. I don't really know why, because most of the time I come away thinking what I've read was just OK, and he was pretty misogynistic, which is never enjoyable to read. Except, maybe I do know why: it's the confessional, self-deprecating tone of his writing. This collection was entirely stories from the perspectives of women, usually relating in some way to some sort of relationship with a man in their life, who was often a no-good novelist. Probably every single man that featured majorly in this collection was just a figure to dig at Dazai himself. By all accounts, it's clear that Dazai wasn't that good of a person, and he was very aware of that. I guess it's something about that self-awareness, the way he never shied away from himself but instead laid it all out for countless people to read—and the way he never really seemed to change, all the way until he died. It could be argued that he made himself seem worse than he was, but none of the introductions of these numerous novels and collections I've read have painted much nicer a picture of him. Maybe you could describe it as being unable to look away from a car crash. There's something appealing about the way he wrote about his life and himself. I understand it and don't. When I was younger, I used to be much more shy. I didn't talk about what I liked much because I knew people would find it weird, I was even more of a people-pleaser, and, beyond that, autistic, so I missed (and still miss) all sorts of things I'll never know about. I tried to hide anything about myself that I thought people wouldn't like, which was everything about me. Nowadays, I'm a lot more open about the kind of person I am, but it's not because I've gained self-confidence, or anything like that: it comes from the same place of insecurity, but handled differently. When I hid everything about myself and then tried to open up and be more myself when I got closer with someone, my experience was that that friendship would end. Then I took that to heart: no one can really like me for how I am, so there's no point in hiding it—rather, I'll be clear about it from the get-go, so that I don't have to deal with the disappointment later. I don't know if it's from that same sense of understanding that Dazai wrote what and how he did, but that's how I understand his work. At the same time, though, I don't know that I could ever be as "honest" as he was. I've mentioned it before here, but I really struggle with story writing. It feels, in a way, like baring my soul, and it makes me so sick I can't stand it. Whenever I write fiction, if I finish it, I make sure to never look at it again because I know that after only a little time passes, I'll hate it. I've sunk so far into the depths of self-hatred, I really don't know how to escape it. So at the same time I admire Dazai, in a sense, because he so clearly hated himself, and yet somehow bared all of that to paper for who knows how many people to read, including his own friends. I may be more open about myself now, but as I said, that doesn't mean I'm okay with who I am: I hate everything I write on this website, and every time I publish something like this it makes me nauseous. But I do it anyway, to prove something I don't know to myself. And all of this is why I'll keep on reading Dazai.

(2025年7月20日-29日) Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 by Murakami Haruki, translated by Ted Goossen
7月29日  I finally finished Pinball. I liked this one less than Hear the Wind Sing. The narrator is very insufferable in this one. I honestly don't really have any particular thoughts other than that. Nothing really stood out to me. I guess it was just interesting to read Murakami's first two books. They felt a lot more meandering than the ones I've read (not many). I saw that Wild Sheep Chase is the final book related to the Rat, so I'm considering reading it just to see how he ends up, but I'm not committed yet since these two books didn't do much for me.
7月20日  Today I read the first of the two novel(la)s, Hear the Wind Sing. I was originally only going to read Hear the Wind Sing because I saw it mentioned on someone's website, but the only proper PDF I could find had both of them, so I decided I might as well read both. I thought Hear the Wind Sing was OK. I've never really cared for stories that end with sudden timeskips. Part of the ending stuck out to me, though, in writing about the transience of relationships. It's something I've been thinking a lot about this summer, because of the nature of a study abroad program. Most of the people in this summer program will be leaving by the end of this month, and I'll almost certainly never see any of them again. One of the people I've gotten to know said it was good to enjoy it while we could, even if we know it won't last. That sort of idea is something I've always struggled with. If something isn't permanent, why bother? Being faced over and over again with the transient nature of relationships while misguidedly holding onto this idea, however, has led to me putting very little effort into any relationship I have, because I know it'll be over sooner rather than later. There's a little more to it than that, but that's most of the idea. I've only realized I was doing that recently, and since then I've been struggling with getting over the idea that things that aren't permanent mean less and trying to figure out how to genuinely put effort into things, even if they won't last forever. So, this is another book that came to me at an interesting time.

(2025年6月4日-7月13日) Soul and Other Stories by Andrey Platonov, translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler
7月13日  The end! What a good collection!! I really enjoyed it. The afterword made me think a lot. A lot of the stories in here were related in some way to death and hope or a lack of it: in general, living despite …. Having finished it, I think it's made me think that I want to stop living every day in fear of death. It's not that death is imminent for me, but that I fear the future of the climate and what that means for humanity, and what it means for me. Every day and every moment I'm afraid of it, like a deer that stands still in the headlights of an oncoming car. But what I want to think is that if it's going to happen, then let it happen; if I'm going to die, then let me die; but I want to actually live in the time I'm given to be alive. I want to stop being paralyzed. I don't want all I feel to be despair and hopelessness. I'll never stop caring about the world and I don't think I should, but I don't want my fear to guide my every choice either. Just live!
7月10日  To the end of The River Potudan. I liked the end. I didn't understand it at first, but when I thought about it a little more, I think I understand now, at least a little. It's hard to accept good things you aren't used to. Last year, for a brief period of time I stopped talking to a friend because his kindness scared me. I couldn't accept it and dreaded speaking to him because I didn't want to hear nice words. Eventually, like Nikita, I got over myself and got back in contact with him. That's what this story reminded me of. Since I haven't written anything until now: I really like the atmosphere of Platonov's stories. It feels very quiet. And I've been remembering that I really enjoy Russian literature. Today I listened to a collection of early 20th century Russian songs, and other than liking the sound I enjoyed it because I felt like I could imagine what kind of voices Platonov and his characters would have been hearing.

(2025年4月18日-4月22日) Mulberry and Peach by Nieh Hualing, translated by Jane Parish Yang with Linda Lappin
4月22日  I read a little bit of it yesterday, I forgot to where, and then read the rest today. It left me without any words, just a particular feeling. It was very good.
 Writing this some hours later: just now I was reading something and it mentioned looking through microscopes, and I immediately remembered Teng talking about killing a cat who was about to have kittens to study her in a laboratory. Not every book leaves impressions on me, but there are quite a few where I'll suddenly mention lines or scenes from them because something reminds me of them: for example, I don't remember the context, maybe talking about grass being green, but the other day I remembered and described to H*K the scene from The Name of the Rose where William needs to get new glasses but the only glass available is green, or something, and he says he doesn't want parchment to appear like meadows to him. I'm almost never capable of directly quoting things, most of the time I can only memorize song lyrics or haiku and tanka, but regardless messages and scenes from books I've read constantly float into my mind, relating themselves to whatever I'm experiencing. Earlier today I was writing to myself and wondering despairingly about what the point of all these words I write is, what good does all this reading do me, thinking I should just give up the written word and books forever, but most of the time I think I'd never want to live in a world where I can't read or write. I don't know what the point of books is or what good they do for society. I don't know what books do for me. But for better or worse, they make me who I am. I really see the written word and the beautiful things people can do with it as a miracle. I love it beyond any other form of art. That's the core of who I am. I don't know if it's a good or bad thing for me to be constantly thinking of and remembering books, but maybe it doesn't matter. All of that to say, I think this book will be another one that returns to me at various times.
4月19日  I think I read up to 21 yesterday night, and then I read to 113 today, the beginning of part 3. I really like it so far. While reading this I thought a lot about how I know literally nothing about Chinese history other than that there were dynasties for a while and some of their intersections with Japanese history, especially when Japan was colonizing them. A while ago I wanted to find books on Chinese history, but as far as I remember I didn't decide on anything because I was suspicious of everything I found potentially working some narrative about China being evil into it. I also thought about how I haven't read a lot of Chinese (language) literature and want to read more, something I've recently decided to rectify by trawling WorldCat and finding things to read since I was reintroduced to the fact that it exists (how I found this book). Most importantly, I thought about how different Mulberry's world is from mine. It's tempting to say it's completely foreign, but that's not true, because there are still moments where I can understand her and the people around her, almost a century after World War 2 and the civil war in China after that I don't know the name of. Peach's life in the U.S., too, is so different from mine. Everyone's life is so different from mine. That's just how it is.
'No place like home.'  'No place like home.' The old man takes a gold pocket watch out of the pocket of his jacket and looks at the time. He replaces it in his pocket, and suddenly I remember the jade griffin on my father's watch chain and think of great-grandfather, clutching the jade in his hands as he lay in the coffin. The old man stares at me. 'I have a daughter about your age. After I left Peking my wife died. Right now I don't even know if my own daughter is dead or alive. Everyone has roots. The past is part of your roots, and your family, and your parents. But in this war, all our roots have been yanked out of the ground. You are lucky you still have a home, and roots. You must go back! I'm going to inform your father, tell him to come get you and take you home.'
The mountains, the heavens, the waters explode with each beat.  The mountains, the heavens, the waters explode with each beat.
 'Don't stop, don't stop. A victory song,' shouts the old man.
 A crow flies toward our boat.
 Refugee Student throws down the drumsticks and glares at the crow.
 'Black crow overhead, that means if disaster doesn't strike misfortune will,' Peach-flower Woman says as she holds her child.
 I pick up an empty bottle and throw it at the crow. 'I'll kill you, you stupid bird.' The bottle shatters on a rock.
 Lao-shih picks up a bowl and hurls it at the crow. 'You bastard. Get out of here!' The bowl shatters on a rock.
 The crow circles overhead.
 The old man shakes his fist at the crow. His face turns purple. 'You think you can scare us, don't you? You think I'll just die stranded here, do you? When the warlords were fighting, I didn't die. When the Japanese were fighting, I didn't die. Do you think I'm going to die now, on this pile of rocks? Hah!' He spits at the crow.
 'Goddam motherfucker,' shouts Refugee Student, leaping at the crow. 'You can't scare me. Just wait and see. I won't die. I'll survive and I'll raise hell, that'll show you. Mountains, waters, animals, crows. Can you destroy the human race? You can destroy a man's body, but you can't destroy his spirit. Ships capsize, people drown, mountains are still mountains and water is still water. Millions of people are being born, millions of people have survived these rapids. The world belongs to the young. Don't you know that, you bastard? People won't die out. Don't you know that? They won't die out.'

(2025年4月13日-4月16日) Japanese Gothic Tales by Izumi Kyouka, translated by Charles Shirō Inouye
4月16日  141 to the end, Osen and Sōkichi (Baishoku kamonanban) and then the afterword. No particular thoughts. Mostly the afterword made me think a lot about how so many Japanese authors around the Meiji era had mentors. Maybe that's what I need. I wonder if Japanese authors today still have mentors they study under. And if it's still common for them to publish their works in installments in newspapers and magazines and whatnot. I was thinking recently about how I know more about Japanese literary history, and in general Japanese history, than of anywhere else. I was scrolling through my Storygraph reviews recently and glanced at my review for the Louise Labé poetry collection I read, and thought about how I had no knowledge at all about any references it made or what informed its writing or such things, but when I read Japanese literature, though I don't know every reference I can get the broad strokes of what the translator talks about if they have an introduction or afterword. It's only natural because my passion is Japanese literature in particular, but still interesting to think about to me. Anyway, my favorite story in this collection was without a doubt One Day in Spring. I would like to read more Kyouka. The translator said Kyouka's work is famously difficult to read in Japanese. One day…
4月15日  From 73 to 141, One Day in Spring (Shunchū & Shunchū gokoku). There's only 4 stories in this collection, but this was my favorite one so far. It was so vivid. I didn't know what rape blossoms looked like even though I've seen them mentioned a lot in other Japanese writing (Nakahara Chuuya's poetry immediately comes to mind, it might have been in his poems that I first saw it? but maybe it was Hagiwara Sakutarou, I haven't reread any poems from Cat Town in a long time), but when this story described them I looked up a picture after and it felt like looking at a flower I've seen a thousand times before. I'm not very good at imagining things—I can usually only feel the vague impressions of what things look like in my mind, sort of like my mind is being pressed into by a woodblock but without leaving the colors behind, but I felt like I could see the scenery in this much better than usual, feel the warmth of the sun on my skin, the humidity settling over me. That's actually a little bit of a lie, but it was almost that vivid. This story gave me writing-envy (like gender-envy). I thought the wanderer was a little pretentious at first, but I ended up liking him, and Mio too. This made me want to climb around on a hill and sweat and walk in a forest. Overall I really liked the atmosphere. The last two sentences were perfect: "As the sand on the beach spread and drew back soundlessly, hollowing out and filling back in, he thought of how the waves must have ravished her. From the sand there appeared only beautiful bones and the color of shells—red of the sun, white of the beach, green of the waves." So impactful! I didn't want to swipe the page into the next story because I just wanted to let it resound inside me. It really was like a dream.
There you go again.  "There you go again. If you doubt me that much, then I'll have to spell it out for you. See this glorious grass? These trees? They have blood and passion. They're hot beneath the sun's red light, and the earth is warm like skin. The light penetrates the bamboo grove, and the blossoms are without shadows. They bloom like fire, and when they flutter down onto the water, the stream becomes a red lacquered cup that slowly floats away. The ocean is blue wine, and the sky…"
 She turned the white palm of her hand so it was facing upward.
 "The sky is like a green oil. Viscous. No clouds, but still murky and full of dreams. The mountains are stuffed like velvet pillows. Here and there, the heat waves shimmer like thick coils of smoke rising fragrantly into the sleeves of a kimono. The larks are singing. In some faraway vale, the nightingale is calling. 'Isn't life a pleasure?' It has all its needs, and not a complaint to make. On a bright sunny afternoon like this, you close your eyes and right away you're drowsily dreaming. What do you think?"
It's almost impossible to tell you how this sunny spring day makes me feel.  "It's almost impossible to tell you how this sunny spring day makes me feel. It's like talking about a dream. This quiet sadness. Can't you feel it? It's like seeing the most vivid part of a dream, don't you think? It reminds me of when I was two or three, riding on my nurse's back, looking at a festival swirling around me.
 "I feel more vulnerable in the spring than in the fall. That's why I'm so damp. This isn't sweat. It's something the sun has wrung from my heart. Not pain, not distress. More like blood being squeezed from the tips of a tree's tender leaves, as though my bones are being extracted and my skin is being melted. Yes, that's the perfect expression for times like this. I feel like I've turned into water, as though what's been melted of me will soon disappear, and that there will be tears—though neither of sadness nor of joy.
 "Sometimes you cry when someone scolds you. Other times you cry when someone comforts you. But on a spring day like today, your tears are of this latter kind. I suppose they're sad. Yet there are different types of sadness. If fall is the sorrow of nature, then spring is the anguish of human life.
 "Those people you see out there working in their fields—when fall comes they brace themselves, each doing his best not to be overwhelmed by melancholy. There's still strength in those dispirited legs. But in spring the strength is stolen away. They float up, as if they've been turned into butterflies or birds. They seem anxious, don't they?
 "Invited by a warm, gentle wind, the soul becomes a dandelion blossom that suddenly turns into cotton and blows away. It's the feeling of fading into death after seeing paradise with your own eyes. Knowing its pleasure, you also understand that heaven is heartless, vulnerable, unreliable, sad.
 "And when you cry out, is it because of sadness? Or is it just another indulgence?
 "I feel as though I'm being sliced into pieces, as if my chest is being torn to shreds. It's neither painful nor prickling, more like a peach blossom in the sunlight, scattered to pieces, placid, serene, beautiful, and at the same time sad, as unreliable as a sky with no clouds or a green field turned into a sandy plain, like a previous existence, like what's before your eyes, like wanting to say what's in your heart but not being able to, something frustrating, regrettable, disturbing, irritating, more like being pulled into the earth than being lifted into the air. And that's why I had to lie down."
Tell me.  "Tell me. Do you really think there's such a thing as life after death?"
 He didn't answer.
 "It wouldn't matter if it were heaven or hell. If the person you love is there, you'd go as quickly as you could." She plucked at the horse-tail grass, one section at a time, entranced. "There's no way to know for sure. But it's too horrible to think that everything just ends when you die. If that's the way it is, it's probably better to live in agony, to be troubled and to waste away, never forgetting until the very end." She bit on the horsetails in her hand.
4月13日  It was already on my to-read list, but MY先生 said the story I turned in for class reminded him of Kyouka (and Sakaguchi Ango, who I'll get to later when I find a collection of his) and that I should read him, so I decided to read this. Today I read from the beginning to 73, The Surgery Room (Gekashitsu) and The Holy Man of Mount Kōya (Kōya hijiri). No particular thoughts on them. For Gekashitsu, my only thought was "Wow, that was fast." It started and then it was over. Basically the entire plot was implied by the ending, which is an interesting way to write a story. Kōya hijiri was much longer. My main thoughts were unrelated to the actual story. When the narrator talked about how he met the monk and they decided to start travelling together, I thought that I should stop wearing headphones on public transit. Not that I'm ever going anywhere other than to get groceries or such things. I'd have to be actually going on a journey somewhere to replicate them. But I thought I should still open up my world a little bit. Some time ago I read on someone's blog something about wearing headphones, that someone shouldn't need to listen to music to walk ten minutes somewhere, or something along those lines. Unfortunately I tend to do that (although not to the extremes some other people do. I don't understand the people that never for a second take their AirPods out), but I think about those words often. Kōya hijiri is just another reminder. I just realized, it's like Neku… I forgot…. Anyway, I didn't really have any thoughts about the actual contents of the story.

(2025年4月7日-4月9日) Sputnik Sweetheart by Murakami Haruki, translated by Philip Gabriel  This time it's been 4 days since I finished it. W*A mentioned it to me, saying that their friend had good things to say about it, and then I saw a quote from it elsewhere, so I decided I had to read it. I read it on two separate days, and both times felt too lazy to write anything about it. But it's been on my mind ever since I read it. In particular, I've been thinking about Sumire a lot. I envy her ability to write. At the beginning, I don't remember the context and I don't care enough to check, but she says the following: "Maybe I'm lacking something. Something you absolutely must have to be a novelist." I feel like that all the time. I've wanted to write since I was in elementary school. I remember in fifth grade, and for some time throughout middle school, I specifically wanted to be a full-time author. I eventually left that dream behind as impossible, but it's never fully left me. I often think of the quote from Rilke about looking inside yourself and seeing if writing was something absolutely essential to your life, and if it wasn't, you could leave it behind. I think writing is essential to me. But I can't do the writing I want to do: all I can write is my journal and things like this. So many ideas for stories come to me, but because of what I've identified as self-hatred (but may just be an excuse for not writing) I can't write a single word. So I felt envious of Sumire's ability to write so much. On the 7th I wrote in my journal: "Read up to chapter 9 of Sputnik Sweetheart today. I feel like Sumire, but she's better than me. I want to believe Miu's words apply to me, too: I don't have enough experience to make something good. That's more comforting than the idea that I'll never be able to write, or make something good. Just once, I want to be able to say something." But that's enough about that. I really liked Miu and Sumire. Sumire was so lively. I really appreciated that the narrator never forced himself on her or tried to battle Miu for Sumire's affections or something like that, and I appreciated that he and Sumire didn't end up in a romantic relationship at the end either. I was worried about that the whole time. Something that stuck in my mind was when he talked about going to the other world that Sumire went to, where the other half of Miu that could do things like have sex was, and just sitting in the room while Miu and Sumire lost themselves in passion or whatever. Even in his fantasies (if that's what you want to call it. I don't think it's the right word) he didn't make her straight or in love with him. It was relieving. I did not appreciate him saying that his and Sumire's relationship was lesser for not being romantic or sexual in nature, though. I think I liked the first half of the book more than the second half. But this is another one I think will float around in my mind, and that I want to reread. Definitely in Japanese one day.
I'm writing this letter at an outdoor café on a side street in Rome…  I'm writing this letter at an outdoor café in Rome, sipping espresso as thick as the devil's sweat, and I have this strangle feeling that I'm not myself anymore. It's hard to put it into words, but I guess it's like I was fast asleep, and some-one came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back to-gether again. That sort of feeling. Can you understand what I'm getting at?
 My eyes tell me I'm the same old me, but something's different from usual. Not that I can clearly recall what "usual" was. Ever since I stepped off the plane I can't shake this very real, deconstructive illusion. Illusion? I guess that's the word…
 Sitting here, asking myself, "Why am I in Rome, of all places?" everything around me starts to look unreal. Of course if I trace the details of how I got here I can come up with an explanation, but on a gut level I'm still not convinced. The me sitting here and the image of me I have are out of sync. To put it another way, I don't particularly need to be here, but nonetheless here I am. I know I'm being vague, but you understand me, don't you?
Summer vacation is nearly over, and I have to step once more into that endless stream of the everyday.  Summer vacation is nearly over, and I have to step once more into that endless stream of the everyday. There's a place for me there. My apartment's there, my desk, my classroom, my pupils. Quiet days await me, novels to read. The occasional affair.
 But tomorrow I'll be a different person, never again the person I was. Not that anyone will notice after I'm back in Japan. On the outside nothing will be different. But something inside has burned up and vanished. Blood has been shed, and something inside me is gone. Head down, without a word, that something makes its exit. The door opens; the door shuts. The light goes out. This is the last day for the person I am right now. The very last twilight. When dawn comes, the person I am won't be here anymore. Someone else will occupy this body.
I closed my eyes and listened carefully for the descendants of Sputnik…  I closed my eyes and listened carefully for the descendants of Sputnik, even now circling the earth, gravity their only tie to the planet. Lonely metal souls in the unimpeded darkness of space, they meet, pass each other, and part, never to meet again. No words passing between them. No promises to keep.

(2025年4月2日) The Beggar Student by Dazai Osamu, translated by Sam Bett  Writing this 3 days after I read it. I wasn't a big fan of the translation style. It's hard to describe exactly why, but I guess I didn't like how 'modern' it felt. Or maybe it felt too casual. Either way, though I think the plot was interesting, the translation style took away quite a bit for me. Honestly, this one didn't really give me any lasting impressions. It just was. The most lasting impression I have is that the day after, I did my presentation on this story in Japanese class and the only question I was asked was whether I like Dazai, which continues to be one of the most evil questions that can be asked.

(2025年2月1日) Plainsong by Hosaka Kazushi, translated by Paul Warham  I saw this mentioned on someone's blog once, glanced at the summary and liked it, downloaded it, and then did not read it for maybe a year (I did not realise it had been that long… in some 4 months, I think, my website will be 2 years old…) until I finally decided to on a whim today. It was another book that I think came to me at a good time in my life. (Fate….) I've been struggling with anxiety about everything and anything lately, which is unusual for me, and this book is another sign telling me I need to not worry and just let things come as they will; uphold my faith that things will turn out okay in the end. And it also reminds me to appreciate the small aspects of life more. Talking with my father earlier today he said that I'm taking life at a glacial pace compared to his own at my age; yet I feel that I have so little patience. I've been trying to go slower, like walking more places if I can, but it doesn't feel like enough yet. It feels like a complete disconnect from life, and I'm trying to actually live one for the first time. When I read things like this, I feel sort of envious of the ease with which these people communicate with each other. When I talk to people I always feel like I'm a step behind, and that there's so much left unsaid that I don't understand. And I feel lonely, because so much of my time is spent alone, and I don't really enjoy my own company, which is where you need to start. Well, anyway, this book reminded me in feeling of Cold Enough for Snow. It's the kind of book that I think will float into my mind and linger every once in a while, and something I might reread one day. Grounding. I liked the ending a lot.
Akira didn't take more than four or five pictures the whole time we were out walking.  Akira didn't take more than four or five pictures the whole time we were out walking. Since he came out on this walk twelve or thirteen times a week with Yoko, I guess he couldn't afford to be too snap-happy every time he covered the same ground. But for Gonta, this was all new, and his camera was rolling the whole time, shooting footage of the three of us as we walked, and of the Nakamurabashi area itself—the scattered apartment buildings surrounded by fields that still took up most of the area, a few old farm houses surviving here and there with their thatched roofs, several grand old houses with gardens full of ancient trees penned in by fences—turning the camera at regular intervals toward the sky as the sun slipped toward the horizon. What he was capturing on film was not the details themselves so much as the overall experience.
 It felt good to spend time together like this as the summer evening turned into night. It felt good to be here now, in this place and in this moment. Yoko was right—what need was there to go all the way back to the beach or anywhere else for that matter, when one had such simple pleasures so close at hand every day?
You're not really interested in filming incidents, are you?  "You're not really interested in filming incidents, are you? Or coming up with an interesting storyline?"
 "How can I explain it? I never remember stories—details of the plot and stuff like that. When I watch a movie or read a book, I'm always thinking of something else. But I always wanted to write when I was in high school. Just like I want to make movies now. But plot and storylines don't interest me. Not like these movies and plays where they take some real-life murder case and make a drama out of it. That doesn't interest me at all. It's just dumb if you ask me.
 "Don't you think it's kind of weird to take your inspiration from some random event? Like murders—normally things like that just don't happen. If you were determined to write about something shocking, why not write about a road accident or something?
 "These Japanese directors, they're always going on about how we live our lives side by side with tragedy and evil. But look at the stuff they put out: What's so 'side by side with tragedy' about that? The characters in their movies aren't even normal people.
 "I prefer to shoot what happens around me—real life, from my real perspective.
 "I want to show people that the life we live has nothing to do with the stories you see in movies or novels, where everything is simplified and dramatic and exciting. Our lives are our stories."

(2025年1月15日-1月18日) The Funeral of a Giraffe: Seven Stories by Tomioka Taeko, translated by Kyoko Selden & Mizuta Noriko
1月18日  79 to the end: A Dog's Eye View, Days of Dear Death, Yesterday's Girl, Time Table. I liked them all, but I think in particular Yesterday's Girl. I read and analyzed Days of Dear Death for a class in the spring of 2024, so I was already very familiar with it. On a first read-through, I have a hard time understanding the themes of Tomioka's work, but I think upon rereading them closer they would reveal lots of interesting ideas. I would really like to read other work from her. The book mentions somewhere, I think the introduction, that Tomioka was a co-author of a book called 男流文学論. One day!!!!!!!!
The last time I saw him before I moved…  The last time I saw him before I moved, he said that, although it was fun watching children grow up, he had no idea what he lived for, and that he wanted to live only for himself.
 "Don't even ask what for; it's good enough to just live," I said.
 "Since when have you become so strong?" Q asked, as if he wanted to pick a fight.
 "It makes no real difference whether you're strong or weak."
 "Talking like you're old—how unpleasant!" Q said.
 "Everyone's old. No one knows that tomorrow won't bring death, so it doesn't matter how young you are."
1月16日  53-78, Happy Birthday. This one I'm writing 2 days after. I don't remember any particular impression other than thinking it was interesting to read from the perspective, as it were, from an older person, since it's not a perspective I come across a lot. It reminded me in some way, I think, of Days of Dear Death, since it featured a similar topic and theme.
1月15日  From the beginning to 52: The Funeral of a Giraffe and Yesteryear. I'm writing this down 3 days later, so I don't remember much, but I do remember not understanding the endings. Maybe if I reread them with my analysis glasses on, but from a single readthrough alone I didn't understand why they ended how they did, particularly Yesteryear. The first was more understandable.

(2025年1月9日-1月15日) Crackling Mountain and Other Stories by Dazai Osamu, translated by James O'Brien
1月15日  219 to the end, Crackling Mountain (Kachikachiyama). I'm putting this down 3 days after so I don't really remember my impressions of the story. Overall, I enjoyed the book. I think my favorite stories were probably Kakekomi uttae & Tokatonton.
1月14日  From 147-218: A Poor Man's Got His Pride (Hin no iji), The Monkey's Mound (Saruzuka), The Sound of Hammering (Tokatonton), Taking the Wen Away (Kobutori). I don't remember any particular impressions from the ones other than Tokatonton. His choice to suddenly insert his opinion at the very end of Saruzuka and throughout Kobutori surprised me. It reminded me of those fanfictions that put author's notes in random places throughout the story… though of course he predates them…
 With that the one that left the largest impression was Tokatonton. I was curious throughout how similar it was to the original letter that Dazai received. But mostly I felt understanding of that hammering sound. I don't hear anything like that, but I understand routinely becoming passionate or feeling strongly for something only to suddenly stop caring about or feeling anything for it, because it happens to me too. I suddenly lack care for story ideas I think of, I stop caring about hobbies I start to get into, I lose all interest in a goal I'm pursuing. Very few things ever truly break past that wall of apathy that everything else seems to hit and fall before, but then I guess I'm lucky anything does at all. The introduction said that the story was reflecting a common feeling of despair in post-war Japan; the recipient of the letter has no real answer for the one who wrote him. What can I say? It's no different than today.
I saw the lead runner stagger in…  I saw the lead runner stagger in, clad only in a pair of shorts. His fingers spread out like the webbed foot of a frog, his arms flailing about as if to part the air, his chest thrown out and his head swaying, he collapsed before the post office with his face grimacing in pain. A companion of his ran up and shouted, Hurrah! You've done it! Then, he helped the runner up and brought him toward the window where I was watching. Even after the runner was splashed with a bucket of water, he seemed more dead than alive. But, as I observed him lying there, his body slack and his face terribly pale, I felt a strange thrill.
 I would call his deed "touching," but that sounds conceited coming from someone only twenty-six years old like myself. Perhaps a word like "heart-rending" would be better. In any event there was something marvelous about this great waste of energy. Even though no one really cared whether the runner took a first or a second, he nonetheless went all out on that final spurt. He didn't run for some high ideal, either. For example, he wasn't trying to help his country raise its standing among the civilized nations. And he wouldn't mouth any such ideals merely to win the favor of people.
 He didn't care about becoming a great marathoner. After all, this was only a country race, and he wasn't going to set any record pace. Realizing that, he certainly wouldn't feel like discussing the event when he returned home. On the contrary, he'd worry that his father might scold him. Despite all this, he had wanted to run, to give the race his utmost without being praised for his effort. He just wanted to run—to do something for nothing. As a boy he had recklessly climbed up persimmon trees to eat the fruit. But he wasn't out to get anything in this grueling marathon. I suppose his passion was almost for Nothing. And that seemed close to my own mood at the time.
1月13日  110-146: Melos, Run! (Hashire merosu) and On the Question of Apparel (Fukusō ni tsuite). Hashire merosu was fine. I can see why it's studied in schools, at least content-wise. There's not really anything else I have to say about it. Fukusō ni tsuite was fun. I liked it, but I don't know what else to say about it either…
On one occasion I had to attend a celebration in honor of a friend's new book.  On one occasion I had to attend a celebration in honor of a friend's new book. With nothing to wear other than a tanzen, I had to borrow from another friend. Clad in a foreign outfit—jacket, shirt, necktie, shoes, and socks—I showed up with a craven smile on my lips. My reputation suffered again, for my friends did not seem impressed with my appearance. I heard all kinds of remarks—So you're wearing a suit for a change… Well, it's hardly an improvement… Nope, it doesn't agree with you… What? Again!
 Finally the friend who had lent the clothes whispered to me in the corner. "Thanks to you, that suit of mine's already notorious. I don't think I'll be wearing it to go out anymore."
 That's what happened the one time I tried wearing foreign clothes. Since I'm not about to waste a hundred yen on a tailor, it will probably be a long time before I try again.
1月12日  81-109, Monkey Island (Sarugashima) and Heed My Plea (Kakekomi uttae). Kakekomi uttae was definitely my favorite between them, and maybe-probably my favorite story so far. With Sarugashima I found myself stuck on the monkeys talking about being from certain areas of Japan; I'm too used to authors altering the way animals talk about things like that, I guess. I expected it to be a lot longer with how the introduction of the story went on. As for Kakekomi uttae, I loved the style and the contents. I've never read the Bible or gone to church or anything like that, so I can't really say anything about the Christianity aspect (other than that absolutely none of these people were white and I am judging Dazai for talking about Mary having skin that was "almost transparent" and Jesus's "pale face")… and the whole story is related to Christianity, so really I can't say much at all, but here is again a case where I love hateful characters and of course with it tied in so closely to love here it made it even better. The introduction said that Dazai's wife Michiko said that he dictated this story to her, apparently taking no pauses to think. Whenever I read mentions of things like that in classics I'm always very impressed. I edit obsessively as I write—I nitpick my smallest word and punctuation choices, delete and rewrite entire paragraphs, and other such things, so it's impossible for me to write anywhere other than in a word document on a computer; and beyond that when I write the words just kind of appear on the page from deep within my brain, so dictation would be even more impossible for me. Thanks to all of that, all mentions of dictating a story to someone are very amazing to me. Anyway, Kakekomi uttae is something I think I will save on its own and reread.
Well, he's a slouch and he's done for.  Well, he's a slouch and he's done for. There's no hope for him. He's mediocre—a nobody. So what if he dies. Perhaps the devil had possessed me, but here I suddenly had a frightening thought. He was going to be slain anyway, I reasoned, so why shouldn't I do it? He sometimes acted as though he wanted someone to slay him. I'd do it with my own hand, then, because I don't want anyone else to. I'd slay him, then die myself. Master, I'm ashamed of these tears. Yes, all right. I won't weep anymore. Yes, yes, I'll speak calmly.
Yesterday I heard from a pedlar in town…  Yesterday I heard from a pedlar in town how the elders and priests had met secretly in the latter's court and decided to execute him. I also learned they were fearful the people would rise up if he were seized in public, so thirty pieces of silver would be given to anyone who reported when he would be alone with his disciples. He was going to die then, so there was no time to lose. I had better hand him over, I thought, rather than let someone else do it. It was my duty to betray him, a last sign of my enduring love. But this would place me in a trap too—will anyone, I wondered, recognize the devotion behind this deed? It makes no difference, though, because mine is a pure love that doesn't seek recognition. And even if people despise me forever and I end up suffering in eternal hellfire, it will be like nothing alongside of my unquenchable love for him.
1月11日  70 to 81; Undine (Gyofukuki) and the introduction of the next story. I didn't really have any particular thoughts on it. I read the introduction of Gyofukuki yesterday and felt nervous about how it said that Dazai may have thought of Suwa as a temptress while I read the story today. I liked the beginning of the story (I).
1月9日  From the beginning to 68, also known as the introduction and the first story, Memories (Omoide). I decided to read it on a whim because I thought about Dazai. (Specifically: I was thinking about naming a cat Dazai Osamu, because I've been enchanted by the idea of naming a cat after an author ever since E*H told me about a family cat they used to have, named Poe after Edgar Allan Poe). I'm glad to have finally read Omoide, because it was mentioned quite a few times in Return to Tsugaru and I was curious about the rest of it. I did like it. I wondered at some of the translation choices: a number of times they translated it as the narrator being referred to as Shuu where in the original text the kanji 治 was written, which if it was supposed to be Dazai's real name that would be the -ji part of Shuuji, so I had no idea why they translated it as Shuu; and I was curious why they chose to refer to the classmate he was in love with as a boy instead of a girl, because in the original text the classmate was only referred to as 生徒. My only guess is either some school term context I'm missing or it's because of the lack of the kanji 女. I probably shouldn't be nitpicking a translation I'm reading because I can hardly understand the original text, anyway… but is it nitpicking or curiosity? I don't know that I could ever be translator. Anyway, I continue to like Dazai's theoretically-autobiographical stories more than his fictional ones. I think the introduction said only a few of the stories in here are of the theoretically-autobiographical kind, though, so maybe I'll like the fictional ones this time. I managed to forget until I was going through my screenshots to see if I wanted to put down any quotes, but I was utterly shocked when he described having the summer homework of "painting five watercolors and catching ten rare bugs". Five watercolors wouldn't be too surprising, I guess, here as well, but catching bugs…. I wonder if that's why bug-catching seems to be such a staple with the children in anime. Do they still have bug-catching homework in Japan? I'm going to ask S*K about it. I guess it could be a random thing he made up, but why would you do that in something that's supposed to be grounded in reality? I don't know why it's so surprising to me.
I tried to portray myself as a model boy…  I tried to portray myself as a model boy, for I believed people would applaud me for that. I even plagiarized. The essay entitled "My Younger Brother's Silhouette" was a masterpiece according to my teacher, but I actually lifted it word for word from a selection of prize stories in a magazine for youngsters. The teacher had me make a clean copy with a brush and enter the work in a contest. When a bookish classmate found out what I had done, I prayed that he would die.

(2025年1月2日-1月8日) Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, translated by Basil Creighton (updated by Joseph Mileck + Horst Frenz)
1月8日  From 87 to the end today. I definitely liked the second half of the book the most. And I think it was beautiful. While reading, I thought more and more that love is the answer. Is that the theme of the book? I don't know. But I'm understanding more, after reading this, what that blog entry I read meant about how people should be less serious. I don't get it fully, yet, but maybe I will one day. Other thoughts: in the part where Hermine was talking about animals and how they're never embarrassed, I remembered that there have been quite a few times over the past month or so when I've pet our cat and thought about how she's never embarrassed about wanting that affection. Also, this book addressed a lot of struggles I've been having recently, and I thought again about fate: everything comes at the right time. Like the Steppenwolf's comment at the beginning of the book, unfortunately I cannot (bring myself to) believe in fate, but…. Anyway, what else? Like I said already, it was beautiful. I found it really hard to get into the rhythm, and I still read rather slowly (by my standards) once I did, but it definitely became more enjoyable after the meeting with the professor. I liked Hermine. And I see now from the end of the book that all of Harry Haller's philosophizing and judgment was set up to be deconstructed later. I won't put quotes this time because I kept too many and it would be hard to choose between them. I'm glad I finally read this. I was going to read it back in the summer, June or July or so, but the epub was acting up on my e-reader so I switched to something else. I think it's good that I didn't read it then, because I might not have appreciated it as fully. As I said: fate…
1月6日  83-87. I'm adding this the day after.
Ah, look where I might and think what I might…  Ah, look where I might and think what I might, there was no cause for rejoicing and nothing beckoned me. There was nothing to charm me or tempt me. Everything was old, withered, grey, limp and spent, and stank of staleness and decay. Dear God, how was it possible? How had I, with the wings of youth and poetry, come to this? Art and travel and the glow of ideals—and now this! How had this paralysis crept over me so slowly and furtively, this hatred against myself and everybody, this deep-seated anger and obstruction of all feelings, this filthy hell of emptiness and despair.
And while I, Harry Haller, stood there in the street…  And while I, Harry Haller, stood there in the street, flattered and surprised and studiously polite and smiling into the good fellow's kindly, short-sighted face, there stood the other Harry, too, at my elbow and grinned likewise. He stood there and grinned as he thought what a funny, crazy, dishonest fellow I was to show my teeth in rage and curse the whole world one moment and, the next, to be falling all over myself in the eagerness of my response to the first amiable greeting of the first good honest fellow who came my way, to be wallowing like a suckling-pig in the luxury of a little pleasant feeling and friendly esteem.
1月5日  62 to 83 today. It went on about the bourgeois for a really long time; I found it hard to focus. I thought the part about the soul being made up of thousands of different selves, and no human having just one single self, was interesting. Reading this makes me want to read Tomioka Taeko, because I remember reading about how she wanted to write about the average person who survives from day to day. This book loves its tortured geniuses.
The heroes of the epics of India are not individuals…  The heroes of the epics of India are not individuals, but whole reels of individualities in a series of incarnations. And in modern times there are poems, in which, behind the veil of a concern with individuality and character that is scarcely, indeed, in the author's mind, the motive is to present a manifold activity of soul. Whoever wishes to recognize this must resolve once and for all not to regard the characters of such a poem as separate beings, but as the various facets and aspects of a higher unity, in my opinion, of the poet's soul. If "Faust" is treated in this way, Faust, Mephistopheles, Wagner and the rest form a unity and a supreme individuality; and it is in this higher unity alone, not in the several characters, that something of the true nature of the soul is revealed. When Faust, in a line immortalized among schoolmasters and greeted with a shudder of astonishment by the Philistine, says: "Two souls, alas, do dwell within my breast!" he has forgotten Mephisto and a whole crowd of other souls that he has in his breast likewise.
1月3日  47 to 62. Noting this the day after; I forgot to write it yesterday.
Thus it was then with the Steppenwolf…  Thus it was then with the Steppenwolf, and one may well imagine that Harry did not have an exactly pleasant and happy life of it. This does not mean, however, that he was unhappy in any extraordinary degree (although it may have seemed so to himself all the same, inasmuch as every man takes the sufferings that fall to his share as the greatest). That cannot be said of any man.Even he who has no wolf in him, may be none the happier for that. And even the unhappiest life has its sunny moments and its little flowers of happiness between sand and stone. So it was, then, with the Steppenwolf too. It cannot be denied that he was generally very unhappy; and he could make others unhappy also, that is, when he loved them or they him. For all who got to love him, saw always only the one side in him. Many loved him as a refined and clever and interesting man, and were horrified and disappointed when they had come upon the wolf in him. And they had to because Harry wished, as every sentient being does, to be loved as a whole and therefore it was just with those whose love he most valued that he could least of all conceal and belie the wolf. There were those, however, who loved precisely the wolf in him, the free, the savage, the untamable, the dangerous and strong, and these found it peculiarly disappointing and deplorable when suddenly the wild and wicked wolf was also a man, and had hankerings after goodness and refinement, and wanted to hear Mozart, to read poetry and to cherish human ideals. Usually these were the most disappointed and angry of all; and so it was that the Steppenwolf brought his own dual and divided nature into the destinies of others besides himself whenever he came into contact with them.
1月2日  Page 9 to 46 today. I read up to 9 a few days before the year began, but I didn't write anything down. I like this a lot so far. I would have liked for there to have not been the racist remarks about jazz. What else is there to say? I spent the last five to seven hours redoing my website, and I read these pages before that, so now that I've finished the upheaval my mind is quite empty of any thought.
 I finished copying down the quotes and thought of the part where the Steppenwolf writes about how maybe the ages past that people long for and romanticise were never really real in the first place. And I thought about how a blog I was reading a week or two ago said that they think people are too serious in writing. I've been thinking about that a lot. I was a lot more free, before, with what I was writing in this reading log, but now I don't know if I should write the personal things I want to write about and keep it strictly about the book. Who cares what I do? I'm writing it for me, and to practise being more thoughtful about what I read, instead of swallowing it whole and moving right on without really digesting it. But also, I'm tired and don't really want to write anymore.
At the very first sight of him…  At the very first sight of him, when he came into my aunt's home, craning his head like a bird and praising the smell of the house, I was at once astonished by something curious about him; and my first natural reaction was repugnance. I suspected (and my aunt, who unlike me is the very reverse of an intellectual, suspected very much the same thing)—I suspected that the man was ailing, ailing in the spirit in some way, or in his temperament or character, and I shrank from him with the instinct of the healthy. This shrinking was in course of time replaced by a sympathy inspired by pity for one who had suffered so long and deeply, and whose loneliness and inward death I witnessed.
He read the label on my bottle…  He read the label on my bottle and asked whether I would not drink some wine. When I declined his offer and said that I never drank it, the old helpless expression came over his face.
 "You're quite right there," he said. "I have practised abstinence myself for years, and had my time of fasting, too, but now I find myself once more beneath the sign of Aquarius, a dark and humid constellation."
 And then, when I playfully took up his allusion and remarked how unlikely it seemed to me that he really believed in astrology, he promptly resumed the too polite tone which often hurt me and said: "You are right. Unfortunately, I cannot believe in that science either."
I didn't really care whether all this was odd or not.  I didn't really care whether all this was odd or not. It was good, it helped, it raised my spirits. As I thought again of that newspaper article and its jumble of words, a refreshing laughter rose in me, and suddenly the forgotten melody of those notes of the piano came back to me again. It soared aloft like a soap bubble, reflecting the whole world in miniature on its rainbow surface, and then softly burst. Could I be altogether lost when that heavenly little melody had been secretly rooted within me and now put forth its lovely bloom with all its tender hues? I might be a beast astray, with no sense of its environment, yet there was some meaning in my foolish life, something in me gave an answer and was the receiver of those distant calls from worlds far above. In my brain were stored a thousand pictures:
 Giotto's flock of angels from the blue vaulting of a little church in Padua, and near them walked Hamlet and the garlanded Ophelia, fair similitudes of all sadness and misunderstanding in the world, and there stood Gianozzo, the aeronaut, in his burning balloon and blew a blast on his horn, Attila carrying his new headgear in his hand, and the Borobudur reared its soaring sculpture in the air. And though all these figures lived in a thousand other hearts as well, there were ten thousand more unknown pictures and tunes there which had no dwelling place but in me, no eyes to see, no ears to hear them but mine. The old hospital wall with its grey-green weathering, its cracks and stains in which a thousand frescoes could be fancied, who responded to it, who looked into its soul, who loved it, who found the charm of its colors ever delicately dying away? The old books of the monks, softly illumined with their miniatures, and the books of the German poets of two hundred and a hundred years ago whom their own folk have forgotten, all the thumbed and damp-stained volumes, and the works in print and manuscripts of the old composers, the stout and yellowing music sheets dreaming their music through a winter sleep—who heard their spirited, their roguish and yearning tones, who carried through a world estranged from them a heart full of their spirit and their charm? Who still remembered that slender cypress on a hill over Gubbio, that though split and riven by a fall of stone yet held fast to life and put forth with its last resources a new sparse tuft at top? Who read by night above the Rhine the cloudscript of the drifting mists? It was the Steppenwolf. And who over the ruins of his life pursued its fleeting, fluttering significance, while he suffered its seeming meaninglessness and lived its seeming madness, and who hoped in secret at the last turn of the labyrinth of Chaos for revelation and God's presence?
 I held my hand over my glass when the landlady wanted to fill it once more, and got up. I needed no more wine. The golden trail was blazed and I was reminded of the eternal, and of Mozart, and the stars. For an hour I could breathe once more and live and face existence, without the need to suffer torment, fear, or shame.

(?-2024年12月24日) See You Soon: Poems of Taeko Tomioka, translated by Hiroaki Sato  I read this a few other days of the month but never wrote it down. I think today I started somewhere around page 70 and read to the end. I didn't really understand any of the poetry here, but it was still good to read. I'd like to read her poetry in the original Japanese eventually.
FINE DAY  On fine days tears come out
 So I put on sunglasses
 But tears don't stop
 From under the sunglasses tears are flowing down
 Brushing off the tears I buy a ticket at a station
 Sniffing up the tears I drink milk at a station sales booth
 Swallowing the tears I am walking in a city crowd
 Wiping the tears I eat a hamburger
 Beyond the tears it's swaying
 With tears I shop
 With tears I go home
 Metzler's expensive sunglasses
 Are messed up with tears

(2024年11月29日) A Woman of Pleasure by Murata Kiyoko, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter
11月29日  I read all of this book today, in some 3 hours according to the books program. It was interesting. Nothing stood out to me much; it's hard to say it was plot-driven, but regardless it had a different sort of tempo than the usual kind of books and stories I generally prefer. I didn't really care much for the narration style, but it's up in the air whether or not that's due to the translator's style or not. I don't want to delve all that much into criticism, but I felt like most of the characters had little personality, some things were repetitive (Tetsuko's anecdote about her friend that went to Germany was mentioned at least 3 times and I don't think a new perspective was highlighted in any of the repeats), and the ending felt kind of rushed. In any case, the contents were educational in a sense (despite the ample references to them in other Japanese novels and stories I've read, I had little understanding of what brothels were like. I still couldn't say I know much about them but it's definitely more than before), and I'm curious about the real-life event that inspired the book. I'm also curious about the author's other works, since Carpenter in her translator's note said that she is a "master of the art of fiction", but this is the only book from Murata that has been translated into English, it seems. It's terrible thinking about the array of Japanese literature that I can't read because I'm not good enough at the language! (It's my fault for not studying as dedicatedly as I should, but still….)
 I appreciated from this book the lack of concern about sexuality (in the modern sense: homosexuality, et cetera), but at the same time I think it would have been nice to see some sort of discussion in that area, though it would certainly have been different from any conversation that might take place on it today. There were no concerns from anyone about the closeness between Shinonome and Murasaki or similar things, but there was also no acknowledgement of women who didn't want to end up with a man at all. Women who wanted to be with other women existed even in 1903…
 This is less important, but I liked seeing the author, through Tetsuko, bash on Fukuzawa Yukichi and his hypocrisy in saying "Heaven does not create one person above another" and then ignoring his own words to act as if it does. I shouldn't feel relieved when I read a book where women are treated as people, not some sort of alien race or objects or lesser species: misogyny shouldn't be the norm, and I shouldn't have to be grateful when it's deviated from.
 Overall I'll say it didn't leave much of an impression, but it's meaningful for what it is.
My pa came without a word  November 16 Rain Aoi Ichi
 My pa came without a word
 and left without a word.
 Just like the wind.
 As if he were formless.
 If my pa is formless
 why shouldnt I erase him?
 Let my parents disappear!
 The sky is vast
 and swimming with clouds.
 Having no parents
 means nothing to me.
“Tetsuzo,” said Shinonome in a quiet tone…  “Tetsuzo,” said Shinonome in a quiet tone, “we all must die one day and be held to account for how we lived. Tonight you have a chance to do something good.”

(2024年11月27日-11月29日) Stories of Osaka Life by Oda Sakunosuke, translated by Burton Watson
11月29日  I'm writing this at 2am, so maybe this could count as the 28th, but I read all of it within the past hour, so…. Well, anyway, I read from 147 to 188: the end of The State of the Times and thus the end of the book. I liked it! It felt in a way like a culmination of the other stories before, so the translator chose well. I thought two things while reading this: when he described happening across the owner of that restaurant Tentatsu, and then the owner leading him to the underground bar that was owned by the former proprietress of Dice, I thought that every event leads into one another, in fact sort of like how he said that he thinks life is an endless cycle of tumbling and turning. I actually can't remember the second thing that I thought other than that I thought it and wanted to write it down after I finished. Maybe it was what I was saying about the story seeming like a culmination of the ones before. I was disappointed with the remarks from Oda and other people in the story about women, but at this point, I shouldn't expect any better. What else is there to say? I'm tired and can't really think of anything. I liked this book.
Ganjirō Alley—the whole area was destroyed…  Ganjirō Alley—the whole area was destoyed in the air raids, so there's not a trace of it left. And for that reason I recall it with even greater nostalgia and want more than ever to describe it in detail.
As I watched him, a wave of compassion swept over me.  As I watched him, a wave of compassion swept over me. But when I continued to stare, the glow gradually gave way to a feeling of cool, almost cruel detachment. The thought had occured to me that I could make a story out of Yokobori's experiences as a vagrant. For a moment the idea of exploiting my pitiful old friend in this way struck me as revoltingly cynical. But as I listened to his halting account of everything that had happened to him, I began almost instinctively arranging the material in my head and shaping it into a story.
11月27日  Today I read i-xx and 1-147. I finished the first three stories in the book, Hurray for Marriage, or Sweet Beans for Two!, Six White Venus, and City of Trees, and I got to section 3 of The State of the Times.
 I don't think I have any particular feelings on any of them. I thought the first two stories were very lively. For Six White Venus, I remember not really liking the characters that much at first, but Narao eventually somehow grew on me (like mould) and I was kind of fond of him by the end of the story. That one in particular was rather gripping for me—I was going to just listen to a video while I made dinner like I usually do but I suddenly had no patience for it and just wanted to read the story instead. For City of Trees, I remember that while reading it, I started thinking again about how, when I read stories like that, I feel more and more like I'm not living at all. I'm thinking about it with The State of the Times too. When you have a fully functional phone and computer, live alone, and have few friends, it's very easy to not go outside and live life, but just stare at a screen mindlessly and find yourself suddenly another month into the future instead. But Oda lived a life. What these stories make me think about is how life feels unreal, like an illusion of some sort, and how connections with others feel so shallow. This isn't a blanket statement about everyone, but specifically for me: hearing the experiences of other people around me so too do I wonder where my life is gone and what on earth I'm doing with myself and my time.
 Anyway, thinking about City of Trees again I'm remembering how it opens with Oda describing all of the trees he remembered from his childhood, arguing against the common saying that Osaka is a city without trees. I'm remembering now that today, while on the light rail, I was looking out of the window and thinking about how everywhere has ugly (by my standards) scenery and I need to stop acting like the U.S. is the ugliest place in the world. Even the town I'm from, which I often disparage as a concrete jungle, has trees and grass and other greenery. I also am now remembering that while reading that story, I noticed how fondly he spoke of Osaka and thought about how I have nowhere I could speak of like that. How I have nowhere I consider 'home', and in fact avoid whenever possible using that word to refer to my family's house or the dorm room I'm living in now. I wonder what inspires love like that in people for the towns or cities they live in.
One day a postcard arrived from the music store…  One day a postcard arrived from the music store informing me that a record I had been searching for was now available and I could pick it up any time I wished to stop by. Judging from the handwriting, the card had been written by the daughter.
 The record in question was an old recording by Charles Panzera of Henri DuParc's setting of Baudelaire's "L'Invitation au voyage." I had had a copy of the record when I was living as a student in Kyoto, but a girl who used to come to my room from time to time accidentally broke it. Perhaps because she felt upset about what she had done, she never came to see me again. She was stockily built and terribly nearsightered. About two years ago I ran into her younger sister, who for some reason knew that we were acquainted, and she told me that the girl had died. The news brought back memories of days that could now never be relived. So this particular record had very special associations for me.
The trees along Kuchinawa Slope were bleak and bare…  The trees along Kuchinawa Slope were bleak and bare and a chill winter wind raced through them. As I descended the stone steps it occurred to me that I probably would not be going up and down them again for some time to come. The pleasant recollections of my youthful years had come to an end, it seemed, and some quite new reality had now swung around into position to confront me. The wind rattled sharply in the tops of the trees.
We walked across the bridge at Yotsubashi…  We walked across the bridge at Yotsubashi and on as far as the entrance to the Puppet Theater. She had been silent up to this point, but now she spoke rapidly in a shrill voice. "Next time you come to my place we'll spend the night together, shall we?" There was no trace of embarassment in her expression as she gave my shoulder a playful shove.
 We went as far as Shinsaibashi before parting, and as I watched her threading her way efficiently through the crowds, the midsummer sun beating down fiercely on the plump flesh exposed by the open back of her dress, I told myself I had better be on my guard the next time I went to Dice. Just at that moment she abruptly turned and looked in my direction and I could see that her face, with its bizarre pair of dark glasses, had taken on a sudden expression of weariness and desolation. Something of the same desolation came over me as well.

(2024年10月16日) Bungou Stray Dogs: BEAST by Asagiri Kafka
10月16日  I read all of this today, apparently in about 2 hours according to the book app. I liked it. The battles were as nonsense as usual, but I liked the themes of this story a lot. I found Akutagawa's relentless anger relatable—not to the same extent, naturally, but I too find myself angry at so much, all the time, wishing I could destroy the world with my anger.

quote: "All I felt was hate."  All I felt was hate. Pure hatred. Hatred for not the enemy but the world itself. But it was hatred that motivated me to kill my enemies, and it was hatred that took my sister away. How did it come to this? Who stole my sister from me?
 “Come find me once you figure out what makes you so weak. We'll have a rematch. I'll be holding on to your sister until then.”
 It didn't make sense. I couldn't comprehend it.
 Where should I direct this burning resentment, this feeling beyond despair? Who should I curse if I do not even believe in a god?
 “Do not pursue the beast within you,” another voice told me.
 I didn't understand. It didn't make any sense, so all I could do was act.

 Atsushi too, with his guilt… just as in the main series, desperately trying to make himself feel like he's allowed to be alive; wishing for someone to tell him it's okay to be alive. Ah! I don't interact with the fandom due to my social media problems, but I follow fan artists and a few other people that post about it, so I do see what people talk about, and I think a huge disservice is done to this book by much of this fandom: a certain very large portion of the fandom reduces it all to a singular scene that lasts probably less than 2 minutes and doesn't even take up a page, and makes the entire book about that singular scene. But after finally reading this, I feel like it's probably one of my favorite light novels that I've read from this series. I really do appreciate what it wanted to say and how it went about it in the short space that was allotted to the author to do so. Anyway, I don't really want to get that much into the "book review" and "complaining about other people" territory, so I will leave off of all that.
 Like Akutagawa, I too want to stop dwelling (I did think about saying 'revolving my life around', but decided I'm not quite at that level) so much on my anger, my regrets. Like the real Akutagawa wrote: "Doppo said he was in love with love. I am trying to hate hatred. I am trying to hate my hatred for poverty, for falsehood, for everything."

(2024年10月9日-10月30日) In the Shade of Spring Leaves: The Life of Higuchi Ichiyō, With Nine of Her Best Stories by Robert Lyons Danly
10月30日  288-295, the last story in the book: Separate Ways (Wakare-michi). Everything after this is just the translator's notes, which I read alongside the main content, and then the bibliography, so I'm done with the book now. Not many words for Wakare-michi, I don't think. It was good. "Take your hands off me, Okyou." A very strong ending. I flipped past that line a few times before I actually got to read the story, and it's still impactful. Fate, again….
 I really enjoyed this book overall. I'm glad I got through it. I hope to one day read Ichiyou's stories in Japanese. Yesterday, I was talking to S*Y-sensei about this book, and she showed me that she had a simplified version of Takekurabe in her office. I'm reading the 風の又三郎 Miyazawa Kenji collection in Japanese for class right now (very, very slowly, only understanding the broad strokes of what's happening), but maybe whenever I finally get through it (I have a very long way to go) I'll look at the Takekurabe she has. I want to read more Japanese women writers! I still wish very much that I knew people who are into this stuff, too, so I could talk about it with them… despite being a Japanese major in the highest level of Japanese my university offers (which, to be fair, is technically 4th year Japanese but equates more to lower-intermediate Japanese in the real world), I don't meet many people who are into the same things that I am, whether Japanese literature or history. In general, my classmates aren't really as obsessed with it all (it all being the language) as I am. Professor D*M said that if I go to graduate school, I'll probably meet people who are as interested as I am. But there's a few years until then. Anyway, our library has… technically a rather small Japanese section, but it still has a number of interesting books (I checked out this book from there), so I'll need to read more of them. What else is there to say? I don't know.
 Typing out the first quote, I thought of something: I appreciate the disconnect between Kichizou and Okyou. Even though Okyou doesn't have the best job, either, her life is still rather fundamentally different from Kichizou, and she can't understand his perspective or what she's doing by leaving him alone, just like everyone else.
"You shouldn't joke like that, Kichizō. (…)"  "You shouldn't joke like that, Kichizō. I don't know what kind of people your parents were, but it makes no difference to me. These silly things you're saying—you're not yourself tonight. If I were you, I wouldn't let it bother me. Even if I were the child of an outcast. I'd make something of myself, whether I had any parents or not, no matter who my brothers were. Why are you whining around so?"
 "I don't know," he said, staring at the floor. "There's something wrong with me. I don't seem to have any get-up-and-go."
They were bold words, and yet it didn't sound as if she herself fully comprehended them.  They were bold words, and yet it didn't sound as if she herself fully comprehended them. "Anyway," she laughed, "come home with me. Hurry up now."
 "What! I'm too disgusted. You go ahead," he said, but his long, sad shadow followed after her.
 Soon they came to their street. Okyō stopped beneath the window where Kichizō always tapped for her. "Every night you come and knock at this window. After tomorrow night," she sighed, "I won't be able to hear your voice calling any more. How terrible the world is."
 "It's not the world. It's you."
10月29日  241-287, The Thirteenth Night (Juusanya) and Child's Play (Takekurabe), today. Not many thoughts on Juusanya. But I enjoyed Takekurabe a lot. I liked the changing of all the personalities of the children, Shouta and Nobu and Midori, at the end. It makes me wonder what my father thinks when he thinks of me as a child compared to how I am now—but I don't want to know. I wonder if there was any moment where I suddenly felt like I had to grow up. Lately, I always feel so young and inexperienced in comparison to everyone else, wishing I was more mature, but then I think of a life of work after I graduate university, the ostensible true coming into maturity of every human being nowadays, and feel dread. Thinking of Midori suddenly wearing the young woman's hairstyle, becoming embarrassed by everything, realising what future she had in store for herself. There's no mentions of what her sister Oomaki thought of her work, nor a single interaction with her, but I wonder if she was as resigned to it. She seemed nothing but untouchable. Also thinking of the interaction between Nobu and Midori at the end, when Nobu's strap broke. I don't know, my thoughts on this aren't really words. Growing up indeed. An unavoidable fate. I wrote in my letter to K on Sunday that I've been starting to believe in fate lately. I used to say I didn't believe in it because every choice we make changes the future. But maybe we're all being guided along a certain path, even if we can make small choices of our own while walking it. I think of fate when I think of my friends and how my study abroad plans have turned out. And after reading this, I think of it when I think of the future of every child that becomes an adult. I do see why this story was so effusively praised in the biography section. I'm curious what the next and last story will be like.
"Nobu, what's the matter? Break your strap? What a sight you are!"  "Nobu, what's the matter? Break your strap? What a sight you are!"
 Nobu turned around to see who owned the unexpected voice. It was obnoxious Chōkichi, decked out like a young gallant. He had on his best-dress kimono, and he wore his orange sash profligately low on his hips. His new jacket had a fancy black collar, and the umbrella he carried was festooned with the trademark of one of the houses in the quarter. His high clogs were sporting lacquered rain covers—this was something new. What pride there was in the young man's swagger.
 "The strap broke, and I was wondering what to do," Nobu answered helplessly. "I'm not very good at these things."
 "No, you wouldn't be. It's all right, wear mine. The straps won't give out."
 "But what will you do?"
 "Don't worry. I'm used to it. I'll just go like this," he said, tucking up the bottom of his kimono. "Feels much better than wearing sandals, anyway." He kicked off his rain clogs.
 "You're going to go barefoot? That won't be fair."
 "I don't mind. I'm used to going barefoot. Someone like you has soft feet. You could never walk barefoot on gravel. Come on, wear these," he urged, arranging his sandals obligingly.
10月28日  205-240 today, On the Last Day of the Year (Ootsugomori) and Troubled Waters (Nigorie). Read them while doing laundry. They were both good, but I particularly enjoyed Troubled Waters. I liked Oriki a lot. I've become so used to reading Japanese literature by misogynistic men that it's a relief to read something where women are actual people. When Oriki told Yuuki that she's a human being, too… I liked the mentions of living to work, and how surely humans weren't born to live like this. When I read the one from Genshichi (see the "Oh, that's right" quote), I thought about sending it to my father.
 On both of these, particularly Troubled Waters, the endings felt kind of sudden to me. But I remember what the biography section said about how Saikaku's works were kind of like that, so…. Regardless, I do wish we had been able to see the murder-suicide scene… I am really curious about what happened! But I'm glad it ended with it at all. I can't help but wonder how Ohatsu fared with Takichi after she left Genshichi. When reading the scene where Ohatsu started asking Takichi if she liked her or Genshichi better, I experienced vivid flashbacks of when the same thing happened to me when I was young, and wondered if Takichi would have grown up to remember it like I do. I like Ichiyou's characters because they make me feel curious about them and their fates outside of the confines of the story. Or maybe it's just something going on in my mind, but what does it matter?
The moon shone cool in the cloudless night.  The moon shone cool in the cloudless night. In the street below echoed the footfall of passersby, their shadows wavering here and there along the road.
 "Yūki."
 "What?" He came over and stood next to her.
 "Sit down," she said, taking his hand. "See the child buying peaches at the fruit stand? The cute little one, about four? He's the son of the man who was here tonight. I must be hateful to him. He calls me a demon when he sees me. Do I look that evil?"
 Oriki gazed up at the sky and took a deep breath.
"Oh, that's right," Genshichi said, as if coming to his senses.  "Oh, that's right," Genshichi said, as if coming to his senses. As he untied his waistband and walked over to the tub, he felt memories of his old self suddenly come back to him. He had never dreamed the day would come when he would have to bathe in the kitchen of a nine-by-twelve house, let alone that he would wind up as an assistant to a crew of construction workers, pulling a cart around all day. Surely his parents had not brought him into the world for this.
"My love is like a bridge of logs across the Hosotani River," she went on.  "My love is like a bridge of logs across the Hosotani River," she went on. "I'm afraid to cross to the other side; I'm afraid to stay where I am." But suddenly, as if the song had reminded her of something, she fell silent. "Excuse me. I'm sorry." She put her samisen aside and left the room.
 "Where are you going?" they all began to shout. "You can't run out on us!"
 "Teru, Otaka, cover for me, will you? I'll be right back." She hurried through the hallway and slipped into her shoes. Without looking back, she ran out into the street and down the alley on the other side.
 Oriki ran from the house as fast as she could. If only it were possible, she would keep on going, to China, to India. How she hated her life! She never wanted to hear another human voice, or any sound at all. She needed a quiet place, where her mind could relax, where there were no worries. How long would she be stuck in this hopeless situation, where everything was absurd and worthless and cruel? Was this what life was supposed to be? She hated it! She hated it! She felt almost delirious and leaned against a tree at the side of the road. "I'm afraid to cross to the other side; I'm afraid to stay where I am." It was her song and her voice, but where was it coming from?
 "I have no choice," she whispered. "I will have to cross the bridge by myself. My father fell treading it. They say my grandfather stumbled, too. I was born with the curse of many generations, and there are things I have to undergo before I die. No one's going to feel sorry for me, that much I know. If I complain about how sad I am, 'What's wrong?' people say, 'Don't you like your work?' Oh, it doesn't matter any more what happens—I haven't the slightest idea what will become of me. I might as well go on as Oriki of the Kikunoi. Sometimes I wonder if I've lost all sense of kindness and decency. No, I mustn't think such things. It won't do me any good. With my station in life and my calling and my fate, I'm not an ordinary person any more. It's a mistake to think I am. It only adds to my suffering. It's all so hopeless and discouraging. What am I doing standing here? Why did I come here? Stupid! Crazy! I don't even know myself," she sighed. "I'd better get back."
 Oriki left the darkness of the alley and walked along a street lined with shops. They were all doing a lively business. If only some of the gaiety would rub off, she mused. As she trudged along, the faces of passersby seemed tiny to her. Even those of people who walked directly in front of her seemed somehow very distant. She felt as if she were hovering ten feet above the ground. She could hear the din of voices, but it sounded more like the echo of someone falling to the bottom of a well. She was lost in her own thoughts and paid no heed to the voices about her. Nothing distracted her. She passed a crowd gathered round a husband and wife who were arguing, but this, too, failed to interest her. It was as if she were walking in a great, open field laid bare by winter. There was nothing to capture her attention. She felt unsure of her step, as if she might faint. She wondered if she was losing her mind.
10月24日  Today was 182-204, Encounters on a Dark Night (Yamiyo). I liked this one better than the first three stories: it still had many of the usual aspects I don't like, but I rather liked the ending. I really love characters that are full of hatred for the world. I think Naojirou failing to kill Namizaki was the perfect ending. My circumstances are different from Naojirou's, but regardless I found his bullheadedness relatable, and his hatred as well. I love hatred. I don't know that I have much more than that to say today. I'm tired. Quotes I liked:
The morning glory by the fence blooms…  The morning glory by the fence blooms in splendor for a single day, and this is all it lives for. Why should he who knows the limits of his fate tremble over things that might have been?
You don't think I'd joke about it, do you?  You don't think I'd joke about it, do you? I keep thinking about what you told me in the garden that day. About your father drowning in the pond. You said it was the only quiet place, away from the world. Well, I'm someone who's never had any peace of mind, any quiet. Ever since I was born I've been unhappy and unlucky. I'm tired of it. What's the point? I can't hope to repay you. You've been so kind to me, Oran, for months now. I owe you everything, the way you've taken care of me. It's been wonderful for me. It's the first time I've really been a part of the world—and the last. I feel as if I've seen enlightenment, all of a sudden, and I can't take this world any longer. You're the only one I'll miss.
If by some chance I'm wrong…  If by some chance I'm wrong—I mean, if there's no connection between the man who hit me and the man who sent the letter tonight—it doesn't really make any difference. It only shows how depraved I am. My suspicions come from bad thoughts. I could do terrible things, Oran. Even if I hide how I feel, in my heart I follow you everywhere. The shame of it! I'll go to hell, and that soft voice of yours will be there with the flames to torture me. I'm alone . . . When I think of all the changes that have come over me, I feel like a different person. I don't know myself what awful things I might do.
10月21日  174-177: A Snowy Day (Yuki no Hi). As with Yamizakura I didn't care much for it, but the imagery was rather beautiful.
 178-181: The Sound of the Koto (Koto no Ne). The same feelings as with the previous story. I was sympathetic towards the boy… being demonized by people that know nothing of you solely due to your circumstances or what they've heard.
10月20日  I almost forgot to do this… anyway, today was 167-173, Ichiyou's story "Yamizakura" ("Flowers in the Dark"). Reading the translation notes, I'm sure it was beautifully written in Japanese, but I didn't personally care for it much. Stories about maidens longing for some man aren't really stories that interest me.
10月17日  text
10月15日  From page 118 to 136 today: 18 pages. Finished chapter 4 of the biography section ("The Yoshiwara"). Despite this being a book about Higuchi Ichiyou, I feel like I know a lot about Saikaku's writing now. It was necessary to provide background for the change in Ichiyou's writing, though, and in any case I didn't mind because it was very interesting—I know little to nothing about pre-modern Japanese literature, so it taught me a lot. Oh, to do linked verse with someone… I think it'd be fun. I enjoyed reading the linked verse (renga? I know renga is linked verse, but I'm afraid to use the wrong term anyway) descriptions in the earlier diary entries mentioned in the book. Anyway, reading all of that about Saikaku made me wish I could read his works in Japanese. Hopefully, one day I'll be able to read all kinds of Japanese literature, from contemporary to modern to Heian period to everything before, too. Nowadays, whenever I read Japanese literature translated into English (which is rather often) I can't stop thinking about if I was reading it in Japanese instead. Since Ichiyou was inspired so by classical Japanese works, I'll have to do a lot of studying to be able to read her works. But surely, it will happen…
10月14日  I only read about 2 pages today—from 116 to 118. I would have liked to read more, but I came across friends and ended up talking to them for 5 hours, and the only thing I have time left for is writing my cat story for Japanese and, apparently, writing this reading log. What I remember from the 2 pages I read was descriptions of Saikaku's writing in comparison with Ichiyou's and maybe a bit of discussion about renga, or I'm just remembering what I read on the 12th. I also remember reading what I think was a quotation from a Saikaku story about people when he was writing being so unnecessarily opulent, wearing such colorful clothes when they didn't need it, and only in some other world could you find more unnecessarily extravagant clothing, for surely humans could go no further than this! I thought about how in every era of the world, everyone believes that surely the people of their time are the worst, so lazy and no-good and materialistic; it puts into perspective the things I feel about the world right now. I wonder what Ichiyou would think about today's society, over 100 years after her death.
10月12日  stopped reading for the day at page 116; I think I had started somewhere in the 40s or so, maybe 45.