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  Chapter One

  All this happened a long time ago. I’m sure it was around 1880, as there is a reason I can remember the exact year of the events: At that very time I shared a wall with the protagonist of the story. He was my neighbor at the Kamijo, a boarding house which stood directly across the street from Tokyo University’s Iron Gate. The Kamijo burned to the grown in 1881, and I was one of the residents suddenly without home. Yes, I remember quite distinctly—all this occurred the year before the fire.

  A majority of residents at the Kamijo were students at the medical school, but there were a handful of patients of the school's hospital staying there as well. Nearly all boarding houses have certain residents who command more influence than others. They move more money than others, demonstrate a considerate shrewdness, and when they pass the landlady ’s room on a pass through the corridor they stop by and make extended, sincere greetings over her charcoal brassiere. Occasionally those greetings morph into dipping heads and extended small talk over the toasting heater. They turn their rooms into veritable bars and brothels, call for the landlady to bring snacks, and cause her untold heartache with their selfishness, but when it comes to book-keeping they apparently see to it that she is rewarded for her efforts. I don’t doubt that my readers are familiar with such types and the authority they command. They command respect by expressing, often to excess, their sway over the house. No one at the Kamijo commanded more influence than my neighbor, though he was a very different sort of character.

  His name was Okada. Despite being one year my junior, graduation was already within his grasp. To explain what kind of man he was, it is necessary to start with his familiar, though extraordinarily good looks. He was beautiful man, though not pale and dainty as the expression might suggest. His complexion was healthy; his build was sturdy. I had perhaps never seen another man with a face like his. In truth he bared a resemblance to a young Bizan Kawakami, the writer whose life ended in misery and disrepute. He looked a bit like Okada in his youth, but Okada, a member of the rowing team, possessed a more robust physique.

  Those looks, how they have supported the lives of those men who own them! However, looks need more space than the halls of a boarding room to exercise their influence. No —Okada did not command influence over the building by his looks alone. It was his private mannerisms. Surely no other students at the Kamijo maintained balance in their lives to the extent Okada did. Never one to challenge himself with perfunctory exams or plunge himself into studying with the intention of winning scholarships, he simply did what needed to be done and never fell below average or what was necessary. Furthermore, he was careful to protect his own time for relaxation. Each night after dinner he went out for a walk, and each night he returned before ten. On Sundays he typically went rowing, and when he did not do that he found some other excursion with which to occupy himself. Before rowing competitions he accompanied the rest of the rowing team when they spent the night in Mukojima, and over summer vacations he returned to his hometown, but aside from these particular times, when he slept in the room beside mine, there was a remarkable consistency with his schedule. Whenever someone neglected to set their watch by the evening bells, they ran to Okada to ask for the proper time. Even the clock that stood at the front desk was occasionally adjusted to match the time on his pocket watch. All who knew him, and proportional to the amount of his activity to which they'd been witness, came to the same, inevitable, conclusion: He was a man in whom one could place their trust. The landlady came to slather elaborate praise on him for his honesty and prudence in the ways of money, and her words built on that very same trust he had earned. That he was always on time with bills and rent and dependable in all matters was a fact she was well aware of, and with time she could often be heard admonishing others with a sing-song, “Just look at Okada”

  A good portion of students had already given up, declaring they'd never measure up to him. Soon, within the bounds of the Kamijo, he was considered the standard by which other residents were judged.

  The path Okada followed on his daily walks was, for the most part, fixed. He'd shamble down the lonely hump of Muenzaka and follow the Aizome river, black as tooth stain, on its path around the north of Shinobazu Lake before arriving at the Ueno hill. He would then proceed up Hirokoji, take a path through Nakacho —always too narrow, always bustling—before stopping in the Yushima shrine grounds and turning at the corner of Karatachi Temple, dank and mysterious as always. There were also times that he turned right out of Nakacho and returned by Muenzaka.

  So composed were his normal wanderings. There were times that he would leave the university through its Red Gate. The Iron Gate was chained up relatively early, and when that was the case he would use that main gate, so often used for patients at the hospital. At one point they had closed the main gate for repair work, during which time they constructed that black one to serve as an entrance to Harukicho.

  On those days he left from the Red Gate and walked up Hongo Street, past the rice-cake vendors, and continued on to the Kanda Shrine. Back then the Megane bridge was still new and lovely. He took it down through Yanagihara and Katakawa for a little walk through those quiet towns. After returning to Narimichi he wandered about the western alleyways and came out by Yahari Temple. That was his other path. Aside from these two walks, he rarely ventured other excursions.

  During his walks he entertained himself with little, other than short glances into second-hand bookshops. There are still a few shops from that era in Ueno and Nakacho. There ’s one in Narimichi still doing business as well. None have survived in Yanagicho, And the businesses on Hongo street change locations and owners rather quickly. Okada never turned right upon exiting the Red Gate, and while it may have been due to Morikawa being a thoroughly small and featureless place, the west side of town being in possession of but one single second-hand shop may have played a role as well.

  The reason Okada entertained himself with these shops, to explain in modern diction, was his literary tastes. Back then the new school of novels and plays had yet to appear, and as for poetry, neither Shiki ’s haiku nor Tekkan’s Waka had been published. Many of us read Kagetsu Shinshi, which published the first translation of a Western novel. I remember because I, too, was a devoted reader of Kagetsu Shinshi. It was the first magazine to run translated novels from the West. There was a story about a university student somewhere in the West who was killed on his way home. Takahara Kanda translated it as a dialogue, I believe. It was the first time I’d ever read a story from the West. Well, those were the times, and Okada’s interest in literature consisted of these popular Chinese poetic interpretations of the unfolding new world. It was fun to read, but not much more serious than that.

  I was by no means a socialite, and I rarely carried on conversations, even with those people whom I frequently encountered about campus. Only occasionally would I remove my hat and greet others, even those students with whom I shared my residence. My friendship with Okada was only brought about through the mediation of a second-hand bookshop.

  Now, while my walks did not follow the same rigid definition of Okada ’s, I did often enjoy a long stroll through Hongo and Shitaya, out through Kanda. If I came across a second-hand bookshop it was difficult to resist a quick perusal. Once, I ran into Okada at the entrance to one of these shops.

  “I sure seem to see you around these bookstores a lot,” one of us said at the time—though heaven knows I can’t recall which of us it was. It was a friendly greeting.

  Back then there was a shop, just at the bottom of the hill leading out of Kanda shrine, that placed a bench out by the street and used it to display their books. Once, when I was passing by, I saw a copy of the Chinese text Kinpeibai, and I quickly asked the owner the price. He answered seven yen. I asked for him to give it to me for five,
to which he responded, “Mr. Okada recently offered me six yen for it, and I was forced to turn him down.”

  By chance, I had a fair amount of money on me at the time, so I bought the book for its asking price. A few days later I ran into Okada again, at which point he said, “Aren’t you a gentleman, sweeping in and buying Kinpeibai. You know I had my eye on it.”

  “The owner did say that you had had discussed the price with him. If you want it, I suppose I could give it up.”

  He smiled. “Don’t be ridiculous. I live next door, I’ll just borrow it when you finish.”

  I gladly agreed.

  It was through these means that Okada and I, having lived next to one another for so long without so much as a greeting, came to be friends.

  Chapter Two

  The Iwasaki mansion stood at the southern end of Muenzaka, though it was not then surrounded by the stentorian walls it currently boasts. Crumbling, dirtied stone masonry enclosed it on all sides, its cracks filled with fuzzy mosses and ferns. The property appeared to be constructed upon some sort of hill, or so it seemed from the exterior—I have still never been inside the property. From the street one could see a number of trees beyond the wall, all of which were large enough to appear to have a number of years behind them, although the shrubbery and grasses at their roots appeared to have never been cut or tended to.

  There were a number of small houses at the northern end of Muenzaka, which looked quite nice surrounded with their clapboard fences. They were normal residences interspersed with the occasional junk shop or tobacconist. The property most likely to catch your eye, however, belonged to a matron who instructed others in needlework. By day the house was filled with young girls sitting and working. When the weather was nice they left the windows open, and when university students passed by, the girls, always so talkative during their work, all bent their necks in unison to look at the passerby. A moment of silence then, followed either by an eruption of giggles or a simple return to the momentarily halted gabbing.

  The neighboring property always had a clean door, and the granite entrance sparkled. In the evening the resident splashed water to cool the concrete. In cold weather the paper screens all stood shut. When it was hot bamboo screens covered the windows. Standing, as it did, next to the always-bustling seamstress’s property, pedestrians were predisposed to think it mute, tranquil.

  The year of our story, around September, Okada returned from Hongo, ate his dinner, and went out on one of his walks, which took him around the old Kashu Temple, and past the temporary autopsy lab as he continued on aimlessly through Muenzaka, where, by chance, he happened to see a woman on her way home from the baths. She entered the silent house that stood by the seamstress’s property. It was nearly Autumn then, and as residents no longer needed to flee the heat of their houses, the usual throngs of people in the streets had lessened, leaving Okada alone on the sloping street. The woman approached the door of the lonely house and reached out her hand to open it when the sound of Okada’s wooden sandals came clopping on the pavement. Her hand paused for a moment before she quickly turned to look him in the face.

  Her kimono was lovely and tied with an intricately patterned belt. In her left hand she clutched a basket filled with soaps and towels and other toiletries. Her right hand hung there on the door as they looked at one another. Nothing about her made a particularly strong impression on Okada. He did, however, notice her hair, which was done in the Ginko-leaf style, two small wings running past her ears, thin as C icada wings. Her nose was sharp, her forehead high, and her face flat. There seemed an expression of loneliness, present but subtle, though Okada was unsure from where it issued. Moving on though, the details of her face meant little to him, and by the time he’d reached the bottom of the slope he had forgotten completely about her.

  However, some two days later, when he was making his way through Muenzaka on one of his walks, his eye fell upon the silent house, and suddenly his impressions of the woman returning from the baths rose from the depths of his memory with an arresting force. He stopped and gazed at the house. There was a woven cushion, stalks of bamboo wrapped in twine there at the window. The paper screen stood open a few inches, and a Chinese Lily grew from a pot, white and smooth like an overturned eggshell. His increased concentration on the window unconsciously led to a slowing of his pace. He lingered, momentarily, just before the center of the house.

  And then, in the space just over the Chinese lily, the space which had been such a dark gray for so long, a white face slowly appeared and broke the gloom. It was looking at Okada and smiling.

  After which there were rarely times that he passed this house without seeing her face. The woman began to appear suddenly in the realm of his imagination, and he slowly came to feel something akin to possession of that face. He wondered if she was waiting for him to pass. Could it be that she was simply gazing out the window and their eyes were meeting by circumstance? He tried to recall the time before they had crossed paths, and whether or not she had been at the window then, only to discover that, in his memory, the house by the seamstress had always simply been well-kept, a banal observation aside from which he could recall nothing. Perhaps he had wondered what kind of person had been living there, but he had never dwelt on the question for long. Why had the screens always been shut, the blinds drawn? The property had always been so quiet. Eventually Okada came to the conclusion that the woman had finally gathered an interest in the outside world, and that she had opened the window then, specifically to wait for his passing.

  Their eyes met each time he passed the house. As he mulled over these thoughts, Okada came to regard the “Woman at the Window” as a friend of sorts. After two weeks of this there came a time when, upon passing the window and finding her sitting there, he, without any thought, removed his hat and tipped it to her. At the greeting her pale face suddenly blushed a blazing red, and her lonely smile dissolved into a sumptuous giggle.

  From then on Okada made a point of greeting her when he passed by.

  Chapter Three

  Okada was a big fan of Gushoshin magazine, and he could recite the entirety of Taitetsuiden from memory. Moreover it seemed he had, for years, harbored an interest in the martial arts that he had been unable, for one reason or another, to act upon. After joining the rowing team, and with the support of his teammates, he quickly improved enough to represent the school in competitions. No doubt this rapid progress was indebted to his latent interest in the martial arts.

  Okada had other pieces he enjoyed in the Gushoshin magazine. No doubt the sentimental, fatalistic imaginations of the so-called geniuses of the Ming and Ch’ing dynasties commanded considerable influence over his view of women. The ideal woman was perfectly composed and lovely in all situations. The ideal woman could fix her hair with the very angel of death at her door. The ideal woman should, in fact, be little more than a beautiful creature, an object to be loved.

  Having, for a fair amount of time then, become accustomed to tipping his hat to the woman at the window, my readers may be surprised that he never went out of his way to meet her. Both the appearance of the house and of the woman herself led him to imagine her a kept woman—a fact that did not particularly bother him. He did not know her name, nor did he make an effort to learn it. He had considered searching out a name plate near the entrance to the property, but whenever she was sitting at the window he held back—and when she wasn’t there he held back for fear of the neighbors’ prying eyes. In the end, he never looked to see what was written on the small wooden plaque that rested in the shadows of the eves.

  Chapter Four

  The woman at the window was in a predicament which forms the core of this story, which made a protagonist of my friend Okada. It is therefore a matter of convenience and necessity that I clarify her situation before continuing.

  The roots of the story reach back to when the medical school was still in Shitaya. The building was covered in grey tiles, which were subsequently covered again with stucco, divi
ding the wall into sprawling grids like the surface of a go board. The barracks of the neighboring Todo mansion had been renovated into boarding houses for the students and, if you ’ll forgive the expression, a glance inside would assure the casual passerby that the students had taken to living like beasts. The large squares of the grid were broken in places by gaping windows, which were little more than lines of wooden bars , thick as a man’s wrist. If you were to search out such windows now, they could perhaps only be found on the remaining watchtowers of the old Edo castle. Indeed, the lion and tiger cages at the Ueno zoo were constructed with a far more delicate hand.

  There were groundskeepers at the boarding house. They handled most of the shopping for the students. The students typically called for yokan and candies. For the sake of historical accuracy and future readers, perhaps I should note that the yokan was composed of roasted potatoes and the candies of broad beans. The groundskeeper ran these errands for a fee of two sen or so.

  Among the groundskeepers was a man named Suezo. The rest of them all kept their faces prickly and unkempt as chestnut hulls, their mouths in a perpetual state of slack-jaw. In comparison, Suezo was always clean-shaven and proper. The others came in wrinkled cotton kimonos, Suezo appeared clean and neat—occasionally he came wearing silk.

  I am not sure who started the rumor, but eventually I heard that if you didn’t have money, Suezo would lend you some cash. Of course they were small sums, 50 sen here, one yen there. The sums grew to five yen, ten yen, and Suezo would then ask the students to write a contract and affix it with their seal. Soon enough, he was including impressive interest rates in said contracts, and established himself as a loan shark to be reckoned with. Can one amass a fortune from simple, two sen loans? Apparently so. When one truly devotes their energies to one goal, perhaps all is possible.