AI-Generated Graded Readers 　　Masaru Uchida, Gifu University 　　 　　Publication webpage: 　　https://www1.gifu-u.ac.jp/~masaru/a1/ai-generated_graded_readers.html 　　 　　Publication date: March 22, 2026 　　 　　About This Edition 　　 　　This book is a simplified English adaptation created for extensive reading practice. 　　The text was translated from Japanese into English and simplified using ChatGPT for intermediate English learners as part of an educational project. 　　 　　Target reading level: CEFR A2-B1 　　 　　The adaptation aims to improve readability while preserving the narrative content and spirit of the original work. 　　 　　Source Text 　　 　　Original work: Kokoro (こころ) 　　Author: Natsume Sōseki (夏目漱石) 　　 　　Source: Aozora Bunko (青空文庫) 　　https://www.aozora.gr.jp/ 　　 　　Original Japanese text available at: 　　https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000148/card773.html 　　 　　The original work is in the public domain in Japan. 　　 　　Copyright and Use 　　 　　This simplified English edition is an educational adaptation intended for non-commercial use only. 　　 　　The source text is provided by Aozora Bunko, a digital library that makes Japanese public domain literature freely available. 　　 　　For information about Aozora Bunko and its usage policies, see: 　　https://www.aozora.gr.jp/guide/kijyunn.html 　　 　　This edition is an AI-assisted translation and simplification prepared for educational purposes. 　　 　　Disclaimer 　　 　　This edition is an independent educational adaptation and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Aozora Bunko.

　　Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro (Simplified Edition, Adapted and Simplified from Japanese by ChatGPT)
　　
　　Part 1
　　
　　Sensei and I
　　
　　 I always called him Sensei. Even now, when I write about him, I do not want to use his real name. To me, that other name feels cold and far away. “Sensei” comes to my mind first, as naturally as breathing. When I remember his face, I also remember the strange feeling he gave me. That is why I begin this story with that one word.
　　 I first met Sensei in Kamakura. At that time I was still a young student, full of energy and not yet used to the world. A friend had gone there for sea bathing during the summer vacation, and he sent me a card asking me to come. I had little money, so I spent several days trying to collect enough for the trip. At last I reached Kamakura, happy to be away from Tokyo for a while. But before three full days had passed, everything changed.
　　 My friend received a telegram from home. It said that his mother was ill and that he must return at once. He did not really believe the message, because his family had long been trying to force him into a marriage he did not want. He was still young, and he disliked the whole matter. That was one reason he had come away from home during the summer. Still, if his mother was truly sick, he could not stay. After speaking with me about it, he finally decided to leave, and I was left there alone.
　　 I could have gone back to Tokyo, because school would not begin for some time. Yet I chose to stay in the same inn. My friend had money, but we were both students, so the place was not very different from what I could afford by myself. It stood in a quiet part of Kamakura, a little away from the more lively places. If I wanted modern amusements, I had to go a long way. But the sea was near, and that made it a good place for me.
　　 Every day I went down to the beach. I passed between old houses with dark roofs and came out onto the bright shore. The sand was crowded with summer visitors from the city, and at times the water itself seemed full of black heads moving up and down like a public bath. I knew no one there, yet I did not feel sad. There was pleasure in lying on the sand, letting the waves strike my knees, and moving in the sun among so many unknown people. It was in that busy and shining world that I found Sensei.
　　 Near the beach there were two tea houses where visitors left their things, rested, washed, and changed clothes. I had fallen into the habit of using one of them. One day, as I came up from the water with my body still wet and cool from the sea, I saw a man there who at once caught my eye. It was not Sensei alone who made me notice him. He was with a Western man, and that was unusual enough to draw my full attention. The sight of those two together fixed itself in my mind at once.
　　 The Western man had very white skin, brighter than anyone around him. He took off his light robe and stood facing the sea with only a small bathing garment on. That surprised me, because I had watched other Western visitors at another beach, and they had all worn more clothing. Women especially covered themselves carefully. Because I had seen that, this man seemed even stranger. Then he turned and said something to the Japanese man beside him, and that Japanese man rose, wrapped a towel around his head, and walked toward the water. That man was Sensei.
　　 I watched the two of them go down across the sand and enter the sea. They passed through the noisy crowd in the shallow water and swam farther out, until their heads grew small against the shining surface. Then they turned and came straight back to shore. After that they dried themselves, dressed quickly, and left without delay. I sat where I was and smoked, thinking about the Japanese man. His face seemed known to me, as if I had seen it somewhere before, but I could not place it.
　　 The next day I went back to the tea house at almost the same hour. I told myself it was only because I had nothing better to do, but I knew that was not the whole truth. This time the Western man did not appear. Sensei came alone, wearing a straw hat and moving with the same quiet, distant manner. When he swam out, I suddenly felt a strong wish to follow him. I threw myself into the water and tried to catch up, but he changed direction in a smooth curve and returned to shore from another side. By the time I came back, breathless and dripping, he had already dressed and gone.
　　 After that I saw him again and again. I went to the beach at the same time each day and watched for him. Yet no chance came for us to speak. He was not rude, but he was not social either. He arrived alone, entered the sea, came back, dressed, and left as if the people around him did not exist. One day, however, a small accident changed everything. Sand fell onto his robe, he shook it, and his glasses dropped through a crack beneath the bench.
　　 He began to search for them at once. I bent down, reached under the bench, and found them. When I handed them to him, he thanked me simply. The next day I followed him into the sea again, and this time I got close enough to swim beside him. We went out until there was no one near us, only the blue water, the bright sky, and the strong sun burning over everything. My body felt full of freedom and joy. Floating there, I called out, “This feels wonderful, doesn’t it?”
　　 Sensei stopped moving his arms and legs and lay on his back upon the waves. I copied him and looked up into the painful brightness above us. After a while he raised himself and said, “Shall we go back now?” I would have liked to stay longer, because I was strong and still wanted to play in the water, but I answered at once, “Yes, let us go.” We swam back together toward the shore. From that time on, I began to know him. Still, I did not yet know where he was staying.
　　 Two or three days later, when we met again at the tea house, he suddenly asked, “Do you plan to stay here much longer?” I was not prepared for the question and could only say, “I am not sure.” Then, feeling awkward under his faint smile, I asked, “And you?” That was the first time I called him Sensei aloud. The word came out naturally, and once I had used it, it seemed impossible to call him anything else. That very evening I went to visit him.
　　 The place where he stayed was not an ordinary inn. It stood in the grounds of a large temple and felt more like a quiet summer house than a public lodging. I learned that the people with him were not his family. Because I kept saying “Sensei,” he gave a small, troubled smile, and I explained that I often used that word for older men. Then I asked him about the Western man. Sensei told me a little about him and said, almost as if speaking to himself, that it was odd for a man like him, who had little to do even with Japanese people, to become close to a foreigner.
　　 At the end of our talk I told him that I felt sure I had seen him somewhere before. I secretly hoped he might say he felt the same about me, for youth is quick to imagine hidden ties. But Sensei was silent for a short time and then answered, “No, I do not think I have seen your face before. You must be mistaken.” His words were plain, and perhaps they were true. Yet I felt a small disappointment all the same. For some reason I had wanted him to remember me, though we had only just met.
　　
　　Part 2
　　
　　 I returned to Tokyo at the end of the month. Sensei had left Kamakura much earlier than I had, so by the time I came back there was only the city, my studies, and the memory of the sea. When we parted, I had asked him, “May I come and visit you from time to time?” He answered only, “Yes, come if you like.” I had thought we had become fairly close, so I had expected warmer words than that. His short reply hurt my pride a little, though I tried not to show it.
　　 This was not the first time Sensei had disappointed me in a small way. He often did something like that. Sometimes it seemed as if he noticed my disappointment, and sometimes it seemed as if he did not notice it at all. Yet those small hurts did not push me away from him. They had the opposite effect. Whenever he left me unsatisfied, I wanted to go nearer and understand him better.
　　 At that age I did not yet know why I felt so strongly drawn to him alone. I was young, but I did not feel this way toward every older man I met. Now, after everything that happened, I think I understand a little more. Sensei was not pushing me away because he disliked me. He was warning me, in his own quiet way, not to come too close to a man like himself. He seemed to think there was something within him that made him unworthy of another person’s trust.
　　 Of course I had meant to visit him as soon as I returned. But when I had been back in Tokyo for two or three days, the feeling I had carried from Kamakura began to fade. The city surrounded me again with its crowded streets, its students, its movement, and its restless energy. Each face I passed reminded me that a new school term would begin soon. My thoughts turned toward books, lectures, and the ordinary future of a young man. For a short while, I almost forgot Sensei.
　　 About a month after classes began, however, a kind of looseness came over my mind. I started walking through the streets with a dissatisfied face. My room felt empty when I looked around it. Something seemed to be missing, though I could not at first say what it was. Then Sensei’s face rose again in my thoughts, and I knew that I wanted to see him.
　　 The first time I went to his house, he was out. I went again the next Sunday, on a bright and beautiful day when the autumn air felt clear enough to wash the body clean. He was out again. This annoyed me for no good reason, because I remembered that in Kamakura he had said he was usually at home and disliked going out. Still, I did not leave at once. The maid who had once taken in my card looked at me, then went inside again, and after a moment a lady came out in her place.
　　 She was a beautiful woman. She spoke politely and told me where Sensei had gone. On a certain day every month, she said, he always visited a grave in the cemetery at Zoshigaya and placed flowers there. “He left only a few minutes ago,” she added, with a look that seemed almost sorry for me. I bowed and stepped back into the street. After I had walked a short distance toward the lively part of the city, another thought came to me, and I turned around at once.
　　 I told myself I was only going for a walk, but in truth I wanted to know whether I could catch him. I entered the cemetery by a path beside a field where young plants were growing and walked down a broad road lined with maple trees. The place was quiet, and even my own steps sounded strange to me there. Then, near a small tea shop at the far end, a man came out whom I knew at once to be Sensei. I went straight toward him until I could see the light shining on the edge of his glasses, and then I called out, “Sensei!”
　　 He stopped suddenly and looked at me. “How did you… how did you…” he said, repeating the same words twice in a tone that felt unnatural in the stillness of the cemetery. I could not answer at once. Then he asked, “Did you follow me here? Why?” His voice was calm, and yet there was a shadow on his face that I could not explain. I told him simply how I had gone to his house, heard from his wife where he was, and come after him.
　　 “Did my wife tell you whose grave I visit?” he asked. When I said no, he seemed to relax a little. “No, of course she would not,” he said. “There was no reason for her to tell a stranger.” I did not understand what he meant, but I did not press him. We walked out together between rows of graves. Some were Christian graves with foreign names, some belonged to officials, and some were old Buddhist markers with solemn words cut into the stone, and I made foolish comments about their different shapes and styles, as young men often do when they feel uneasy.
　　 Sensei listened for a while without smiling. At last he said, “You have never thought seriously about death.” His words ended my little observations at once. We walked on in silence until we came under a great ginkgo tree. Looking up into its branches, he said, “A little later, this place will be beautiful. The leaves will all turn yellow, and the ground around here will be covered in gold.” I understood then that he knew the place in every season. When we left the cemetery and came out to the road, I asked him whether the grave belonged to a relative, and he answered no. We walked on for some time before he added, almost as if the words had been forced back out of him, “It is the grave of a friend.”
　　 From that time on I began to visit him regularly. He was at home each time I went, and the more often I saw him, the more often I wished to go again. Yet his manner toward me changed very little. He was always quiet, sometimes so quiet that it felt almost lonely to sit with him. There was still that strange quality in him that made him hard to approach, and yet impossible not to approach. I felt, though I could not then have explained it, that he was a man who wanted human closeness and at the same time could not open his arms and receive it.
　　 Sometimes, while he was sitting calmly before me, a dark expression would suddenly pass over his face like the brief shadow of a bird crossing a window. It would appear and disappear almost at once. I had first seen it in the cemetery when I called out to him without warning, and later I forgot it. But one evening, late in the warm days of autumn, the memory of the great ginkgo tree came back to me. Counting the days, I realized that his next monthly visit to the grave would come only three days later, on an afternoon when my classes ended early. So I asked him, “Sensei, have the leaves at Zoshigaya fallen already?”
　　 “Not all of them yet,” he answered, looking steadily at my face. His eyes remained on me, and so I spoke again at once. “The next time you go there, may I come with you? I should like to walk there with you.” He replied, “I go there to visit a grave, not to take a walk.” I laughed and said that he could do both on the same day, but he did not answer. After a little while he said, with quiet insistence, “Mine is a real visit to the grave.” There was something almost childlike in the firmness with which he separated the two things.
　　 Still, I was not ready to give up. “Then let me come for the grave visit,” I said. “I will visit the grave too.” To me there was hardly any difference between walking and paying respects in such a place. But at those words his brows darkened, and a strange light came into his eyes. It was not exactly anger, nor hatred, nor fear, but something close to all three. In that moment I remembered clearly the shadow that had crossed his face when I surprised him in the cemetery. “I have a reason,” he said slowly, “a reason I cannot tell you, why I do not want to go there with anyone else. I have never even taken my wife there.”
　　
　　Part 3
　　
　　 I found his refusal strange, but I let the matter drop. At that age I was not going to his house in order to study him like a subject in a book. I only wanted to be near him. Looking back now, I think that was one of the best things in my younger self. If my curiosity had turned cold and sharp, if I had pressed him and tried to open his secrets by force, the warm human tie between us would probably have been cut at once.
　　 After that I began to visit him two or three times a month, and sometimes even more often. One day, when my visits had clearly become frequent, he suddenly asked, “Why do you come so often to the house of a man like me?” I answered, “There is no special reason. Am I a trouble to you?” “No,” he said, “I do not mean that.” There was no sign of annoyance in him, and I knew already that his circle of friends was very small.
　　 He had a few old school friends in Tokyo, but only a few, and even with them he did not seem very close. Now and then I met younger men from his home province in his room, but they too seemed to stand farther from him than I did. “I am a lonely person,” he said. “That is why I am glad when you come. That is why I asked the question.” I said, “Then why ask it at all?” and he answered only by looking at me and asking, “How old are you?”
　　 This exchange made little sense to me then, but it did not keep me away. Within four days I was at his house again. As soon as he came into the room, he smiled and said, “You have come again.” “Yes, I have,” I answered, and I smiled too. Had another man spoken that way, I might have felt offended. But from Sensei the words gave me pleasure.
　　 That evening he repeated, “I am a lonely person.” Then he added, “Perhaps you are lonely too. The difference is that I am old enough to stay still in my loneliness, while you are young and must move. You want to move as far as you can. You want to throw yourself against something.” I said, perhaps a little proudly, “I am not lonely at all.” “Young people are lonelier than they know,” he replied. “If that is not true, why do you keep coming to see me?”
　　 Then he said something I did not understand fully at the time. “Even after meeting me, some part of you is probably still lonely,” he said. “I do not have the power to pull that loneliness out by the root. One day you will have to turn toward the wider world and open your hands there. When that day comes, your feet will no longer bring you to my door.” He smiled as he said this, but it was a sad smile. His words touched me, though I did not know how to answer them.
　　 His prediction did not come true, at least not then. I kept going to his house, and after a while I began to eat meals there. As a natural result, I also began speaking more with his wife. Before that time I had not known many women closely. I was not cold toward them, but my life had given me little chance for real friendship with any woman. Sensei’s wife remained in my mind above all as a beautiful person, quiet and gentle, and somehow always seen through the fact that she was his wife.
　　 One evening Sensei gave me sake. His wife sat near us and filled our cups. Sensei looked happier than usual and said to her, “You should drink too.” He held out his own cup, and after refusing once, she took it with some unwillingness and touched it lightly to her lips. She said, “How strange. You almost never tell me to drink.” He answered, “Because you do not like it. But once in a while it is good. It can make a person feel better.”
　　 She smiled a little and said, “It does not make me feel better. It only makes me uncomfortable. But you look very pleased tonight after a little drink.” “Sometimes I feel very pleasant,” he said. “But not always.” “Then you should drink a little every night,” she said. “That would be better, because then you would not feel so lonely.” Their house held only the two of them and a maid, and it was usually so quiet that at times I felt as if only Sensei and I were inside it.
　　 “It would be good if there were a child,” his wife said, turning toward me. I answered politely, “Yes, it would,” but in truth I felt no deep sympathy, because I was still young and had never thought seriously about children. Sensei said, “Then shall we adopt one?” His wife answered, “But an adopted child is not the same, is it?” Then Sensei said, “We can never have a child, no matter how long we wait.” I asked, “Why not?” and he laughed in a high voice and said, “Because it is heaven’s punishment.”
　　 As far as I could see, they were a good husband and wife. He called her by name in a gentle voice, and she answered him with a natural softness that seemed full of trust. They sometimes went together to concerts or to the theater, and once or twice they even traveled for a few days. Yet there was one exception that stayed in my mind. One day, when I came to the entrance as usual, I heard voices from inside, and I quickly understood that they were not speaking calmly. The man’s voice rose high enough for me to know it was Sensei, and the other voice, lower and broken as if close to tears, seemed to be his wife’s.
　　 I stood there in great uncertainty and at last went back to my lodging without entering. A strange anxiety came over me. I tried to read, but I could not take in the words. About an hour later, Sensei came under my window and called my name. When I opened it, he looked up and said, “Come for a walk.” I still had on the same clothes I had worn when I returned, so I went out at once and joined him.
　　 That night we drank beer together. Sensei was not a strong drinker. He could not go on drinking until he forced himself into cheerfulness, as some men can. After a while he said with a bitter smile, “It will not do tonight.” I asked, “You cannot become cheerful?” because the scene at his house was still stuck in my mind like a bone in the throat. Then he said first, before I could ask, “My wife and I had a small quarrel. I excited my nerves over a foolish matter.”
　　 I wanted to ask what the quarrel had been about, yet the word itself felt hard to speak. He understood my silence and continued, “My wife misunderstands me. Even when I tell her she is mistaken, she will not accept it, and then I lose my temper. If I were really the sort of man she fears I am, I would not suffer so much.” He would not explain the misunderstanding, and I could only listen. We walked for a long time in silence before he suddenly said, “I should not have gone out in anger. She must be worrying now. Women are pitiful creatures. My wife has no one to depend on but me.”
　　 When we reached the corner near my lodging, I said, “Shall I go with you to your gate?” He stopped me at once and raised his hand. “No, it is late. Go home quickly. I too will go home quickly, for my wife’s sake.” Those last words warmed my heart and let me sleep in peace that night. Later, after the storm between them had clearly passed, Sensei said to me in a serious voice, “In this world I know only one woman as a woman, and that is my wife. She too thinks there is only one man for her, and that man is me. In that sense, we ought to be the happiest pair alive.” He did not say that they were happy. He said only that they ought to be. That difference stayed in my mind.
　　
　　Part 4
　　
　　 Some time after that, I went to the house one morning and found Sensei away again. He had gone to Shinbashi to see off a friend who was leaving Japan by ship from Yokohama. He had already told me to come at that hour because I wished to ask him about a certain book, and before leaving he had said that I should wait for him. So I was shown into the room and sat there with his wife. By then I was no longer the shy youth who had first come from Kamakura. I had grown used to the house, and I spoke with her freely.
　　 We talked for a while about simple things, but I remember only one part of that talk now. I had already learned that Sensei had finished the university and that he had once had the education needed for public work. Yet he did nothing. He did not teach, he did not write for the world, and he did not hold any post. I had often felt this as a waste, and that morning, while waiting for him, I asked his wife, “Why does Sensei stay at home all the time? Why does he not go out and do some work in the world?”
　　 She answered at once, “He cannot. That kind of thing does not suit him.” I asked whether he had perhaps decided that ordinary work was foolish or unworthy. She shook her head and said she could not explain it in such clear terms. “I think he wishes to do something,” she said. “But for some reason he cannot. That is why I pity him.” I asked whether his health was bad, but she said he had no illness at all. Then, with real sorrow in her voice, she added, “That is why it troubles me so much. If I understood the reason, I should not worry like this.”
　　 Her sympathy was very deep, though there was still a small soft smile near her lips. I sat there with a serious face, feeling that she loved him more warmly than I had guessed. Then, as if something had suddenly returned to her mind, she said, “He was not like this when he was young. He was completely different then.” I asked, “When you say young, do you mean his student days?” “Yes,” she said. “His student days.” I asked one step further, “Did you know him already in those days?” At once her face turned a little red, and she gave me no more.
　　 Since that moment, I often wondered about their marriage. Sensei never told me the history of it, and his wife did not tell me either. At times I thought this was only modesty, the restraint of older people who did not wish to speak openly of love before a younger man. At other times I judged them less kindly and thought that both belonged to an earlier age, one that could not speak honestly about such things. In either case, I imagined that there had once been a bright and beautiful romance behind the quiet life of that house. I was not wrong, but I understood only half of the truth.
　　 The hidden half, which I did not yet know, was tragedy. Even now, as I write, I must not explain that tragedy too soon. It stood like a dark wall behind their marriage, and the wife still knew nothing of it. Sensei kept it hidden from her to the end. Rather than destroy her peace by telling her everything, he chose first to destroy himself. At that time, however, I knew none of this clearly, and so my thoughts about them were still warm, uncertain, and full of guesses.
　　 One spring day, when the cherry blossoms were in full beauty, I went out with Sensei to Ueno. Everywhere around us the air was bright, the paths were crowded, and faces looked cheerful under the falling light petals. There we saw a young man and woman walking close together beneath the trees. They were so clearly happy with each other that many people watched them with more attention than they gave to the blossoms. Sensei looked at them and said, “They seem like a newly married pair.” I answered, “Yes, they look very close and happy.”
　　 He did not smile. Instead, he turned his steps away, as though he wished to put them outside his field of sight. After a little while he asked me suddenly, “Have you ever been in love?” I answered, “No.” Then he asked, “Do you want to be?” I could not answer at once. At last I said something weak, and he looked at me and said, “You laughed at that couple just now. There was coldness in your voice. A man who has already known the joy of love speaks more warmly.”
　　 I denied that I had meant anything so hard. But he went on in the same quiet tone, “You are not satisfied. You wish for something and cannot find it. That is why your voice sounded the way it did.” Then, after a pause that seemed to tighten the air around us, he added, “But remember this. Love is a sin. Do you understand?” Those words struck me so sharply that I lost my answer. They were not the sort of words I had expected to hear under spring blossoms among crowds of happy people.
　　 We walked on until the flowers were behind us and the road had grown quieter. Then I asked, “Is love really a sin?” “Yes,” he said. “Certainly.” His voice was strong, almost harder than before. I asked why, but he answered in a strange way. He said I would understand in time, perhaps that I already understood without knowing it, because my heart was already moving toward love. I searched inside myself and found nothing clear there, and so I told him that my heart held no particular object and that I was hiding nothing from him.
　　 “That is exactly why it moves,” he said. “If it had an object, it might become calm. Because it has none, it reaches out.” I replied that even if I was restless, that did not mean love. Then he said one of the strangest things I had yet heard from him. “It is the first step toward love,” he said. “You came to me because something in you was unsatisfied. First you move toward a man like me. Later you will move toward a woman.” I felt a sudden sadness at these words, as if he were already preparing to send me away from his side.
　　 I told him that I had no wish to leave him. But he paid little attention to that answer. Instead he said, “With me there is no danger, because I cannot satisfy you as a man. There are reasons why I can never do that. But when a person is caught by long black hair, then danger begins.” I understood his image only in imagination, not from experience, and his use of the word “sin” still remained dark to me. So I said, with some irritation, “Sensei, either explain clearly what you mean by sin, or let us leave the subject here until I can understand it myself.”
　　 He seemed sorry at once. “You are right,” he said. “I thought I was telling you the truth, but I was only troubling you.” We walked quietly beside a fence, and through its gaps I could see a deep garden thick with bamboo grass. Then, quite suddenly, he asked, “Do you know why I visit that grave in Zoshigaya every month?” Since he knew very well that I could not answer, the question only confused me more. He seemed to realize this at once and said, “No, this too will only trouble you. We must stop here. Still, remember one thing. Love is a sin. And at the same time it is sacred.”
　　 Those final words did not make the matter clearer. They made it deeper and more difficult. How could one thing be both sinful and sacred? I turned the question over in my mind, but no answer came. Sensei, for his part, said nothing more about love that day. Yet from then on I felt more strongly than ever that some real event, some painful living fact, lay hidden beneath all his thoughts. He was not merely a man who had read books and formed opinions. He was a man who had suffered, and what he had suffered was still alive within him.
　　
　　Part 5
　　
　　 One day I went to the house in the morning and found that Sensei was out again. He had gone to Shinbashi to see off a friend who was leaving Japan by ship. Before going, he had told me to come at the usual hour and to wait for him if he was late. So I was shown into the sitting room and left there with his wife. By that time I was already a university student, and I no longer felt as awkward in her presence as I once had.
　　 While we waited, I asked her something that had long been in my mind. “Why does Sensei stay at home all the time?” I said. “Why does he not do some work?” She answered at once, “He cannot.” I asked whether that meant poor health, but she said no, his health was not bad at all. Then she added, in a voice full of real pity, “That is why it troubles me. If he were ill, I could understand. But he is not ill.”
　　 I pressed her a little more. “Was he always like this?” I asked. She shook her head and said, “No. He was very different when he was young.” “When he was a student?” I asked. “Yes,” she said. “In his student days.” Then I asked the natural question. “Did you know him then?” At once a light color rose to her face, and she gave me no clear answer.
　　 That small change in her face stayed with me after I left the house. I already knew that she was from Tokyo and that Sensei came from another part of the country, so it did not seem likely that they had known each other through family ties in childhood. From then on I often wondered about their marriage. I imagined, as a young man naturally would, that there must once have been some bright and beautiful love story between them. What I did not yet understand was that love could carry tragedy inside it like poison hidden in sweet water.
　　 Around that time another line of thought also grew stronger in me. Sensei’s strange view of life did not seem to come from books alone. He was certainly a man who thought deeply. He could sit still, look at the world, and shape an idea with a calm and exact mind. Yet I could not believe that quiet thinking by itself had made him what he was. Something real, something sharp enough to wound a living heart, seemed to lie under all his words.
　　 At last I began to speak to him more directly about it. “Sensei,” I said one day, “your way of thinking about people did not come from reason alone.” He looked at me, half surprised and half amused. “What makes you think so?” he asked. “Because your words feel lived,” I answered. “They do not feel borrowed. There is something behind them.” He stayed silent for a while, and then he said, “Yes. There is something behind them.”
　　 After that, he spoke more plainly than before, though not yet plainly enough to satisfy me. “I do not trust human beings,” he said. “Do you think that means I hate them? No. It is because I know them too well. And I know myself too well too.” I told him that this seemed too hard a judgment. He replied, “You are young, so you still divide the world too neatly. You think there are good people on one side and bad people on the other. But it is not so simple.”
　　 Then he said something that made a deep mark on me. “A person may seem good,” he said, “and perhaps in many matters he truly is good. But place that same person in a certain position, tempt him in a certain way, and you may see another face appear. That is why I do not trust people. When I say people, I include myself.” I listened in silence. His voice was not loud, and yet every word seemed to strike harder than many strong speeches I had heard from other men.
　　 I argued with him as well as I could. “Then must one live without trusting anyone?” I asked. He answered, “Perhaps that would be safest.” I said, “But that would also be miserable.” At this he gave one of his sad smiles and said, “Exactly. It is miserable. But there is another misery which is worse. It is to trust, to respect, to depend on another person, and later to receive insult from that very person. I would rather bear the loneliness I know now than the deeper loneliness that comes after betrayal.”
　　 These words were too heavy for me then, but I felt their weight even without fully understanding them. “You speak as if this has happened to you,” I said. He did not deny it. Instead he looked away and said, “I am speaking from experience.” Then, after a pause, he added, “That is why I do not want too much respect from you. To receive respect now only to lose it later would be painful for both of us.” The seriousness of his tone shocked me more than the words themselves.
　　 I protested at once. “You talk as if I must one day despise you,” I said. “I cannot imagine such a thing.” He answered, “You cannot imagine it because you do not know me.” I said that knowing him was exactly what I wanted. At that he gave me a long, searching look. “You are bold,” he said. “Or perhaps only sincere. But sincerity is also dangerous.” I replied that I wanted truth, not polite phrases, and that thoughts cut off from the life that produced them had little value for me.
　　 He seemed troubled by my answer, almost as if I had touched a place that must not yet be touched. “You want my past as well as my ideas,” he said. “Yes,” I answered. “Without the past, the ideas remain only empty forms.” He held the cigarette in his hand and looked at me with a face that had suddenly grown pale. “You are very earnest,” he said at last. “If I ever tell my story, I must tell it all. But if you hear it, you may wish you had not.”
　　 After that conversation I could no longer look at the house in the same simple way. Each time I saw his wife, I wondered whether she knew the source of his suffering. She always seemed calm, and I had little chance to speak with her alone, so I could not judge her heart. Yet the question remained. Had some tragic event passed between these two people before marriage, or around it, or inside it? I remembered again his strange words in the flower season: love is a sin, and at the same time sacred.
　　 I began to suspect that some powerful love affair lay behind everything. That guess was not entirely false. But I still imagined only half of the truth, and the half I imagined was the brighter half. I thought of romance touched by pain, not of happiness built over a hidden wound. Sensei continued to sit before me as a quiet thinker, but now I saw more clearly that his thought had been burned into him by life. Something had once happened that made him doubt others, fear respect, and keep even kindness at a distance.
　　
　　Part 6
　　
　　 After that, I found myself watching Sensei’s wife more carefully each time I saw her. I wondered whether he showed the same dark restraint to her that he showed to me. If he did, I wondered how she endured it. Yet whenever I met her, she looked natural and calm. Because I rarely spoke with her alone, I could not reach any certain answer.
　　 At the same time, my thoughts about Sensei grew even more troubled. Could a man become like that only by sitting still and thinking about life? He certainly had the nature of a thinker. He could remain quiet for a long time and look inward with a severe eye. But I could not believe that mere thought, however deep, had made him what he was. His attitude seemed to have been shaped by something lived, something that had struck him in his own flesh and blood.
　　 Then chance gave me another long talk with his wife. There had been several thefts in the neighborhood, all in the early evening, and the house had become uneasy because of them. On the very night when Sensei had to go out to dine with an old friend from his home province, he asked me to come and stay until he returned. I accepted at once. When I arrived, the light was only beginning to fade, and the house already felt more silent than usual.
　　 Sensei had left before I came. His wife led me into the study and placed me near the brazier. The room held a table, a chair, and many books in glass-fronted cases, their fine backs shining under the electric light. She told me to read something while I waited, then went away. I sat stiffly, smoking and listening. Her voice rose now and then from the kitchen area as she spoke with the maid, and then even that stopped, leaving the whole house so still that I felt less like a guest than like a man set there to catch an unseen danger.
　　 After half an hour she appeared again at the door with a cup in her hand. She looked at me with mild surprise and said, “You are sitting there like a very formal visitor.” I answered that I was not uncomfortable, only alert because I was waiting for the thief. She laughed and said the study was a poor place for guarding a house, since it stood in a quiet corner. Then she invited me into the dining room, where the kettle was singing over a long brazier and the air felt warmer and more human.
　　 We drank tea there together. She herself did not touch her cup, saying she must not become sleepy. I asked whether Sensei often went out to such dinners, and she answered that he did so very rarely and that recently he had come to dislike seeing people more and more. Encouraged by her tone, I said, “Then you alone are the exception.” She replied, “No, I too am only one of the people he dislikes.” I laughed and said that could not be true. “That is only what you say,” I told her. “The truth is that once he loved you, the rest of the world became unimportant.”
　　 She answered with more sharpness than I had expected. “You men enjoy playing with empty cups and empty arguments,” she said. “One could just as easily say the opposite: that because he came to dislike the world, he came to dislike me as well.” Her words struck me, though they were not violent. There was nothing showy in her intelligence. She did not argue to display herself. Rather, she seemed to value something deeper and quieter in the heart, and because of that, her words carried more weight than cleverness alone would have done.
　　 Wanting to restore the gentler mood, I asked her to let me continue seriously. She agreed, and so I said, “If you were suddenly taken away from him, do you think Sensei could go on living as he does now?” She answered that only Sensei himself could know such a thing. I pressed her, asking not for his view but for hers. Then, after some hesitation, she said with great calm, “From my side, I believe he would only become more unhappy. Perhaps he could not live at all. It sounds proud, but I truly believe I do as much as any person could to make him happy.”
　　 I told her that such faith must surely reach his heart. She shook her head. “That is another matter,” she said. “I do not think he hates me. He has no reason to hate me. But he has come to dislike human beings. If that is true, then I too must stand among those human beings.” Only then did I fully understand what she meant when she said she was among those he disliked. She did not mean that he treated her coldly as a husband. She meant that she felt herself shut out by the same dark wall that stood between him and the rest of the world.
　　 The conversation grew more serious. I reminded her that she had once said he had not always been as he was now. She said again that in earlier days he had been a far more dependable, hopeful man. When I asked what had changed him, she answered that it had not happened all at once, but little by little. Then I pressed further and asked whether she truly knew no cause. Her face changed, and she said she had begged him many times to tell her everything, but he always answered that the fault lay in himself and that there was nothing for her to worry about.
　　 Suddenly she looked at me and asked, “Do you think I am to blame?” I answered no at once, but she begged me not to hide the truth if I thought otherwise. She said that to believe herself the cause of his suffering was more painful than being cut by a knife. Then, with tears rising in her eyes, she told me how she had once said to him, “If there is some fault in me, tell me plainly. If I can correct it, I will.” But he had replied only, “You have no fault. The fault is all in me.” When she repeated those words, her eyes filled completely.
　　 Up to that point I had listened to her almost as to a clear-minded judge of Sensei’s condition. Now her grief itself began to move me more than her understanding. Her trouble lay in this: she saw no open quarrel, no visible wrong, and yet she felt that something stood between them. Sensei remained kind and gentle. Day by day he behaved like a good husband. And still, inside all that daily warmth, a hidden knot seemed to remain. She had carried that knot in silence for a long time, and on that night she opened it before me.
　　 “There is one thing I have thought of,” she said at last, lowering her voice. “If it is truly the cause, then at least I may know that I am not to blame.” I asked what it was. She hesitated and said she could not tell me everything, because she had promised not to. Then, after making me promise to judge as fairly as I could, she told me that when Sensei was still at the university, he had one very close friend. Just before graduation, that friend died suddenly. Then she bent nearer and added in an almost secret voice, “It was not a natural death.”
　　 Those words startled me. She went on to say that from after that death, Sensei had gradually begun to change. She did not know why the friend had died, and she was not sure Sensei himself fully understood it either. But if his change began there, then perhaps that event stood at the root of everything. I asked at once whether the grave in Zoshigaya was that friend’s grave. She refused to answer directly and only repeated that such matters were not to be spoken of. Then she looked at me with painful eagerness and asked, “Can a man change so much only because he has lost one dear friend?”
　　 My own judgment leaned toward no. Yet I could not speak strongly, because I felt that behind what she knew there must lie some deeper fact still hidden from both of us. I tried as well as I could to comfort her, but my comfort had no firm ground under it. She herself knew only part of the truth and could tell me even less than that part. So the two of us, each uncertain, kept talking about the same question as if we were floating on moving water and trying to hold each other steady.
　　 At about ten o’clock we heard Sensei’s shoes at the entrance. At once all the sorrow and questioning vanished from her face. She rose quickly and went to meet him before he had fully opened the door. When I followed after her, I found him in good spirits. She too now looked almost bright. Because I still remembered the tears gathered in her eyes only a short while before, this sudden change struck me deeply. Yet instead of making me distrust her, it strangely relieved me. I thought perhaps I had taken the evening too seriously and that their life together was more secure than I had feared.
　　 Sensei laughed and asked whether the thief had come. Then he joked that perhaps I felt disappointed because nothing had happened. When I rose to leave, his wife thanked me and said almost in the same joking tone that it was a pity a thief had not come after all. She wrapped the remaining cakes in paper and put them into my hand. Carrying them in my sleeve, I hurried through the cold and twisting streets toward the brighter part of the city, thinking that whatever shadow lay hidden in that house, the man and woman within it still seemed, to outward sight at least, like a fortunate pair.
　　
　　Part 7
　　
　　My Parents and I
　　
　　 Winter had already come when I received a letter from home. My mother wrote that my father’s illness was not going well. She did not say that death was near at hand, but she added that he was old now, and that if I could possibly arrange it, I should come home for a while. My father had long suffered from a disease of the kidneys. Because it had gone on slowly for years, we had all grown used to it and believed that, with care, he would continue much as before.
　　 Yet my mother’s letter troubled me. I took it at once to Sensei and told him that I might have to leave Tokyo for a time. I also asked, with some embarrassment, whether he could lend me the money for the journey. He agreed at once and had his wife bring out the amount I needed. She placed the money neatly on white paper and said, with real concern, “You must be anxious.”
　　 While we were speaking, Sensei asked careful questions about my father’s condition. He seemed to know a good deal about that illness, more than I had expected. He told me of a military officer who had seemed well enough to those around him and yet died almost at once, in such a sudden way that even the wife sleeping beside him had no chance to nurse him. The story alarmed me so much that I asked whether my father might die in that manner. Sensei answered more gently then and said that if the doctor was not yet seriously worried, there was no need for me to imagine the worst.
　　 I left Tokyo that very night. When I reached home, my father was not as bad as I had feared. He had been lying in bed, but after I arrived he insisted on getting up. He sat on the floor and said that everyone had made too much of a small matter. My mother protested, but he seemed almost pleased to show strength before me, as if my coming back had given him new energy.
　　 My brother lived far away in Kyushu, and my sister had married into another province. In practical terms, I was the only child who could easily return home when needed. That fact seemed to comfort my father. Though he said aloud that it was a pity for me to leave my studies for such a light illness, I could see that my presence satisfied him deeply. He walked slowly through the house, rested when he needed to, and showed no sign of faintness or sickness except for the bad color of his face, which had long been there.
　　 I wrote at once to Sensei to thank him for the loan. I said I would bring the money back after the New Year when I returned to Tokyo. I also described my father’s condition in a hopeful tone and added a few words asking after Sensei’s own cold. I did not expect an answer. Yet one came, brief and simple, and perhaps because it was the first real letter I had ever received from him, it gave me more pleasure than a longer letter from another person might have done.
　　 During those days at home, my father was not strong enough to go out, so I often sat with him and played shogi. We placed the board on the raised frame of the brazier and drew our hands out from under the quilt each time we moved a piece. Sometimes a captured piece slipped away and disappeared until my mother found it in the ashes with the fire tongs. These small accidents made the game faintly amusing, but after a while even that amusement grew dull to me.
　　 While I sat facing my father over the board, my thoughts often turned to Tokyo. I thought of the city, of youth, of the life that was still opening before me, and also of Sensei. It seemed strange to compare the two men, since one was my real father and the other nothing more than an older acquaintance. Yet I could not help doing so. My father, gentle and harmless as he was, gave me less inner movement than Sensei, who did almost nothing in the world and yet had come to hold a deep place inside me.
　　 The longer I remained at home, the clearer this difference became. At first my parents had welcomed me warmly, as families always do when a son returns after an absence. But after some days the novelty faded. I too changed in their eyes from a guest back into an ordinary member of the house. At the same time, I felt more and more that I had brought home from Tokyo something they could not understand. I kept it hidden as well as I could, but it still stood between us.
　　 Since my father’s condition did not worsen, I decided to go back before the winter vacation ended. When I said so, both he and my mother objected. They asked why I was in such a hurry and said I could remain four or five days more without harm. But I did not change my mind. I felt restless there. The quiet rooms, the games of shogi, the slow talk of the household, and the uncertainty of my own future all pressed on me at once.
　　 When I returned to Tokyo, the New Year decorations had already been taken down. The city looked cold and ordinary again. I went at once to Sensei’s house to return the money, and I also brought dried mushrooms from home, packed in a new gift box so that they would not seem too poor an offering. Sensei and his wife both asked after my father with real concern. While we were speaking, Sensei again described the danger of that illness and said that a man might die suddenly, even while those around him still thought him safe.
　　 These words made me uneasy for a moment, but the feeling did not remain. My father’s illness still did not seem immediately serious, and the stronger demand on me now was something else. I had to finish my graduation thesis by the end of April, and I had hardly begun. Other students had already gathered notes and material, while I had done little more than imagine my subject in the air. When I finally sat down in earnest, my courage failed almost at once.
　　 I made the problem smaller and decided that instead of building a great argument of my own, I would collect materials from books and draw a modest conclusion from them. Because my chosen topic was close to Sensei’s old field, I went to ask his advice. He kindly told me the names of useful books and even offered to lend me some. But he would not guide me further. He said he no longer read much, and that there was less shame in not knowing things than there had once been.
　　 His words did not strike me strongly at the time. I was too tired and too troubled by my own work. Then began a hard season of reading, writing, searching among shelves, and forcing myself forward day after day. Plum blossoms appeared, then talk of cherry blossoms, yet I scarcely noticed them. Until I had driven that thesis to its end, I did not cross Sensei’s threshold again.
　　
　　Part 8
　　
　　 At last I finished my thesis. The hard pressure that had held me for so many days suddenly left me, and I felt almost empty. Soon after that came the graduation ceremony. On the evening of that day I went to Sensei’s house, and they spoke kindly to me. His wife asked what I meant to do next, whether I would become a teacher or enter government service, but I could not answer clearly. I had finished my studies, yet I still had no fixed road before me.
　　 I said, half as a joke, that perhaps I had been too much influenced by Sensei. His wife laughed and said it was a poor kind of influence for a young man. Sensei only smiled in a quiet, tired way. I noticed again that he could congratulate me with his lips while keeping something cold at the bottom of his face. Yet even that coldness drew me toward him more strongly than open warmth from ordinary people. It seemed to me that he looked down on my graduation and yet understood life more deeply than all those who praised it.
　　 Two or three days before I left Tokyo, I had another meal there, and a strange question came up between Sensei and his wife. They spoke, almost lightly, of which of the two would die first. The words were simple, but they settled heavily in my mind. I was about to return to a father whose illness might at any time turn for the worse, and so that question did not leave me. As the train carried me home, I repeated it silently to myself and felt how helpless human beings were. We lived, feared, loved, and still could not know which one of us would go first.
　　 When I reached home, I was surprised. My father was not in bed looking like a dying man. He was out in the yard, busy with some small work, with an old straw hat on his head and a cloth hanging down behind it to keep off the sun. “So you are back,” he said. “Good, good. So you have graduated after all. Wait a moment. I shall wash my face and come in.” He went around toward the well as if nothing were seriously wrong with him.
　　 He repeated many times that my graduation was a fine thing. Hearing him say it again and again, I found myself comparing him with Sensei. The comparison was unfair, but at that age I did not see my own unfairness. I thought my father simple and country-minded, too easily pleased by something that happened every year to many students. At last I answered him rather sharply. “Graduating from a university is not such a great thing. Hundreds do it every year.”
　　 My father looked at me in a way that stopped me. Then he said that I had not understood him at all. He did not mean only that graduation itself was good. He meant that it was good for him, because he had thought he might die before he saw that day. He said that a father felt more joy in seeing his son finish school while he was still alive than in thinking it would happen later, after his own death. While he spoke, I grew ashamed. I saw that he had long been measuring his life against my future and had quietly feared that his time would end too soon.
　　 I took out my graduation certificate and showed it to him and my mother. It had been bent and pressed out of shape in my bag, and my father carefully tried to straighten it. Then he carried it to the alcove and placed it where everyone in the room could see it at once. On any other day I might have laughed or protested. That day I said nothing. I only watched while the paper leaned, slipped, and refused to stand as proudly as he wished.
　　 Later I drew my mother aside and asked how bad his illness truly was. She answered that he seemed little changed from before, but that such appearances could not be fully trusted. Then another matter arose. My parents wanted to invite relatives and a few others to mark my graduation. I did not want it. I said there was no need and that people would only talk because they had nothing better to do. My father said that country life was noisy with such obligations, and my mother added that he too had a place to keep in the eyes of others.
　　 We argued more than was necessary. I spoke too stiffly, as if logic alone could settle everything, and my father grew quiet in the face of my hard tone. At last I gave way. I said that if the gathering was for me, they should stop it, but if it was for their own standing among neighbors and relatives, then I had no right to oppose them. My mother spoke in a confused, hurried way, and my father said only, “Too much learning makes a man too full of argument.” Yet after that he softened again, asked me what day would suit, and together we fixed the date.
　　 Before that day arrived, a great piece of news spread through the whole country. It was the report that the Emperor had fallen ill. The moment that news entered our house, the little celebration we had been preparing for lost all shape and meaning. My father, sitting with his glasses on and the newspaper in his hand, said at once that we ought to refrain. He was no doubt thinking not only of the public event, but also of his own sickness. So the matter ended there, and the house returned to silence.
　　 In that old and overly large home, with so few people living in it, I opened my trunk and tried to read. But I could not settle. In Tokyo, in my boarding room above the noise of the streetcars, I had always felt a stronger pull of mind. Here the air itself seemed to loosen me. I leaned over my desk and fell half asleep. Sometimes I even brought out a pillow and lay down properly in the daytime. When I woke, the sound of cicadas filled my ears so suddenly and sharply that it seemed to break through the sleepy world like a hard tool.
　　 I wrote letters to friends. Some had stayed in Tokyo, and some had gone back to their own distant homes. Replies came from a few and not from others. The days passed in a slow and almost formless way. I had finished university, yet I had not begun anything new. My father moved in and out of weakness, sometimes looking so ordinary that hope returned to us, and sometimes sitting so still that I felt a small fear without wanting to admit it. The quiet of the house pressed on me from every side.
　　 In those hours I often felt that I had already stepped away from one life without yet entering another. Tokyo, with its movement, its work, and the shadow of Sensei, seemed far away and yet strangely more real than the rooms around me. At home there was duty, family feeling, and the smell of summer, but there was also a kind of waiting that wore down the spirit. So I lived from day to day without firmness, reading a little, sleeping too much, writing a few letters, and listening to the heavy summer sounds that seemed to say the same thing again and again.
　　
　　Part 9
　　
　　 In the middle of August, I received a letter from a friend. He wrote that there was an open place at a middle school in the country and asked whether I wanted it. He had first thought of taking it himself, but then a better chance had appeared somewhere else, so he kindly offered the first one to me. I answered at once and refused. I wrote that there were others who needed such work more than I did and that he should pass the opportunity to one of them.
　　 When I told my father and mother about this, neither of them seemed pleased that I had refused it. They both still hoped for something better, something more suitable for a university graduate. My father said that once I had finished school, I ought to become independent as soon as possible. He did not speak cruelly, but there was pressure in his voice. To him, a grown son without a position was not only a burden but also something hard to explain to other people.
　　 Then my mother brought up Sensei again. “Why do you not ask that gentleman you always speak of?” she said. She could imagine Sensei only as a man of influence, the kind who could arrange a place for a younger person. When my father asked what Sensei did, I answered, as I had before, “He does nothing.” My father looked displeased. To him, a man who did nothing was either useless or lazy, and he could not understand how such a person could deserve respect.
　　 In truth, I knew very well that Sensei was not the sort of man who could help me find employment. Still, to satisfy my parents and also to keep peace in the house, I wrote to him. I described my father’s illness in detail, explained the pressure I was under, and asked whether he could do anything for me. Even while writing, I believed he would not be able to help. Yet I did expect one thing from him, and that was a reply.
　　 No reply came. A week passed, and then more days passed, and still there was nothing. To my mother I said that Sensei was perhaps away from Tokyo for the summer and that his silence must have some simple cause. I said these things partly to calm her and partly to calm myself. Inwardly I felt both uneasy and disappointed. I did not want to believe that he was ignoring me, and yet I could not understand his silence.
　　 By the beginning of September, I had decided that I must return to Tokyo. I told my father that I needed to go back if I was ever to find the kind of position he wanted for me. He spoke of independence again and repeated that a graduate should not live forever on family support. I listened quietly, because I did not want to trouble him further. For all his complaints, I could see that he did not truly want me to go.
　　 Just when I was preparing to leave, he collapsed again. My mother called me in a frightened voice, and I found him weak and half-fallen after his bath. The next day he seemed better, and once again he said, “I am all right.” But I could not trust those words now, and I put off my departure. Then came another attack, and after that the doctor ordered complete rest and warned us to be ready for anything.
　　 We sent for my brother in Kyushu and for my sister’s husband, since my sister herself was expecting a child and could not travel safely. The house, which had been so quiet all summer, grew busy and unsettled. My father moved between hope and fear. At one moment he spoke as if he would recover and travel to Tokyo again; at another, he told us to care for our mother after his death. My brother and I even began, with shame in our hearts, to talk softly at night about what would happen to the house and family when he was gone.
　　 During this confused time a telegram arrived from Sensei. In our country town, even a telegram felt like a major event, and my mother looked at it as if it might change our whole situation. The message was short. It said only that Sensei wanted to see me and asked whether I could come to Tokyo. My mother was sure this meant he had found a position for me, but I was not so certain. Even so, with my father in such a state, I could not leave, and I sent back a reply saying that I was unable to come because of my father’s grave illness.
　　 Two days later another telegram came. This one said only that I need not come after all. That too seemed strange, though my mother still believed a useful letter would soon follow. Instead of a letter about work, my father’s condition worsened. His body grew weaker, his eating became difficult, and the newspaper he had so loved lay unopened beside him. Then, one day, in the middle of all this, a heavy registered packet arrived from Sensei.
　　 I could not open it at once, because my father needed me beside his bed. When I finally stole a little time and went to my room, I tore the wrapping and found many closely written pages inside. The very first page told me what it was. Sensei wrote that he was at last going to tell me the whole story of his past, the story he had once promised to speak aloud. Even then I did not understand why he had chosen to write instead of waiting for me.
　　 But as I turned the pages in great haste, a sentence near the end struck my eyes like a blow. He wrote that by the time this letter reached my hands, he would already be no longer in this world. In that instant, everything else disappeared. My father’s long illness, the talk of work, the heavy house, all of it fell behind a single terrible thought. After one last look at my father and a desperate, useless attempt to find the doctor, I left a short note for my family, ran to the station, and threw myself onto the Tokyo train with Sensei’s letter hidden inside my sleeve.
　　
　　Part 10
　　
　　Sensei and His Last Letter
　　
　　 You wrote to me two or three times during that summer. In one of those letters, you asked me to help you find a position in Tokyo. When I read it, I thought that I ought at least to send you a reply. Yet the truth is that I did nothing at all. I had no real power to help you, because I lived almost cut off from society, but that was not the deepest reason. At that time I myself was standing at the edge of a dark question and could hardly think of any other human being.
　　 I was asking myself how I ought to go on living. Should I continue to exist like some dried thing left among living men, or should I choose another road? Whenever I repeated that other possibility to myself, a chill ran through me. It was like running to the edge of a cliff and suddenly looking down into a bottomless valley. I was afraid, and yet I could not turn my eyes away. In such a state, your future, your work, and even your immediate needs faded almost completely from my sight.
　　 Still, my silence was wrong, and I ask your pardon for it now. Later I sent you a telegram because I wanted to see you. I also wished, at last, to tell you my whole past with my own mouth. But when your answer came, saying that you could not leave your father in his illness, I saw at once that I had been selfish. It was I who had once warned you how serious such an illness could be, and yet I had forgotten it when I called you back to Tokyo.
　　 After your last letter arrived, I tried to write to you. I even took up the pen, but I could not bring myself to send a small and ordinary reply. If I wrote, I wanted to write everything. At that time the hour for such a confession still seemed a little early to me, so I put the pen down again. Yet I could not truly abandon the task. Even when I stopped, I found myself wanting to begin again within the hour.
　　 There was another reason besides duty. I wanted to write because I wanted my past to be received by someone who might understand it. A man may keep his experience buried with him, and perhaps that is often best. But if there is one person able to receive it seriously, then the dead experience may still become a living lesson. I chose you because you once said that you wished to learn from life itself, not only from books or from arguments. That was why I decided to place my darkness in your hands.
　　 Do not be afraid of the darkness. Look at it calmly and take from it whatever truth you can. My darkness is not merely sadness. It is moral darkness, the darkness of a man who was born with a conscience and has suffered through it. Perhaps my ideas will seem old-fashioned to you, but they are my own, not borrowed clothes put on for a day. What I am about to tell you was not formed in lecture halls. It was formed in blood, betrayal, shame, and memory.
　　 I lost both my parents before I was twenty. My father died of typhoid, and my mother, who nursed him, caught the same disease and died soon after. I was their only son, and ours had been a house of some means, so until then I had grown up in generous ease. Looking back, I sometimes think that if even one of them had remained alive, I might have stayed a simpler and better man. But they were both taken, and I was left standing alone before a world I did not yet know.
　　 At my mother’s bedside, my uncle promised to care for everything. She pointed to me and tried to speak about my going to Tokyo, which had already been planned, and he answered quickly that he would see to all of it. After their deaths I had no choice but to trust him. He handled every matter, arranged the household, and made it possible for me to go on with my education. So I went to Tokyo and entered the higher school with a grateful heart, believing that my uncle was not only capable but noble.
　　 In those days I admired him deeply. My father had often praised him as a stronger and more active man than himself. My father was a quiet country gentleman who loved old books, paintings, flowers, and tea. My uncle was different, more energetic, more practical, and already involved in business and local politics. Yet the two brothers had been close, and because my father trusted him, I trusted him too. I not only believed in him, but felt proud to belong to him.
　　 When I returned home for my first summer vacation, my uncle and his family were living in our house, just as had been arranged before I left for Tokyo. I found the place more crowded and cheerful than when my parents had lived there, and I was pleased by that liveliness. My cousins welcomed me warmly, and my uncle gave me back what had once been my own room. There was almost nothing to disturb me. Only one thing cast a faint shadow over that summer.
　　 My uncle and aunt began speaking to me about marriage. They said I should marry young, return home in time, and continue the line of the family. At first I was merely surprised. When they repeated the matter, I refused more clearly. Their reason was simple enough in country terms, and I could not even call it unreasonable. Yet I had only just begun to taste freedom in Tokyo, and the future they described seemed so far away that I could not bring it near my heart.
　　 The next summer they returned to the same subject, but this time with a real bride in mind. It was my cousin, my uncle’s daughter. They said such a marriage would be convenient for both houses, and even added that my father had once spoken favorably of the idea. I could believe that he might have done so. Even then I did not suspect any low intention. I simply felt troubled, because I had not thought of her in that way and could not force myself to agree.
　　 When I went home for the third summer, I returned in the same innocent mood. I loved my native place, its air, its smell, and the memories of my parents that seemed to live there still. I believed that if I refused this unwanted marriage once more, the matter would end. But almost at once I felt a change in the household. My uncle no longer drew me to him warmly. My aunt seemed altered, my cousins too, and even the son who had once written to me in friendship appeared somehow different.
　　 I could not rest until I had thought about this change. At last I went alone to the graves of my father and mother and knelt there, half in grief and half in prayer. Something in me had opened suddenly, just as a boy’s eyes first open to beauty. I saw, all at once, that the faces around me were no longer the same faces I had trusted. Then a new fear entered me. I began to think that unless I learned the truth about my property and my position, I might lose not only my peace, but my whole future.
　　
　　Part 11
　　
　　 The feeling that had entered me beside my parents’ graves did not leave me. It followed me back into the house and sat with me at every meal. I began to watch my uncle more closely than before. Until then I had accepted his busyness as the natural way of an active man. Now that I wished to speak seriously about my position and property, that same busyness began to look like a method of escape.
　　 He was always going somewhere. If he spent two days in our house, he spent three in the town. He moved between the two places with a restless face and used the word “busy” so often that it became part of his breath. When I had no suspicion, I even admired this activity and thought it modern. But once I started looking at it with a different mind, I could see that each movement carried him away from me just when I wished to speak.
　　 Around that time I also heard a rumor that struck me sharply. An old school friend told me that my uncle kept a woman in the town. Such a thing, by itself, might not have been enough to shake me, for my uncle was a man of appetite and energy. Yet I had never heard a word of it while my father lived. The same friend added other things as well. He said that my uncle had once seemed close to failure in business, but in the last two or three years had suddenly begun to prosper again.
　　 That rumor entered my mind like a dark stain spreading in water. I began to connect things that I had not connected before. My uncle had pressed the marriage question on me more than once. His whole household had changed toward me after I refused it. He seemed unwilling to talk openly about money, accounts, or division. The more I thought, the more I felt that his kindness had not been kindness alone.
　　 At last I forced a direct discussion. To call it a discussion is almost too mild, because our talk naturally fell into something nearer a quarrel. He tried to treat me as a boy who knew nothing. I faced him from the first with suspicion already formed in my heart. Under such conditions, there was no hope of a calm settlement. Even before we had gone very far, I could feel that he was defending himself and that I was accusing him.
　　 He spoke cleverly, sometimes with laughter, sometimes with injured dignity, and sometimes with the rough patience older men use toward the young. I had neither his age nor his experience, but I had anger. I asked for clarity, numbers, and fairness. He gave me words. I asked again. He answered in a way that turned each answer into fog. What should have been plain grew less plain the more he spoke. By the end, I understood one thing clearly: I could not trust him.
　　 In that moment something hard and permanent took shape inside me. Up to then I had still hoped to save some image of him. After that, no such image remained. The man my father had trusted, the man my mother had turned to in her last fever, the man I had once been proud of, stood before me as my enemy. I do not mean that he openly declared himself my enemy. It was worse than that. He wore the face of a relative while acting against me.
　　 Once I reached that conclusion, my mind ran on without restraint. I did not merely think that my uncle had deceived me. I came to think that any human being, placed in the right position, would deceive me in the same way. My logic was simple and terrible. If even this man, praised so highly by my father and tied to me by blood, could betray me, then others would surely do no better. In that season of my life, distrust entered me not as a passing mood but as a principle.
　　 Even so, there remained practical matters. My uncle and his family gathered the property that was to come into my hands and arranged it in a form I could receive. But when I saw the total, it was far smaller than I had expected. I had two possible roads before me. I could accept what was given and go away in silence, or I could bring a public case against my uncle and fight him openly. I was angry enough for the second course, yet I hesitated.
　　 A lawsuit would consume time, strength, and money. I was still a student. The years I needed for study were precious, and I could not bear the thought of wasting them in a struggle that might drag on without end. At last I made my choice. I asked one of my old friends in the town to turn everything I had received into money as far as possible. He advised me not to do it. He said I would lose value, that land and other property should not be thrown away in haste. But I would not listen.
　　 By then I had already decided to cut myself off from that place. I meant to leave my home district and live elsewhere. I meant, above all, never again to see my uncle’s face. Before going, I visited my father’s and mother’s graves once more. I stood there alone and thought of what had happened since they died. The earth above them seemed peaceful, but the world they had left me in was not. That was the last time I ever saw those graves.
　　 My friend later carried out what I had asked, though it took some time after I had already returned to Tokyo. As might have been expected, the property brought in much less than it was truly worth. Land in the country cannot be sold quickly without loss, and once people see that a young owner must sell, they press him down without mercy. I accepted the poor result. To receive less and escape seemed better to me than to stay and rot in bitterness before my uncle’s eyes.
　　 When I reached Tokyo again, I was no longer the same young man who had left it. Until then I had still possessed, in some quiet way, a natural belief in other people. That belief had been hurt before, but not destroyed. Now it was broken at the root. I had learned that affection, family duty, promises at a deathbed, and even blood itself were not enough to protect a man from greed. From that time on, I began to stand apart from others. My distrust of humanity, which later grew so deep, first took real form there.
　　
　　Part 12
　　
　　 After I had settled my affairs and returned to Tokyo, I felt no peace in the noisy boarding house where I had been living. Money itself was not my problem, but my mind had become dark and watchful. I no longer wished to sleep near careless young men who shouted, drank, and moved in and out without order. I thought for a time of renting a whole small house for myself, but that would have required furniture, servants, and many small arrangements. So instead I began to look for a quiet private lodging where I might live alone and still avoid that trouble.
　　 By chance I heard of a house in Koishikawa where only a widow, her daughter, and a maid were living. The husband had been an army officer and was already dead, and they had moved there from a larger place because the old house was too big and lonely. I went to see them without an introduction, relying on my student cap and my decent clothes to give me some credit. The widow received me directly and questioned me in a clear, firm way about my school, my studies, and my home. She seemed satisfied at once and said that I could move in whenever I wished.
　　 I took the best room in the house, the very room where I had first spoken with her. It was larger and finer than a student needed, and for a short time I almost felt ashamed to live there. On the day I moved in, I saw flowers arranged in the alcove and a koto standing nearby. At first neither pleased me. My father had taught me to prefer older and more severe tastes, so these softer decorations struck me as a little showy. But when I later learned that the flowers had been placed there for my sake, my feeling changed.
　　 The daughter herself changed it even more. Before seeing her, I had imagined her from her mother and had expected someone rather stiff and severe. The instant I saw her face, that whole picture broke apart. A new feeling entered my mind, one that had the scent of womanhood in it and yet was still clean and surprising to me. After that, the flowers in my room no longer seemed foolish, and the sound of the koto no longer troubled me. I listened to its uncertain notes with pleasure, though I knew well enough that the playing was not skillful.
　　 You may think it strange that I could feel all this while I was still full of distrust toward human beings. Yet both things were true. I had come to suspect men because of money, but I had not yet learned to suspect love. That is the simplest way I can explain it. My heart carried darkness and hope at the same time without feeling any need to choose between them. So I watched the family as carefully as a thief might watch a room, and at the same time I welcomed each flower and each faint sound of the koto as if they were gifts meant only for me.
　　 At first I was ashamed of my own suspiciousness. I observed the widow and her daughter too closely, noticed every movement, and silently measured every word. Yet the strange thing was that they seemed not to notice this sharp watchfulness in me, or if they noticed it, they refused to answer it. The widow called me calm, serious, and even generous. She seemed to think I had a broad and easy nature. Her opinion was wrong, but because she held it so naturally, my nerves slowly began to quiet themselves in her presence.
　　 Little by little I grew familiar with both mother and daughter. They called me in for tea, and sometimes I invited them to my room with sweets I had bought outside. The daughter often came to my door and stood there for a moment before asking, “Are you studying?” She must have thought me diligent because I was always sitting before an open book, but the truth was not so noble. Many times I was only waiting for her voice. When she did not come, I myself found some excuse to rise and go toward the rooms where she and her mother were sitting.
　　 The daughter’s room was next to the dining room, and the two spaces were almost one. When I called from outside, it was usually the mother who answered, “Please come in.” The daughter was far less ready to speak out. Yet when she happened to come alone into my room and remained there talking, she showed a different side of herself. She was not childish, and she was not as shy as her small voice at the koto had led me to believe. She could stay longer than I expected, answer her mother from the next room without rising, and make me feel at once deeply happy and deeply uneasy.
　　 After she left, I often breathed out as if I had escaped some hidden danger. Yet at the same time I felt loss, regret, and a sweetness that did not leave me quickly. The mother, meanwhile, puzzled me. At times she seemed almost to wish that her daughter and I should grow close. At other times she appeared to watch us with a quiet caution, as if she wanted to keep us from coming too near. Because my uncle’s deceit was still fresh in my mind, I first thought that one of these attitudes must be false. I even blamed her for being a woman and told myself that women were foolish and uncertain creatures.
　　 But I could not place the daughter inside that judgment. Toward her I felt something closer to reverence than to desire. When I looked at her, I felt as if my own mind became cleaner. If love has a high and low end, mine then stood at the higher one. I was still a human being with a body, of course, but my feeling for her seemed to rise above the body so completely that I almost forgot flesh existed. That was why the mother’s caution, once I understood it better, stopped offending me.
　　 In time I came to think that the mother’s two attitudes were both real. She trusted me and perhaps even hoped that I might someday become part of the house, but she also wished to guard her daughter from any closeness beyond what she thought right. Once I understood that, I stopped judging her harshly. I then made another mistake, though it was a sweeter one. Because they trusted me, I let my whole story slip out to them. I told them about my parents, my uncle, the loss of my property, and my decision never to return home except in thought.
　　 The mother was deeply moved, and the daughter cried. Their tears pleased me more than I should perhaps confess. I felt accepted, almost gathered into the family. Yet even then my suspicion did not die completely. Sometimes it rose again and asked whether the mother was drawing me nearer because I was a good match for her daughter, just as my uncle had tried to use his daughter for his own advantage. And once that thought came, it poisoned everything for a while. I began even to torment myself with the question of whether the daughter too might be acting with knowledge and agreement.
　　 Such thoughts made ordinary life difficult. I went to lectures, but heard them as if they came from far away. I bought books and looked at their pages, but the words did not enter deeply. A male voice heard in the house could disturb me for hours. When the mother told me to buy better clothes and took the daughter with us to shops in Nihonbashi, I went with them, gave opinions, and endured the stares of strangers. The next day a classmate joked that I had already taken a beautiful wife, and when I repeated this at the house, I almost confessed everything. Instead I asked, in a careful and indirect way, what they thought about the daughter’s marriage.
　　 The mother answered that there had been proposals and that there was no need to hurry. I learned something, but not what I most needed to know, because I could not force myself to speak plainly of my own wish. While I delayed in this weak and restless state, another man was about to enter the house. His arrival changed my whole life. Had he not crossed my path there, I might never have needed to write this long confession to you at all. That man was K.
　　
　　Part 13
　　
　　 I shall call that friend K. We had known each other since childhood, because our families came from the same region. K was the second son of a Buddhist priest. Since he was not the eldest son, he was adopted by a doctor’s family while we were still boys. I still remember the surprise I felt when a teacher called the roll at school and K suddenly answered to a new family name. That change seemed strange to me then, but I soon grew used to it.
　　 K’s new family had money, and they sent him to Tokyo with the hope that he would become a doctor. By that time he and I were already close. We came to Tokyo separately, but once there we quickly found ourselves in the same lodging. In those days it was common for two or three students to live and sleep in the same small room. K and I shared one of those rooms and looked out at Tokyo like two young animals shut inside a cage. We feared the city and its people, and yet inside our narrow room we talked as if the whole world might one day belong to us.
　　 We were both serious, but K was far stronger than I was. Since he had grown up in a temple, he often used the word “discipline,” and his whole life seemed built on it. Even in middle school he troubled me with hard questions about religion and philosophy. I could not always follow him, but I respected him deeply. He had a strong head, a firm will, and a strange power to make even unclear ideas sound noble. When he spoke of “the Way,” neither he nor I could have explained it well, and yet we both felt that it pointed upward toward something high.
　　 The family that had adopted him meant for him to study medicine. But K had already decided that he would not become a doctor. He entered the university, took money from that family, and at the same time chose a different field, believing he had the right to follow what he called his true path. When he told me this, I asked, “Is that not the same as deceiving them?” He answered, “Yes, perhaps it is. But if the road is right, I must go on.” I was young, and his courage moved me. Instead of opposing him strongly, I encouraged him, and for that I have always felt some share of guilt.
　　 During the first summer, K did not go home. He rented a poor room in a temple in Komagome and stayed there alone to study. When I returned to Tokyo, I went to see him and found him living almost like a monk. His room was narrow and dark, close to the main hall, and yet he seemed satisfied there. He wore a string of prayer beads around his wrist and counted them with his thumb again and again. I once saw a Bible in his room as well, though I had heard him speak far more often of Buddhist writings. He wanted to read everything that serious people called sacred, and in that strange hunger he seemed larger than ordinary students around us.
　　 For a time his adoptive family did not notice that he had changed his course. But during the next year he finally wrote and told them the truth himself. Their answer was harsh. They said that a son who deceived his parents deserved no more money, and his real family also turned cold when they learned what had happened. K showed me the letters. He spoke calmly, but I could see that a heavy blow had fallen on him.
　　 I offered help at once. I said, “Let me support you until things become easier.” K refused without a moment of hesitation. He said, “If I cannot support even myself after entering the university, I am no man at all.” There was pride in him, but there was also something harder than pride. He would rather carry a heavy load alone than accept kindness if that kindness might make him dependent. So he found work for himself, kept studying, and drove his body and mind forward without rest.
　　 At the same time, his trouble with both families grew worse. Messages passed back and forth. Some relative tried to make peace. Others told him to return home. K would not do so. He said that since the school year was still going on, he could not leave, but from the other side his refusal must have looked only like stubbornness. In the end he was cut off. The money once given for his education was to be repaid by his own family, and K took this as a kind of rejection from both homes at once. Though he spoke little of pain, I knew he had been struck in the deepest part of his life.
　　 He went on working and studying with terrible force. At first I admired him more than ever, but after a while I began to fear for him. He grew more sensitive, more severe, and more restless in spirit. Sometimes he spoke as if the whole weight of sorrow in the world had somehow been placed on his own shoulders. If I tried to calm him, he became excited. He seemed to think that hardship itself would purify him, and that the more he suffered, the stronger his will would become. I, however, began to suspect that the opposite might happen, and that his strength might slowly turn against him.
　　 So I decided to bring him into my own lodging. I did not wish to hand him money directly, because I knew he would reject it. Instead I thought I could help him quietly by making him live under the same roof as I did. I explained to the widow and her daughter that K was a serious man, that his health had grown uncertain, and that loneliness had made him too closed in upon himself. I did not tell them every detail of his money trouble, but I asked them to be kind to him and to help me watch over him. After much careful talk, I won their agreement, and then I invited K without letting him know how much I had prepared behind his back.
　　 He came at last. I gave him the small four-mat room that lay between the entrance and my own larger room. It was not a good room, but he preferred being alone there to sharing my space. The widow and her daughter kindly helped him unpack his few things, and I was grateful to them for it. Yet K himself showed almost no pleasure. When I asked, “How does the new place feel?” he answered only, “It is not bad.” Compared with the damp and ugly room where he had lived before, the house was almost like a bright tree after a dark valley, but he would never say such a thing.
　　 Even so, I did not lose hope. The widow’s house had once softened me when I myself had been dark and distrustful. I believed that the same warmth might work upon K as well. I asked the mother and daughter to speak with him when they could, and I tried to draw him into small talks at meals or in the evening. At first he was stiff, silent, and difficult, and both women laughed gently at the trouble of making him answer. But little by little I thought I saw a change. I believed that the walls around his heart were beginning, very slowly, to loosen.
　　
　　Part 14
　　
　　 At first I believed that my plan had succeeded. K did not become cheerful, but the hard edge of his silence seemed to soften little by little. The widow and her daughter worked patiently at him, though they laughed afterward at the trouble of drawing even a few words from his mouth. I too was pleased whenever he answered more naturally than before. Because I had brought him there for his own sake, I felt almost proud when I thought I saw him changing. I did not yet know that a man may grow used to a house before another man notices what that new ease really means.
　　 My classes often kept me out later than K. About three times a week I returned after him, and whenever I passed through his room on the way to mine, I never saw the daughter there. K would turn his usual eyes toward me and say, as regularly as a custom, “You are back?” I would answer with a nod or a word equally empty. Everything looked harmless, and because everything looked harmless, I let my guard sleep. That was my mistake.
　　 One day in the middle of October I overslept and hurried out to school in Japanese dress, with sandals on my feet because I had no time to lace my shoes. According to my classes, I was supposed to come home before K that day. When I returned, I opened the front lattice without care, thinking the house would be as usual. Then I heard K’s voice. At the same instant I heard the daughter laugh, and the sound went through me like a sudden needle.
　　 Because I had no troublesome shoes to remove, I stepped quickly up into the house and opened the sliding door at once. K was there, sitting before his desk in his ordinary way. But the daughter was already leaving. I saw only the last part of her figure as she slipped out, almost as if escaping from the room. I asked K why he had come back so early, and he answered that he felt unwell and had rested instead of going to class.
　　 I then went into my own room and sat there for a time without doing anything. Soon the daughter brought me tea. That was when she first greeted me properly and said, “You are back.” I was not the sort of man who could laugh and ask, “Why did you run away just now?” Had I been such a man, perhaps my life would have taken a different course. Instead I said nothing. Yet inwardly I could not free myself from that small scene.
　　 She left my room at once and went down the veranda. Then she stopped before K’s room and exchanged a few more words with him from outside. It was clearly the continuation of what had been interrupted by my arrival, but because I had not heard the beginning, the whole matter remained dark to me. After that day her manner gradually became easier. Even when K and I were both at home, she would sometimes come to the veranda by his room, call his name, and go in. There was always some simple excuse, a letter, washed clothes, or some household thing, but to me it seemed more than that.
　　 You will ask why I did not at once tell K to leave the house if I felt so troubled. The answer is simple. I had myself brought him there. I had argued with the widow for him. I had thought myself generous, faithful, and strong. If I turned and drove him out the moment his presence pained me, then my earlier kindness would become a lie. I could not bear that thought, so I endured what I saw.
　　 Even so, endurance did not make me noble. It only made me watchful and jealous. There were times when I fancied that the daughter avoided my room on purpose and went instead to K’s. Whether this was true or not, I cannot now say with certainty. A man in love sees with a burning eye and therefore often sees badly. Yet at that time each small movement in the house grew large before me. A laugh from the next room, a quiet step on the veranda, the sound of a sliding door, any of these could unsettle my whole mind.
　　 Then, on a cold day of November when rain was falling, I came home with my coat wet from the weather and passed through the narrow slope as usual. K’s room was empty, but the fire in his brazier had just been refreshed and glowed warmly. I thought this odd. When I opened the partition to pass through, I found K and the daughter sitting there together after all. K said in his usual tone, “You are back?” The daughter too greeted me, but something in her voice sounded a little stiff, as if it had slipped away from its natural place.
　　 I asked where the widow was. The question had no special meaning. The house only felt quieter than usual. The daughter answered that her mother had gone out, and that the maid had gone with her. That meant K and the daughter had been left alone in the house. Such a thing had never happened before. I asked whether some urgent business had taken the widow out, but the daughter only smiled. I disliked a woman’s smile when I wanted a plain answer, and I disliked hers at that moment especially. Yet when she saw my face, she stopped smiling and answered more seriously that there had been a small errand, nothing more.
　　 Soon the widow and the maid returned, and outwardly everything was normal again. But after supper I took K out for a walk. We went around behind Denzuin, made a round by the road near the botanical garden, and came back by another way. It was not a short walk, yet we spoke very little. I asked him, as naturally as I could, what he thought of the widow and her daughter. He answered in brief words that told me almost nothing. His manner suggested that he paid more attention to his studies than to the women of the house, and because our examinations were near, this may well have been true.
　　 Around that time he had begun to speak often of hard and distant things again. He talked of religion, of philosophy, and even of Swedenborg in a way that made me feel unlearned beside him. When our examinations ended well, the widow happily said that in another year we would both be finished. Since the daughter too would soon finish school, I expected K to show at least a little interest in her future. Instead he said dryly, “Women leave school without knowing anything.” It was clear that he cared nothing for her lessons in sewing, koto, or flower arranging. I laughed at his rough judgment and repeated my old belief that a woman’s value did not lie in such things alone. Yet even then, while I argued with him, I could not decide what I most feared: that K had already begun to see her as I did, or that he still had not seen her at all.
　　
　　Part 15
　　
　　 K was not a man who liked travel. I too had never been to that part of Bōshū before, so the two of us moved without any clear plan and got off the boat at the first place where it stopped. I think the name was Hota. At that time it was a rough fishing village, and everything there smelled strongly of fish and sea water. When we entered the sea, the waves threw us down at once, and our hands and legs were easily cut by the stones under the water.
　　 Those stones were as large as fists, and the waves rolled them again and again along the shore. I disliked the place almost at once. K, however, said neither that he liked it nor that he disliked it. His face stayed calm, but each time he entered the water he came out with some new small wound. At last I persuaded him to leave, and we moved first to Tomiura and then to Nako. Along that coast there were already many places where students gathered in summer, so it was easy enough for two young men like us to live there.
　　 K and I often sat together on rocks by the sea and looked out over the water. From above, the sea near the shore was clear and beautiful in a way that the open water was not. We could see small fish of red, blue, and other strange colors passing through the transparent waves below us. I would open a book there and try to read. K more often sat with empty hands and said nothing.
　　 I never knew what he was doing in those silent hours. Perhaps he was thinking deeply. Perhaps he was only watching the sea. Perhaps he was letting some private dream pass through his mind. Sometimes I raised my eyes from the page and asked him, “What are you doing?” He always answered, “Nothing,” and that was all.
　　 While I sat beside him, another thought often came to me. I would think how pleasant it would be if the person sitting there were not K but the young lady from our house. That thought by itself was painful enough. But sometimes a worse thought rose suddenly after it. I would begin to wonder whether K himself might also be sitting there with the same wish in his mind.
　　 The moment that suspicion came, I could no longer read calmly. I would shut the book, spring up, and shout for no reason like a wild man. I could not sing a poem or speak a proper line with gentle feeling. I only wanted to break the silence around us. Once, in a sudden storm of feeling, I seized K from behind by the back of the neck and asked, “What would you do if I threw you into the sea now?” Without turning around, he answered, “That would be fine. Do it.” At once I let go of him.
　　 By then K’s nervous weakness seemed much improved. In exact proportion to his recovery, I myself was becoming more sensitive and more troubled. I looked at his calmness and felt both envy and hatred. He never gave me any sign that he took my unrest seriously. To me, that calm began to look like confidence. If it was only confidence in study or in his future, then I had nothing to fear. But if it was confidence about the young lady, then I could not forgive him.
　　 The strange thing was that K still seemed completely unaware of my own feelings for her. Of course I had never acted in an open way, but I had thought that a friend who lived so close to me might at least guess something. K was dull in these matters, and that dullness had once made me feel safe enough to bring him into the house. Now I no longer felt safe. I had begun to fear not only what he knew, but also what he might come to know too late.
　　 I had long wished to tell him the truth about my heart, and during that trip I made up my mind once again to do so. Yet in those days it was not common for young men to speak plainly about such private feelings. Even when love or marriage came into our conversations, they almost always turned at once into abstract talk. K and I spoke of books, learning, future work, ambition, and self-discipline. Because our friendship had grown in that hard shape, I could not easily break it open and speak in a softer, more direct way.
　　 I watched him constantly, waiting for a good chance, yet every chance slipped away from me. His manner seemed too high, too severe, and too closed. At times he appeared so strong and so far above ordinary desire that I almost felt ashamed of my own suspicion. Then I would say inwardly, “I have judged him badly,” and I would apologize to him in my heart. But soon afterward the old fear would return with even greater force. The more I doubted, the more every good point in him stood sharply before my eyes.
　　 His face, I thought, would please a woman more than mine. His nature was less narrow and restless than mine. He had a certain plain, manly firmness that I believed women might trust more easily. In learning too, though our subjects were different, I knew well that I was no match for him. When all these advantages of his rose together before me, I lost the little peace I had just recovered. Then, when K said that if I was unhappy there I might return alone to Tokyo, I answered in a strange way. The truth was that I did not want him to return to Tokyo without me.
　　 We went on around the end of Bōshū and crossed to the other side. Under the fierce sun we walked long distances, groaning over the false “one ri” of Kazusa roads, which always seemed longer than they sounded. At times I could not see the purpose of our journey at all. Half joking, I said so to K. He answered, “We have legs, so we walk.” When the heat became too strong, he would say we should enter the sea and cool ourselves, and then, after the water, we had to bear the sun again with our bodies heavy and tired.
　　 In that way our physical condition slowly changed. It was not exactly illness, but it was as if one’s soul had been placed inside another person’s body. I spoke to K as usual, yet inside I felt separated from my usual self. My friendliness toward him and my anger toward him both took on a strange temporary color, as if everything belonged only to that journey and would disappear when it ended. Because of the heat, the sea, and the long walking, the two of us entered a new kind of relation, like peddlers who happen to travel together on the same road.
　　 During those days we did not talk much about difficult matters. Yet there was one exception I have never forgotten. Before leaving Bōshū, we visited a place called Kominato to see the famous sea bream there. The story was that Nichiren had been born in that village, and that on the day of his birth two sea bream had appeared at the shore. Since then, the fishermen there were said to have avoided catching them, so the fish were still plentiful. We hired a small boat and went out to look.
　　 I was interested only in the moving colors in the water and the play of the waves. K, however, seemed to care less for the fish than for Nichiren himself. Nearby stood the temple called Tanjōji, and K insisted on visiting it and speaking with the priest. Our clothes were in a miserable state, especially his, since the wind had blown his hat into the sea and he had replaced it with a simple straw one. I told him we ought not to present ourselves to a priest in such condition, but he paid no attention and went in.
　　 The priest received us more politely than I had expected, and K questioned him eagerly about Nichiren. I listened with little interest, tired from the heat and the travel. Afterward, outside the temple, K kept speaking to me about Nichiren with great seriousness, but I was too weary to answer with anything more than empty sounds. At last I stopped answering altogether. The following night, after supper and just before sleep, K returned to the subject with force. He said that a man without spiritual ambition was a fool, and his words sounded almost like an attack on me.
　　 Because my heart was already full of the young lady, I could not accept his contempt with an easy laugh. I began to defend myself. In that argument I used the words “human” and “human feeling” again and again. K said that I was hiding all my weakness inside those words. If I think of it now, he was right. But at that time I was already resisting him, and I had no room in my mind for self-examination. I insisted instead that he himself, for all his talk, was more human than he admitted, perhaps too human.
　　 He did not argue strongly against me. He said only that perhaps his self-discipline was still not enough, and that was why I saw him that way. That answer took the force out of the quarrel. Instead of feeling victorious, I suddenly felt sorry for him. He then spoke sadly of those old men who had beaten down the body for the sake of the spirit, and said it was a pity that I could not understand how deeply he suffered in trying to do the same. We slept after that, and the next morning began walking again as before. Yet all through the road that followed, I regretted one thing: I had come close to speaking plainly of my love, and still I had let the moment pass.
　　
　　Part 16
　　
　　 When we finally came back to Tokyo, both of us were dark from the sun and thin from too much walking. The widow looked at us with surprise and then said we seemed stronger than before. Her daughter laughed and said that her mother was speaking nonsense, because we were clearly worn out. The sound of her laughter pleased me more than it had for many weeks. Perhaps it was because I had not heard it for some time. Perhaps it was because I had returned with a changed heart and wanted to believe in happy signs.
　　 I soon noticed another change as well. While K and I were settling back into the house, there was much to be done, and the women naturally helped us. The mother was kind to both of us as always, but the daughter seemed to give me a little more care than before and to leave K slightly behind. She did it so lightly that no one but I could have seen it. Because it was not open or rough, it did not make me uncomfortable. On the contrary, it filled me with a secret joy. In my heart I even sang a small song of victory over K.
　　 Summer ended, and by the middle of September we had to return to our usual school life. K and I once more came and went by different hours. Three times a week or so, I returned later than he did. Yet each time I passed through his room, I no longer found the daughter there, and this seemed to support my hopeful thoughts. K turned his usual eyes toward me and said, “You are back?” and I answered him in the same empty way as before. Outwardly everything seemed ordinary again, but inwardly I watched every small sign.
　　 One day in the middle of October I overslept and rushed out to school in Japanese dress, wearing only sandals because I had no time for shoes. That day, according to the class schedule, I should have come home before K. So when I returned and opened the front lattice, I expected to find the house quiet. Instead I heard K’s voice at once, and at the same time I heard the daughter laugh. Because I was not delayed by shoes, I stepped quickly inside and opened the sliding door at once. K was sitting before his desk as usual, but the daughter was already leaving, and I saw only her back as she slipped away.
　　 I asked K why he had come back early. He said he felt unwell and had rested instead of going to class. I went into my own room and sat there in silence until the daughter brought me tea. Only then did she greet me and say, “You are back.” I was not the sort of man who could laugh and say, “Why did you run away just now?” So I said nothing, though the matter stayed in my heart. After leaving my room, she stopped again outside K’s room and spoke a few words from the veranda, clearly continuing what had been cut short by my arrival.
　　 From then on her manner grew more natural. Even when K and I were both at home, she often came to the veranda by his room, called his name, and went in. There was always some simple reason, a letter, washed clothes, or some small household matter, and perhaps I should have thought no more of it. But because I wanted to keep her wholly for myself, nothing seemed simple. At times I even felt that she avoided coming to my room and chose K’s instead. You may ask why I did not then tell K to leave the house, but that was impossible for me. I had brought him there with my own hands, and to drive him out now would have turned my earlier kindness into a lie.
　　 One cold day in November, when rain was falling, I came home with my coat wet and passed by the usual narrow slope. K’s room was empty, but the fire in his brazier had just been fed and burned warmly, while my own room was cold and dead. This put me into a bad mood at once. Then the widow came, helped me change my clothes, and even brought K’s brazier into my room. When I asked whether K had already returned, she said that he had come back and then gone out again. Because this made no sense according to his school hours, I felt a quiet uneasiness.
　　 I tried to read, but the house was too still, and the early winter cold seemed to bite into my body. At last I rose and went out without knowing where I meant to go. The rain had almost stopped, but the sky was still heavy and gray. The road was muddy and narrow, and everyone had to walk in a thin safe line through the middle. There, on that strip of ground, I suddenly met K face to face. I asked where he had been, and he answered only, “Just nearby,” in his usual blunt tone.
　　 Then, as we moved past one another, I saw that a young woman stood just behind him. When I looked closely, I found that it was the daughter from our house. Her face was a little red, and she greeted me politely. For a moment I could do nothing but stare at her hair and face in surprise. Then I stepped into the deep mud so that she could pass. After reaching the main road, I no longer knew where to go. I walked through the dirt like an angry fool and at last returned home in a worse state than before.
　　 Back in the house I asked K whether he had gone out together with her. He said no, that they had met by chance in another part of town and returned together. I could not question him further without showing too much. At supper I wanted to ask her the same thing, but when I turned to her, she gave that laughing look I had learned to dislike. She even told me to guess where she had been. Because I was still quick-tempered in those days, this playful manner angered me. Only the mother seemed to notice my discomfort. K, for his part, appeared completely calm.
　　 After that, my jealousy grew sharper. I could not decide whether the daughter was acting with thought and skill, or whether she was only behaving with the careless freedom of a young woman. I do not deny now that jealousy was working strongly in me. Love and jealousy seemed to grow from the same root. Because of that, I began once more to think seriously of speaking to the mother and asking openly for the daughter’s hand. Yet each day I put the matter off. Before K came, pride had held me back. After K came, doubt held me back, because I feared that the daughter’s heart might already be turning toward him.
　　 If that were true, I thought, then I would rather lose her than take her against the direction of her own heart. At that age I called this a noble theory of love, though in truth it made me helpless in action. I avoided speaking directly to the daughter as well. Partly I hid behind custom, telling myself that such a confession was not the proper way in our country. But that was not the whole truth. I also believed that even if I spoke, a young woman of our kind would not easily answer with complete honesty. So I stood still and suffered, seeing no road that I could take without pain.
　　 The year turned, and early in the new year the mother and daughter went out one morning to visit relatives in Ichigaya. K and I remained behind in the house, both still free from school that day. I sat by the brazier without really reading or thinking. After a long silence, K opened the partition and came into my room. He sat in front of the fire and began asking strange questions about where the women had gone, which relatives they were visiting, and why they had gone so early in the season. Because this was not like him, I was deeply struck. At last I asked why he was so curious today, and then he suddenly fell silent.
　　 I watched his mouth move in its old way before speech, and I knew that something heavy was about to come out. Yet I had no idea what it would be. Then he told me, slowly and with great effort, that he loved the daughter. When I heard this, I felt as if my whole body had turned to stone. A moment later I returned to myself and thought at once, “He has gone before me.” But even then I could not speak. Sweat broke out under my clothes, K went on opening his heart in his hard and serious way, and I sat there in misery, hearing not only his words but also the dreadful strength inside them. When he had finished, I could say nothing at all. At noon we sat opposite each other at the meal, silent before the untouched food, while the mother and daughter were still away and the whole house felt as cold as winter itself.
　　
　　Part 17
　　
　　 After that noon meal, K and I withdrew to our own rooms and did not meet again for some time. He remained as quiet as he had been in the morning. I too sat still, but there was no peace in my stillness. I felt that I ought to tell him at once that I loved the same young woman. At the same time, I thought the proper moment had already passed and that whatever I said now would sound late, weak, and unnatural.
　　 I blamed myself again and again for not speaking the instant he had finished. If I had cut across his confession and answered him directly, or if I had followed his words at once with my own, the matter would at least have stood open between us. Now that he had spoken first and withdrawn, my answering him afterward seemed clumsy and almost shameful. My mind shook with regret until I could hardly sit still. Yet I still could not rise, open the partition, and go to him.
　　 For a while I almost wished he would come to me again and force the matter forward. I kept lifting my eyes to the sliding door, hoping it would open. It remained shut. The more quiet he became, the more uneasy I grew. In earlier days, when we sat in neighboring rooms without speaking, his silence had never troubled me. On the contrary, it usually allowed me to forget him for a while. That day his silence pressed on my nerves as if he were thinking powerfully behind the wall and I alone had been left defenseless.
　　 At last I could no longer bear my room. If I stayed there, I felt I might suddenly rush into his room and say something mad. So I went out to the veranda, then wandered into the dining room, poured hot water into a cup, and drank it without tasting it. After that I left the house and began to walk through the New Year streets with no purpose at all. I was not trying to escape K. I was turning him over in my mind with every step.
　　 I could not understand him. I asked myself why he had spoken to me so suddenly, why his love had grown so strong without my seeing it, and where the stern, disciplined man I had known had gone. The more I thought, the stranger he seemed. I knew his seriousness and his strength, yet now he appeared to me like some difficult and dangerous being whose true center I had never grasped. While I walked, I kept seeing him in my mind, sitting motionless in his room with that heavy, deliberate face turned downward.
　　 By the time I came home, the house was still quiet. Before long I heard the harsh sound of a rickshaw stopping outside. The widow and her daughter had returned. When we sat down to supper about half an hour later, their bright clothing still lay tossed in the next room, and they themselves seemed cheerful from being out together. Against that liveliness, K and I appeared colder than ever. The widow asked if something was wrong, and I said that I felt unwell, which was true enough.
　　 Then the daughter turned to K and asked him the same question. He did not answer as I had. “I do not feel like talking,” he said. She laughed and pressed him, asking why he did not feel like talking, and I raised my eyes to see what he would do. His lips trembled a little in the old way. She teased him again and said he must be thinking about some difficult matter. At that, his face grew slightly red, and my heart tightened.
　　 I went to bed earlier than usual that night. Because I had said I felt sick, the widow came in later with hot soba water and made me drink it in the dark. The light from K’s lamp fell across the room while she sat by my pillow. After she left, I lay awake for a long time thinking in circles. At last, half without meaning to, I called softly through the partition, “K.” He answered at once. I asked whether he was still awake. “Not for long,” he said.
　　 I asked what he was doing. He did not answer. A few minutes later I heard him open his cupboard, spread his bedding, and prepare for sleep. I asked the time, and he told me it was twenty minutes past one. Then his lamp went out, and the whole house sank into darkness. Yet my own eyes only grew clearer in that darkness, and my mind would not rest.
　　 Once more I called his name, and once more he answered. Then I forced myself to say that I wished to speak further about what he had told me that morning. I had no intention of having such a conversation through a partition, but I wanted at least to secure his agreement for the next day. This time he did not answer so simply. He gave a low, uncertain sound, neither yes nor no, and in that single sound I felt something like resistance. That small resistance struck me sharply.
　　 The same half refusal remained in him the next day and the day after. He never brought up the subject again of his own will. Since the widow and her daughter were always in the house, we had no easy chance to talk quietly, yet even where a chance might have been made, K showed no sign of wishing to make it. So I began to watch the women instead. Their behavior had not changed at all. Neither the mother nor the daughter seemed to know anything of K’s confession, and this gave me a little relief.
　　 Because of that relief, I decided for a short time to wait and let things move by themselves. Outwardly K and I soon returned to our old habits. When our class hours matched, we went out together and came back together like before. Anyone watching us from the outside would have thought nothing had changed. But inside, each of us was surely carrying his own private struggle. I had begun to feel that my whole future depended on learning what K meant to do.
　　 One day, while we were walking in town, I suddenly pressed him. The first thing I asked was whether he had spoken to anyone else. He answered plainly that he had not told either the widow or her daughter, or anyone else at all. This satisfied me, for I believed him completely. However suspicious I had become in many matters, I still trusted his word where direct truth was concerned. Then I asked the harder question: what did he intend to do with this love?
　　 I asked whether his confession had been no more than a confession, or whether he meant to act and try to win her. On that point he would not answer. He lowered his head and walked on. I urged him not to hide anything from me, but he said only, “I am hiding nothing.” He would not explain further, and because we were in the street, I could not force the matter then. So again the chance slipped away.
　　 Soon after that I was in the university library, searching through foreign journals for a paper my teacher had assigned me. At last I found what I needed and bent over it seriously. Then I heard my name spoken in a low voice from across the wide table. I looked up and saw K leaning toward me. “Are you studying?” he asked. I said that I was looking something up. He remained there and then asked whether I would go for a walk with him.
　　 I told him to wait a little, but once he sat down in front of me, I could no longer read a line. It felt as though he had come with some hidden purpose, and the air around him made my thoughts scatter. So I closed the journal, returned it, and left with him at once. We had nowhere in particular to go, so we made our way through Tatsuoka-chō, past Shinobazu Pond, and into Ueno Park. There, almost at once, he began speaking of the matter again.
　　 Even then he did not speak in a practical way. He did not ask what steps he should take. Instead he asked what I thought of him as he was now, caught in such a feeling. In other words, he wanted my judgment of his present self. That alone showed me how far he had moved from his usual nature. K was not a man who ordinarily sought another’s opinion before acting. Yet now he seemed shaken enough to need a witness.
　　 He said he was ashamed to find himself so weak. He said that he no longer understood himself and wanted an honest judgment from me. I asked what he meant by weakness. He answered that he was uncertain whether to advance or to pull back. I pressed one step farther and asked whether he truly could pull back if he chose. At that he faltered. After a pause he said only, “It is painful.” His face looked dry and worn, and if the woman in question had been anyone but the daughter, I think I might have pitied him deeply.
　　 But I was no longer free for pity. I had become like a man in a duel, watching every opening in his opponent. The moment I saw him wavering between his ideal and his desire, I saw a place where I could strike. So I drew myself up and said, with great seriousness, “A man without spiritual ambition is a fool.” It was the very sentence he had once thrown at me during our journey. I gave it back to him in his own tone, not from wounded pride, but with a colder purpose. I meant to block his road with it.
　　 K had always loved the word discipline. To him, the way of the spirit stood above the claims of the body, and even love without gross desire could still be a danger if it turned a man aside from his path. He himself had taught me these ideas many times. That is why my words struck him so hard. I was not exposing some weakness he had never known. I was forcing his own past convictions to rise up and judge him.
　　 “A man without spiritual ambition is a fool,” I said again. K stopped where he was and stared down at the ground. After a moment he answered, “A fool. Yes, I am a fool.” His voice was so weak that it frightened me more than if he had burst out in anger. Then he began walking again. I stayed beside him, but from that moment I felt that something in him had bent inward under my hand, and though I had wanted victory, I also felt the first cold touch of fear.
　　
　　Part 18
　　
　　 We walked side by side after that, but the road between us had changed. I had expected K to resist, to argue, or to strike back with one of his severe principles. Instead, he seemed to shrink inward, as if my words had entered some place in him that was already wounded. That sight calmed me for the moment. I told myself that I had regained the upper hand, and because I was thinking only of victory, I did not stop to ask whether the victory itself was shameful.
　　 Yet even while I felt this ugly relief, I was aware that I had acted unfairly. If anyone had come beside me then and whispered that I was a coward, I believe I would have started as if struck. K was too honest for that. He was too simple, too open in his seriousness, and it was exactly that openness which I used against him. I forgot the respect I owed him as a friend and saw only the obstacle standing between me and the woman I loved.
　　 After a while K called my name and turned to look at me. We both stopped walking, and for the first time since our talk I was able to meet his eyes directly. Because he was taller than I was, I had to lift my face to him, and in that posture I felt like a beast looking up before it sprang. “Let us stop this subject,” he said. There was pain in both his voice and his eyes, and for a moment I could not answer at all.
　　 Then he said again, this time almost like a plea, “Please stop.” What I answered was cruel. I said that the matter had not begun with me, but with him, and that if he wished to stop speaking of it, then words alone would not be enough. He must also stop it in his heart. I pressed him further and asked what he meant to do with all the principles he had taught so strongly in the past. As I spoke, he seemed to grow smaller before me.
　　 K was stubborn, but he was also painfully honest with himself. To be accused of inconsistency was something he could not bear lightly. At last he murmured, almost like a man speaking in sleep, “Resolve? If it is resolve, then perhaps I can have it.” After that we walked home through the winter evening almost without a word. The trees in the park had a dead brown color under the dark sky, and the cold seemed to bite through my coat whenever I turned and looked back.
　　 At supper, the widow asked why we had returned so late, and I answered that K had taken me to Ueno for a walk. She seemed surprised that anyone should choose such a place on such a cold day. The daughter asked what there was to see there, and I told her there was nothing, only a walk. K scarcely answered anyone. He swallowed his food quickly, rose before I had finished, and went back to his room, leaving the rest of us in a silence that felt heavier than speech.
　　 That night, however, I was calmer than I had been for many days. I even sat beside K’s brazier for a while and deliberately led him into small, useless talk. He seemed annoyed, but I did not care. There was something like triumph in me, and I think it must have sounded in my voice. Before sleeping, I told myself that in this one matter at least I need not fear him any longer.
　　 I fell asleep easily, but in the middle of the night I woke to hear my name. The sliding door between our rooms stood open by about two feet, and K’s dark figure was there against the light of his lamp. For a few seconds I could do nothing but stare at him. The whole world seemed different from the one in which I had gone to sleep. When I asked what he wanted, he answered quietly that he had merely wondered whether I was asleep and had asked on his way back from the toilet.
　　 He closed the door again, and darkness returned to my room. I slept once more, but in the morning the whole incident seemed strange enough that I wondered whether I had dreamed it. So I asked him while we were eating. He admitted that he had called me, but when I asked why, he gave no clear answer. Later, on the road to school, I pressed him again, yet he only denied that he had meant to resume the subject we had dropped in Ueno.
　　 It was then that one word of his began to trouble me deeply. The day before, he had said “resolve,” and now that word rose again and again in my mind. At first I had taken it to mean only that he might gather his courage and go forward in love. But as I repeated it to myself, another meaning began to appear. What if K’s resolve was not to advance toward the daughter, but to cut through all his struggle by some final and terrible act?
　　 I did not examine that fear fairly. I should have looked at it from every side, but instead my jealousy forced it at once into the shape most dangerous to me. I told myself that K, once resolved, would surely go straight to the mother and ask for the daughter’s hand before I could move. The thought shook me so strongly that I felt I too must make a final decision at once. From then on I watched for a chance to speak privately with the widow, but day after day either K remained in the house or the daughter did, and I could find no safe moment.
　　 At last I lost patience and pretended to be ill. Though all three of them urged me to get up, I stayed under the quilt until late in the morning, waiting for the house to grow quiet. When K had gone out and the daughter too was absent, I rose, washed, and ate in the dining room with the widow alone. Even then I could not bring the matter to my lips at once. I wandered about it awkwardly, asked whether K had said anything strange recently, denied at once that I myself had heard anything, and only made myself feel more ashamed.
　　 Since I had gone so far already, I could not retreat. So I suddenly said, “Please give me your daughter.” The widow looked at me steadily for a moment, but she did not seem nearly as startled as I had feared. When I repeated my request more strongly and told her that I wished to make her daughter my wife, she answered with unexpected calm. She said the matter had come suddenly, but after a few direct questions she agreed with surprising ease and even said that I might have the daughter if I truly wished it.
　　 The whole conversation was settled in less than fifteen minutes. She demanded no conditions, said no relatives need be consulted first, and even declared that the daughter’s own mind would offer no obstacle. Her confidence should have made me happy, and in one sense it did. Yet when I returned to my room, I felt strangely uncertain, as if something too important had moved forward too smoothly. Still, I knew that my future had changed. Later, when I asked when she meant to tell the daughter, the widow said she could speak that very day after the daughter returned from her lesson, and I, unable to sit still and imagine the two of them talking about me inside the house, put on my hat and went out.
　　 As I was leaving, I met the daughter on the road. She knew nothing and looked only mildly surprised to see me well again so soon after my supposed illness. When I said that I was recovered, she accepted it naturally, and we passed one another like ordinary members of the same household. I then wandered through the city without any real aim. My mind was full of the widow’s calm voice and of the daughter’s face when she would hear what had been decided, and in all that long walk I hardly thought of K at all.
　　
　　Part 19
　　
　　 I walked a long way that afternoon, through one district after another, driven forward by thoughts of the widow and her daughter. Strangely enough, I hardly thought of K at all. Only when I opened the front lattice and passed through his room on the way to mine did my conscience wake again. He was sitting at his desk as usual, but instead of saying, “You are back,” he asked whether my illness was better and whether I had gone to see a doctor. At that instant I wanted to kneel before him and beg his pardon, yet I could not do it, because other people were in the house and my courage failed me.
　　 At supper the burden grew even heavier. K knew nothing and sat there in his usual silence. The widow seemed unusually pleased, and the daughter, who already knew the truth, did not come out to the table. When the widow called her, she answered only from the next room. K asked why she did not appear, and the widow, smiling, said she was probably embarrassed. Then K asked why she should be embarrassed, and the widow turned her eyes toward me in a way that made my heart stop. Fortunately K fell silent again, and the talk went no farther.
　　 For the next two or three days I lived in constant uneasiness. I knew that I ought to tell K everything plainly, yet every possible way seemed painful and shameful. I even thought of asking the widow to speak for me, but if I asked her to change the truth or soften it, I would have to confess my weakness to her and to the daughter as well. I could not bear that either. So I remained where I was, already far from the honest road and still unable to step back onto it.
　　 Five or six days later the widow suddenly asked whether I had told K about the engagement. When I answered no, she seemed truly surprised and said it was no wonder he had looked so strange, because she herself had already told him. Then she repeated what had passed between them. K had answered only, “Is that so?” at first. But when she added, “You must be glad for them too,” he looked at her, smiled faintly, and said, “I congratulate them.” Before leaving the room, he had even asked when the marriage would take place and added that he had no money, so he could not give a present.
　　 Hearing this, I felt my chest close with pain. Two full days had passed since he received that blow, yet he had shown me almost nothing different in his behavior. I had thought myself clever and victorious, but beside such self-control I felt small and ugly. I told myself that I had won by trick, while K had remained the better man. Even then, however, shame did not give me courage. Instead it only made me delay again, and I decided weakly that I would speak to him the next day.
　　 That next day never came. On Saturday night I went to sleep with a troubled but tired mind. By chance I had laid my bedding with my head to the west instead of the east, and in the middle of the night a cold wind touched my face and woke me. When I opened my eyes, I saw that the sliding door between our rooms stood open by about the same width as on the earlier night when K had spoken to me. This time he was not standing there. His lamp still burned weakly, his bedding was thrown back in disorder, and he himself lay face down in a strange, unmoving way.
　　 I called to him once, then again. There was no answer. I got up at once and went to the threshold. In that dim light, the first feeling that struck me was almost the same as when he had confessed his love to me. For one moment my eyes seemed to turn to glass, fixed and useless. Then another thought ran through me with terrible speed: I was too late. Something final had happened, and with it my whole future had suddenly become dark.
　　 Even then I did not forget myself. On his desk I saw a letter addressed to me, and I seized it at once. I feared that it would contain accusations against me, words that would shame me forever if the widow or her daughter saw them. But the letter was brief and strangely calm. He wrote only that he was weak in purpose, that he saw no future before him, and that he had therefore chosen death. He thanked me for past kindness, asked me to manage things after his death, asked that I apologize to the widow for the trouble, and requested that I inform his family. The daughter’s name did not appear anywhere, and the last line, written as if added at the end, said only that he ought to have died long before and did not know why he had lived until now.
　　 I folded the letter back into its cover and left it on the desk where all could see it. Then, when I turned again, I noticed the blood on the paper door. I tried to lift his head and look at his face, but the weight and the coldness of him made me let go at once. I could not cry. I could only feel horror. It was not only the horror of death before my eyes, but the horror of the fate that had now opened in front of me.
　　 I went back to my own room and walked around it like an animal in a cage. Again and again I thought that I must wake the widow, and again and again I stopped myself because I could not bear to expose the women of the house to that sight in the dark. I lit my own lamp and looked at the clock over and over. Never in my life had time moved so slowly. The sky seemed as if it might remain black forever. At last, before six, I went to wake the maid, and the widow, hearing my steps, called out that it was Sunday and too early.
　　 I told her softly that I needed her to come to my room at once. She threw a robe over her sleeping clothes and followed me. The moment we entered, I shut the sliding door and, pointing toward K’s room, begged her not to be frightened. Then I said, “K has killed himself.” She turned pale and stared at me without speech. At that very moment, before I had planned to say anything of the kind, I bowed low and apologized, saying that I had done wrong and had caused sorrow to her and to her daughter. She did not understand the full meaning of my words and only answered, with a frozen face, that if it was a sudden disaster, nothing could be done now.
　　 After that, the widow showed remarkable strength. She would not let anyone enter K’s room until the proper steps had been taken. At her direction I went for the doctor and then for the police. We learned that he had cut the main blood vessel in his neck with a small knife and had died almost at once. Later, when all formal matters were over, we cleaned the room as best we could. Most of the blood had sunk into the bedding, so the tatami did not suffer as badly as it might have done. We moved his body into my room and laid it there as if he were only sleeping, and then I sent a telegram to his family.
　　 When I came back, incense was already burning by his pillow. The widow sat there with red eyes, and beside her sat the daughter, quietly weeping. That was the first time I had seen her face since the night before. Until then I had been filled only with fear and strain, but when I saw the two women grieving beside him, sorrow at last entered me as well. I sat down with them in silence, offered incense, and felt my heart loosen a little under the weight of shared sadness. Even then I was still strangely grateful that the daughter had not seen the first dreadful sight in K’s room.
　　 Soon K’s father and elder brother came from the country. Because I had handled everything from the start, they listened when I spoke about where he should be buried. K had once said that he liked the area around Zoshigaya, and long before, half in jest, I had told him that if he loved the place so much, I would bury him there after his death. I repeated that memory now and urged them to let him rest there. In truth, I also wanted his grave to stand where I could visit it month after month and renew my repentance for the rest of my life. So K was buried at Zoshigaya, and from that day forward the road to his grave became the road of my own punishment.
　　
　　Part 20
　　
　　 K’s death did not end my suffering. It only gave my suffering a fixed shape and a place to return to. From the day of his burial onward, I visited his grave every month without fail. At first I told myself that this regular act was a duty to the dead, a proof that I had not forgotten my friend. But in truth it was also a form of punishment. Each time I stood before the stone and placed flowers there, I felt again that I had helped to drive him toward death.
　　 The widow and her daughter remained in deep sorrow for a long time. Because the cause of K’s death was not fully known to them, their grief was quieter than mine, but perhaps for that very reason it lasted more naturally. I alone carried the knowledge that our friendship, our rivalry, and my own hidden conduct stood behind the event. That made ordinary life in the house almost unbearable. Yet I did not leave. Having gone so far already, I now felt tied to the house in a way that was half duty and half weakness.
　　 Before long the widow spoke to me of the marriage again. The matter had already been settled between us before K’s death, and she seemed to think that, after a proper period of waiting, it should proceed as first planned. I no longer knew what I ought to do. At times I thought that the right course was to break the engagement at once and leave the house forever. At other times I thought that to do so would only create fresh sorrow for the women, who knew nothing of the deeper truth and had already suffered enough.
　　 There was also another feeling in me, one harder to name honestly. Though K was dead, my love for the daughter had not died. If love had ended with his death, perhaps I could have acted more nobly. But the heart does not obey moral arguments with such cleanliness. Even while I blamed myself, I still longed for her. That longing shamed me, yet it remained stronger than all the fine speeches I made to myself about sacrifice.
　　 At last I married her. That sentence is easy to write, but nothing in my later life was ever simple because of it. Before the marriage, I told myself that if I could only make her happy, perhaps some part of my sin would soften. I hoped that faithful daily life might cover the grave of the past. But a crime hidden under kindness does not disappear merely because the hands that committed it later behave gently. What I had done remained inside me, and the happier she seemed, the more bitterly I felt my own unworthiness.
　　 From the first days of marriage, I discovered that I could not confess the truth to her. More than once I thought that honesty demanded it. More than once I even came close to speaking. But each time, when I looked at her face, I stopped. She loved me with a whole and trusting heart. To pour into that trust the poison of my past seemed less like repentance than like cruelty. So I chose silence. That silence protected her peace, but it also made our married life false at its root.
　　 You may ask whether she suspected anything. She did not know the truth, but she felt the shadow of it. At times she would ask why my monthly visits to the grave never ceased. At times she would wonder why sorrow came so suddenly over me even in the middle of an ordinary happy day. Once in a while she begged me to tell her everything, saying that if there were some fault in her she wished to correct it. Each time I answered as I had answered before: the fault was mine, not hers. That answer was true, but because it was incomplete, it became another lie.
　　 Our life together was outwardly peaceful. We went out at times, spoke gently to one another, and passed through the years without open conflict. She was a good wife, and I think I was not a bad husband in the visible sense. Yet invisibly I lived beside her as a man who has locked a body in the next room. The house was warm, but my heart carried winter. There were moments when I looked at her and felt real gratitude, almost happiness, and then at once K’s face would rise before me and accuse me from the depth of that very happiness.
　　 Because of this, I slowly came to distrust not only other people but myself most of all. In earlier days I had said that human beings could betray one another when desire touched them at the right place. After K’s death, that belief sank deeper and turned inward. I no longer thought merely that men were weak. I knew that I myself was weak, cunning, and capable of harming even the person I respected most. Once a man sees that clearly in himself, he cannot return to the innocent faith of youth.
　　 My wife sometimes spoke of children. She did not press the matter often, but the subject would return now and then, as it naturally does in a marriage. We had none. Whether this was due to chance, to the condition of our bodies, or to something darker in my own spirit, I do not know. Yet whenever she spoke of children, I felt as if heaven itself were refusing to allow new life to grow from a union founded upon guilt. This thought may have been unreasonable, but it clung to me. In my darker hours I said to myself that childlessness was a judgment laid upon us.
　　 The years passed. I ceased to expect rescue from time. At first I had believed that memory would fade and that habit would make life bearable. Instead memory changed its form and became more deeply rooted. K no longer appeared to me only as the friend who had died. He became the witness standing behind my whole existence. If I read a book, if I spoke kindly to my wife, if I walked to the grave with flowers in my hand, somewhere behind the act stood K, not saying anything, but making all simple things difficult.
　　 Little by little I withdrew from society. I had once thought of taking some position, doing some useful work, and living in the ordinary world like other educated men. But I could not give myself to any such road. Part of the reason was simple weariness. Part of it was distrust. I did not believe that a man who was morally broken at the center had the right to stand before others as an upright member of society. So I remained at home more and more, until even my wife came to think this inactivity was part of my nature.
　　 Yet inactivity did not bring peace. A man can hide from the world, but he cannot hide from himself. The more quietly I lived, the louder my inner life became. When I sat alone, I did not hear silence. I heard accusation. When I tried to reason about my own case, I could produce arguments on both sides and settle nothing. There were times when I almost persuaded myself that K’s death had not been my doing, because he himself had been divided, proud, and already close to collapse. Then, just as I began to accept that thought, the memory of my secret request to the widow or of my words in Ueno would return and strike it down.
　　 In this way my marriage and my remorse advanced together through the years like two carts tied to the same horse. My wife gave me devotion, care, and a daily life that from the outside looked complete. I gave her affection, consideration, and what comfort I could. But beneath these visible exchanges ran another current, one she could not see and I could not escape. The result was that I came to think of myself as a man already half buried, continuing to breathe only because habit is stronger than decision in most human beings. Even then, however, I had not yet resolved to die. That final resolution came later, when the whole age around me began to change and the end of Meiji cast its long shadow over my own exhausted soul.
　　
　　Part 21
　　
　　 During those same years, my wife’s mother fell seriously ill. The doctors said from the beginning that she could not recover, and I cared for her as carefully as I could. I did it for her sake, and for my wife’s sake, but also for another reason that reached beyond both of them. I had long wanted to do some good thing in the world and had found no road by which I could do it. In nursing her, I felt for the first time that my hands were at least touching human life in a useful way. Even then, however, I knew that some part of this devotion was only another form of atonement.
　　 When she died, my wife and I were left alone in the world together. My wife said to me, with tears in her eyes, that from then on I was the only person in the world on whom she could truly rely. Hearing this, I felt my own eyes fill. A man who cannot rely even upon himself is a poor support for another human being. I told her once that she was an unfortunate woman, and when she asked why, I could not explain my meaning. She wept, thinking I was only speaking from one of my strange and twisted moods.
　　 After her mother’s death, I tried, more than before, to treat my wife with kindness. It was not merely because I loved her, though I did love her. My feeling had widened into something more general and more sorrowful than personal affection alone. The same force that made me visit K’s grave each month and made me nurse the old woman now commanded me to be gentle to my wife as well. I began to think deeply about human sin, not as an idea, but as something pressing with full weight upon my life. There were moments when I felt that I deserved to be beaten in the street by strangers, simply because I was a man.
　　 In time even that thought changed. To be beaten by others no longer seemed enough. I came to feel that I myself must strike myself, and after that, that even self-punishment while living was not enough. The thought of killing myself rose before me not once, but many times, at first like a sudden flash and later like something that had perhaps been sleeping inside me from the beginning. Because I still lacked the courage to carry it out, I chose another road for a time. I decided that I would live on as though I were already dead. That was the form my punishment took.
　　 Since making that decision, I have passed many years beside my wife in outward peace. We were not unhappy in the ordinary meaning of the word. Indeed, in many visible ways we were happy. Yet there remained in me one dark point that she could never understand, and I believe it always appeared to her as a shadow she could not name. When I think of that, I feel most pity not for myself but for her. She lived beside a man who loved her and yet could never fully come near her.
　　 There were times when some outward stimulus made my heart leap and tempted me to return to active life. But whenever I tried to move toward work, public duty, or any clear place in the world, a cold and terrible force seemed to seize me and say, “You have no right.” I would struggle inwardly and ask why I alone must be stopped. Then the answer would come back, “You know why.” At once my strength failed me. Thus my inner life became a repeated war in which every road was closed except one.
　　 That one open road was death. You may think this excessive, but to me it was simple. If I remained still, I could continue somehow. The moment I tried to move forward as a living man with claims upon society, conscience drove me back. More than once I came close to ending my life, and each time my wife held me back without knowing it. I could not take her with me, for that would have been cruelty beyond measure. Yet to leave her behind also seemed pitiful, and so I went on hesitating.
　　 Remember this clearly. When I first met you in Kamakura, when I walked with you in the suburbs of Tokyo, when I listened to your youthful questions and let you come again and again to my house, my essential state had not changed. Behind me there was always the same black shadow. I was dragging out life for my wife’s sake, much as a condemned man might still walk because someone weaker leans upon his arm. Even when I told you we would meet again after the seasons changed, I was not lying. At that time I truly meant to go on living.
　　 Then came the illness and death of the Emperor. When the news of his decline spread through the country, I felt that the spirit of Meiji itself had begun to sink. And when he died, I had the strange and powerful feeling that the age had ended not only in history but inside my own breast. I belonged to that age more deeply than younger men like you could fully understand. To continue living after it, I thought, was almost like remaining behind as a useless remnant. I even said as much openly to my wife.
　　 She laughed and would not take my words seriously. Then, in a playful tone, she asked whether I meant to die in loyalty like a man from former times. Her joke recalled to me the old word junshi, a word I had not used or even thought of for years. I answered, also half in jest, that if I were to die in that way, it would be in loyalty not to a person, but to the spirit of Meiji itself. At the time I did not know how deeply those light words had entered me. Yet once spoken, they did not leave.
　　 About a month later, on the night of the imperial funeral, I sat as usual in my study and listened to the signal guns. To me they sounded like the final announcement that Meiji had passed forever out of the world. Later came the news of General Nogi’s death. When I read that he had long wished to die ever since the loss of the flag in the Satsuma Rebellion, and that he had borne that resolution silently through thirty-five years of life, I was shaken to the core. I counted those years on my fingers and asked myself which was harder: to die in a moment, or to go on living for decades with death already fixed in one’s heart.
　　 A few days after reading that, I finally made my decision. You may not fully understand my reason, just as I cannot fully explain Nogi’s. The difference between your age and mine, or perhaps the difference between your nature and mine, may stand in the way. Still, I have tried, through this whole long confession, to show you the structure of my mind as honestly as possible. I do not write this in drunkenness or in theatrical excitement. I write because my past is mine alone to tell, and because I believe that even such darkness may serve as a lesson if it is spoken truthfully.
　　 I do not wish to give my wife a scene of blood or terror. She has gone for a short stay to her aunt in Ichigaya, because the aunt is ill and needs help, and I myself urged her to go. During her absence I have written most of this letter. When she came back unexpectedly even once or twice, I hid the pages from her at once. I intend to die quietly, without letting her know, so that she may think I died suddenly, or even that my mind gave way. Any thought like that would be easier for her than the full truth.
　　 It has now been more than ten days since I first decided upon death, and most of that time has gone into writing this long account for you. At first I meant to speak it aloud, but in writing I have been able to draw myself more clearly. You may perhaps think this effort unnecessary, yet to me it has not been so. It was not done only to keep a promise to you. More than half of it arose from my own final need to put my life into words before it ended.
　　 Now that need has been satisfied. I have nothing more to do in this world. By the time this letter reaches your hands, I shall already be gone from it. I ask one thing of you, and it is the last thing. Use my story as you wish for your own understanding of human life, but keep the whole truth hidden from my wife as long as she lives. I wish to leave her memory of the past as white as possible. Let this confession remain only between you and the dead man who writes it.