土 English

"Earth"

—a preface

Soseki

"Earth"

appeared in the Tokyo Asahi

two years ago.

And the man responsible for it was me.

Unfortunately, however, before "Earth"

had reached its end I fell ill and lost the freedom even to hold a newspaper, and after that I never had occasion to remember "Earth"

or its author again.

Planned at first for fifty or sixty installments, "Earth"

had grown, before anyone noticed, into a surprisingly long work.

Having lost the thread of the story partway, I could not summon the courage to take it up again and start reading from some arbitrary point, and so I simply let it go; yet inwardly I marveled at the author's persistence and energy.

"Earth"

reached its conclusion, I believe, only at the hundred and fiftieth or sixtieth installment.

An indifferent public and a busy man like me forgot "Earth"

for a long while afterward.

Then one day I met Ikebe, who has since died, and when our talk happened to turn to novels, Ikebe asked why "Earth"

had not been published as a book, and praised Nagatsuka's work at some length.

Ikebe was then at the Asahi

as its chief editorial writer, so "Earth"

he had read from beginning to end.

Moreover, though he claimed to know nothing of literature, he in fact had an honest critical eye and had read "Earth"

patiently all the way through.

I answered that the publishing world was in a slump, and that the time had probably not yet come for "Earth"

to appear as a single volume.

At that moment I thought privately that, since things far poorer than "Earth"

are put into the world nowadays, it would be good for the author if it could somehow be gathered into a book. But being an unhelpful sort of man, once the day had passed I again forgot "Earth"

entirely.

Then this spring Nagatsuka called on me without warning: a publisher had at last agreed to take "Earth",

and would I write a preface for it?

At the time I was writing one installment of my own novel every day, and had no leisure to read "Earth"

over again.

There was nothing for it but to ask him to wait until my own work was done.

Nagatsuka then said he wanted a preface from Ikebe as well and asked me to introduce him while I was at it; I agreed at once.

The day the author of "Earth"

stood in Ikebe's entrance hall with my calling card was, as it happened, the thirty-fifth day after the death of Ikebe's mother. Nagatsuka, they tell me, stated his errand from where he stood and went home; and three days later Ikebe himself died suddenly, so his preface was never obtained.

No sooner had I finished "To the Spring Equinox and Beyond"

than I kept my earlier promise and turned to "Earth",

beginning to read its proofs.

It was longer than I expected; I used up half of one day and the whole of another before I finished, and thinking it over, I found it a work of considerable labor.

I am by nature a cheap sort of man, given to admiring almost anything I read, and with this "Earth"

it was entirely so.

First of all, before anything else, I thought: this is something I could never write.

Next I cast about, wondering who in today's literary world besides Nagatsuka could write it.

And I came to the conclusion that no one else could.

When I say no one else could write it, however, I do not mean skill in handling prose, or the inborn power to make characters live and move.

If I meant only that, and said no one equals Nagatsuka, it would insult other writers on one hand, and look like a scheme to puff Nagatsuka up on the other; either way it would only trouble the author.

What I mean by saying no one equals him is that the events and the nature described in this work have not yet been studied by anyone but Nagatsuka.

The people who appear in "Earth"

are the poorest of farmers.

They have neither learning nor refinement: they are simply born upon the earth and raised with it, the pitiful life of farmers no better than maggots.

Nagatsuka, whose family has since ancient times been a local power settled in Yuki district in Ibaraki, and who employs many tenant farmers, has faithfully gathered into this "Earth"

every detail of their near-bestial, dreadfully exhausted way of living.

Their coarseness, their shallowness, their deep superstition, their innocence, their cunning, their lack of greed and their greed—things the rest of us (every writer in today's literary world included) can scarcely even imagine—are drawn so vividly that they rise before the eye: such is "Earth"

—that is it.

And because "Earth"

sets down minutely and straightforwardly the part of the farmer's hard life nearest to the beast, a part no one but Nagatsuka can touch, I say that no one equals him.

Of nature apart from human labor, too, the author has studied the scenery of the Kinu River banks, the sky, the spring, the autumn, the snow and the wind so closely that any reader must readily assent to the same judgment.

The things of the fields, the alder on the ridge between paddies, the voices of frogs, the sounds of birds—if it exists in his native place at all, then down to the smallest stroke it appears in his description bearing the character of that region.

Hence wherever and however it appears, it is always unmistakably its own.

Setting that distinctiveness against the commonplace nature-writing of ordinary novelists, I say that no one equals him.

While admiring his distinctiveness, I lamented that it was often so minute that it killed the thread of the story—so exact an observer of nature is he.

As a work of literature, "Earth"

is, if anything, painful reading.

It is hard to say: read it because it is entertaining.

First, the speech of the characters is built out of a dialect very far removed from us.

Second, for all the scale of its construction, and for all that it spans several years, the story keeps wanting to spread out flat rather than trace a clear line and deepen as it moves forward.

So as a whole it does not give the reader a gathering, accelerating interest.

It is therefore more accurate to say that, rather than events knotting and tangling and dragging the reader along, the annual round of that region is set down diligently and plainly, and in the midst of it the people the author has made begin, fitfully, to move.

In that sense too it is hard to read, for there lurks a danger of losing some of its power to draw people in.

But these are difficulties only on the surface. What I really mean by calling it hard to read is that the hearts and deeds of its people give the reader nothing but oppression, unease, and pain, and never the stimulus and comfort of feeling oneself a happy human being made by God.

Tragedy is doubtless terrible.

But in ordinary tragedy there is some compensation besides the sorrow, so that the reader welcomes the sacrifice of tears.

With "Earth,"

however, the pain is such that not even tears will come.

It is the pain of weather that never rains and, in exchange, never once clears.

The heart simply sinks down under the earth; neither in human feeling nor in moral sense is one given anything to set against this oppression.

One only digs down into the earth and falls into the dark.

Anyone who reads "Earth"

will surely feel himself dragged through the mud as well.

I felt so too.

Some may wonder why Nagatsuka wrote anything so hard to read.

To such people I would say only this: if you would once press to the bottom of your heart the miserable fact that human beings living such a life exist in our own time, and in countryside not so very far from the capital, might it not serve as something useful to your view of life hereafter, and to your daily conduct?

I hope especially that young men and young women who long after pleasure will endure the discomfort and find the courage to read this "Earth"

through to the end.

When my daughter comes of age and begins talking of concerts and of the Imperial Theatre, I mean above all to have her read this "Earth"

That is my intention.

She will certainly say she does not want to.

She will certainly ask me to exchange it for a love story she finds more interesting.

But at that time I do not mean to tell my daughter to read it because it is entertaining.

I mean to tell her: read it because it is painful.

I want to advise her to endure and read it, because it is for her instruction, because it is to learn the world, and because knowing it will cast a dark and dreadful shadow across her own character.

For I firmly believe that the awakening and the religious feeling that arise in a young woman (or a young man, it is the same) raised warm and thoughtless all come out of the depths of that dark shadow.

Nagatsuka's manner of writing is calm throughout.

His people are all just as they are.

The course of the story is entirely natural.

When I began running "Earth"

in the Asahi,

a man named S from the north took the trouble to send me a letter reporting an argument he had had with Nagatsuka when Nagatsuka was traveling and met him.

Nagatsuka had read one installment, at S's house, of the piece I wrote for the Asahi

called "Here and There in Manchuria and Korea,"

and had grown greatly indignant, saying that this fellow Soseki makes fools of people.

Not Soseki alone: he railed that the whole manner of writing of the reporters of the Asahi

makes fools of people.

That is only natural for Nagatsuka, who wrote so earnest and mature a work as "Earth,"

a work one might fairly call solemn.

That "Here and There in Manchuria and Korea"

should have offended him is, I think, only to be expected.

But even I, suspected by him of frivolity, have eyes for reading an earnest work like "Earth"

—those eyes I do possess.

And that is why I am writing this preface.

Nagatsuka happened to see one installment of "Here and There in Manchuria and Korea"

and was angered by my shallowness; but had his eye chanced to fall on something else from the same hand, he might have felt the opposite.

For if I were from first to last the man of that one installment of "Here and There in Manchuria and Korea"

that displeased Nagatsuka, then I could never spend so many words on his "Earth"

—that would simply stand to reason.

Nagatsuka has had the misfortune to contract tuberculosis of the larynx; until recently he was in hospital in Tokyo, and is now traveling partly for his health.

A letter from Dr. Kubo of Fukuoka University, to whom I had earlier introduced him, said that Nagatsuka had come to be examined, so by now he must be in Kyushu.

I am glad to have been able to say this much about "Earth"

for his sake in his illness, and in time for publication.

When I first began running "Earth"

in the Asahi,

someone took the trouble to inform me that a certain man of letters had said we were under no obligation to read "Earth"

and the like.

At the time I wondered why this man of letters should insult the innocent author of "Earth,"

and felt a bitter distaste.

By rights, the only people obliged to read a novel are its proofreader and the censor at the Home Ministry.

Without any need for announcements, if one dislikes it one may simply keep silent and not read it.

And if he means there is no obligation to read a thing because its writer's name is unknown, then he is no better than an outsider who reads novels by their authors' names and cares nothing for their contents.

A man of letters ought, I think, to show a little more sympathy and respect toward a fellow craftsman, even an unknown one.

And since the author of "Earth"

is ill, in this case I want all the more to say so.

(May 1912)

I

A fierce west wind flung its huge invisible mass against the woods with a roar, and flung it again, and all day long tormented the lean, leafless trees.

Now and then the branches wept, crying out with a thin, mournful whistle.

The short winter day was already sinking, blinking as it cast its yellow light.

And then the west wind grew so quiet that one might have thought it had dropped altogether.

Clouds like torn lumps of mud clung motionless and irregular above the woods, showing that the sky was still in an uproar.

So from time to time the branches rustled, as if they had remembered something.

The world had suddenly grown forlorn.

Oshina set down her carrying pole again.

From the ends of the short bamboo pole she had hung small hooks made of tree branches, and on these she had caught the handles of her pails.

Between spells of farm work Oshina would take on tofu from the village and walk two or three villages selling it; that was her custom.

Since she carried it out in nothing but pails, no capital was needed, and the profit was correspondingly thin; still, it brought in visible pocket money day by day, better than farming alone, so she had kept at it a while longer.

One pail of tofu was always gone by the time she had made her usual round.

On the way home she poured out the water, whitened a little by crumbs of tofu, and the pole grew light.

Oshina never stopped moving her hands at one thing or another while daylight lasted—wetting the straw she would twist into rope by night, raking up fallen leaves, this and that.

Being strong by nature, Oshina had never once thought her work hard.

But this day she herself found it thoroughly unpleasant, and had forced herself out only because the winter solstice was coming and she had to lay in konnyaku.

At the solstice makeshift peddlers come out in swarms, and unless she hurried around once she would be beaten to it. Oshina simply could not sit still.

There was no konnyaku in her own village; to lay any in she had to go far, crossing paddies and passing through woods.

So Oshina, meaning to do business along the way, shouldered her tofu again that day.

Unluckily a fierce west wind had risen in a sky that had been bitterly cold since the night, and going against it Oshina felt her own feet unsteady beneath her.

A chill ran shuddering through her body.

And each time she plunged her hand into the water to lift out the tofu, the cold went into her until she shivered.

Her hands, dry and rough, turned red every time she dipped them.

The cracks in her skin stung and smarted.

Here and there among households she knew, Oshina had them burn a handful of fallen leaves for her, and held her hands over the fire until she was warm at last.

By the time she came away with the konnyaku she had lost time over one thing and another, and it was later than usual.

Oshina passed one wood after another hurrying toward her village, but she was tired, and felt a kind of heaviness, and had come setting her load down at the roadside to rest several times along the way.

Oshina let herself fall against the bamboo pole laid across the handles of the pails, and dropped heavily to her knees.

Slumped there, her already unsightly figure fell into a still more slovenly disarray.

What was left of the west wind blew from behind her.

And the west wind turned back the ends of the dirty towel knotted behind her head, seemed to comb up her dusty red hair that had gone without oil, and laid bare the grimy nape of her neck.

At the same time the trees of the wood would not give up their habitual clamor: the branches at the roadside closed all around and leaned in to peer down at Oshina, and from behind and behind again the treetops of the wood thrust out their heads all together.

Then after a moment they all swung sharply back together, swaying sideways, rustling as though whispering and laughing.

As Oshina became aware that something had changed in her body, she began to feel afraid.

She told herself it must be all right, since nothing had happened for three or four days; but sitting still like this she felt as though she were sinking away into some far place, and being somewhat prone to dizziness anyway, at that thought her ears seemed to ring, and the world seemed instead to have gone quiet.

When she came to herself, Oshina shouldered the pole briskly.

The wood ended and the paddies came into view.

Beyond the paddies was the village, and her house stood right at their edge.

Blue smoke was rising straight up.

Oshina thought of her two children and her heart leapt.

From the edge of the wood down to the paddies was only some ten meters, but the slope was steep, and since every rain it gathered the water thereabouts and poured it into the paddies, the earth had been gouged out into a deep hollow.

Oshina turned the pole aside at an angle, put her right hand to the handle of the front pail and her left to the handle of the back one, and went down carefully.

Even so, the weight of the konnyaku, which nearly filled the pails, barely held her unsteady feet under her.

Along the narrow paddy path, wide enough only for two people to pass, Oshina carried her load slowly.

She wore leggings so old they had faded to a whitish brown, and tabi patched only at the toes.

Her big straw sandals had mud from the thawing frost caked on them as if set hard, and it made her steps heavier still, slopping as she went.

An irrigation ditch ran lengthwise through the narrow strip of paddies.

Where two or three fairly large alders stood, a bridge of a single plank was laid across at a slant.

Oshina paused a moment at the foot of the bridge.

And she looked at her own house, now close.

The village stood on high ground, so directly behind Oshina's house was a wood that seemed about to slide down at a slant into the paddies.

Short bamboo grew among the oaks and scrub.

The oaks, grown to a decent size, had all shed their leaves, so through their twigs one could see the sagging ridge of the roof.

Five or six white-feathered hens, scratching the earth with their claws and pecking at the spot, then scratching again, were making their way from the paddies back to the wood, wholly absorbed in the search for their evening feed.

Oshina crossed the slanting bridge with the greatest care.

By the fourth step she stood on the soil of the paddies.

By then the sun had long since set, and as far as one could see, from the fields and from the woods, the world glowed only a yellowish brown, and yet it was still light.

Before climbing up from the paddies Oshina set down her pole and turned left.

Between the wood behind her house and the paddy ran a path no wider than the tracks of feet.

Oshina stopped beside the silverberry bush that marked the border between that path and the wood.

The marks of hens' claws had scattered the fresh earth there.

Oshina gathered the soil back with her hand and tamped it flat with the sole of her sandal.

By the time Oshina's figure appeared in the yard the west wind had dropped as though it had forgotten itself, and the shriveled radish leaves slung over the chestnut tree by the yard did not stir.

The white hens came scurrying to Oshina's feet and looked up at her blankly, wanting something.

Oshina could not bother with hens as she usually did.

She set the pole down at the doorway and suddenly called,

"Otsu."

That was all.

"Is that you, Mother?"

came Otsugi's answer at once, lively.

At the same moment the fire in the stove flickered red in Oshina's eyes.

The rain shutters had not been opened since morning, so it was dim inside.

Oshina's eyes, used to the light outside, could not make out even Otsugi at first.

From the doorway, Otsugi's body had been hiding the stove fire.

She had twisted around as she answered, and so the red fire showed.

Yokichi, on Otsugi's back, caught the sound of Oshina's voice and cried,

"Mamma, mamma,"

putting out both hands and trying to get down.

While Otsugi untied the sash, Oshina set the two pails of konnyaku side by side near the straw bales against the wall.

Yokichi, held in his mother's arms, groped for a breast that hardly gave milk.

Oshina sat down in front of the stove.

The white hens hooked their claws one by one into the bamboo trunk wound round with rough rope that served as a ladder, and, spreading both wings to keep their balance, flustered their way up to the roost.

And there in the blue smoke they sat still with their eyes shut.

Oshina had warmed a little on coming home, but the shivering would not stop, perhaps from the day's cold.

She thought that if she borrowed a bath in the neighborhood later and warmed herself slowly, she would feel better.

A small pot hung over the stove.

The soup was boiling hard, lifting the lid.

Outside it had grown pitch dark before anyone noticed.

Otsugi took a lighted twig from under the stove, lit the hand lamp, and hung it on the post by the raised step.

Oshina saw that Otsugi still had a haori thrown over her thin unlined kimono.

That was nothing out of the ordinary, but since she herself was shivering badly and felt unwell, she could not help noticing, and asked,

"Otsu, aren't you cold dressed like that?"

That was all she said.

Then she gazed at Otsugi's innocent face showing beneath the towel.

"I'm not cold."

Otsugi said it as if it were nothing.

Yokichi was fussing insistently at her breast.

Oshina had brought nothing home, unlike other days, and was suddenly at a loss.

"Otsu, wasn't there some sugar about?"

Oshina said.

Otsugi silently kicked off her sandals, ran up into the room, found a small bag of old newspaper in the cupboard, pinched out a little sugar into her palm, and saying,

"There now, there now,"

gave it to Yokichi, who was waiting with his hand out.

Otsugi licked the sugar off her own hand.

Yokichi, spilling the sugar into his mother's bosom, picked it up unsteadily and put it in his mouth.

When the sugar was gone Yokichi held his sticky hand up near his mother's mouth.

Oshina caught both his hands and licked them for him.

Oshina took the lid off the pot and, holding up a burning twig,

"Is this taro, or what?"

she asked.

"Mm, I put in a little taro and warmed it up again."

"Isn't the rice cold?"

"I was going to make gruel out of it after this."

Oshina thought something hot would warm her, but she felt so heavy that she left everything to Otsugi.

Otsugi put into the pot the crumbly rice, mostly barley and without any stickiness.

Oshina thrust in another twig.

Otsugi took down the pot and hung up the tea kettle.

She stirred the pot two or three times with a ladle as the white steam rose, and put the lid back on.

Otsugi took the tray out of the cupboard and set it on the raised step.

The light of the hand lamp on the post did not reach there, so she worked by feel.

Holding Yokichi in her left arm, Oshina ate the gruel, feeding him a little at a time from the tip of her chopsticks.

Oshina speared three or four pieces of taro on a chopstick and gave it to Yokichi to hold.

Yokichi carried the taro to his mouth and at once cried that it was hot.

Oshina blew on his cheeks and then chewed the taro for him in her own mouth.

Oshina's bowl went cold this way.

When it went cold Otsugi exchanged it for what was in the pot.

Oshina ate three bowls of gruel she did not even want.

She felt her insides grow somewhat warm.

And at last she dipped out water from the kettle, now boiled past its rawness, and drank.

Otsugi went out to the well in the yard and emptied a bucketful of water into the pot.

When Otsugi came back,

"Otsu, it needn't be tonight,"

Oshina said.

Otsugi silently put her hand to the pail beside the straw bales.

"These will have to have water put in them too, won't they."

"You may as well, but it will be hard work."

Before Oshina had finished speaking, Otsugi went out into the yard.

Presently she appeared dimly at the doorway out of the dark yard, carrying the washed pot and pail.

She set the pail down a moment on the threshold and met her mother's eyes.

The pail was half full of water, and it covered the konnyaku in both.

All three of them went to the house east of theirs to borrow a bath.

The place to the east was one large walled compound, wrapped in a thickly grown wood.

Outside it was dark.

The cedars of that wood thrust roughly up into the clear sky.

Because of that wood, Oshina's house had never had sunlight in its yard until the sun had swung well round to the south.

Oshina's family were shadowed people from first to last.

Later, when the Land Survey Department set up triangulation towers here and there with little flags fluttering on top, three or four of the cedars were cut down because the wood blocked the line of sight.

The great cedars were felled to the west, so that they shook the ground terribly with their fall and lay across Oshina's yard.

The branches snapped, and their tips gouged the soil of the yard.

Still, the neighbors gave Oshina's family the small branches and other scraps scattered about when they cleared the trees away, and what with the unlooked-for firewood and the fact that the east was now open, Oshina's household rejoiced in secret, however much the neighbors lamented it as having an arm cut off.

From then on the sun reached them from morning, however awkwardly.

Even so the wood loomed over everything, and at night it towered especially, so that Oshina's little house looked trodden flat into the ground.

Oshina vanished into the darkness.

And appeared at the neighbor's door.

The hired men next door were twisting rope for their night's work.

Sitting cross-legged at the edge of the boarded floor, they added straw and more straw to the end of the rope held down by the foot, rubbed it up to the forehead with a dry rasping sound, then swung the right hand behind and drew the rope back with a jerk.

Each time, the rope dropped to the earthen floor.

Oshina sat small on the boards.

When the straw ran out, each man hooked his rope from foot to hand, counted quickly as he hauled it up from the floor, and tied it off in coils still joined together.

Then they swept the straw scraps from the boards down onto the earthen floor, and took turns going into the bath.

Oshina watched and waited in silence.

Coming here meant deferring like this, so she usually went a little farther to borrow a bath elsewhere; but that night no bath had been heated anywhere.

Oshina had tried two or three houses before she came through this gate.

The hired men had a fire burning under the great cauldron and were warming themselves at it.

Even after coming out of the bath they drew near the fire, showing thighs red as if boiled.

"Come now, warm yourself a while; it will be free in a moment,"

one of the men said kindly, but Oshina endured the cold rising through her and sat patiently on.

Trying not to disturb Yokichi asleep in her bosom, and finding her legs going numb, she shifted her body restlessly several times.

When the bath was free at last, Oshina had waited so long that she took off her clothes in a hurry without thinking.

Luckily Yokichi had gone limp and did not know he was being taken from his mother's bosom, so Otsugi held him in her small arms.

As her body warmed by degrees, Oshina felt for the first time as if she had come back to life, and grew dreamy.

She felt she would like to stay sunk there forever.

When it occurred to her that Yokichi might cry, she came out without washing properly.

Still her face glowed, and her hairline was damp with sweat no matter how she wiped it.

And it felt deeply good.

As soon as Oshina had thrown on her clothes she took Yokichi inside her bosom.

The maid went in after Oshina, so Otsugi had to wait.

By the time Otsugi came out, Oshina's body was beginning to cool.

Oshina regretted not having gone in second herself.

When Oshina came home with her leggings and tabi carried by Otsugi, the moon had quietly sharpened the outline of the neighboring wood, and the gaps in that wood shone especially bright.

The world had gone deeply cold.

Wrapping herself in the thin, grimy quilt, Oshina found her body shivering again and her knees like ice.

II

The next morning Oshina woke while only a faint light showed through the cracks in the shutters.

She lifted her head from the pillow and looked, but the core of her head seemed to ache dully, and it was heavier than usual.

In the narrow house the clatter of a hen's wings rang harshly into her ears.

Otsugi was still sleeping peacefully.

When the cracks in the shutters brightened like eyelids opening, a hen crowed shrilly again.

Oshina had meant to let Otsugi take her time this morning.

Even so, when the hen crowed again Otsugi got up abruptly.

It was so much quieter than usual that she looked around in surprise.

And she saw her mother still wrapped in the quilt beside her.

"Otsu, there's no need to hurry. I'm a bit off this morning, so I'll take my time."

Oshina said.

Otsugi fidgeted a while as she tied her sash, then slid open one of the big doors with a rattle and went out into the yard rubbing her eyes.

In the tub by the well a few taro were soaking, and ice as thick as a pane of glass had formed on the water.

Otsugi struck at the ice with a chip of the whetstone she always used on the pots.

Otsugi had left the big door open, and noticing that the morning cold was coming in, she said,

"Mother, weren't you cold? I didn't notice,"

and rattled the door shut.

In the darkened house only the stove fire stood up red and lively.

Otsugi said,

"Oh, it's cold,"

and holding her hands over the flames curling out of the stove mouth,

"The water on the taro froze this morning,"

she said, turning toward her mother.

"Mm, there seems to be frost too."

Oshina said weakly.

With the doorway behind her, Oshina watched the stove fire licking up.

"It's white everywhere."

Otsugi said, stirring the fallen leaves with bamboo tongs.

"It went bitterly cold toward dawn."

Oshina said, and lifting her head a little,

"I don't want anything this morning, so never mind me—you eat when it's ready."

Oshina said.

Again gruel was boiled from the frozen rice.

"Mother, won't you have even a little?"

Otsugi held out a bowl to her mother's pillow.

When the scorched smell of the gruel struck her nose, Oshina turned onto her front thinking she might take up the chopsticks, but at once she felt sick.

Because she had moved, Yokichi in her bosom began to cry.

Oshina gave him the breast lying on her front.

And she made him another skewer of taro to hold.

When Oshina had the front doors opened, the sun was slanting brightly into the yard over the wood to the east, cutting the shade off sharp and clear, and the frost that had not melted showed white.

From the dead leaves of the chestnut tree by the yard, and from the radish leaves hung on its branches, the thawing frost still dripped.

The straw spread over the yard was soaked through.

In winter, frost columns push up, so the yard is spread thickly with straw scraps and buckwheat husks and the like.

That is the yard covering.

The frost columns were toppling over, one after another, in the mulberry field beyond the yard.

Even under her quilt Oshina felt that it had grown much warmer.

From time to time she lifted her head and looked out through the doorway.

And now and then, without thinking, she found herself staring at the pails of konnyaku set beside the straw bales.

Seen from where she lay, the treetops of the wood to the east looked strangely altered, and staring at them tired her eyes, so she would shift her gaze back to the konnyaku pails.

Oshina wanted somehow to get rid of at least a little of the konnyaku.

Thinking she would surely be up soon, she dozed off from time to time.

"Shall I cut some radish for drying?"

When Otsugi called out loudly from the yard, Oshina raised her head from the pillow.

So Otsugi's voice reached her faintly, without its meaning.

After a while Oshina heard Otsugi in the yard drawing up water with a splash, pausing, and drawing again.

Otsugi was washing the radishes.

She spread a mat over the yard covering and began cutting the radishes for drying in the warm sunlight.

She cut each radish crosswise into several pieces, then split them lengthwise and sliced them into strips.

Otsugi brought the knife down with a rhythmic chopping on the board laid across the rice tub, and with the knife swept the white-cut radish down into the tub.

Hearing the sound of the cutting, Oshina understood that the earlier noise had been the washing of radishes.

Remembering that for the past two or three days she had been saying herself that the radishes must be cut, Oshina was glad in her heart that Otsugi had thought of it.

The sound of the knife came from close outside the shutters.

When Oshina slid half out of the quilt she could see Otsugi's back, bent a little forward, her hair wrapped in a towel.

"Do you know about the radishes?"

Oshina asked.

"I know."

Otsugi stopped her knife and answered, turning her head.

Oshina wrapped herself in the quilt again.

And listened to the still-clumsy sound of the knife.

Yokichi in her bosom grew bored and began to fret.

Hearing him, Otsugi said,

"There now, come to your sister."

and hurriedly burning a handful of leaves, she warmed his clothes and dressed him.

"Yoki is a good boy, so he'll stay with his sister."

Oshina said.

Otsugi carried him over onto her own mat.

Otsugi's hands were dirty with the dust of the leaves.

When she took up the knife again, fingermarks showed on the radish.

Otsugi wiped her hands on her haori.

Yokichi reached out for the cut radish beside him.

"That's dangerous. Here, hold this instead."

Otsugi gave him a half-cut radish.

Yokichi bit into it at once.

"It must be terribly sharp for you, Yoki."

Otsugi said it fondly.

Oshina could hear it all clearly and knew what the two of them were doing.

Next there came to Oshina's ears

"Did you spit it out? There, it's gone that way,"

and then

"You mustn't spit this time, now,"

and again

"Don't carry that off; if you don't listen I'll cut you with this, and blood will come out, oh it hurts,"

and other such things Otsugi was saying.

Each time, the sound of the knife stopped.

Oshina could all but see Yokichi getting into mischief, and Otsugi crying that it hurt and putting her finger in her mouth, and Yokichi putting his own hand to his mouth as well.

Oshina had always been strict with Otsugi, and thought her better able to work than other people's children; but seeing her romp with Yokichi reminded her that the girl was still a child.

She herself had come to know Kanji in the autumn of her sixteenth year.

Would Otsugi too grow up like that, she wondered, thinking such thoughts as she rarely did.

Otsugi was fifteen.

Oshina did not want any midday meal either.

She gave up, admitting to herself that she could not go out to sell today.

She thought that tomorrow she would.

But that was an empty hope.

Oshina still could not leave her pillow.

Naturally enough, uneasiness came first.

Oshina kept thinking of Kanji, who had gone away only recently: after working so hard here he was surely earning money without taking a single day off, and when she thought how he stripped to a single shirt even in the cold, and how the tail of that shirt would work loose so that his navel showed, and how he had said his bones seemed to creak at night, it was all as if before her eyes, and she felt she wanted to see him unbearably.

Kanji had gone to the excavation works on the Tone River.

Since autumn a labor contractor had been coming round to recruit, and made it sound sweet enough that five or six men from the villages nearby signed on.

Kanji did not really know what the work was, but the daily wage was said to be more than fifty sen, and for that season the figure was outrageous, and he fell for it.

The site was low ground near Lake Kasumigaura, where once a flood sank the grasses on the bank the lake spread and became one with the river, all a pale flood, and only an embankment raised by human hands marked off the lake from the river.

Compared with his own land, the vast blankness of the place overwhelmed Kanji.

And the foremen worked him mercilessly, throwing their weight about.

When it was settled that Kanji would go and be hired, he hurried the harvest.

By the time the solstice draws near, not only the paddies but the taro and the radishes in the fields must each be dealt with.

Kanji worked from dark to dark: before Oshina was up to light the stove he was drying mats of unhulled rice on the yard covering, then turning the hulling mill alone, then drying radishes or burying them in the earth.

Even so a little rice and a little of the field work were left, and he went off because Oshina said she would manage somehow.

It was eighty kilometers to the site.

Thinking he would have money as soon as he got there, Kanji had scraped together a purse of only about a yen.

He carried a great deal of food on his back, so that until he arrived he needed nothing but ferry fares.

Kanji arrived at night and went out to work the next day with his body already tired.

He was afraid of eating even half a day's food for nothing.

But the day after that, from the violence of the labor, the sinews of his hands ached with what is commonly called "empty hand," and he could not go out to work for two or three days.

Then six or seven days later a fierce west wind blew.

Wrapped in his thin quilt, Kanji could not warm the feet that had been cold since daytime.

He dozed without ever sleeping soundly, and tossing about got through the long night at last.

The next day he worked his hands, which felt stiff, gripping the cold handle of the shovel and covered in mud.

While he was so occupied a man from his neighborhood turned up unexpectedly, and Kanji was simply astonished, as though bewitched by a fox.

The neighbor said that since so many men were moving about all alike as mud he had been at a loss to tell one from another, and repeated again and again how glad he was to have found Kanji.

He talked of having stopped a night on the road and did not state his business until Kanji anxiously pressed him.

At last Kanji learned that Oshina had sent him.

When he heard that Oshina had fallen ill, the fear of the worst struck him with a jolt.

And he asked again and again how bad it was.

From the way the man spoke he tried to think it was not so serious, yet even so Kanji could not be calm; when he tried to speak, the spit seemed to push back up his throat.

They set out that night.

Kanji was in haste himself, and could not make the messenger walk on tired legs, so they crossed Kasumigaura by steamer to the town of Tsuchiura.

Dawn broke aboard the steamer, but something went wrong on the way, and they reached Tsuchiura far later than expected.

In the town of Tsuchiura Kanji bought a parcel of sardines and hung it from a towel.

From Tsuchiura he left the tired legs behind and walked with all his strength.

Even so, by the time he entered his village he could barely make out the people he passed, and when he stood at his own door a dim hand lamp hung smoking on the post.

In the hushed house Kanji saw at once Oshina wrapped in her quilt.

Then he turned his eyes to Otsugi, who was rubbing her mother's legs.

When Kanji slid the big door open and stepped over the threshold, he said nothing but simply,

"How are you?"

That came first.

Hearing Kanji's voice, Oshina moved her pillow without meaning to and said,

"Is that Kanji?"

and then,

"You didn't miss the man from the south house on the road, did you?"

she said.

"I met him. But how are you feeling?"

"I thought it wasn't much, but I've been lying down three or four days now. Still, today I seem a bit better, so I'm thinking at this rate I'll soon come round."

"That's good then. I could have walked for nothing myself, but I couldn't have the south man walking again, so we took the steamer together as far as Tsuchiura; he was worn out, so I went ahead. At that rate he won't get here easily even tonight. And the steamer was delayed too."

Kanji said this as he took off his straw sandals.

He tossed the parcel of sardines tied to the end of his towel down by Oshina's pillow, set down the bundle slung from his neck with a thud, went out into the yard and washed his feet.

Kanji took his seat by Oshina's pillow.

"It's good it isn't so bad after all. I wondered what had happened."

Kanji said again.

"Oshina, have you eaten?"

he added.

"A while ago I had Otsu boil rice gruel for me, and even that I only just managed to get down."

"Then what about this—I found them on the way. Won't you try one?"

Kanji brought the hand lamp to Oshina's pillow and opened the parcel of sardines.

The sardines shone blue and bright in the lamplight.

"Well now."

Oshina said this, turning onto her front.

"Otsu, why don't you blow up a fire there?"

Kanji said.

"Kanji, that must have been a lot. I didn't need so much."

"It's the season, so they'll keep. And you build up your strength."

"Coming by steamer must have cost a good deal."

"That's so—about sixty sen for the two of us, but I paid it. I couldn't let the south man pay."

"Then you threw away that much of what you earned."

"There's still some in the purse. I worked about seven days and two yen were left even so. And since I'm to go back, I took a little advance. The men from around here who are working there stood surety for me."

Kanji said it with a proud face.

"If I were like I am today it would be all right, but I wanted so badly to see you."

Oshina pressed her forehead to the pillow.

"I went off without clearing up things here anyway, so I'd have had to come back once partway; it comes to the same thing."

Kanji said, leaning over to look at her.

"You did get it into the bales, though."

Kanji said, looking at the straw bales against the wall.

Oshina still lay on her front.

"Over there you don't need money. It isn't as if I smoke; the fifteenth is settling day, and till then there's no reckoning—rice, firewood, everything is taken on the book—so the purse doesn't swell till the fifteenth, but nothing goes out either."

Kanji went on telling Oshina about the place.

"Rice alone takes a good sho a day, so it's hard going; but if I stick it out I can put by two or three kan, so I think I'll manage something before I come home. Then I can buy at least some salted salmon."

"That's good then. They say navvies are a bad lot, so I wondered how you were getting on."

Oshina raised her head.

"There'd be no end to it if I mixed with that sort, but if you keep small in a corner they say nothing."

While Kanji sat with her, Otsugi broke dry twigs and made a fire in the brazier.

Kanji laid the tongs across it and set three sardines on them.

The oil of the sardines dripped hissing and blue flames leapt up.

The smell of the sardines filled the room with the thin smoke.

And that smell woke Oshina's appetite.