I never knew the madman who wrote these notebooks. I did, however, have a passing acquaintance with the woman who (as near as I can tell) figures in them as the madam of a bar in Kyobashi. She was small with a pale complexion, narrow eyes that tilted upward, a high nose bridge and an air of such firmness that she looked less like a beautiful woman than a handsome young man. The events in the notebooks seem to have taken place in Tokyo around 1930. A friend and I went to the bar in question a time or two for highballs, but that wasn’t until 1935 or so, about the time Japan’s army started going openly on the rampage. I never had the chance
to cross paths with the man who wrote the notebooks.
However, this past February I called on an old friend who’d relocated to Funabashi City in Chiba Prefecture, someone I knew from college days who’d gone on to become a lecturer at the local women’s college. I had in fact asked him to find a marriage partner for a relative of mine. While near the coast, I intended to pick up fresh seafood for my family, and set off carrying a rucksack.
Funabashi is a fairly big city overlooking a muddy sea. My friend had moved there only recently, and I had trouble finding his place even after telling local people the address and asking for directions. It was cold out, and my shoulders ached from the weight of the rucksack. Drawn by the sound of a violin recording, I pushed open the door of a coffee shop and went in.
The owner looked familiar. Sure enough, she turned out to be none other than the manager of that little bar in Kyobashi a decade ago. She remembered me right away, and after reacting to the unexpected reunion with exaggerated surprise and laughter, we immediately exchanged tales of being burned out of house and home in the fire bombings, almost boasting, the way everyone did.
We also exchanged the usual pleasantries of people who meet after some time:
“You haven’t changed a bit.”
“No, I’m an old lady now. Falling apart. You’re the one who looks young.”
“Not at all. I’ve got three kids. I’m here stocking up on food for them.”
Then we turned to news about the doings of mutual friends. After a while she asked in a different tone, “Did you by any chance know Yo-chan?”
When I said I did not, she disappeared into the back of the shop and returned with three notebooks and three photographs which she handed to me.
“Maybe you could find material for a novel here,” she said.
As I am incapable of writing anything based on material that’s been thrust upon me, I toyed with the idea of handing everything back on the spot, but the photos (I wrote in the prologue to this book about the three photographs and their weirdness) were so fascinating that I agreed to keep the notebooks for a time. Promising to stop by again on my way home, I asked if she knew so-and-so at such-and-such an address, a teacher at the women’s college. It turned out that she did. They were both newcomers to the neighborhood. He sometimes came by the coffee shop, she said, and lived right around the
corner.
That evening, I had a few drinks with my friend, and he put me up for the night. I stayed awake all night, absorbed in the notebooks. The events recorded there had taken place some time ago, but I felt sure the contents would appeal to readers today. Rather than make any clumsy additions, I decided that asking a magazine publisher to run them just as they were would be far more meaningful.
I picked up some dried fish for the kids, left my friend’s place, and stopped by the coffee shop again.
“Thanks for yesterday. And by the way,” I said, getting right down to it, “do you mind if I hang onto the notebooks for a while?”
“Please do.”
“Is this person still alive?”
“I have no idea. About ten years ago, a package containing the notebooks and the photos arrived at my place in Kyobashi. The sender had to be Yo- chan, but there was no return name or address. The notebooks got mixed in with some other things and somehow survived the bombing. I read them for the first time just the other day, and . . .”
“Did you cry?”
“No, not cry so much as . . . It’s awful for someone to end up that way, isn’t it? Just awful.”
“Ten years ago, was it? Then he could be dead by now. He must have sent the package to you in gratitude. Some of what he wrote sounds exaggerated, but you seem to have come in for considerable suffering. If everything he wrote is true, and I were his friend, I might have wanted to pack him off to a mental hospital myself.”
“His father was to blame.” She sounded nonchalant. “The Yo-chan we knew was sweet and thoughtful. If he just hadn’t been a drinker . . . but no, even then, he was a dear boy. An angel.”
