Massacre or: Yukata
I was going to die. This year on New Year’s, I received a kimono instead of money. It was made of hemp. It was woven with fine gray stripes. It seemed to be a summer kimono. I decided to stay alive until summer.
These lines have the atmosphere of typical Dazai theatrics, but regardless of whether he meant to or not, he did die in the end, so you could say his theatrics had consistency.
Even if he was bluffing to appeal to his readers, to me, these lines have become like a pillow word for “yukata,” so at some point I started associating yukata with death.
This summer, I had a yukata made to order. It was my first time ever.
The other day there was a gathering where everyone was to wear yukata, and I participated. The old house in the area where kagemachaya (eating and drinking establishments where male prostitutes could be hired) used to line the streets might have been suitably renovated, but the stairs remained as they had been—narrow and steep. Not very easy for a person nowadays to climb.
But once I got used to them, my feet carried me smoothly like an escalator. Perhaps these stairs were a good fit for the kimono-wearing era’s sensibilities.
I don’t remember who, but someone there said, “You could trip and die on these stairs.”
Someone else replied, “That’s hardly worth mentioning. Death is an utterly normal part of daily life.”
She didn’t disagree or state her own opinion; she merely expressed that sentiment.
Many of the participants there that day were interested in martial arts. Surely they had some degree of feelings about death.
To be killed. Or to kill. Maybe they usually imagine death as the unnatural result of being attacked by a mob or a murderer, some confrontation. Maybe they didn’t consider it an event with any connection to their daily existence. That was the sense I got.
After a while, I went out to buy more ice and beer. The area had been reconstructed a bit, but there were still little side paths remaining. The streetlights weren’t as bright as in central Tokyo. Encountering this scenery made me nervous.
There’s something I’ve thought over and over my whole life, ever since I can remember. There are people waiting for me around the corner of little streets like these. With katana, or bamboo spears, or fire hooks. So when it happens, I’ll think, Ahh, I knew it.
They aren’t strangers. On the contrary, familiar faces will come to kill me. They wear the features of people I know like masks and stare me down. A massacre would occur right up against everyday life. At some point, I started having that feeling every day. It was the same back then, too. The ones who got eliminated were your neighbors.
I wrote that at some point I started associating yukata with death. If I’m alive next summer, I’m sure I’ll wear mine again.
Post originally in Japanese August 18, 2021
Translated by Emily Balistrieri
Social preview image by 運転太郎 and used under the Attribution 3.0 Unported Creative Commons license