Mei Yumi's Postwar Japanese Literature: Hayashi Fumiko's novels, Late Chrysanthemum, Downtown, Floating Clouds by Hayashi Fumiko

Author:Hayashi Fumiko [Fumiko, Hayashi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hjosui Publishing
Published: 2015-08-26T04:00:00+00:00

.. * 37

Throughout history, countless human beings were born. Politics consist in repetitions of the same things. Wars as well are waged and concluded at repetitions of the same things. …… Before they realilze what’s what, human beings repeat life and death while jostling each other within a social framework.

Time went by all too soon. It was summer.

At the end of February, Yukiko had returned once to Shizuoka and met her immediate family, then returned to Tokyo very soon. She moved from the shed in Ikebukuro to a rental room on the second floor of a hardware stop’s barrack in Takadano’baba[*189], which was introduced to her by Shinoi Haruko. She had not met with Tomioka for a long time. The room was located near to the station, and underwent the trains’ noisy rumbering. Nevertheless, no deposit and a room charge of 1,000 yen pleased Yukiko. She felt like settled down in a human life only after carrying her wicker trunks and the futon-beddings in her room. She, however, did not have a job. She was pregnant. She wrote to Tomioka three times, and his reply came once, saying “I will come one of these days,” along with a money order for 5,000 yen. Yukiko paid for her living by selling off her clothes that she brought back from her home in Shizuoka. Almost all her clothes were sold. Her life became difficult little by little. She was in robust health, and nausea was unexpectedly not bad. Yukiko worried every day about whether she should give a birth to a child or not. On one hand, she wanted a baby, on the other hand, however, felt like burying the trouble. She shut herself in her room all day long every day and went to nowhere except that she went out for a public bathhouse or for shopping. She knew that her life would be financially difficult before long. When the worst would come to the worst, she thought to put into practice Tomioka’s idea in Ikaho, although she was not sure whether she could really do it. Iba very often visited her, and not blamed her anymore for her so-called unthankfulness. He seemingly got a good job, and was nicely turned out. She did not meet Joe since parting last year. Joe’s memory remained in a form of only one pillow. She sold the radio gifted by Joe for purchasing a round-trip ticket to Shizuoka.

Iba did not know of Yukiko’s pregnancy. Yukiko did not consult a midwife, but wrapped a long white cotton cloth, sarashi, of 13 inches wide and 7 feet long, around her belly tightly in her way. Yukiko had never known that her own body and her way of life were so bearable this way. She secretly felt capable of doing anything. She did not notice her own strength. She remembered that she might have had this patience also when her arm was injured by Kano. She thought that a woman like herself who had such patience was obstinate.

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