This flustered me. I’m not very good with gadgets, and I haven’t the least interest in photography. What’s more, I presented such a squalid figure in those two dotera that even my hosts at the teahouse had laughed and said I looked a proper mountain bandit, so I was thrown into quite a panic to be asked to perform such a fashionable act by those two gay flowers from (I presumed) Tokyo. But then, rethinking the situation, it occurred to me that even as shabbily dressed as I was, a discerning observer might easily detect in me a certain sensitivity and sophistication that would indicate at least sufficient dexterity to manipulate the shutter of a camera, and, buoyed up by this reflection, I feigned nonchalance as I took the instrument, casually asked for a brief explanation of how to work it, and peered into the viewfinder, inwardly all atremble. In the middle of the lens stood Fuji, large and imposing, and below, in the foreground, were two little poppies—or so the girls appeared in their red overcoats. They put their arms around each other and looked at the camera with sober, solemn expressions. It all struck me as very funny, and my hands shook helplessly. Suppressing my laughter, I peered through the finder again, and the two poppies grew even more rigid and demure. I was having a difficult time aiming and finally swept the two girls out of the picture entirely, allowing Fuji, and Fuji alone, to fill the lens. Goodbye, Mount Fuji.

Thanks for everything. Click.

“Got it.”

“Thank you!” they said in unison. They’d be surprised when they got back home and had the film developed: only Fuji filling the frame, and not a trace of themselves.

The next day I came down from Misaka Pass. I stayed the first night at a cheap inn in Kōfu, and the following morning I leaned against the battered railing that ran along the corridor there, looking up at Fuji, about one-third of which was visible behind the surrounding mountains. It looked like the flower of a Chinese lantern plant.

TRANSLATED BY RALPH McCARTHY

VILLON’S WIFE

I was awakened by the sound of the front door being flung open, but I did not get out of bed. I knew it could only be my husband returning dead-drunk in the middle of the night.

He switched on the light in the next room and, breathing very heavily, began to rummage through the drawers of the desk and the bookcase, as if he were searching for something. After a few minutes there was a noise that sounded as if he had flopped down on the floor. Then I could hear only his panting. Wondering what he might be up to, I called to him from where I lay, “Have you had supper yet? There’s some cold rice in the cupboard.”

“Thank you,” he answered in an unaccustomedly gentle tone. “How is the boy? Does he still have a fever?”

This was also unusual. The boy is four this year, but whether because of malnutrition, or his father’s alcoholism, or sickness, he is actually smaller than most two-year-olds. He is not even sure on his feet, and as for talking, it’s all he can do to say “yum-yum” or “ugh.” Sometimes I wonder if he is not feebleminded. Once, when I took him to the public bath and held him in my arms after undressing him, he looked so small and pitifully scrawny that my heart sank, and I burst into tears in front of everybody. The boy is always having upset stomachs or fevers, but my husband almost never spends any time at home, and I wonder what if anything he thinks about the child. If I should mention to him that the boy has a fever, he says, “You ought to take him to a doctor.” Then he throws on his coat and goes off somewhere. I would like to take the boy to the doctor, but I don’t have any money. There is nothing else I can do but lie beside him and stroke his head.