“The war finally ended. We started openly doing business in black-market liquor and put new curtains in front of the place. For all its seediness the shop looked rather lively, and we hired a girl to lend some charm. Then who should show up again but that damned gentleman. He no longer brought women with him, but always came in the company of two or three newspaper and magazine writers. He was drinking even more than before, and used to get very wild-looking. He began to come out with really vulgar jokes, which he had never done before, and sometimes for no good reason he would strike one of the reporters he brought with him or would start a fistfight. What’s more, he seduced the twenty-year-old girl who was working in our place. We were really dumbfounded, but there was nothing we could do about it at that stage, and we had no choice but to let the matter drop. We advised the girl to resign herself to it, and quietly sent her back to her parents. I begged Mr. Otani not to come any more, but he answered in a threatening tone, ‘People who make money on the black market have no business criticizing others. I know all about you.’ The next night be showed up as if nothing had happened.

“Maybe it was by way of punishment for the black-market business we had been doing that we had to take such a monster on our hands. But what he did tonight can’t be passed over just because he’s a poet or a gentleman. It was plain robbery. He stole 5,000 yen from us. Nowadays all our money goes for stock, and we are lucky if we have 500 or 1,000 yen in the place. The reason why we had as much as 5,000 yen tonight was that I had made an end-of-the-year round of our regular customers and managed to collect that much. If I don’t hand the money over to the wholesalers immediately, we won’t be able to stay in business. That’s how much it means to us. Well, my wife was going over the accounts in the back room and had put the money in the cupboard drawer. He was drinking by himself out in front but seems to have noticed what she did. Suddenly he got up, went straight to the back room, and without a word pushed my wife aside and opened the drawer. He grabbed the 5,000 yen in bills and stuffed them in his pocket.

“We rushed into the shop, still speechless with amazement, and then out into the street. I shouted for him to stop, and the two of us ran after him. For a minute I felt like screaming ‘Thief!’ and getting the people in the street to join us, but after all Mr. Otani is an old acquaintance, and I couldn’t be too harsh on him. I made up my mind that I would not let him out of my sight. I would follow him wherever he went, and when I saw that he had quieted down, I would calmly ask for the money. We are only small business people, and when we finally caught up with him here, we had no choice but to suppress our feelings and politely ask him to return the money. And then what happened? He took out a knife and threatened to stab me! What a thing to happen!”