No Longer Human

“Don’t be silly. I’ve got three children now. I’ve come today to buy them some sea food.”

We exchanged these and other greetings appropriate to long-separated friends and asked for news of mutual acquaintances. The madam suddenly broke off to ask, in a rather different tone, if by chance I had ever known Yozo. I answered that I never had, whereupon she went inside and brought out three notebooks and three photographs which she handed to me. She said, “Maybe they’ll make good material for a novel.”

I can never write anything when people force material on me, and I was about to return the lot to her without even examining it. The photographs, however, fascinated me, and I decided after all to accept the notebooks. I promised to stop by again on the way back, and asked her if she happened to know where my friend lived. As a fellow newcomer, she knew him. Sometimes, in fact, he even patronized her shop. His house was just a few steps away.

That night after drinking for a while with my friend I decided to spend the night. I became so immersed in reading the notebooks that I didn’t sleep a wink till morning.

The events described took place years ago, but I felt sure that people today would still be quite interested in them. I thought that it would make more sense if I asked some magazine to publish the whole thing as it was, rather than attempt any clumsy improvements.

The only souvenirs of the town I could get for my children were some dried fish. I left my friend’s house with my rucksack still half-empty, and stopped by the coffee shop.

I came to the point at once. “I wonder if I could borrow these notebooks for a while.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Is the man who wrote them still alive?”

“I haven’t any idea. About ten years ago somebody sent me a parcel containing the notebooks and the photographs to my place in Kyobashi. I’m sure it was Yozo who sent it, but he didn’t write his address or even his name on the parcel. It got mixed up with other things during the air raids, but miraculously enough the notebooks were saved. Just the other day I read through them for the first time.”

“Did you cry?”

“No. I didn’t cry ... I just kept thinking that when human beings get that way, they’re no good for anything.”

“It’s been ten years. I suppose he may be dead already. He must have sent the notebooks to you by way of thanks. Some parts are rather exaggerated I can tell, but you obviously suffered a hell of a lot at his hands. If everything written in these notebooks is true, I probably would have wanted to put him in an insane asylum myself if I were his friend.”

“It’s his father’s fault,” she said unemotionally. “The Yozo we knew was

so easy-going and amusing, and if only he hadn’t drunk—no, even though he did drink—he was a good boy, an angel.”