In the autumn of Showa 36 (that is, 1961), I participated in a travel speech organized by Bungeishunqiu Society and came here.Stayed here for one night, and the next morning, I got up early and hired a car to go to my father's hometown.I have written about this matter in an article in the past. The car ran for more than two hours on rough roads before arriving at the foot of the Spine Mountain near the Chugoku Mountains (located in the northern part of the Chugoku region in southwest Honshu).When I saw place names such as "Mizoguchi", I remembered what my father told me when I was a child, and I didn't feel unfamiliar.

The first time I came to this city was shortly after the war.Now Shengshan has become a fairly large city.It is said that due to the production of duralumin ore nearby, the situation in this area suddenly improved. The place of Yado Village has now been renamed Nichinan Town.There are many fir trees on the mountain.There are more than 20 families lined up in the center of the street, but there are both a post office and a nursing home. In the drizzle, there are more than 20 people standing there, waiting for my arrival.They were all from the family of the father's biological parents.However, they were all relatives that I had never even met.I went to my father's cousin's house (Tanaka's house), and they greeted me with wild vegetables (wild vegetables that grow on the mountain) and red rice.My father's cousin was eighty-nine years old, and he looked like my father somewhere in his face.The twenty or so "relatives" who were with me greeted and introduced me, but I didn't figure out which one was related to me for a while.Enthusiastic people treated me like close relatives, and showed me the place where my father was born and the tombs of my grandparents on my father's side.I was walking on the path, and the persimmon tree above my head had grown fruit.

The farmhouse where my father was born is now lived by people who have no relationship with my family, and the gate has been converted into a cowshed.The house has not been seen since my father left his hometown. The Hino River (the river that flows through Hino County, Saeki County, and Yonago City in Tottori Prefecture. The total length is 80 kilometers) flows through the village. When my father recalls the past, he always mentions this river.My father's cousin is deaf and can't talk to people at all.However, people said that when he was seriously ill, his family recorded him, so they played the tape to me.In it, he talked about playing with my father when he was a child.

The father had just been born, and because of an accident in the family, he was given to someone else as an adopted son.During her pregnancy, her father's biological mother divorced her husband.This may be the reason why the father was taken in as an adopted son, but I don't know the details, and I always feel gloomy. "When Minetaro was in elementary school, he often came to play with me, but then he stopped coming unknowingly." The voice on the tape said so.It seems that since then my father has cut off contact with his hometown. My relatives asked me to write something to commemorate, and I wrote the following:

"My father left his hometown and never returned to his hometown in his life. I want to see this village with my own eyes for my father." I took a picture of the village. Relatives and friends from the same family are mixed together. Although I can't tell who is who, everyone is living quite well in the village.Only the father alone, was born very unfortunate. His father's name is Minetaro.Immediately after he was born, he was sent to Yonago's Matsumoto Miji and Yayu couple as an adopted son.I don't know what kind of work the couple did at that time, but I deduced later that they seemed to have opened a pastry shop, and they belonged to a poor family with neither property nor land.It is difficult to figure out the relationship between the Tanaka family and the Matsumoto family now.But one thing is that the Matsumotos do not have children.

The distance between Yonago and Yado Village in Hino County is 40 kilometers. Unlike now, the railway lines (Hoki to Bizen, Bichu, and Bingo) were not open to traffic. I don’t know how the two families came together. . Minetaro's mother was from the Fukuda family in the same county, a place called Kasumi.Here she gave birth to her eldest son Minetaro, but for unknown reasons, she once severed ties with the Tanaka family.After giving Minetaro to the Matsumoto family as an adopted son, he remarried and gave birth to two boys.If you guess the reason that the person doesn't know, you can think of many, many.

Minetaro, who was taken to Yonago, often returned to Yado's biological parents' house when he was a child. This is indeed what the above-mentioned Minetaro's cousin Tanaka old man said. "When I was in elementary school, I often came to play with me, but later, I stopped coming without knowing it." Why didn't you come?Did the Tanaka family avoid Minetaro?Or did Minetaro realize his own secret in his young heart and no longer set foot in it?I don't know what's going on here. The Tanaka family lost their second son, and the third son grew up.His name was Kasaburo, and he left his hometown to become a teacher.

However, the father seems to remember playing with the two younger brothers.So I guess that was when he was in elementary school.My father once told me that he was lying with his two younger brothers, and my mother was lying beside them watching them happily. Minetaro and Kasaburo later met again in Hiroshima. At that time, Kasaburo graduated from the Higher Normal School in Hiroshima and often visited Minetaro in Hiroshima.Then, he may go to a junior high school to teach, where he became a family, and since then, he has never seen Minetaro again.Kasaburo later stopped working as a teacher and lived in Tokyo. He joined a publishing company similar to the current Learning Research Society and Wangbunsha that publishes magazines that help students review for exams.There, he exerted his talents in editing dictionaries and held important positions, and has now passed away.His bereaved family is now in Suginami (a district in Tokyo).

One of my novels is "The Father's Guide".As far as Xiang's works are concerned, this one is the closest one, and it describes the relationship between my father and the Tanaka family almost entirely according to the facts. Minetaro was probably employed as a handyman in the government office immediately after graduating from elementary school.Perhaps since then, he has learned Chinese according to the fashion at that time, but soon he quit his handyman and ran away from home.Most of the things at that time came from listening to stories on my father's arm when I was a child.However, why did he leave the Matsumoto family?Has the consent of the adoptive parents been obtained?I haven't heard him say it.

The village of Yado, as mentioned in the preceding quotation, is located in the northern foothills of the Backbone Mountain in the Chugoku Mountains.Now, if you take the Hakubi Line from the direction of Okayama to Yonago, there is a station called Bichu Jindai in the middle.After passing this station, immediately enter the tunnel, above which is the county boundary between Tottori Prefecture and Okayama Prefecture, and it is also a watershed.Go through the tunnel, enter the Hoki area, and then arrive at Ikuyama Station. Next to Ikuyama Station is a valley upstream of the "Hino River", called "Haoxi".According to legend, he once lived in a nearby temple.

Minetaro ran away from home, walked along the Hino River from Yonago, and from Negu, which has now been included in Hino Town, to Sakushutsu Mountain.That was when he was seventeen or eighteen years old.This road is called Izumo Street. In the same county, there is a Forty Curved Ridge. I also really want to walk the road from these forty songs to Katsuyama and Tsuyama. A few years ago, when I was traveling and giving lectures, I stayed at the hotel in Kaike Onsen, and there was a calligraphy and painting in the picture frame.In that painting, Daguan was riding a rickshaw, running on a majestic mountain road.Probably in the forty-two and three years of Meiji (ie 1909, 1910). However, Minetaro left and never returned to his hometown until the end.He walked from Tsuyama to Osaka, and what he did there, I don't know.Next, my father suddenly became a servant of the Hiroshima Prefectural Police Minister's family during the Nissin War (that is, the Sino-Japanese War of 1894) in the 27th year of Meiji (1894). It is conceivable that Minetaro studied law and worked as a lawyer's servant, possibly preparing to pass the bar exam in the future.This can be seen from the fact that my father often talked about legal matters when I was not young. Once, because of some dispute, someone came to the gate and argued with his father.At that time, my father seemed to have introduced some legal provisions.So far, I can still recall the scene of my father sitting upright in front of the dim door of that house in Kyushu, dealing with others.I remember the other person yelling, "What law? I can't do anything about it. If that's the case, let's talk about it!" He yelled, closed the battered lattice window roughly, and left. However, his father's legal studies were cut short because of the transfer of the police minister. Later, he lived a life as a nurse's orderly at the Weixu Hospital in Hiroshima. "The sick and wounded lying on the hospital bed were always calling 'Give me water' and 'Give me water' in the middle of the night, which often kept me awake all night." said father. After that, what kind of life he experienced, I don't know.However, it can be concluded that they are still struggling at the bottom of society.Around that time, Minetaro married Okadaya from Shiwa Village, Kamo-gun, Hiroshima Prefecture. I have been to my father's hometown twice, but never to my mother's hometown.Speaking of Shiwa Village, if you take the Sanyo Line, if you use the locomotives of the past, the distance between Seno and Happonmatsu is so steep that you can almost only hang two carriages.To Zhihe, you can get off at Seno Station or Happonmatsu Station.Every time I pass by here on the Sanyo Line, I have to get close to the window and look at my mother's hometown. Okadaya's natal family was a farmer with five siblings.Gu is the eldest sister, who probably worked as a textile worker in Hiroshima after leaving the village.She can't read a word. My mother often said, "When I was young, I annoyed the teacher at school, and I stopped going to school. Later, the teacher came to pick me up. If I went to school at that time, I would know a few words. I couldn't read newspapers. No fun at all." I don't understand why Minetaro and Tani moved from Hiroshima to Kokura, Kyushu.Perhaps it was Kyushu at that time. Due to the impact of the war, the coal mines were still booming.However, there is no coal mine in Xiaokura, and his father is a person who hates labor.Perhaps it was because he heard that Kitakyushu was very prosperous due to the prosperity of the coal mines, so he wavered through it.I was born on December 21st in the forty-second year of Meiji (that is, 1909). Parents still continue to live in poverty.I was not the only child in the family. Before I was born, I had two older sisters.They all died in infancy, so I was the only one left. "Look at this, when you were born, you grew up wearing it!" My mother would often open old wicker boxes and show me baby undergarments sewn from pieces of rags.She said that it was because she couldn't support the child. In order to save my life, she burned incense and worshiped in temples in the city, collected rags from various almshouses, and sewed undergarments. Below my memory moved to from Ogura. Now, there is a tram between Shimonoseki and Shimonoseki, but at that time there was only a narrow street along the coast.Now, on a mountain called "Mountain of Fire", there is a cable car and an observation deck, and the street is called Jiutanpo, which is the site of a ruined monument.A cluster of dwellings was built there, arranged in four or five streets.The sea was in the back, so half of the houses at the back protruded from the stone walls and rested on piles driven into the sea.My home is located between Xiaguan and Changfu, counting the second two-story house from the street. For some reason, at this time, Matsumoto Miji and Masako who were supposed to be in Yonago were called to live with them.There, they opened a pastry shop doing business with passers-by on the street. I really don't know what kind of work my father was doing at that time.He didn't want to work. After a year, when I can remember things clearly, he did short-selling and short-selling of rice, etc. It can be seen that he once wanted to make a fortune easily and easily. For me, Meggie is no longer remembered as the equivalent of a adoptive grandfather.In that distant and hazy memory, there appeared a room on the second floor covered with quilts, and shadowy people stood there, perhaps that was the moment of my grandfather's death. I once heard my mother say: "You don't know how to call me Grandpa, you call me Yaya. Before he died, Grandpa looked at you and said, 'No matter how much you call Yaya, Yaya, I can't agree to it!'" Behind my house, there is a swirling channel with ships coming and going.There is a Wabu Kari Shrine directly in front of the opposite bank.With its back facing the mountain and surrounded by lush forests, the ridge tiles of the shrine's roofs shine brightly in the setting sun.At night, the lights of the city are twinkling like a series of small beads. My mother has a younger sister, and her husband is a street vendor who often rests in the shop when he comes to this area.He has a peach tattoo on his wrist and is a heavy drinker. By the way, my mother's only younger brother became a miner in Kyushu, the younger sister became the wife of a fish seller, and the third younger became the wife of Army Special Agent Chief Cao in Mitajiri, Yamaguchi Prefecture.The whereabouts of the younger sister was unknown at that time. I heard that this sister pushed me into the street in a baby carriage one day, left me behind and disappeared.After some years, when she reached a certain age, she saw her sisters again.I heard that when asked what she was thinking at the time, she said: "Then my sister was too chatty!" Mother is indeed a rambunctious person.I am always worried, and this is also because my father is too leisurely and never cares about housework.My childhood memories of my parents are almost entirely filled by the two of them fighting.

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