Chapter 15 mud sand

It was also at that time to see the Fugui Hall. It was about an hour's drive south from Takata to a place called Tuo.At that time, cars were still charcoal cars.It took a lot of time for the car to climb up the narrow, potholed mountain road panting.I just had to get back to Kokura at night, so I didn't feel particularly rushed. In books such as "Illustrated History of Japanese Art" issued by Asuka Garden and "History of Japanese Architecture" by Shunichi Amuma, I read about Fukiji Temple, and I also wanted to see the buildings left over from the Heian period buried in this remote mountain village. .I heard that Fukiji Temple was restored after the Meiji period. Since then, it has become a place for children to play through wind and rain.

Get off from the bus station, pass by the tribe with only a dozen houses, and you will come to Fugui Temple.Naturally, no one moves here.The temple is located on the hillside of a small hill.This sloping road paved with stone steps, when I later visited Hiraizumi's Golden Hall, I thought that the terrain of the two places was very similar. However, this hall in Bungo Mountain seems to be forgotten by people, and it is left alone in Kobayashi, making people feel like a deserted palace.The door of the Buddhist hall was locked, so I walked down the stone steps and inquired in the small grocery store in front of the parking lot. It turned out that this was the house of the manager. A housewife in her fifties came back with me with the key.

There is no lighting, so I can only look in vaguely by the light outside. The back of the Sumeru Altar in the main hall may depict a picture of the Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss, but there is only a little bit of vermilion and color, and I can't tell what it is. pattern.Similarly, on the pillars of the inner hall and the outer hall, and on the sliding windows, there are also serious mottled and peeling marks, which ooze white like mold.Even so, there are still some statues of flying apsaras holding flutes and pipas on the sliding windows. The housewife standing next to me talked about her impression of copying murals before the war, and lived in her house.Standing in this ancient site in the mountains, I forgot the hardships of reality for a moment.

Going to Yoshino is also about that time.From Tanbara Shrine to Xiashi, I was blocked and escaped from the truck.Just a little light from the slightly opened door of the van.Passengers either sit or stand on mats.I think it was on the way home after finishing "business" in Kyoto.In my rucksack were samples of brooms and rice for a meal when I arrived at my lodging.Along the valley of the Yoshino River, a piece of fresh green looks very beautiful. I'm traveling around like this, and I'm slowly getting bored.At the beginning, seeing a strange land produced a sense of excitement of seeing the place I read in the book in reality, but this gradually became difficult to meet my requirements.All in all, I no longer feel the meaning of this kind of excursion.

Before the war, when I was visiting the Yokokutombs in various parts of Kitakyushu, a friend once said to me: "What's the use of doing this?" Now I agree with these words.This is nothing more than what I do to drive away the emptiness. My broom business is also going from bad to worse.After the products were launched and the regular wholesale stores resumed their old order, there was no room for people like me to sneak in.Also, I was struggling financially, and orders that had been paid in cash were changed to checks or bills paid in advance.And after that slowly began to refuse to pay, the job could only be stopped.

After the broomsticks like the past began to appear in the Hanshin area, our situation is even more difficult.For millet brooms, poor-quality rice brooms cannot compete with them.If this goes on, it will add trouble to the family who tie the broom.In March of the 23rd year of the Showa era (that is, 1948), I ended my business.When I went to Otsu, Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima, and Mitajiri to collect money, I thought that this was the end, and I became attached to these places. During the above-mentioned trips, I mostly did not even eat food.In order to coordinate the time of the train and the destination, we can only delay the meal.For example, when I go to collect money, if a customer comes to buy something in that store, the store always greets the customer first and puts my business behind.If customers come in one after another to buy things, I have to wait as long as I want, and I feel restless thinking that I will miss the next train I am scheduled to catch.These unspeakable sufferings had to be swallowed by one person.

In the 23rd year of the Showa era, food began to become more abundant. Although there were things I really wanted to buy, they were expensive, and I finally held back when I thought of reducing my savings when I bought them.For a long time, I was shaken by the mixed trains, and I could only get home late at night, and I had to go to the newspaper office on time the next morning. How did my "business" end?In the end, I didn't save any money at all; instead, the unpayable bills turned out to be losses.However, in the midst of inflation, I was lucky that I made it through with my family of seven safe and sound.Being able to see the places I yearn for is also a great achievement for me.

There is another reason why the "business" has to be discontinued, that is, after the abundance of food, the newspaper office no longer recognizes the staff's vacation for purchasing things.I wasn't a person who didn't go to work casually to engage in these side jobs, so I didn't cause any trouble to the newspaper office, but I still felt a sense of debt mentally.Taking a monthly salary, but doing this kind of "business", even if it is to support the needs of a large family, it is definitely not easy in the mood.To this day, it still feels like an afterthought confession.

I reverted to pure clerk life, regressing to the monotony of life. ——By the way, let’s talk about the Asahi Shimbun. During this period, there was a major leadership change.New main leaders were selected according to the union's intentions, and Tadashi Hasebe was elected president.The problem was at the level of the ministers. People talked about ministers being elected by the trade unions, and the ministers at the time were all sad.However, the matter was closed without proceeding. When my family came back from Saga, they lived in the staff house of the former weapons factory, and we never moved from there.There are eight fathers and sons crowded into the six-fold, three-fold, and four-and-a-half-fold rooms, and even my side job has to be reserved.At that time, my eldest daughter was in the first grade of middle school, and my youngest son was just two years old.Two old people, four children, there is simply no place to stand.

After the "broom business" was discontinued, my side job was to draw original prints for printing houses and advertisements for bounties.I stick the double-purpose paper of folio size on the wooden board with water, put it on the tatami, and then lay on it to paint the color with a spray paint brush. When I started drawing original prints for news advertisements at the Asahi Shimbun, I bought them from Hakata on the basis of monthly payments on the advice of colleagues in the company.The machine is old and wobbly.Still, I pressed the pump like hell.This kind of work sometimes lasts until one or two o'clock in the middle of the night.

Moreover, the working hours of the printing house are tight. Sometimes I go to the printing house by myself, either to draw the original drawing on paper, or to make the original plate of the lithography or zinc plate.By the time we got home, it was already past midnight.If you don't do this, monthly salary is far from enough. Also, I was commissioned to do window decoration in the commercial street, and the wages were very cheap.In a cramped room, the effort required to paint the large wooden panels used for display was beyond imagination.Once, while I was waiting for the color to dry, I lay on the gap of the tatami mat, fell asleep unconsciously, and messed up the color I had painted with great difficulty when I turned over. If the owner likes the finished painting, it's fine, but usually he has to complain a few times, and then immediately lower the price.In this way, the remuneration is just enough for my material cost. Even such a side job does not happen every day, at most one week in a month. The newspaper was largely back to its original shape, except that the morning issue was reduced to four pages.My work has finally returned to something close to pre-war levels.However, that did not interest me. There was nothing pleasant about the air in the newspaper office.The only people who move around with vigor are those who have graduated from school and are destined for fame and family.They came from Osaka, lived temporarily in Kyushu for two or three years, and soon returned to Osaka or Tokyo.Every time, go up one level.For these people, even the Minister looked at them with special eyes.These views of mine are probably not just personal prejudices. I'm almost forty too. When there is no side job, there is nothing to relax except playing mahjong.I also play chess, hoping to forget myself. In the past, when I was an apprentice in printing, the shopkeeper there loved to play mahjong and taught me.After finishing the night work, we gather around the table, and sometimes the war ceases at one o'clock in the middle of the night.At that time, I asked for a plate of fried noodles from a nearby restaurant that could deliver food to my door. I think there is no more delicious food in the world than it.I was wearing greasy work clothes, drinking Chinese noodle soup with my legs crossed, and it couldn't be more pleasant than this.My status is far from enough to buy fried noodles with my own money. I heard that there was a poor old lady who was negative and world-weary and planned to commit suicide. She was walking on the road to find the place of death. As the last memory, she ate a bowl. to die.From my experience, I don't think this is an exaggeration. After my apprenticeship at that printing house, I stopped playing mah-jongg, but the newspaper gang picked up cards almost every night after work.If you don't do that and go straight home, it's simply unbearable.Most of the opponents who play mahjong are so-called "qualified people". People like me, probably had to be added because of lack of manpower. After playing mahjong, I staggered home. If it was winter, the constellation of Orion would just rise to the sky above my head. "Ah, I can't do this kind of thing, I have to find a way." This kind of thought weighed heavily on my heart, not anxious, not regretful, nor a sense of emptiness. The chess partner is a man named Okihara from the advertising department.He used to be a security officer of the Tokyo head office. After returning from the battlefield as a sergeant, he was assigned to Kyushu and was promoted to a member.After the war, the "Asahi Shimbun" naturally no longer had the ranks of members, reserve members, and employees, but only the distinction between members and employees of the Ministry of General Affairs.The Police are under the Ministry of General Affairs. When this Okihara was working as a security officer at the Tokyo head office, a right-winger came to the newspaper's printing factory to make trouble and wounded the editorial director Fumshiro Suzuki with a Japanese sword.Chong Yuan stretched his hands under the armpits behind the thug, crossed and tightened the guy's neck, and that became one of the topics he was proud of. Near Okihara's house, there is the house of the head of the advertising department, and the house of the deputy head of the advertising department is also there.Taking advantage of the proximity of his home, Chongyuan tried every means to please the minister. He asked his wife to go to the minister's house no matter it was morning or evening, and help him like a maid.It was impossible not to irritate the family members of the deputy chief who lived very close, and the deputy chief immediately told the minister, which made the minister alienate Chongyuan. Unfortunately, Okihara happened to be an accountant under that deputy chief.Chongyuan, with his natural knack in the army, curry favor with the deputy chief who the minister likes, probably he really wants to get into the "mainstream".The result was just the opposite. He was severely abused by the deputy chief, and finally transferred from the accounting department to the proofreading department.He said frankly that since then he has "cryed and cried a lot." But who would laugh at Okihara?In the advertising department, which has less than thirty people, it is divided into two factions: the minister's cronies and non-confidants. Everyone secretly joked that Chongyuan had an ambition that was incompatible with his own identity, which was also a kind of struggle for an unqualified person to get into the top of the pagoda. After "falling into" the proofreading unit, he probably had completely lost confidence in "getting ahead", and he became more relaxed, and now he no longer works the night shift that he had desperately wanted to work before. The staff in the ministry always hate this Okihara, but I understand his feelings and sometimes play chess with him.It can also be said that I, a person who has no other place to solve my worries, can no longer find an opponent to play chess except Chongyuan.One year during the New Year, because Okihara was often on duty, I also went to a newspaper office where there was no one else, and played chess with him. From morning to midnight, I played for about twelve hours, and I also gave up on myself. My heart is always like chewing sand, falling into a gray situation... I can use these familiar adjectives, but it is difficult to express myself with such words.Although I am in continuous anxiety, I also have the joy of being willing to suffocate and despair in the mud and sand, and the mood of abusing my body. There is an abandoned coal mine near my house, and there is a mountain of waste coal that is not very high on the mine.In the evening, I took my eldest daughter and stood on the top of the mountain and taught her the names of the constellations.Rising from the side of the mountain, the constellation Scorpio, with its glowing red eyes, is surprisingly larger than it appears in the picture.In the sky above the head, there are the constellations of White Bird and Grizzly, which form a triangle, "That's the constellation of White Bird." "There's Altair over there." I pointed to the child with my finger.I can only do this, but I can't see a single star in my heart. On Sundays without a side hustle, I have nowhere to go.At home, restlessness; going out, can't fill the emptiness.Walking on the street where people gather, I also get angry for no reason.Whether it was playing chess, mahjong, or working, my forehead was covered with cold sweat, and I had to keep wiping it with a towel, and my colleagues made fun of me for it.I may have a nervous breakdown and I can't sleep well at night. The coast of the Seto Inland Sea facing across the mountain from Kokura is located in the inner side of Kitakyushu.There is a lime mountain on the road, and there is a quarry for a cement factory.The road skirts the foothills and extends behind Moji at the tip of the peninsula.With nowhere to go, I boarded the bus aimlessly, got off at Pine Branch, and walked on the coast. There was no one on the beach, and I could only see a small island with no name. Sometimes I sit by the sea and look at the sea, and sometimes I walk in the pine forest.Back home with a large population, I'm bored and have no place to go when I go out.Had I had a more immediate motive, I might have attempted suicide then.But even such a strong motive was not in me.Thoughts are immersed in impatience and lazy emotions. Although the heart is anxious, the body is tired and the mind is lazy. I don't even have the desire to read a book, and I don't see any use in reading a book.Doing a broom business, taking night trains to and from Keihan, Hiroshima, and Saga has become a distant past.

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