I am sensitive to sounds and smells. My doctor says I am suffering a nervous breakdown, but how can I ever escape from the sounds and smells of my birthplace? When I inhale, the various odors sequestered in that dirt floor cling to the hairs in my nostrils the way the cold wind from the Pacific coils around the gritty straw mats, and when I hold my breath, they seep in through every pore of my body. Every smell whirls inside my body—each of them whistling, cracking, and roaring—before settling into my empty stomach and finally growing quiet.
I’ve spent a thousand nights like that, the hail or sleet just outside the wooden walls battered by the wind, humans and horses alike listening with shallow breath, father and mother weaving the charcoal sacks in silence, children pretending to be soldiers on the paths between rice paddies where day after day the raw grassy smell of the rice that failed to ripen was stifling, the aging mare’s head bent low in a corner of the earthen-floored room, grandfather and grandmother bowing their sooty faces as they stared at the glowing embers tapering off in the hearth. This is the life of horses and cattle with no notion of the future.
I am simply trying to accurately describe the sounds and smells that make my body tremble, but no matter how many times I repeat these words, I am always defeated in the face of that futile and unchanging past. I battle with absolute silence and barren time, as immovable as the mountains to the south.
Let us jump to the present. The main point of this letter is that my “former colleague” Katsuichi Noguchi and I are both human beings. How Noguchi and I are alike does not need to be demonstrated here, but given the fact that both of us were employees of Hinode, perhaps first it would be best to write about what the Kanagawa factory meant to me. Doing so will naturally relate how the “issue of last December 15th” fits into this story.
These days I suppose I am, from head to toe, what people call a ‘laborer.’ Although I will be the first to admit this, all my life I have been ignorant of worldly affairs, narrow-minded, and dedicated exclusively to my studies and research. During the war I was called an anti-patriot who lacked loyalty and devotion to the country, and when I was conscripted they told me, “Second-class soldiers should act as bullet shields.” Like many of my countrymen in the South Seas I tasted unimaginable trials and tribulations, and even though I managed to survive and return to my country, I was not all that interested in the establishment of basic civil liberties within a democracy. When suffering great need in my daily life, I was the type to think, Oh, as long as I can earn enough to eat, everything will be fine.
It was for this reason that I only looked on from the sidelines at the various labor disputes that have occurred since last year, and even during the past general strike of February 1st, I ultimately failed to take my place as one of the six million laborers in the country. What I want to emphasize here first is that I was an ordinary citizen with no political beliefs or societal opinions whatsoever, and because of this, perhaps I was only ignorant of the state of oppression that I should have been fighting against while all along I could have been carrying water for the reactionaries. However, the remorse of anyone who falls into this latter group is irrelevant to someone like Katsuichi Noguchi.
Of course, I know very well that unlike other companies, Hinode Beer has generally valued its employees since even before the war, and that not only the laboratory but also the manufacturing floor and employee cafeteria have always had a bright and liberated atmosphere. When my former professor Kenjiro Yonezawa at Tohoku Imperial University referred me to job opportunities at the navy fuel plant, the board of health at the home ministry, the army medical academy, Nippon Chisso nitrogen fertilizer company, Godo Spirits, and Hinode Beer, among others, the reason why I decided on Hinode without much hesitation is because I had a good first impression of the personnel department at the main office as well as the manufacturing department, I found the equipment in the fermentation laboratory impressive, and with flexible work hours, I thought it was a suitable place to spend my entire career. Of course, when I joined the company in 1937, beer brewing had already been designated as one of the country’s most valued industries, so I had some awareness of the responsibility that I would be taking on.
I hardly need to explain that during the five years from the time I joined the company to when I was drafted and went off to the front, all industries in Japan were forced to carry on and work especially hard in the wartime effort. At the brewery, production hit its peak about two years after I joined the company, and then we shifted to cutting back production as per regulation. Yet even as the number of employees dwindled due to compulsory recruitment and conscription, the fact that, in addition to maintaining the working order on the home front, the company upheld its standard of producing the most delicious beer possible, was a source of
