I boarded the express train leaving Ueno at 5:30 pm. As the night grew late, I shivered from the cold. Beneath my jacket-like clothing, I only wore two thin shirts. Under my pants, I only wore underpants. Even people wearing winter coats and prepared with lap blankets were cold and whining about the strange chill of that night. I hadn't expected the bitter cold. In Tokyo at that time, impatient people were already walking around wearing unlined serge kimonos.
I had forgotten about the cold of Tohoku. My hands and feet shriveled and I shrunk like a turtle. I tried to convince myself this is an exercise for training my mind. Dawn finally came and it was cold. I gave up training my mind. We would soon arrive in Aomori. I entered the lowly state of fervently wishing for the realistic circumstance of wanting to sit cross-legged beside a fireside in an inn somewhere and drink hot sake. We arrived in Aomori at eight in the morning. My friend T was at the station to welcome me. I posted a letter to him beforehand.
"I thought you'd be wearing Japanese clothes," he said.
"This is a different age," I tried hard to joke.
T brought a little girl with him. The thought, A present for her would have been nice, sprung to mind.
"Why don't you come home with me and rest for a while?"
"Thanks. I'm thinking about going to N's home in Kanita by noon today."
"I know, N told me and is probably waiting for you. Well, you're welcome to rest at my home until the bus leaves for Kanita."
My vulgar but cherished wish to sit cross-legged beside the hearth drinking hot sake was miraculously coming true. At T's home, a charcoal fire was blazing in the hearth, and a bottle of sake rested in an iron kettle.
"You've had a long journey," said T and bowed to me again, "How about a beer?"
"No, thanks. The sake is fine," I said clearing my throat.
In the old days, T lived at my house and mostly took care of the chicken coops. We were the same age and became good friends. In those days, I remember hearing my grandmother criticize T with "Yelling at the maids has good and bad points." Later T went to Aomori to study and then worked in a hospital in Aomori City and gained the trust of both the patients and the hospital employees. A few years ago, he went to war to fight on an isolated island in the south but got sick and returned home last year. After he recovered, he began to work at the hospital.
"What was your happiest time on the battlefield?"
T's response was swift.
"That was when I filled my cup to the brim with my beer rations on the battlefield. I sipped with great care and thought about taking the cup away from my lips for a rest, but the cup never left my lips. Never."
T was also a man who liked sake. However, he didn't even drink a little with me and from time to time lightly coughed.
"How are you feeling?" I asked.
Sometime in the past, T had a lung problem that flared up again on the battlefield.
"This time I'm serving on the home front. When caring for patients in the hospital, if you haven't suffered once from sickness, you lack understanding. Now, I have good experience."
"It seems you've become an adult. In reality, it's the chest illness," I said. I got tipsy and began to shamelessly expound on medicine to a doctor.
"Your disease is in your mind. If you forget about it, you will recover. And drink a lot of sake once in a while."
"Oh, well, I'm not overdoing it," he said smiling. My reckless medical science could hardly be relied on by professionals.
"Would you like something to eat? Around this time of the year, delicious fish are scarce even in Aomori."
"No, thank you," I said while gazing at the trays on the side, "Everything looks delicious. Don't go to any trouble. I don't want to eat too much."
I made one promise to myself before setting off to Tsugaru. I would be indifferent to food. I'm not comfortable saying I'm not much of a saint, but the people of Tokyo are greedy for food. I'm a stodgy man or a samurai who revels in honorable poverty by chewing on a toothpick as if he just finished a meal. But I love being amused by my idiotic stoicism that hinted of desperation.
I thought about using that post-meal toothpick, but that sort of manly pride tends to look ridiculous. Among the Tokyoites who go to the provinces lacking spirit and will, most will not die of starvation but will exaggerate and complain about their horrible plight. After the meal of white rice held out by the country people is presented and eaten, I've heard rumors of someone wearing a servile smile and full of flattery ask, "Is there any more to eat? Is this a potato? Thank you. It's been many months since I've eaten a potato this delicious. I'd like to take a little home, if you could slice it up for me…"
Everyone in Tokyo receives identical food rations. It's a miracle for only that person to be in a state of near starvation. Perhaps, they underwent gastric dilation, but the plea for food is disgraceful. Each and every time, without saying in defiance words like "For the sake of the country," they must hold on to their pride as human beings. A few exceptions in Tokyo go to the countryside
