Introduction
The Japanese title is “Tazunebito.”
Tazunebito in Japanese means “someone who is missing and being searched for.”
Here, I have deliberately translated it into English as “The Young Lady I Want to Visit”
This work was written during the postwar period of chaos, and it can be inferred that Dazai himself was keenly aware of the changes in the times and the fluctuations in people’s values.
This novel is marked by strong feelings of loneliness and loss, which seem to be deeply connected to Dazai’s own view of life, which is to seek and keep searching for someone.
It is a wonderful work that features people who are alienated from society and lonely people who are not understood, and that gives a sense of human weakness and warmth.
※ Aozora Bunko (Aozora Library) is a Japanese digital library that provides free access to public domain literary works.
*Aozora Bunko (Aozora Library) is a Japanese digital library that provides free access to public domain literary works.
“The Young Lady I Want to Visit” by Osamu Dazai
I would like to briefly borrow a corner of the precious pages of this magazine, “Tohoku Bungaku.” Why have I chosen to use the pages of this magazine, “Tohoku Bungaku,” in particular? There are the following reasons.
As you may know, this magazine, “Tohoku Bungaku,” is published by the Kahoku Shimpo newspaper in Sendai, and of course it is available on store shelves throughout Kanto, Kansai, Shikoku, and Kyushu, but I suspect that the majority of this magazine’s readers are in the Tohoku region, and most of them in the Sendai area.
With that as my only hope, I would like to take this opportunity to say something in a corner of this literary magazine called “Tohoku Bungaku.”
The truth is, there is someone I would like to meet. I don’t know her name or address, but I believe she is definitely someone from Sendai city or nearby. She is a woman.
The reason I decided to have these humble notes published in a corner of the magazine “Tohoku Bungaku” published from Sendai City was because I thought that this person might live in Sendai City or nearby, and that perhaps my notes might come to their eye, or even if they don’t, someone they know might read them and pass them on to them – some one-in-a-million stroke of luck…no, no, that’s impossible, there’s no way that could ever happen, no, no, I fully understand that it’s impossible, but I just can’t help but write, counting on even such an impossible thing to happen.
“The young lady, you helped us then. We were beggars then.”
If those words do not reach that The Young Lady’s ears, it is as if you were to board an airplane to bury a brave warrior and throw a bouquet of flowers from the sky over the battlefield where he rests, but it would never land where the warrior’s bones are buried, but would instead splash down into an eagle’s nest in a faraway forest, frightening its chicks in no time, or it would end up floating in vain among the ocean waves.In the end, it does not matter whether the flowers reach the eagle or not, and as long as it satisfies the person who threw the words or the bouquet, then that is fine.It may seem to me that this is nothing more than an extremely selfish scheme, but still, I would like to say it.
”The young lady, you helped us then. We were beggars then.”
At the end of July 1945, my family of four got on a train from Ueno. We had been affected by the disaster in Tokyo, then evacuated to Kofu, where we were burned down again. However, the war was still going on, and I thought that if I was going to die anyway, it would be better to die in my hometown so I left Kofu with my wife, a five-year-old girl, and a two-year-old boy, with the intention of boarding an express train from Ueno to Aomori that very same day. However, an air raid warning was issued, and the thousands of passengers filling Ueno Station became murderous. With our young child by my side, we were pushed around and kicked, and suffered so badly that we could not get on the express train, and in the end, we ended up sleeping by the ticket gate at Ueno Station that day.
That night was a beautiful moonlit night. Late at night, I went outside by myself to see what was happening. This area had also been burned down. I climbed the stone steps of Ueno Park and looked towards Asakusa from the bronze statue of Nanshu. It was like looking at a cluster of water plants at the bottom of a lake.
When I realized that this was my last time seeing Tokyo, my last time seeing the city of Tokyo that had raised me ever since I entered school in Hongo fifteen years ago, I couldn’t stay calm.
The next morning, we decided to catch the earliest train leaving Ueno Station, no matter where it was going, as long as there was a train going even five or six miles north, so we boarded the first train from Ueno Station to Shirakawa, which left at 5:10 at dawn.
We soon arrived at Shirakawa. We were dropped off there and decided to catch a train going five or six miles north from Shirakawa and board it. At 1:30 p.m., the train bound for Kogota arrived at Shirakawa Station, so the four of us, my family, crawled in through the window.
Unlike the previous train, this one was extremely crowded. It was also extremely hot, and the two-year-old boy, who was held in my wife’s bare chest, was crying bitterly the whole time. The younger child had been weak and small since birth due to his mother’s malnutrition, and due to a lack of breast milk, his growth had been poor, so it seemed as if he was just alive and moving. The older child, a five-year-old girl, was relatively healthy, but had suffered from conjunctivitis shortly before the disaster in Kofu, and had lost all sight at the time of the air raid. I carried her on my back and fled under the rain of flames, searching for a hospital that had not yet burned out, where we received treatment, and after three weeks of confusion in Kofu, the child’s eyes finally opened, and we were able to leave Kofu with her.
However, by evening the child’s eyes would close up, and by morning he would not open his eyes. I washed his eyes with the borax solution that I had received from the doctor, then put in eye drops, and it was only after a while that he was able to open his eyes.
That morning, when we were boarding the train at Ueno Station, my daughter’s eyes would not open, so I forced them open with my fingers, and blood gushed out.
In other words, our group consisted of the father, dressed in a dirty shirt, faded navy blue cotton trousers, a geiter wrapped sloppily around his neck, tabi socks, and no hat; the mother, with messy hair and soot on her face in various places, wearing shabby monpe pants and with her chest exposed; the girl with an eye disease; and the skinny, crying boy – we were a veritable family of beggars.
The youngest boy continued to cry and wail for an eternity, and my wife pressed her breast against his mouth, but knowing that no milk would come out, she turned her face away, leaned back, and cried even more violently. A woman standing nearby, also with a child, couldn’t bear to see this and asked my wife, “Aren’t you producing milk?”
“Just let me hold your baby. I have too much milk.”
The wife handed the crying child to the lady.
The woman’s breasts seemed to produce a lot of milk, and the baby soon stopped crying.
“What a quiet baby. He has a very graceful way of sucking.”
“No, he’s just weak.”
When my wife said this, the woman laughed a little, with a sad look on her face, and said,
“My baby sucks very roughly, and it hurts, but I think your baby is being shy.”
The weak baby fell asleep at the breast of someone who was not his mother.
The train arrived at Koriyama Station. The station had apparently just been bombed, and there was even a strong smell of gunpowder. Thick yellow dust was rising from the collapsed station building.
It was a time when the Tohoku region was being subjected to heavy air raids, and most of Sendai had already been burned down. Moreover, the night we were sleeping on the concrete at Ueno Station, it seemed that incendiary bombs had been launched against Aomori city. As the train headed north, we heard rumors of places being hit here, and there. The damage in the Aomori region in particular seemed to be severe, and some people seriously exaggerated things such as all transportation in the prefecture having come to a halt. We felt completely dejected, wondering when we would be able to reach our hometown at the edge of Tsugaru.
After passing Fukushima, the train started to get a little empty, and we were finally able to sit down. After we had breathed a sigh of relief, we started to worry about food. We had prepared about three days’ worth of rice balls, but because of the intense heat, the rice grains had become stringy like natto, and even when we put them in our mouths and chewed them, they were so chewy that it was impossible to swallow them.
For the younger boy, I gave him powdered milk, but he would get ill if the milk was not hot, so when we got off at a station along the way, I explained the situation to the stationmaster and asked him for hot water so I could prepare the milk, and on the train I would give him small amounts of soft steamed buns.
However, the outside of the steamed bread was already soggy and had to be thrown away. There was nothing to eat except the roasted beans. There were also some rice grains, so it might be possible to get off at an inn along the way and have a meal, but for the time being, I was worried about what I would eat in the future.
My wife and I can probably tolerate munching on roasted beans and drinking water for a day or two, but my 5-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son will definitely be in big trouble. My younger son is fast asleep thanks to the milk he just drank, but my older daughter is already tired of roasted beans and is starting to get a little irritated as she glares at others eating their lunch.
Oh, how shameful it is that humans cannot live without eating. “Hey, if the war gets more intense and we have to fight over even a single rice ball to survive, I’ll give up living. I intend to give up my right to join the rice ball battle. I’m sorry, but when that time comes, you’ll have to be prepared to die along with our child. That’s the only thing I have left of my pride,” I had been declaring to my wife for a while, and it seemed that “this time” had now come.
I was just gazing blankly at the scenery outside the window, and no good ideas came to my mind. A woman got on at a small station, carrying a basket full of peaches and tomatoes.
In an instant, the woman was surrounded by passengers, all whispering to each other. “No,” the woman refused in a high-pitched voice, sounding like a strong-willed person, and added, “It’s not for sale. Let me through, or people won’t walk!” She pushed her way through the crowd, came straight over to me, and sat down next to me.
At that moment, I had a strange feeling. I had the delusion that maybe I was a seducer with a great knowledge of women’s psychology, and it made me feel bad. I vaguely played with my own psychology, wondering if I was just a weirdo in beggar’s clothes with two children.
While the other passengers were gathering around the fruit basket and making a fuss, I seemed completely uninterested in it and just stared blankly at the scenery outside the window.
Deep down, I must have been the one who was most interested in what was in the basket, but I restrained myself from even glancing in that direction.
“Where are you going?”
The landlady spoke in a hurried tone to my wife, who was sitting in the seat in front of her.
“Further on into Aomori,” my wife replied groggily.
“That’s terrible. Have you been affected by the disaster after all?”
“Yes.”
My wife is, in general, a quiet woman.
“Where?”
“In Kofu.”
“It must be hard with kids. Would you like to eat?”
She quickly placed about 10 peaches and tomatoes on my wife’s lap and said, “Hide them. The others are making a fuss.”
Sure enough, a man appeared, clutching a large bill in one hand and casually showing it off, whispering, “Just sell me as many as you want.”
“Stop making a fuss.”
The landlady frowned and shouted, “They’re not for sale,” and chased him away.
Then my wife did something unexpected: she suddenly tried to give the landlady some money.
Instantly, little shouts that were barely even words – No!
No!
No!
Now!
How about that! and so on – came flying alternately from their mouths like sparks, while the money was going back and forth faster than the eye could see.
Humanitarian!
And indeed, those words came out of the landlady’s mouth.
“That’s rude,” I said in a low voice, scolding my wife.
It would take too long to explain it like this, but it was probably less than five seconds from when my wife put the money up, to when the fireworks flew, to when I stepped in to mediate, to when she reluctantly took the money back again. It all happened in the blink of an eye, like a flash of lightning.
From what I could see, although the landlady said that they were not for sale, she simply did not want to sell them on the train; she was still clearly a merchant.
I don’t know if she was going to take it home and give it to someone in particular, but it seemed like it was definitely for sale.
However, since the noble words “humanitarian” had already been uttered, we could no longer treat the woman as a merchant.
Humanitarian.
Of course, I was grateful and pleased by the landlady’s kindness, but deep down I also felt a little put off.
Humanitarian.
I was at a loss for words to express my gratitude. After much deliberation, I decided to give the landlady the most valuable thing I currently own. I still had about twenty cigarettes left. I handed ten of them to her.
It was a similar mentality to when people quietly criticize the taste of canned squid in America.
Our plan was to take this train to its final destination, Kogota, and then, as we had heard rumors that we would be asked to get off the Tohoku Main Line far before Aomori City and the main line was likely to be extremely crowded, we weren’t confident that the four of us, a family of four, would be able to squeeze in. So we changed direction and headed out towards the Sea of Japan from Kogota, that is, from Kogota we changed to the Rikuu Line and headed for Shinjo in Yamagata Prefecture, then changed to the Ou Line and headed north, passing Akita and getting off at Higashi-Noshiro Station, then changed to the Gono Line, entering through the back door of Aomori Prefecture, so to speak, and getting off at Goshogawara Station, and then finally changing to the Tsugaru Railway and arriving in my hometown, Kanagi Town. But now that I think about it, the future lies beyond our reach and the journey would take a good three days and nights even if all went well.
Although the tomato and peaches that we received were enough food for our eldest child to last for a day, what would we do if our youngest child woke up at any moment and started crying for milk?
It would be four hours or more until we reached Kogota, and even if we arrived there, it would be almost ten o’clock at night, so there would be no way we could have milk or porridge cooked for us.
If Sendai hadn’t burned, I would have had some acquaintances who could have gotten off the train and asked them to help me, but as you know, most of Sendai had burned, so I couldn’t do that, and my younger child would have had to starve to death. I had only just turned 37, but I had suffered so much that, looking back, I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that those 37 years had been meaningless. As I was peeling peaches for my older daughter, my younger son woke up and started to get grumpy.
”There’s probably nothing left.”
“Yes.”
“I hope they have some steamed bread.”
As if in response to my voice of despair,
“If it were steamed bread, well, I…”
A mysterious whisper came from the heavens.
I’m not exaggerating. I definitely heard it coming from above my head. I looked up and saw a young woman who seemed to have been standing behind me, reaching out her arm to take down a white canvas bag that was on the luggage rack. A clean paper package that seemed to contain a lot of steamed buns was placed on my lap. I remained silent.
”Well, I made it for lunch, so I think it’s fine. And then… this is red rice. And then… this is an egg.”
One after another, the packages of paper were piled up on my lap. I couldn’t say anything, so I just stared blankly out the window. The forest was burning bright red in the sunset. The train stopped, and we were at Sendai Station.
“Excuse me. Goodbye, little girl.”
She said this and quickly climbed out of my window.
Neither my wife nor I had the time to say a word of thanks.
I wanted to meet that person, that young lady.
She was around 20 years old. At the time, she was wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and Kurume kasuri monpe.
I want to say this to you, with a certain amount of resentment in my heart.
“The young lady, you helped us then. We were beggars then.”
