Okamura Sakiko was the daughter of a public bathhouse owner in the town of Funabashi in Chiba Prefecture.

At the end of last year, during which she turned eighteen, she started working in an office in the Ginza district of Tokyo for a certified public accountant by the name of Sasaki.

One day, as always when it was finally time to go home, Sakiko had hastily gotten her things together, exchanged perfunctory goodbyes with the other women, and was about to leave the office with her friend Kimiko.

"Hey, wait a minute. There's something I want to ask you about." Called back just as they were about to walk out the door, the two women turned and looked at Sasaki's face.

Sasaki's broad shoulders and stocky build suited his bald head and square face, with its jutting lower jaw, making him appear to be a superbly powerful man. But in the light at the window, reflecting the rays of the setting sun, it was the whiteness of his closely cropped moustache that caught the eye. He must have been past fifty. Sasaki rose from his chair and, pressing his pot belly against the edge of his desk, leaned toward them.

"Just you, Sakiko. I don't need you, Kimiko. Go on home."

The accountant watched Kimiko lower her eyes in a silent bow and go out the door alone and then, in a somewhat lower voice, said, "Come over here, a little closer."

"Yes, sir."

"There's no one around now, so I thought I'd just go ahead and ask you about this today."

"Yes, sir, what is it?"

"It's because you and Kojima are the only ones in and out of my office all the time. Kimiko's just the telephone receptionist after all, and besides, she's just started working here. And so... well, I just thought I'd start with you first. Mind you, if it's my mistake, I intend to apologize. This morning, that customer who always comes in—you know, Mr. Kanbara—left a bundle of money on that table. But when I checked it later it was a little short. This isn't the first time it's happened either. Somehow lately, money just seems to keep disappearing from time to time. I'm not saying you're the only one I want to check up on. Sooner or later, I intend to get around to everybody. But you're the one I feel most comfortable with, so I thought I'd start with you. Don't take it the wrong way, but could I take a look at your handbag?"

"Sure, take a look. I'm not the kind of woman who steals money. Not me. You can look anywhere you want as far as I'm concerned."

"I know, I know. I just thought I'd ask to make sure. Don't get mad." After the accountant had lined up the things from Sakiko's handbag one by one on the table, he moved closer and, as if to placate her, began to stroke her arms lightly with his fingertips. It was one of those days when the lingering heat of late summer had still not dissipated, and the sleeves of Sakiko's dress were as short as could be, just barely covering her shoulders and underarms. The vaccination scars on both her arms were clearly visible.

"Just as I thought, it was all my mistake. Here, I'll put everything back."

"Satisfied already? Here, sir, check inside my lunch box if you want to."

Sakiko did not appear to be particularly angry. Pressing the handkerchief she was holding against her sweaty forehead, she was gazing at the man with a dimple in one of her full, round cheeks. Ever since the end of the war, hardly a day passed when she did not hear about something disappearing or being stolen, if not on the train, then when she came to the office in this building, or when she got home. Money disappeared from people's wallets and they could never figure out whether they had dropped it somewhere or had had their pockets picked. She had heard of umbrellas disappearing from the stands they were left in and of a raincoat that had disappeared almost as soon as it was hung on the wall. There was even a story about someone who had opened her lunch box at noon only to discover that the food packed that morning was no longer there. None of this was of any concern to Sakiko, as long as her own things did not disappear. And she seemed to think that if a person were going to worry or get angry every time someone cast a little suspicion upon them there would be no end to it.

The woman's attitude was so contrary to his expectations that Sasaki, who had been secretly afraid that Sakiko would be mortified and get angry, or even cry, began to feel sorry for her. But in complete opposition to that feeling, her manner made him remember hearing somewhere that it was precisely those women who are kleptomaniacs by nature who are able to remain completely calm and affect an air of serene innocence in a situation like this. Without really meaning to, he found himself staring at the woman. Sakiko—what was she thinking?—she suddenly jumped up from the chair she had just sat down on and, slapping her dress with her palms, said, "Sir, search me, anywhere you like. Here, I don't even mind taking off what I'm wearing." She tilted her head back slightly and vigorously shaking it to the left and right two or three times to loosen her hair, reached back and began quickly unfastening the hooks of her dress.

Ever since she was a little girl, Sakiko had sat in the high attendant's seat between the men's and women's baths in her father's public bathhouse, and she had become thoroughly accustomed to seeing men and women taking off their clothes and walking around nude. In a situation like this, alone with her boss and no one else around, she thought nothing at all of standing there in just her chemise.

"See? I'm not hiding a thing."

"All right, all right.... I understand. That's enough." But even as he said this, Sasaki was overcome by curiosity, instantly aroused by Sakiko's body. He could not keep his hands from touching her breasts and her hips, covered now only by the sheer fabric of her chemise.

The way the woman's muscles expanded and contracted, squirming in her body as she writhed and twisted under his touch. The man's face reddened, as if he had suddenly become intoxicated. Sweat began to pour down his face.

"I was wrong. I apologize. I'll buy you something to show you how sorry I am. Come with me to Ginza."

Sakiko smiled at him in a manner that was almost affectedly seductive and said, "Sir, the things I want to buy... there are so many I wouldn't even know where to begin."

Taking advantage of the fact that everyone else in the office had left for home, Sasaki took Sakiko's hand and got into the same elevator with her. Typical of a man past fifty, and one who had always enjoyed a little self-indulgence, Sasaki had often thought that if only the opportunity presented itself he would like to have a fling with one of these office girls—or perhaps one of the salesgirls in the department stores—who all appeared to have become more and more licentious since the end of the war. But up to now he had never had a good chance. Oh, he had begun to entertain certain ambitions toward Sakiko as early as that first day at the end of last year, when she appeared to answer his help-wanted advertisement in the newspaper. The way she had looked that day in her red sweater and boyish dark blue trousers-the way her breasts and hips swelled so deliciously, so much more than most girls. And her air of sophistication, far beyond her years. But it had turned out that it was even more difficult to make advances to a girl he used in his own office, and the thrill he had felt on that first day gradually faded as he got used to seeing her everyday. He had just let things go on as they were until somehow, without really meaning to, he had forgotten all about it. But the body he had felt beneath the sheer material of her chemise! The way she was acting! Sasaki was quite beside himself.

First an open-air stall on Sukiyabashi Avenue—a ring with a red glass setting for eight hundred yen. Then out to the main boulevard, where he bought her a pair of sandals for two thousand yen. As they walked through the crowded streets, Sasaki put his arm around her waist and drew her hip against his own. He even tried taking her hand. But Sakiko did not appear to be the least bit averse to what he was doing, and Sasaki concluded that since things were going so well it couldn't hurt to go one step further. He began trying to think of a place where he could take her clothes off.

Before the war, he would have known where to go without even stopping to think about it, but now everything had changed and he did not have the slightest idea where he could take her. Struck suddenly by an idea, he turned back to the pedicab drivers who were loitering around the Sukiyabashi Bridge waiting for passengers.

"Hey, you guys, isn't there an inn around here? Doesn't have to be overnight. . . ." He stole a glance at Sakiko as he said this, but she didn't appear to be particularly suspicious, so he turned to her and said, "Come on, let's have a bite to eat. I'll send you home in an hour or so."

The two pedicabs went through the intersection at Owarichō, over the Mihara Bridge, and finally turned into a dark side street off the road that runs along the streetcar tracks in Tsukiji. They stopped at the door of what appeared to be a private residence, and the pedicab drivers received two hundred yen apiece.

A woman of about forty, whose face suggested that she understood perfectly what Sasaki required, led them upstairs. It was an eight-mat tatami room in which a futon had been spread neatly over the floor. When he saw the bedding, Sasaki was overcome once again by fears that Sakiko would be shocked and try to escape and, without giving her a chance to protest, or even to sit down, he threw his arms around her and attempted to throw her down right where they stood. But, again, Sasaki's fears were needless. Sakiko quietly placed the things he had bought for her beside her pillow, as if to say that they were more important than her body, and fell back onto the futon, spreading her legs as she rolled onto her back.

Three days after that evening, Sakiko quit her job at the office and moved into a rented room in the Nakano-Kōenji area.

Sakiko had achieved a status that required nothing of her on days when Sasaki did not visit but to go out to the movies, or to her dance lesson, or perhaps to spend half the day polishing her nails. But all too quickly the affair was nearly half a year old, and her patron's visits—so frequent at first that she was surprised he did not get tired of seeing her every day—gradually became further and further apart. Finally he failed to show up at the end of the month when she was supposed to receive her allowance. She sent him a letter, but there was no reply.

One day, Sakiko went to the accountant's office, intending to find out what was going on, and was surprised to find that while the number of the office was the same, the gold lettering on the glass door had been changed, and now spelled out "M. M. Trading Company." When she inquired about this to the building superintendent, she was told that Sasaki had vacated the office about a month ago and turned over his rights to it to the firm that was there now. He didn't know the details, he said, but Sasaki's business seemed to have fallen off considerably lately, so much that it probably no longer justified paying so much rent to maintain an office.

Sakiko did not know Sasaki's address, only that he lived in Kawasaki, but even had she known she could not very well have called on him at home. Suddenly she felt forlorn and hopeless. She did not even look back at the theater marquees along the way as she slowly started for home. It was on that day that Sakiko ran into her dance instructor, a certain Tsuda, on Sukiyabashi Bridge. Tsuda, who could have been slightly under or slightly over forty, pomaded his hair and wore suits in the latest fashion with expensive-looking ties. He spoke to Sakiko in languid, wheedling tones.

"I'm so sorry I was out. I had a little business to attend to."

"Oh, I hadn't called on you yet today. I had something to do, too."

"Uh, Miss Okamura, I have a good proposition for you. Come over here a minute."

"A good proposition? What kind of proposition?. . ."

"Miss Okamura, ah.. . say, wouldn't you like to make a little money? I have a deal where you can make a thousand yen for only an hour or two's work."

Sakiko had no idea what Tsuda might have in mind, but having just discovered that she might well be without a patron, she could not bring herself to brush him off.

"What kind of work is it, Mr. Tsuda?"

"There's going to be a dance party tonight at a certain place I know. You just go to the party and dance."

"Do you think I could do it? Didn't you say I still can't dance at all yet?"

"No, no... that doesn't matter. You'll do fine. But there is one little condition. You can hide your face with a mask, but you have to dance with nothing else on."

"So, it's nude. . . ."

"Uh-hmmm. You're game, aren't you?" The dance instructor answered Sakiko with a deliberately casual air and then added, "The place is in Meguro, a big mansion. We have these parties once in a while for the members of a certain club. You know, we can't take girls from dance halls or places like that. We want girls with a little more class, and better bodies. It's from eight to ten tonight."

"But is it safe? The police . . ."

"This place is absolutely safe. It's not a cafe or a dance hall, you know."

"Will there be a lot of people?"

"Probably twelve or thirteen, tonight."

In the nearly six months since she had become the mistress of a fifty-year-old man, Sakiko had thoroughly mastered a great variety of ways to have sex, and as a result she was often tortured by an irrepressible lust that seemed to well up from within herself. Already, she entertained ample desire to peer into the bizarre world about which she had heard so many rumors. And, indeed, given her nature, her physical constitution, and her upbringing, the path this woman would take may well have been largely determined from the very beginning. She had graduated from junior high school during the war and was immediately conscripted to work in a factory. But unlike most of the other girls, she had not minded being conscripted. Going to the factory, a production site for war supplies in name only, had been easier than being at home, where she was worked all day long, a baby strapped to her back while she helped clean up in the kitchen or the bathhouse. The work was not that hard at the factory, and it had been fun flirting with the "peace soldiers" during lunch breaks or on the way home.

Sakikó had been used to seeing the nude bodies of men and women in the bathhouse since she was a child. She had seen the men who sometimes came to peek into the women's side of the bath, and she had seen the bath attendants douse them with water or grab them and drag them off to the police box. And at some point these scenes had deeply engraved on Sakiko's mind the fact that men like to look at naked female bodies. One day, she was accosted by one of the boys on the way home and she had taken off her clothes quite willingly. And on Sundays, when they went to swim at the beach nearby, she had astonished the boys by stripping naked. Their surprise had given her a feeling of triumph. After the war, the general mood of society, and the things she saw and heard every day, only made that consciousness more and more unshakable.

The illustrations in magazines and novels, which one could never have seen during the war ... The photographs in the newspapers ... The sketches on the advertisements displayed at street corners ... Handbooks on birth control ... The lively activity of the prostitutes that one could see at every train station ... And the rumors and gossip that people talked about tirelessly whenever they came together. They never failed to make Sakiko's skin crawl, as if a sultry, unpleasantly warm breeze were blowing over her body.

Sakiko consented easily to the dance instructor's proposal and that evening was taken to a mansion in Meguro.

Until the day of defeat it had been the residence of an army general, but its owner had been purged, and the former mistress of a tea house in the Tsukiji area had bought it and made it over into an inn. Inside the gate, a two-story Western-style building was concealed behind a deep, densely wooded grove. The spacious drawing room—a place where generals with close-cropped hair had once proudly displayed their swords and medals as they plotted military strategies for uniting the eight corners of the earth in universal harmony—had become the dining room. The neatly arranged tables were spread with white cloth, setting off vases of beautiful flowers. The rooms on the second floor had become guest rooms, furnished with double beds and closets for Western-style clothing. The tatami rooms that continued on from the rear of the main building were furnished with round, red-lacquer tables. In the tokonoma alcoves hung ukiyo-e prints of beautiful women, and behind sliding panels in each room were stored futon with red covers dyed in the Yūzen style. At the end of the gallery connecting the tatami rooms to the main building was a door. This door opened onto a large underground room. Once the vault in which the military had stored its most secret documents, the room had been constructed in such a way as to eliminate any fear of damage from air raids. Now it had been transformed into a bizarre secret world of gambling and illicit sexual pleasures.

When the dance instructor ushered Sakiko up to the second-story room that had been chosen as the changing room, three of the other girls who would be dancing that night had already come and were busily repairing their makeup before hand mirrors. Just as they had completed their greetings, and the conversation had shifted to small talk, the rest of the women began arriving in groups of two or three. Finally, when it appeared that everyone was there, the dance instructor gave a brief explanation of the order of the evening's performances.

When all the guests were comfortably settled in the underground chamber, the mistress of the hotel would put on a record. By this time, the women were to have taken off whatever they were wearing and changed into the black stockings he had brought for them. There were also masks for those who did not want to show their faces. Silver and red shoes had been provided, and they were to wear them for the performance. Now, when the record began, they were to join hands and skip down the stairs two or three at a time from the connecting gallery to the underground room. Once all the women were assembled there, and an appropriate amount of time had elapsed, a really sexy Western film would be shown. And on top of that, tonight's entertainment would be made even more interesting by some people who were going to stage a live sex performance. This was the way the evening had been planned, and now they should all know what to expect.

Chattering noisily among themselves, and without the slightest sign of hesitation or shyness, they all took off their clothes and picked up their masks. But among them were two or three women who did not cover their faces at all, and went scampering off to the underground chamber as if they could hardly wait for the phonograph record to give the signal. Sakiko was one of them.

The pale red lighting in the underground room was hazy, obscuring the spaciousness of the chamber as well as the people seated in the chairs and couches arranged against the walls. It was impossible to discern how many guests were present. But there seemed to be a fireplace burning somewhere in the room, for though it was an October evening, the room felt too warm even before she began dancing.

Gradually, the glasses of cold, tasty punch and well-chilled beer that she gulped down each time she had a break from dancing began to take effect. And the Western movie and the live sex performance for which she had waited so impatiently stimulated her excitement to the extreme limit. When the party finally ended and the men and women were preparing to leave, three of the girls were quietly called aside by the mistress of the mansion, who told them that if they could stay for the night she would very much like to have them do so. Sakiko, of course, was among them.

Perhaps never before that night had Sakiko been so enraptured by the pleasures and the delights of having been born a woman. Again and again she had shaken the man awake when he was on the verge of falling asleep—so many times, in fact, that even in her elated mood she had felt a little embarrassed to have him see her face in the morning. It was nearly noon when she finally returned to her second-floor apartment, still floating in feelings of conquest and good fortune. No sooner was Sakiko through her door than she pulled a stack of money out of her handbag and went out again to pay her overdue rent and the money a friend had spent to buy her rationing for her. After paying back every single yen that she owed people, she went off to the neighborhood public path to wash her sweaty body. When she took off the clothes she was wearing, that body, which had been completely uncovered from the previous evening until she had left for home that morning, stood before her in the dressing room mirror. For a little while, Sakiko could not remove her eyes from it—as if she were gazing at the form of another person.

The public accountant Sasaki, who had paid her only three thousand a month in the beginning, had let her quit her job in the office and without begrudging any of it, had rented an apartment for her and given her ten thousand yen every month to live on. And why had he been so generous? Hadn't it all started from the time she had taken her clothes off in the office and shown him her naked body? And even after that, Sasaki was never satisfied until he had made her spread her futon before the big full-length mirror and had watched her writhing body as she twisted it into various poses for him.

The man she had slept with the night before had begun his lavish praise of her nude form even while she was still dancing. There are very few women like you. Your whole body is possessed of a classical balance of proportions. Sure, we say that plump women are best, but that doesn't mean that she should have a short neck, broad, jutting shoulders, and a long, flabby torso. The most beautiful women are those who, viewed from behind, make one wonder if they aren't in fact a little skinny. One should still be just able to see the line of her spine. The ones whose torsos are merely fat are called "Zundō vases," because their waists are not tapered even slightly above the hips. Their figures are ugly, and they are not pleasant to embrace. Women with flat, grossly large buttocks are no good either. A woman's flesh must have a firm plumpness, and a resilient spring. The best breasts are those that do not sag limply from the chest but rather are round and firm, like a tea bowl turned upside down, so the ideal bottom is the same. It must protrude from the hips with a taut roundness. Only the thighs may be stout and powerful—the more so the better, in fact, when it comes to titillating a man's eye. But the legs must be long and slender below the knees. And the underside of the foot-the arch must be deep, indented to the utmost. The big toe should curve back on itself and be elegantly long and pliant. As Sakiko recalled these points one by one, and how the man had lavished praise on her, saying that her body was flawless in every respect, she studied the bodies of the four or five women squatting in the soaping area before the big tub, comparing them to her own. And ever since she had gotten into the hot tub, she had not been able to stop stroking her naked body with her own hands.

When she awoke, after returning to her walkup apartment and flopping herself down for a short nap, scenes from the foreign movie and the live sex show she had seen the night before came floating up before her eyes again, and Sakiko began to feel that she could not stand just sitting at home by herself—that she wanted desperately for someone to embrace her as tightly as he could. Already, the short autumn day was coming to an end, and when she looked toward the window, the evening sun fell on the translucent paper of the shōji screen at a sharp angle. Still sprawled out on the floor, Sakiko stretched out her hand, reaching for the skirt she had flung off earlier. She hastily dabbed on a little makeup and went out. She boarded the train and after a short ride got off at Shinjuku Station.

For no particular reason, Sakiko had suddenly wanted to see the bustling streets of Shinjuku, men and women pressing against each other as they walked to and fro before the glass display windows full of gaudy merchandise. It was not the first time she had felt this way. Even when she was an office girl, Sakiko had liked to loiter on the busy street corners, mingling among women who appeared to be prostitutes and eavesdropping on their conversations while gazing at their figures and mannerisms. As she had experienced more and more extreme sexual acts as the mistress of an elderly patron, the conduct of these women, and of the men who approached them, had made her feel all the more intensely a kind of mystery and longing.

The lights had been turned on at the station and in the shop windows. In the fading sunlight, the streets in the far distance were wrapped in dust and a leaden haze. But all around her it was as bright as afternoon. Stopping for a moment at one of the open-air stands to look at the obscene pictures on the covers of the novels and magazines lined up on the counter, it occurred to her to enter one of the movie theaters around the station and wait for nightfall.

She crossed an intersection through which cars and trucks barreled past at an even more reckless pace than usual, and just when she had gotten a little tired of walking, her eye was caught by a theater marquee. Without a second glance, she walked up to the ticket window. It was then that she realized that the ad poster was not for a movie. Pictured instead was a large group of nude women, all dancing in various poses. Among the other passersby who had stopped to look, someone was loudly reading off the titles written on the poster. Horror at Midnight. Ero-Grotesque No. 1. Melody in Curves. Others were nervously waiting to buy tickets.

Sakiko had grown up during the war years, a period in which revues had been banned, and so there was something strange and marvelous about the pictures on the poster. And they also reminded her of the women who just the night before had come to the mansion in Meguro to dance in its secret, underground chamber. Without a thought for the one hundred yen entrance fee, Sakiko bought a ticket, still reliving in her mind the experiences of the previous evening.

The darkened theater was so crowded that she could not find an empty seat. She pushed her way into the throng of customers standing against the walls and somehow managed finally to at least peer through them to the brightly illuminated stage.

On the stage, a backdrop had been lowered that made it seem that she was looking at a flower garden, and from the garden she could see a clear, blue sea through the surrounding forest. Three women wearing costumes that revealed their bodies beneath some white, gauzy material were dancing in time to a musical accompaniment. They held old-fashioned water jars over their heads. Presently, a heavily bearded male actor entered the stage, his body below the waist transformed into that of an animal. A horse or perhaps a goat. This half-man-half-beast chased the dancers around the stage trying to throw his hairy arms around them or raise their skirts. The women fled in feigned panic and finally ran off stage. Suddenly, the music became soft and gentle. A single woman appeared in a dazzling costume that reflected the stage lighting. As she danced, she became a maiden picking flowers. The satyr appeared again and gave her flowers from a narcotic plant. In an instant, her dancing became languid and uncertain, as if she had suddenly become intoxicated. The satyr followed her movements, clinging to her body and tearing at her costume. But even as he ripped her clothing off—first her blouse, then her brassiere, and finally even her skirt—stripped her naked, the woman did not awaken from the trance induced by the perfume of the poisonous flower. She sank slowly to the ground, and the stage darkened. Now, a woman in white entered and left the stage with cards upon which somethingapparently the names of foreign artists—had been written in katakana script. Each time she appeared with a new card, a brilliant spotlight illuminated a large picture frame within which nude women struck various standing or reclining poses.

During these performances, a kind of strained stillness had blanketed the dimly lit theater, a hushed silence in which not even the sound of a cough could be heard. But as soon as the curtain began to come down, people noisily got up to leave, and others were pushing and shoving to get to the empty seats after them—and in the midst of this confused commotion she began to hear the voices of the hawkers calling out as they moved through the audience with their baskets of candy and cider.

It seemed about time for the curtain to open again, but Sakiko had been caught up in the crowd of people who were pushing and shoving to get outside, as if there could be nothing more of interest now that they had seen nude bodies. She could do nothing but allow herself to be pushed outside with the others. Night had already fallen in the street outside, and the scene was animated by the blare of radios, the lights, and the people milling around her.

For reasons that even she did not understand, Sakiko was overcome by a wonderful feeling of exhilaration. She wanted to eat recklessly—to eat her fill of something really delicious, no matter how much the cost. When she was still an office girl, she had passed by coffee shops after gazing wistfully at the prices on the dishes displayed in the glass cases—even coffee shops. But now there was nothing she could not eat if she felt like it, and this thought made her recklessly, excruciatingly happy. And that wasn't all. It seemed to her that all the people milling about her must be people on their way home from seeing the nude revue. Either that or they were on their way to see it. When she thought of the amazing popularity that focused on the nude female body, Sakiko naturally could not help feeling a profound sense of security toward life, and pride and confidence in her own body.

She had not eaten breakfast or lunch and just as she was once again counting in her head the money she had received the night before at the mansion in Meguro, her eye was caught by the gaily decorated wreaths of flowers lined up before a Chinese restaurant that had just opened. She went in and took a table near the door.

The interior of the shop seemed deserted, not at all like the hustle and bustle outside on the sidewalks. There was a couple at a corner table, and a young man in a suit sitting near the counter. He read a newspaper as he ate. The three waitresses were leaning against the wall gazing dreamily at the people passing by outside.

Sakiko had a bowl of noodles and steamed dumplings and then went outside again. It was already that time in the evening when the street walkers and cafe waitresses were beginning to come out to look for customers. One really could not tell them apart as they began to appear in all the side streets. Feeling a little frightened, she stood at the street corner watching them. Just then, someone rushed up beside her, so suddenly that she thought he was going to crash into her, and grabbed her hand. She whirled around in astonishment and alarm, but it was the young man she had just seen reading his paper and eating alone in the Chinese noodle shop. With his long, oval face, a lock of hair falling over his forehead, and his slender physique, he had looked not altogether unattractive when she saw him in the restaurant, and Sakiko allowed the hand she had started to pull away to be held.

"Walk with me a little ways, will you? This isn't my turf."

"Hmmm? You from Ueno then?"

"Come on, let's have a drink."

"Uh.. . you a waitress? I'm not going to any cafe."

"I'm no waitress. I just asked you because I can't go into a bar by myself. Don't worry, I'll pay."

"Doing pretty well, huh?" He was looking at her face dubiously. "How about it... uh.. . how about it tonight?"

"For goodness sakes, why are you making such a face? Don't I look like a whore?"

"If I say you do, you'll get mad, and... What am I supposed to say now?"

"Look, I'm feeling lonely tonight, that's all. I don't want your money."

Taking advantage of the bustling crowd around them, Sakiko kissed the young man on the cheek and gave him a hug. His look of stunned astonishment was so funny she couldn't stand it, and shaking all over, she laughed and laughed and laughed.

Translated by Mark A. Harbison

Kafū, Nagai. “Nude.” The Mother of Dreams and Other Short Stories: Portrayals of Women in Modern Japanese fiction. Ed. Makoto Ueda. Tokyo/New York: Kodansha International, 1986; 135-149.