THE SCAVENGERS, 1948

by Nagai Kafu

Site Ed. note: The following story by well-known author Nagai Kafū was written in 1947 and published in an important journal, "Chūō korōn (Central Review)," 1948, without encountering any problems with censors. It is a departure from his preoccupation with themes of sexuality and the demi-monde.
The branch of the Sōbu Line between Noda and Funabashi carries so few passengers other than those out hunting rice and sweet potatoes that it has come to be known as "the scavenging line." The trains generally have but two or three cars, battered and dirty to the point that they seem to be meant not for passengers but for freight. There is not a pane of glass in the window frames, and old boards nailed together serve as doors. The state of the uncushioned benches is such that a per¬son in ordinary dress has trouble finding a place fit for sitting. The few trains each day, no more than three or four, are always so crowded that on dark days one can scarcely make out what is baggage and what passengers.
It was about ten o'clock on the morning of a day when the scavenging train was even more crowded than usual. Because of floods on the Tone River, service to the north, and even between Tokyo and Ichikawa, had been out for several days, and the tracks had only just been reopened. The train was about to enter a station some two or three stops before Funabashi when a rumor began to circulate to the effect that policemen were waiting in Funabashi Station to look for black¬market food. It spread through the scavenging train like a flash fire.
All of the scavengers had gone out that morning before daylight to make the rounds of farms with which they were acquainted, and now they were in a hurry to get back to Tokyo and sell what they had in their knapsacks. Well, they would get off at the next stop, no matter what village it proved to be. If things seemed in order, they would get back on the train. Otherwise they would walk to Funabashi, there to catch a train for Tokyo. Some suggested that it might be better to turn back to Kashiwa, and there catch a train for Ueno. Someone reached for the knapsack at his feet. As if that were the signal, the flood toward the doors began, like an army in rout. Almost no one was left behind. The train was still in motion when the flood began spilling out on the platform.

"So this is where we are," said those who knew the land, starting briskly for the gate.
Those who were strangers followed.
"I have a feeling I've been here before."
"A bad place to do any buying. The farmers know they have you where they want you."
"They won't take money. If you want to get anything out of them you've got to bring shoes or towels."
"There should be a bus to Nakayama from a little farther down."
Such were the remarks they exchanged as they trudged along.
It was a pleasant October day, not a cloud in the sky. The rice, already cut, hung on frames among the paddies. Cabbages and radish leaves were spread out like carpets. The tips of the branches, in which shrikes were calling back and forth, carried traces of autumn color, and the persimmons in farmyards where chrysanthemums and camel¬lias were just coming into bloom were a bright vermilion. It was good weather for walking. Weighted down by their bundles, the scavengers fell into a column as they started for their several destinations. The men were in sweaters or civil-defense uniforms that were no better than rags, and old yellow caps and battered shoes or straw sandals. Most of them seemed to be in their forties. The women, too, seemed for the most part to be about forty. They had dirty towels tied around their faces to keep off the sun, and they wore baggy trousers over their skirts. Some were barefoot.
Gradually the column began to break up, the good walkers pushing ahead, the weaker ones falling behind in groups of three and four. Presently some stopped to rest, laying their packs on the grass. It be¬came difficult to know which were from the scavenging train and which were residents of the district. Everyone was dressed very much like everyone else, and all of the bundles were similar.
At a curve in the road where flaming daisies were in bloom, an old woman was the very first to put down her pack. She propped it against a milestone, under a nettle tree. Vacantly, she turned her eyes on the backs of those who had gone on.
A woman perhaps in her forties came up. They appeared to be acquaintances from the train.
"It's a real nuisance, isn't it. I think I'll have a rest too.
"What time do you suppose it is?" The old woman squinted up at the bright autumn sun.
"It'll soon be twelve. If we don't hurry, we might miss out."
"Maybe we should have gone on down the tracks to Funabashi."
"I don't know the roads around here. Do you?"
"I have a feeling I've been here before. Only once, though, and then with someone from the neighborhood. I have no idea where anything is. It was a long time ago. The war had started, I think, but not the air raids."
"It'll soon be ten years. And even now that it's over, you don't know where it will all end. It's a hard life, I say, when you have things like this happening to you."
"A hard life it is, all right. Bad enough for people like you. And what am I to do at my age?"
"How old are you?"
"Sixty-seven. I'm no good any more. It seems like just yesterday that I could carry sixty and seventy pounds with no trouble. But you can't fight the years."
"You do pretty well, whatever you say. I'm beginning to wonder how long I'll hold out myself."
"Oh, you'll have the young ones to look after you. They won't let you starve."
"I only hope you're right. But you can't depend on them these days. Well, it doesn't do a person much good to sit here grumbling. We've had quite a rest. Shall we move on?"
The younger woman, who appeared to be a housewife, hitched up her pack. The older woman, too, shouldered her rice, done up in a large, greenish kerchief, and the two of them started down the un¬familiar road.
"Where do you live in Tokyo? Honjo?"
"Nihombashi. Hakozaki."
"You're lucky. Hakozaki wasn't bombed. I was in Kinshicho my¬self, and I was lucky to get away with the clothes on my back. Couldn't take a thing with me."
"It was the same with me. I was working in Sagachõ, cooking for a man by the upper bridge, a wholesale dealer in china. Both the old master and the young master were killed in the raid. It's funny, isn't it. It doesn't matter about someone like me, and I come through with¬out a scorch. And the young master gets killed, and him with so much to live for. You never can tell. That's what I always say."
"Listen-the siren. Noon." The younger woman turned to look in the direction of the siren, which seemed fairly near. The old woman paid no attention. Untying the towel around her face and wiping the sweat from her forehead, she fell a step and two steps behind.
"Suppose we have lunch over there. It doesn't matter how much of a hurry you're in, you can do just so much walking." Seeing a dilapi¬dated little wayside shrine under a great camellia tree, the younger woman unloaded her pack on the stone platform. Cocks were crowing busily. The old woman laid down her cloth bundle beside the other, and watched in silence as the housewife undid her lunch.

"What's the matter? Don't you feel well?"
There was no answer. Perhaps the old woman was hard of hearing, perhaps she did not want to talk. The housewife attacked a second ball of rice, and, crunching away at a pickle, licked her fingers. The old woman was teetering forward, her head between her knees. There was a loud snore. No one like a child or an old person for snoring, no mat¬ter where you are, the housewife seemed to be thinking.
"Wake up. It's time we got started."
There was no answer.
"Well, I'll be on my way, then," she said, hoisting up her pack. Just then the old woman fell forward, and the housewife sensed for the first time that something was desperately wrong. Lifting the other from behind, she saw that the eyes were closed and there was foam at the mouth.
"What's the matter? What's the matter? Come on, now, pull your-self together." She shook the old woman. There was no answer. The old woman slipped from her arms and rolled over.
The housewife looked around. As far as the eye could reach, over fields of radish and spinach and onions, there was not a person, not a farmhouse, in sight. There was only the shimmering autumn sunlight. A horse cart approached and went off again, paying no attention to the two. The housewife thought of an old person who had lived next to her, and who, while talking of this and that after a bath one evening, had fallen over dead.
“So she’s gone and done it.”
She looked around. Then she took off her knapsack again. Dragging it and the woman’s bundle in under the eaves, she quickly changed her sweet potatoes for the polished rice the old woman had been carry8ng. By weight, rice brought more than sweet potatoes.
She retied the old towel around her face, and, without a glance back¬ward, started off down the road.
It dipped and gradually rose again, to disappear in a pine grove atop a distant hill. There was a lowing of cattle from generally that direction. Panting desperately and bathed in sweat, the woman hur¬ried along as if someone were chasing her. However often she wiped her forehead, sweat came pouring into her eyes an instant later. She had to rest. If she overtaxed herself she would meet the old woman's fate. But, stumbling in a rut from time to time, she was determined to get as far as that pine grove. She was terrified at the thought of being left anywhere along the road she had come. She would get beyond the pine grove, even if she had to crawl.
Once there, once beyond the pine grove, she would somehow have passed a boundary. She would somehow be at a sufficient distance that the scene of the crime no longer concerned her. She felt that if only she could get beyond the grove, then no one walking in the same di¬rection would know where she had come from.
She was not wrong. Perhaps it was her imagination, but when she climbed the rise, shoulders heaving, and entered the pine grove, the scenery ahead beyond the trees and the dwarf bamboo, the aspect of the trees themselves, seemed completely different. The crops in the fields were different. Here and there among the thatched roofs was the tiled roof of a two-story house with glass doors and an imposing gate. The grove was shady and the breeze cool. She heaved a sigh, and as she squatted down to rest, the weight of the rice threw her forward. She was not able to get up for a time.
A middle-aged man came up the rise on a bicycle. Stopping near her to wipe away the sweat, he lighted a cigarette. She glanced at him. He would be a scavenger himself, on the way back from looking for food. On the luggage stand of his bicycle was what appeared to be a folded knapsack.
"Are you out buying ?" the woman asked timidly.
"No luck at all. Things are completely out of sight."
"It's not easy, is it, when they don't want to sell."
"It's not easy at all. With rice you don't get anywhere. They ask whatever comes into their heads and aren't satisfied with just money."
"They put the squeeze on me, too, but I was finally able to get a little."
"Women seem to do better than men. Two hundred yen a quart they want. Can you believe it?"
"But there are places in Tokyo where you can get more than that. If you make me a good offer, I might let you have some of mine here."
"Thank you. That would be very kind of you. How much do you have?"
"Maybe half a bushel. It's pretty heavy, and I'm afraid I'm coming down with a cold. You can have it if you want it."
"How would one eighty a quart be?"
“That's what I bought it for. You ought to let me make a least five a quart."
The man felt the weight of the pack. Then, looking to see that no one was coming, he untied his knapsack and took out scales.
The transaction was soon finished.
Freed of her burden, the woman tucked the roll of bills into the breast of her kimono. She looked at the man's receding back as she left the grove. Birds were singing in the trees, and insects in the grasses.

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Reference:

"The Scavengers." Kafu the Scribbler: The Life and Writings of Nagai Kafu, 1879-1959. Trans. Edward Seidensticker. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965, 339-349.