Tokyo Literary Masters: Starting from the Late 1980s

Chapter 207 A Faint Charcoal Fire

On the same day, two million copies of "The Long Road" covered the long-noisy streets of Japan like a silent snowfall.

The anticipated outrageous condemnation did not occur.

Instead, there is a deep, quiet stillness that makes you almost hear your own heartbeat.

In the crowded trams during the evening rush hour, the carriages that used to be filled with people muttering curses about prices and politicians are now so quiet that only the scraping of the rails can be heard.

The office worker in the old suit gripped the handrail tightly with one hand, while awkwardly flipping through the gray pages of a book with the other, refusing to put it down even though the pages were crumpled.

On a drafty park bench, someone turned up their coat collar to the maximum and hunched their neck to look through the streetlights.

At the convenience store entrance, the hot coffee in the can of coffee held by the worker who had just finished his night shift had long since gone cold, but he seemed oblivious, unconsciously stamping his feet while staring intently at the book in his hand.

In those cramped rental rooms with peeling paint, bankrupt middle-aged men sit on tatami mats, turning pages very quietly so as not to wake their sleeping families, while glaring red debt collection notices are carelessly tossed at their feet.

In fact, many people were filled with resentment when they first opened "The Long Road".

With a sense of excitement, they frantically flipped through the pages, eager to see how Kitahara Iwa would vehemently denounce the Ministry of Finance on their behalf, and how he would strip those bloodsucking bankers naked and nail them to the pillar of shame.

After turning a dozen or so pages, their turning motions unconsciously slowed down.

There is no mention of Japanese yen, mortgages, bankruptcy notices, or a single angry accusation in the book.

The book contains only chilling winds that make your teeth chatter, ashes falling everywhere, and madmen who would devour each other for half a bottle of dirty water.

Many readers were initially annoyed, even feeling frustrated as if they had punched cotton.

But as they read on, and as their fingers turned more and more pages, the burning anger in their hearts not only subsided, but transformed into a deeper, more bitter feeling that gradually choked them.

Because on the endless, gloomy highway, they truly saw their own pathetic reflections.

In Kitahara Iwao's writing, they are no longer the cold "unemployment rate" or "bankrupts" in the newspaper; they are fathers pushing dilapidated shopping carts and gritting their teeth to persevere in the wind and snow.

The creaking, seemingly doomed shopping cart wasn't filled with some fictional wasteland supplies, but rather with the last shred of humanity they had left in this messed-up reality: their unwavering loyalty to their families.

When I read the book, I saw a father so hungry he could barely walk, yet he still covered his child's eyes tightly, trembling as he said, "We are good people, we will never eat people."

When I read about the father in the book, in his final moments, desperately trying to leave a faint, invisible "fire" in his child's heart—

Many adults who smile obsequiously at debt collectors' calls and never shed a tear even when pushed to the brink have completely broken down in their defenses.

In their respective cold corners, their eyes reddened, and suppressed sobs escaped their throats.

It was past 11 p.m. when a man in an inexpensive suit sat on a park bench, turning the last page of "The Long Road" under the flickering streetlights.

He used to have a respectable job at a securities firm.

For the past three months since he lost his job, in order to keep his family from finding out, he still puts on a tie every morning, carries a briefcase containing a few old newspapers, and goes to the job that doesn't even exist.

He had already missed two mortgage payments, and when the bank called to collect the debt yesterday, his wife didn't argue with him. She just looked at him with tired eyes and then gave him a forced smile.

That smile was more humiliating than slapping him ten times in the face.

He went to queue up to buy books today, originally just wanting to see how Kitahara Iwa would curse this messed-up world before he died.

In the inner pocket of his suit jacket, close to his chest, was an envelope containing his last words, which he dared not tell his wife and children to their faces.

He had planned to finish reading the book, then walk to the tram stop ahead and end it all before the last tram pulled into the station.

In this nearly 100,000-word story, he didn't see his enemy jump off a building, nor did he see the bank collapse; he only saw a father who, like him, was desperate.

In the book, in a desolate world where even the sky has been burned to ashes and breathing feels like an eternity, the father still grits his teeth, drags his terminally ill body, and holds his son's hand tightly no matter how difficult it is.

The man stared at the pages, his fingers gripping them trembling slightly. He suddenly felt an unbearable shame.

In the book, the father, living in a real hell on earth, would rather starve to death than give up trying to protect the little spark of purity in his child's heart, repeatedly telling him, "We must never eat people."

And what about yourself?

Just because you lost your job and are burdened with debt, should you cowardly write a will and leave your innocent wife and children alone in this equally "man-eating" winter, making them face those vicious debt collectors for you?

He suddenly remembered that his child always curled up when he slept, and his wife's exhausted smile that she could barely hold on.

If I really leave tonight, all the remaining debts, the remaining collection calls, and all the nasty words will fall on them.

The step they take to escape will become another stone pressing down on them.

He sat frozen in the cold wind, holding the book, for a long time before gently closing it.

The despair and resentment that I had used to numb myself were shattered by a deeper pain.

He slowly bent down, like an empty shell drained of all strength, burying his face in his frozen hands.

At first, only his shoulders were trembling slightly.

Then, a sob, as if torn from the depths of his chest, leaked out from between his fingers.

Warm tears mixed with snot smeared all over his palms, then splattered onto the faded white trousers.

Occasionally, people passing by on the sidewalk after their night shift would catch a glimpse of this middle-aged man curled up in a ball, sobbing uncontrollably. They would simply walk around him without bothering to expose what little dignity he had left.

After crying, the middle-aged man sniffed hard, his nose reddening, and wiped his face haphazardly with his rough sleeve.

Then he reached into his inner pocket and pulled out the suicide note, which was warmed by his body heat.

Although his frozen fingers were a little clumsy, he still managed to tear the suicide note into pieces and throw it into the trash can next to him.

The middle-aged man then stood up, holding onto the armrest of the bench. However, because he had been sitting for too long, his legs were already numb with cold. He stumbled as soon as he took a step and almost fell.

He steadied himself somewhat awkwardly, brushed the dust off his knees, and looked up at the night sky.

The early winter night wind still felt like a knife scraping at your bones, and the mess in reality didn't disappear out of thin air because of a book.

When my wife wakes up tomorrow, she will still be worried about her empty wallet, the debt collection calls will still ring on time like a death knell, and the tens of millions of debts will still weigh on her head like a mountain.

However, he still pulled the collar of his drafty coat tighter, stuffed "The Long Road" into his empty briefcase, and strode towards home.

Even if the sky were to fall tomorrow, at least tonight, he had to go back and see his child's sleeping face.

That night, in countless unseen corners, similar struggles were taking place.

On the crowded last tram, a commuter who was dozing off suddenly woke up, hastily wiping the moisture from the corner of his eyes with the back of his hand, pretending that his eyes had just been reddened by the heating in the carriage.

In a studio apartment strewn with empty wine bottles, someone with red eyes swept all the sleeping pills on the coffee table into the trash can and picked up tomorrow's job application resume from the wastepaper basket.

Outside a public phone booth, a man clutched his last few ten-yuan coins and dialed a number back home. Upon hearing his mother's voice, the usually proud adult bit his fingers so hard he couldn't utter a single word for a long time.

Some people stuff "The Long Road" into their faded briefcases, fix their cheap ties in front of the mirror, and prepare to face the bank's ruthless debt collectors again at dawn.

"The Long Road" failed to send any of their bloodsucking politicians to prison, nor could it erase even a ten-thousand-yen debt from their accounts.

House prices are still falling, and bankrupt companies won't reopen tomorrow.

But in this economic winter that's driving people crazy, "The Long Road" managed to hold back those who had already stepped out the window with one foot in the door.

It made these desperate people feel that even if the outside world was rotten to the core, a cannibalistic wasteland where anyone would do anything for money, they couldn't become those ruthless monsters.

As long as you have family, and as long as you haven't abandoned your basic human decency, you haven't truly reached a dead end.

The next morning, the fax machine in Shinchosha's distribution department ran out of paper rolls.

The mailroom at the front desk was crammed with postcards and letters from all over Japan.

The vast majority of letters were unusually short, and the wording was clumsy and simple.

Many people simply grab a cheap ballpoint pen and hastily jot down their thoughts on sticky notes or even the back of an izakaya bill.

The handwriting on the paper was mostly crooked and distorted, with some edges still showing traces of water stains: "I'm still alive. I cooked myself a bowl of hot soup noodles this morning."

"Looking at my sleeping daughter, I decided to kill the thought of leaving this world from my mind."

"Teacher Kitahara, it was so cold last night, but I want to try walking a little further."

Kenichi Sato stood in the messy editorial department, holding a crumpled postcard in his hand, and stared at it for a long time.

Tokyo outside the window was already brightly lit.

In the distance, the Ministry of Finance building in Kasumigaseki still stands tall and imposing, while the glass curtain wall of the Financial Street coldly reflects the glaring winter sun.

The high-ranking bureaucrats are still calculating, shirking responsibility, and may even be celebrating in the meeting room, feeling that the book has not harmed them in the slightest.

In cramped rental rooms in Tokyo where no sunlight reaches, in drafty apartments in local cities, on park benches late at night, and in the carriages of the last train, two million books are held carefully in people's arms like two million tiny embers.

The fire is very small.

So small that it can't even illuminate the country's bad debts.

But at least it helped some people get through that night.

The afternoon after the release of "The Long Road," the newsroom of TV Asahi's "NewsStation" was like a pressure cooker filled with the smell of smoke and anxiety.

The headlines drawn in bold red on the whiteboard were originally "Tracking of Bad Debts in Housing and Urban-Rural Development" and "Follow-up on the Total Quantity Regulation of Tibet Province".

For this major program, the directors worked three sleepless nights and spent a lot of money to create the bad debt scale pie chart and the corporate bankruptcy curve, which are now leaning against the corner of the wall.

As is customary, a program that vehemently criticizes the bureaucrats of Xiaguan would instantly boost its ratings.

But as reporters from various places sent back tapes of their street interviews, which were then played on the monitor wall, the once noisy editing room, which was like a vegetable market, gradually fell silent.

There was no riot as expected, and no one smashed the windows of the Ministry of Finance.

In the rough footage taken by the reporter at Shinjuku Station, the doors of crowded trains were wide open during the evening rush hour, and people poured out like sardines.

A middle-aged man in a cheap, worn-out suit was jostled about by the crowd, but he was clutching a well-worn copy of "The Long Road" tightly, standing frozen on the platform as if he had lost his soul.

It wasn't until the train conductor blew the whistle to urge them on that he suddenly lowered his head, buried his face behind his briefcase, and his shoulders trembled.

On another screen, outside a bookstore's windproof curtain, a young woman stands with trembling legs, yet obliviously flips through the book in her hands.

Staring at the wall covered with real images, the head of the news department smoked two cigarettes in a row, then suddenly grabbed the "Ministry of Finance's Criticism Script" from the table and threw it into the trash can with a thud.

"Withdraw all the follow-up cases from the Tibet Autonomous Region! Screw the bad debts of the residential property management company!"

The director roared at the stunned directors, pointing sharply at the man weeping on the platform in the monitor, and yelled, "Remove all the images! Change the headline tonight, broadcast this!"

At 10 p.m., there was only one minute left before the live broadcast.

Hiroshi Kume, a famous anchor known for his sharp tongue and outspokenness, sat in front of the studio, irritably loosening his tie.

His large, solid wood broadcasting table held no sharp news commentaries today, only rough-textured paper...

"The Long Road" doesn't even have a cover sleeve.

"Three, two, one, all signals!"

The director shouted into his headset.

The red light is on.

In the past, when criticizing the dark side of the financial industry, Hiroshi Kume would always launch into a barrage of attacks.

But tonight, staring at the camera, his Adam's apple bobbed awkwardly, and his usually sharp voice carried a rare hint of tightness and dryness: "From last night to today, a kind of oppressive, silent queue has appeared outside bookstores all over Japan."

"The first printing of two million copies of Kitahara-sensei's new work, sold at an affordable price, is quietly making its way to the streets."

"Many people, including our program's producers, originally thought this would be a sharp knife aimed at Tibet Province."

"But after I got my hands on it, I realized that it depicted a world burned to ashes, a father and son who were starving to the bone, and a muddy road where there was no hope at all."

As Kume Hiroshi spoke, the studio then switched to a series of almost unedited, rough footage.