Minato Ward, the Kosaka family residence.
Professor Kosaka sat at the head of the long table, a half-burned cigarette pinched between his fingers.
His gaze fell on the two novels spread open before him.
One was The Setting Sun, which had caused a sensation not long ago.
The other was Shinchō, which had recently stirred up a slow-sales controversy; this latter one carried No Longer Human by the master of Dassai-ya.
Across from him sat two old friends.
One was Professor Matsushita, a professor in the Faculty of Letters at Waseda University, who sat with his legs crossed, leafing through a certain page of No Longer Human.
The other was Professor Takeuchi, likewise of the Faculty of Letters at the University of Tokyo, who cradled a teacup in his hands while his eyes stayed fixed on those two novels.
"So."
Professor Kosaka spoke, blowing out a ring of smoke.
"What do you two make of it?"
Professor Matsushita closed the magazine and set it down on the table.
"Let me give my conclusion first—this isn't a traditional I-novel."
Professor Takeuchi nodded.
"Nor is it the popular-literature mold."
"And it's certainly not the Aesthetic School."
Professor Kosaka picked up the thread.
"Both of these novels differ from the mainstream literary schools of today."
"If we had to force them into some school, they'd be more like the [Gesaku literature] of the Edo period."
The three men fell silent for a moment.
The smoke slowly coiled and dissipated in the air.
Professor Matsushita picked the magazine back up, turned to the part on The Setting Sun, and tapped a passage of text with his finger.
"Look at this passage."
I feigned precocity, and people rumored that I was precocious.
I feigned laziness, and people rumored that I was a loafer.
I feigned being unable to write novels, and people rumored that I couldn't write.
I feigned lying, and people rumored that I was a liar.
I feigned wealth, and people rumored that I was rich.
I feigned indifference, and people rumored that I was cold.
And yet, when I truly suffered until I couldn't help but groan, people rumored that I was merely feigning suffering.]
He finished reading, lifted his head, and looked at the other two.
"What kind of writing is this?"
"This isn't narration—this is... deconstructing oneself."
"Taking himself apart to show the reader."
"But it's not confessional—not that 'I have sinned, I confess' tone."
"He takes himself apart, yet he doesn't apologize."
"He acknowledges his own depravity, yet feels no shame for it."
Professor Takeuchi set down his teacup and leaned forward.
"And don't you feel it? There's a certain something in this style of writing..."
"How to put it... a kind of resistance against established morality."
"He isn't writing about how people ought to be, but about how people simply are."
"He writes of human weakness, hypocrisy, self-deception—yet without any of that critical undertone when he writes it."
"Carrying instead a kind of compassion?"
"Compassion?"
Professor Matsushita frowned.
"I'd say it's more self-mockery."
"Self-mockery is also a form of compassion."
Kosaka cut in.
"Compassion toward oneself."
Another silence.
Kosaka pressed his cigarette butt into the ashtray, shifted his posture, and leaned back against his chair.
"Let's push this a step further."
"If this isn't an I-novel in the traditional sense, isn't popular literature, and isn't the Aesthetic School either?"
"And isn't any literary school of the present day."
"Then it..."
"Could it possibly be something... new?"
Professor Matsushita's eyes lit up.
"You mean—a new literary school?"
"Why not?"
Professor Kosaka spread his hands.
"Since the Meiji era, which transformation in Japanese literature didn't begin from just such a small sprout?"
"Naturalism, the Shirakaba School, the Shinshichō School..."
"Which of them didn't start with someone writing something different first."
"And then having people discover, 'Oh!'"
"So this is a new path?"
Professor Takeuchi nodded thoughtfully.
"That makes sense."
"When The Setting Sun came out, I felt something was off."
"Not that it was badly written, but that it was too good—so good that no one knew how to classify it."
"That sense of decadence, that self-destructive tendency, yet it gave off a certain... a certain vitality."
"Very strange. Extremely strange."
"No Longer Human is even more so."
Professor Matsushita continued.
"This piece—after I finished it, I didn't sleep well for two whole days."
"Not because it was frightening, but because it... it let me see myself."
"The part of myself I'm unwilling to admit to."
"But the master of Dassai-ya... ah, young Kagami just wrote it out like that, wrote it without the slightest reservation."
"And he passes no judgment. He simply presents."
"Exactly!" Professor Takeuchi slapped his thigh.
"Just presenting!"
"He isn't teaching the reader anything, isn't criticizing anything."
"He simply spreads out the most unbearable side of human nature for you to see."
"And then?"
"And then you realize—you're unbearable, he's unbearable, everyone is unbearable."
"And so, paradoxically, you feel relieved."
Professor Kosaka narrowed his eyes slightly, as if chewing over these words.
After a long while, he slowly spoke.
"Everything you're saying makes me think of one word."
"What word?"
Professor Matsushita asked.
"Scoundrel."
The other two were both struck dumb at once.
"Scoundrel?"
Professor Takeuchi repeated it, his tone carrying both confusion and a sense of having been stirred.
Professor Kosaka nodded, rose from his chair, and walked to the window.
The red maples outside had entered their peak viewing season, rustling now and then as the autumn wind blew through them.
"Think about it—in traditional Japanese literature, and even in world literary creation, how are villains written?"
"Either as utterly evil men, or as prodigals who later repent."
"But what is it that young Kagami writes?"
"It's the kind of 'I don't want to become good, and I don't think I'm bad either.'"
"Characters who are 'just the way I am—take it or leave it.'"
"Isn't that exactly a scoundrel?"
Professor Matsushita stroked his chin thoughtfully.
"Scoundrel... the Buraiha, the Scoundrel School..."
"Interesting."
"This isn't a scoundrel in the moral sense, but a scoundrel in the existential sense."
"It's a passive resistance against all established values."
Professor Takeuchi also stood, walked over beside Kosaka, and gazed at the autumn scenery outside the window.
"And this scoundrel sensibility isn't pessimism, isn't despair."
"On the contrary, it's the courage to go on living after seeing through everything."
"Just like that line young Kagami wrote in his afterword."
"Even in falling, one must fall like a human being."
The three men fell silent once more.
But this silence was different.
The earlier silence had been confusion, a waiting for an answer.
This silence was resonance—a kind of shared realization flowing through the air.
At last, Professor Matsushita spoke.
"In that case, shouldn't we ask the author himself?"
"True—it's been a while since we've had a chat with young Kagami."
"After all, young Kagami is still a high schooler, and he's been quite busy lately."
"Compared to hanging around with us old pedants, he'd of course be happier spending time with his girl classmates."
Kanda Street, Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo.
Its core area, Jimbōchō, is one of the largest used-book districts in the world.
Packed within a span of several streets are some 200 bookstores.
Of these, antiquarian bookshops alone make up over a third.
And the most famous of them, Sanseidō Bookstore, is the largest bookstore in Japan, with a collection of over a million volumes.
By now, Tsushima Kagami and Kobayashi Tomoaki were already standing before the entrance of a long-established Japanese-style ryōtei.
Kobayashi Tomoaki stood at the entrance, looking at his watch.
Today, Professor Kosaka, Professor Takeuchi, and Professor Matsushita had invited Tsushima Kagami and Kobayashi Tomoaki.
Aside from being Tsushima Kagami's editor, Kobayashi Tomoaki now also accompanied him whenever Professor Kosaka or other acquaintances in the industry specially invited Tsushima Kagami.
He'd come to seem rather like a guardian for a minor.
The appointed time was half past five, and he had deliberately brought Tsushima Kagami fifteen minutes early.
This was his habit—whenever attending such occasions with Tsushima Kagami, he always arrived early, so as to handle anything that might come up.
"Let's head in first."
Kobayashi Tomoaki said to Tsushima Kagami after checking the time.
Tsushima Kagami nodded, and the two of them walked into the ryōtei together, arriving at the private room they'd reserved earlier.
But the moment he pushed open the door of the private room, he froze.
Professor Kosaka had already arrived.
And not only Kosaka—Professor Takeuchi and Professor Matsushita were there too.
The three of them sat around the low table, heads bowed, passing something around to read.
On the table lay the previously published The Setting Sun.
Beside it were several magazines, all with Shinchō on the cover—evidently all this issue's No Longer Human.
Hearing the door open, the three looked up at once.
They saw Kobayashi Tomoaki and Tsushima Kagami walk in.
Professor Kosaka smiled.
"Perfect timing."
"We were guessing what young Kagami would wear tonight."
Tsushima Kagami stood in the doorway.
A school uniform!
The ever-gentle Professor Takeuchi burst into hearty laughter, his laughter echoing through the wooden space of the ryōtei.
Professor Matsushita sighed and, together with Professor Kosaka, drew his wallet from his breast pocket.
Each pulled out a ten-thousand-yen note and handed it to Takeuchi.
"A bet's a bet."
Tsushima Kagami watched this scene, a little bewildered.
He looked down at his own uniform—a dark winter uniform.
The collar buttoned up neat and tidy.
Then he looked at the three professors.
Professor Kosaka wore a dark-gray suit and tie.
Professor Takeuchi wore a traditional kimono with a haori over it.
Professor Matsushita wore a casual jacket, though it too looked like a high-end piece.
Kobayashi Tomoaki leaned in and whispered.
"They were betting on what you'd wear."
Tsushima Kagami smiled too as he walked in and sat down in the empty seat.
"So."
"Who won?"
Professor Takeuchi raised his hand.
"Me."
"Congratulations, Professor Takeuchi—shouldn't you split half of it with me?"
Laughter rose throughout the private room.
At this point, Professor Matsushita complained too.
"Honestly, young Kagami."
"How is it that every time we meet, you're in your school uniform?"
"You're at the most vibrant age, yet you go out in your uniform even on holidays."
Tsushima Kagami looked at his uniform again.
When he first met Professor Kosaka and the others, he had also considered wearing formal attire.
But it had been billed as a book-club gathering, and he felt that, as a mere student, dressing too formally would seem somewhat out of place.
Besides, he didn't much care for wearing formal clothes.
Still, they were all senior elders, and university professors at that.
Dressing too casually wouldn't feel right either.
After turning it over and over, he'd decided to just wear his school uniform.
No one could find fault with that, after all.
And so, every time he met Professor Kosaka and the others after that, he simply went in his uniform.
"I think the uniform is perfectly fine."
Professor Takeuchi, who'd just won some money, spoke up in Tsushima Kagami's defense.
Professor Kosaka nodded with a smile too, speaking as if reminiscing.
"Your student years can slip away before you know it."
"Later on, it'll be hard to ever put on a school uniform again."
Everyone nodded in agreement.
At this point, the proprietress came in carrying a sake flask and filled everyone's cups.
Only Tsushima Kagami had juice instead.
The sake was Jōzen Mizuno Gotoshi, the ryōtei's signature—smooth on the palate, with a long, lingering finish.
Professor Kosaka raised his cup.
"Come, let's drink to this first."
"For nothing else, just for..."
He paused and looked at Tsushima Kagami.
"Just for the fact that the three of us, who together add up to nearly two hundred years, have been bowled over by something a high schooler wrote."
Professor Takeuchi and Professor Matsushita raised their cups at the same time.
Tsushima Kagami and Kobayashi Tomoaki smiled and raised theirs too.
The cups clinked together with a crisp sound.
After three rounds of sake and five flavors of food.
The conversation drifted from the weather to traffic, then to the three professors' recent academic research.
From academic research it moved to Kobayashi Tomoaki's publishing trade.
And from publishing to Tsushima Kagami's books.
At last, Professor Kosaka couldn't hold back and spoke.
"You know."
"On the very first day No Longer Human was released, the three of us held a seminar together."
At this point, Professor Kosaka's tone grew a few degrees more solemn than usual.
"We invited you here today because we want to discuss something with you."
"Please, go ahead."
Tsushima Kagami nodded, signaling that he was listening.
"We old fellows have lately studied your The Setting Sun and No Longer Human over and over."
Professor Kosaka continued.
"We've come to a shared view."
"These two works are wholly distinctive in style, unlike any literary school of the modern era."
"If anything, they're somewhat close to the Gesaku School of the Edo period."
Tsushima Kagami looked up, a flicker of surprise crossing his eyes.
Professor Takeuchi picked up the thread.
"We even think this might be a new literary school."
"And... this school might belong to you alone."
"At least for now—so unique that we can't find a second author or work resembling yours."
Beside them, Kobayashi Tomoaki suddenly understood.
He looked at the three seated professors with some shock.
"In other words..."
"Young Kagami may have founded an entirely new literary school?"
Everyone nodded affirmatively, then turned to Tsushima Kagami, who was eating.
Professor Kosaka drew a deep breath.
What we want to ask today is this.
"If your works can be counted as a new literary school, have you ever thought of giving it a name?"
"A name?"
"Yes, a name that can represent this style."
Professor Takeuchi said.
Tsushima Kagami thought for a moment, then looked at the three professors and said with a smile.
"Since the three of you held a seminar before coming to me."
"I'm rather curious whether you have a name of your own for it."
The three exchanged glances, not expecting that, rather than busying himself with thinking up a name for the new school, Tsushima Kagami would instead ask whether they had already named this possibly newborn literary school.
"Of course—we did discuss it before."
"Then I'd like to hear it."
Tsushima Kagami said with a smile.
Both Professor Takeuchi and Professor Matsushita glanced at Professor Kosaka.
Finally, Professor Kosaka came right out and said it.
"We analyzed your The Setting Sun and No Longer Human."
"It felt as though the characters you shape and the core you express in your books are like a [scoundrel]."
"So the three of us have tentatively called it the [Buraiha—the Scoundrel School]."
The Buraiha doesn't refer to scoundrels in the literal sense.
The school's name derives from Dazai Osamu's calling himself a "scoundrel" (buraikan).
And besides Dazai Osamu, the representatives of this school include Sakaguchi Ango, Oda Sakunosuke, and others.
Such as Sakaguchi Ango's Discourse on Decadence.
Or Oda Sakunosuke's The State of the World.
Both advocate using [decadence] to resist a hypocritical order.
Centered on resisting traditional morality and the authoritarian system, they reflect postwar social reality through decadent, self-mocking narrative techniques.
At the same time, by drawing on morbid, gloomy subject matter and a rebellious literary stance, they echoed the widespread spiritual crisis of the populace.
There was quite a scoundrel's spirit of "this is just how I am—do whatever you like about it."
And so this school of works later came to be directly labeled [Buraiha] literature.
At the same time, since these writers consciously imitated the creative attitudes and methods of the early-modern gesaku writers, they were also called the New Gesaku School.
Hearing this, Tsushima Kagami too looked at the three professors in shock.
Inwardly, Tsushima Kagami couldn't help but admire the three professors' genuine erudition.
"I think the name [Buraiha] is excellent too."
"Of course, if we want to be a bit more formally academic, it could also be called the [New Gesaku School]."
Hearing that Tsushima Kagami simply adopted their naming outright, and even tacked on the additional name [New Gesaku School] in line with the [Gesaku School] style they'd mentioned earlier, the three were all struck dumb at once.
"Young Kagami, do you mean to just adopt our earlier tentative name as is?"
"Why not?"
"We refuse to become the kind of people society expects us to be."
"Because we know we are weak, hypocritical, and self-deceiving—yet we do not apologize for it."
"Because we are alive, living in our own way, even if that way of living is [decadence] in others' eyes."
"We were born human—no need to apologize."
"Isn't that a perfect fit?"
The private room fell silent once more.
Then the three professors were seized with ecstasy.
In their lifetimes they had not only witnessed the birth of an entirely new literary school.
The very naming of this school had even been done by them, and had been endorsed by the author himself.
And this school was destined to leave a vivid, weighty mark on the history of Japanese literature—and even world literature.
And once they later published the relevant papers on it, what a glorious thing that would be!
Kobayashi Tomoaki was the first to speak, his voice a little hoarse.
"Buraiha..."
"It's a good name."
The three professors all stood up in excitement, came before Tsushima Kagami, and extended their hands.
"Young Kagami, from today on, Japanese literature has one more school."
"You are the one who created it."
"Of course, we still have to finish and publish our papers."
"To let more people know of it and recognize it!"
"Then whether I can become a literary master of our time from here on—I'll leave that all to the three of you, professors."
Tsushima Kagami said as he too stood up.
"Come, come—an occasion this momentous and joyful."
"We absolutely must toast again."
"Here's to the three professors' papers being published smoothly."
"And here's to young Kagami soon becoming a literary master of our age!"
Kobayashi Tomoaki was again the first to raise his cup, toasting the three professors and Tsushima Kagami.
The others all smiled and raised their cups again, clinking them together.
"Young Kagami, you really ought to switch to sake this time."
"Right—for something this worth celebrating, how can you be the only one drinking juice?"
"You young folks mustn't bully us old-timers, now."
"No, no—if I drink and end up laid up in the hospital again, Shizuku will get angry once more."
"Scared stiff by just one older sister."
"Whatever will you do once you're married someday!"
"Hahahaha~"
The laughter spilled endlessly from the private room to the outside.
On the streets of Kanda, people came and went.
But no one could have imagined that, within this small Japanese-style ryōtei.
A school's name destined to be written into literary history had just been born!
____
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