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their bodies, and their motions made it seem as though the shrine itself were staggering-drunk. Their legs seemed to be one great tangle, and it was as though their eyes were not looking upon things of this earth. The young man who carried the great round fan of authority was running around the edges of the group, urging them on with wonderfully loud shouts. From time to time the shrine would tilt crazily. Then, with even more frenzied shouting, it would be recovered.
    At this point—perhaps because the adults in my family had intuitively perceived that, although the young men seemed outwardly to be parading along just as before, there was some power in them that was demanding an outlet—I was suddenly shoved back by the hand of the person onto whom I had been clinging.
    "Look out!" someone shouted.
    I could not tell what happened after that. Pulled by the hand, I ran fleeing through the entry garden and dashed into the house through a side door.
    I rushed up to the second floor with someone and out onto the balcony. From there I looked down upon the scene, breathlessly. Just at that moment they had come swarming into the entry garden, bearing their black shrine.
    Even long after, I wondered what force impelled them to such an action. I still do not know. How could those scores of young men have suddenly arrived at the decision, instantaneous and single-minded, to come rushing in through our gate?
    They took delight in wanton destruction of the plants. It was a rout in every sense of the word. The entry garden, which had long since been exhausted of all interest for me, was suddenly transformed into a different world. The shrine was paraded over every inch of it, and the shrubs, ripped apart crashingly, were trampled underfoot. It was difficult for me so much as to tell what was happening. The noises were neutralizing each other, and it seemed exactly as though my ears were being struck by recurrent waves of frozen silence and meaningless roaring. Likewise with the colors—gold and vermilion, purple and green, yellow and dark blue, all throbbed and boiled up and seemed like a single color in which now gold and now vermilion was the dominant hue.
    Through it all there was only one vividly clear thing, a thing that both horrified and lacerated me, filling my heart with unaccountable agony. This was the expression on the faces of the young men carrying the shrine—an expression of the most obscene and undisguised drunkenness in the world. . . .
     

CHAPTER TWO
     
     
    For over a year now I had been suffering the anguish of a child provided with a curious toy. I was twelve years old.
    This toy increased in volume at every opportunity and hinted that, rightly used, it would be quite a delightful thing. But directions for its use were nowhere written, and so, when the toy took the initiative in wanting to play with me, my bewilderment was inevitable. Occasionally my humiliation and impatience became so aggravated that I even thought I wanted to destroy the toy. In the end, however, there was nothing for it but to surrender on my side to the insubordinate toy, with its expression of sweet secrecy, and wait passively to see what would happen.
    Then I took it into my head to try listening more dispassionately to the toy's wishes. When I did so, I found that soon it already possessed its own definite and unmistakable tastes, or what might be called its own mechanism. The nature of its tastes had become bound up, not only with my childhood memories, but, one after another, with such things as the naked bodies of young men seen on a summer's seashore, the swimming teams seen at Meiji Pool, the swarthy young man a cousin of mine married, and the valiant heroes of many an adventure story. Until then I had mistakenly thought I was only poetically attracted to such things, thus confusing the nature of my sensual desires with a system of esthetics.
    The toy likewise raised its head toward death and pools of blood and muscular flesh. Gory