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dueling scenes on the frontispieces of adventury-story magazines, which I borrowed in secret from the student houseboy; pictures of young samurai cutting open their bellies, or of soldiers struck by bullets, clenching their teeth and dripping blood from between hands that clutched at khaki-clad breasts ; photographs of hard-muscled sumo wrestlers, of the third rank and not yet grown too fat—at the sight of such things the toy would promptly lift its inquisitive head. (If the adjective "inquisitive" be inappropriate, it can be changed to read either "erotic" or "lustful.")
    Coming to understand these matters, I began to seek physical pleasure consciously, intentionally. The principles of selection and arrangement were brought into operation. When the composition of a picture in an adventure-story magazine was found defective, I would first copy it with crayons, and then correct it to my satisfaction. Then it would become the picture of a young circus performer dropping to his knees and clutching at a bullet wound in his breast; or a tight-rope walker who had fallen and split his skull open and now lay dying, half his face covered with blood. Often at school I would become so preoccupied with the fear that these bloodthirsty pictures, which I had hidden away in a drawer of the bookcase at home, might be discovered during my absence that I would not even hear the teacher's voice. I knew I should have destroyed them promptly after drawing them, but my toy was so attached to them that I found it absolutely impossible to do so.
    In this manner my insubordinate toy passed many futile days and months without achieving even its secondary goal—what I shall call my "bad habit"—let alone its ultimate, its primary goal.
     
    Various changes had been taking place about me. The family had divided into two and, leaving the house where I was born, had moved into separate houses, not over half a block apart on the same street. My grandparents and I were in one house, while my parents and my sister and brother were in the other. During this time my father was sent abroad on official business, toured several countries in Europe, and returned home. Before long my parents moved again. My father had finally reached the belated resolve to reclaim me back into his own household and took this opportunity to do so. I underwent a scene of parting with my grandmother —"modern melodrama" my father called it—and thus finally went to live with my parents. Now I was separated from the house where my grandparents lived by several stops on the government railway and the municipal streetcar line. Day and night my grandmother clasped my photograph to her bosom, weeping, and was instantly seized with a paroxysm if I violated the treaty stipulation that I should come to spend one night each week with her. At the age of twelve I had a true-love sweetheart, aged sixty.
    Presently my father was transferred to Osaka. He went alone, the rest of us remaining behind in Tokyo.
    One day, taking advantage of having been kept from school by a slight cold, I got out some volumes of art reproductions, which my father had brought back as souvenirs of his foreign travels, and took them to my room, where I looked through them attentively. I was particularly enchanted by the photogravures of Grecian sculptures in the guidebooks to various Italian museums. When it came to depictions of the nude, among the many reproductions of masterpieces, it was these plates, in black and white, that best suited my fancy.This was probably due to the simple fact that, even in reproductions, the sculpture seemed the more lifelike.
    This was the first time I had seen these books. My miserly father, hating to have the pictures touched and stained by children's hands, and also fearing—how mistakenly!—that I might be attracted by the nude women of the masterpieces, had kept the books hidden away deep in the recesses of a cupboard. And for my part, until that day I had never dreamed they