I must have offended my father, his revenge must be terrible, and I must do something to get it back while I still can, he thought as he shivered in his futon.
I took it up, flipped through it, found the section for ordering souvenirs, licked the pencil, wrote “Shishimai” and went back to bed. I didn’t want the lion of the lion dance at all. I would have preferred a book. However, I realized that my father wanted to buy the lion for me, so I went along with his wishes and ventured into the drawing room late at night, hoping to put him in a good mood.

This extraordinary measure was rewarded with great success. Soon after, my father returned from Tokyo, and I was listening to him yelling to my mother in the nursery. 　I went to the toy shop in the middle store and opened this pocketbook and found this, here, shishimai, written here. This is not my handwriting. What is it? 　I tilted my head and thought to myself. This is a prank by Yozo. When I asked him about it, he just smirked and kept quiet, but later, he couldn’t resist wanting the lion. After all, he is a strange monk, after all. He pretends not to know and writes it down properly. If he wanted it so badly, why didn’t he just say so? I laughed in the toy store. Call Hazo here as soon as possible. 　On the other hand, I gathered the servants and women in a western-style room and had one of them play the piano (the house was equipped with most things, even though it was in the countryside), and I showed them how to dance an “indayan” dance to a crappy tune, making them all laugh out loud.

On the other hand, I gathered the servants and women in a western-style room and had one of them play the piano (the house was equipped with most things, even though it was in the countryside), and I showed them how to dance an “indayan” dance to a crappy tune, making them all laugh out loud. My second brother took a picture of my indayan dance with a flash, and when he saw the picture, he could see my little penis through the seam of my loin cloth (it was a chintz cloth), which again made the whole house laugh out loud. 　I kept more than ten new boys' magazines every month, and I also ordered various other books from Tokyo and read them without telling anyone, so I was very familiar with Dr. Mechara-Kuchara and Dr. Nanjamonja. He was also quite familiar with ghost stories, storytelling, rakugo, and Edo kokyôjô, etc., so there was no shortage of comical remarks made with a serious face to make the people in the house laugh. 　But, aha, school! 　I was almost respected there. The idea of being respected also frightened me greatly. To deceive someone almost completely, and then be discovered by some omniscient being and beaten to a pulp, to be shamed beyond death…that was my definition of being respected. 　That was my definition of the state of being respected.

That was my definition of the state of being respected. I was a man who had cheated people out of their respect. 　And when the humans eventually learn from one of them and realize that they have been deceived, what will their anger and revenge be like? Even imagining it makes one’s hair stand on end. 　I am not so much born into a rich family as I am what is commonly referred to as a “rich man’s son”. 　I almost won the respect of the whole school because of my ability to do what I could do, rather than because I was born into a rich family. I had been sickly since childhood and often missed school for a month or two or even a whole school year because I fell asleep. 　I was more able than anyone else in the class. Even when I was in good physical condition, I did not study at all. When I went to school, I wrote cartoons during class time and explained them to the class during break time, making them laugh. He also wrote a lot of funny stories in his spelling, and even though his teacher warned him about it, he never stopped. I knew that my teacher secretly looked forward to my comical stories. One day, I was told by Rei that my mother had taken me on a train to Tokyo and I had peed in a phlegm urn in the aisle of the carriage (but I did not pee in the urn without knowing it was a phlegm urn; I peed in the urn on the way to Tokyo). I was confident that the teacher would laugh, so I quietly followed him as he left for the staff room. As soon as he left the classroom, he picked out his own spelling from those of the other students in the class and began to read it as he walked down the corridor, chuckling as he did so. 　A mischievous eye.

A mischievous eye. 　I succeeded in being seen as what is called “mischievous. I succeeded in getting rid of being respected. I got 10 points in all subjects in the report card, but only in manipulation I got 7 or 6 points, which was the source of much laughter in the house. 　However, my true nature was quite the opposite of such a mischievous person. At that time, I had already been taught and raped by the maids and servants. I now believe that to do such things to young children is the ugliest, lowest, and cruelest crime a human being can commit. But I persevered. I even felt as if I had seen another human quality, and I laughed without effort. If I had been in the habit of telling the truth, I might have been able to appeal to my father and mother about their crimes without being offended, but I could not understand even them. I had no hope of appealing to human beings. Whether I appealed to my father, my mother, the policeman, or the government, in the end, I would only be told to go along with the world’s most worldly-minded person’s convenient argument. 　I knew that there was always a one-sided fall.

I knew that there was always a one-sided fall. It was futile to appeal to human beings after all. 　What, are you talking about distrust of human beings? 　Huh? 　There may be some who scoff at me and say, “When did you become a Christian?” However, it seems to me that disbelief in human beings does not necessarily lead one to the path of religion. In fact, people, including the scoffers, live in mutual disbelief with no regard for Jehovah or anything else. When I was a child, a famous person from a political party to which my father belonged came to this town to make a speech, and my servants took me to the theater to listen. The theater was packed, and I could see the faces of all the people in the town, especially those who were close to my father, and they were applauding loudly. After the speech was over, the audience gathered in groups on the snowy night streets and headed home, complaining about tonight’s speech. Some of them were particularly close to my father. My father’s opening speech was not very good, and the speeches of the celebrities were incomprehensible. 　My father’s opening speech was poor, and the celebrity’s speech was incomprehensible,” they said in an angry tone.

My father’s opening speech was poor, and the celebrity’s speech was incomprehensible," they said in an angry tone. Then they stopped by their house, went into the guest room, and told my father with a look of happiness on their faces that tonight’s speech had been a great success. Even the servants, when asked by their mother how tonight’s speech had been, were all smiling, saying that it had been very interesting. The servants were lamenting to each other on the way home that there was nothing more uninteresting than a speech meeting. 　But this is just one small example. It seems to me that human life is filled with examples of pure, bright, and cheerful disbelief, in which people mock each other, and yet, strangely, neither of them is hurt in any way, nor even aware that they are mocking each other. However, I am not particularly interested in the fact that we are being deceived by each other. I am not really interested in the Shushin textbook morality of justice and whatnot.

I am not really interested in the Shushin textbook morality of justice and whatnot. I find it difficult to understand people who live a pure, bright, and cheerful life, or people who have the confidence to live, even though they are deceitful to each other. Human beings have never taught me that mystery. If I had known that, I would not have been so afraid of them, and I would not have been so desperate to serve them. I would not have been at odds with human life, and I would not have suffered so much in the nightly hell. In other words, the reason I did not accuse anyone of the abominable crimes of the servants was not because I distrusted people, and of course not because of Christocentrism, but because people had tightly closed their shell of trust toward me, Hazo.