Runaway from Flatfish

Yozo's flight from Flatfish's house is the moment when his already fragile connection to family and conventional society finally snaps, propelling him into a rootless existence as a kept man and accelerating his spiral into alcoholism, drug addiction, and madness. The escape is not a bid for freedom but a desperate, almost involuntary act born of his inability to articulate his own desires or to endure the suffocating atmosphere of Flatfish's home. It marks the point at which Yozo ceases even to pretend at self-determination, handing over the direction of his life to a series of women and acquaintances who will use him as they please.

Background and Immediate Cause

After his release from police custody following the suicide attempt with Tsuneko, Yozo is taken in by Flatfish, a family retainer who had served as his guarantor. Flatfish's house near the Okubo Medical School is a cheerless place; the shop, called the "Garden of the Green Dragon," is filled with dusty antiques, and Flatfish himself, once obsequious, has become cold and contemptuous. Yozo is confined to a tiny second-floor room, forbidden to drink or smoke, and spends his days reading old magazines, too listless even to think of suicide. The only other inhabitant is a seventeen-year-old boy who treats Yozo as a simpleton or a lunatic. One evening in late March, Flatfish invites Yozo downstairs for a rare dinner with sake. In a roundabout, evasive conversation, Flatfish hints that Yozo should make plans for the future, but he refuses to state plainly that money from home is available if Yozo returns to school. Yozo, unable to decipher the indirect speech, feels only irritation and despair. When he finally blurts out that he wants to be a painter, Flatfish laughs with a crafty, contemptuous expression that reveals what Yozo calls "the very nadir of adult life." Humiliated and confused, Yozo runs up to his room and, the next morning at dawn, flees the house.

The Flight and Its Immediate Aftermath

Before leaving, Yozo leaves a note scrawled in pencil on his writing pad, saying he is going to discuss his plans with a friend—Masao Horiki—and will return that night. The note is a lie, written not as a calculated stratagem but out of a compulsive need to soften the shock of his departure and to avoid causing Flatfish sudden alarm. Yozo admits that this habit of embellishment, born of a terror of conversational silences, has often made people call him a liar. Once outside, he walks to Shinjuku, sells the books in his pockets, and stands utterly at a loss. He has no friends he can truly rely on; the only person he can think to visit is Horiki, a companion from his student days whose friendship has always been one of mutual exploitation. The thought that Horiki is his only remaining hope fills Yozo with dread. He boards a streetcar and goes to Horiki's house, a two-story dwelling at the end of a dirty alley in a working-class neighborhood.

The Encounter with Horiki and the Turn to Shizuko

Horiki is at home, but his reception is cold. He immediately guesses that Yozo has run away and treats him with barely concealed contempt. When Horiki's aged mother brings jelly, Horiki's exaggerated gratitude and his possessive reaction when Yozo fiddles with a cushion thread reveal a stingy, calculating city-dweller's mentality that Yozo finds both alien and humiliating. Just as Horiki is about to leave on business, a woman visitor arrives—an employee of a magazine publisher who has come to collect an illustration. A telegram from Flatfish arrives, exposing Yozo's flight. The woman, whose name is Shizuko, learns that Yozo lives in Okubo and offers to help. She is twenty-eight, a widow with a five-year-old daughter, and she lives in an apartment in Koenji. Yozo goes with her, and for the first time in his life he becomes a kept man.

Life as a Kept Man and the Deepening of Dependence

Shizuko supports Yozo, arranges a conference with Flatfish and Horiki that severs his ties with his family, and gets him work drawing cartoons for her children's magazine. Yozo buys liquor and cigarettes with the proceeds, but his gloom only intensifies. He feels he has sunk to the bottom; sometimes, while drawing the monthly comic strip "The Adventures of Kinta and Ota," he is overcome with homesickness and weeps. His only relief is Shizuko's daughter, Shigeko, who calls him "Daddy." Yet even this innocent relationship becomes poisoned by Yozo's fear: when Shigeko says she would like God to bring back her real father, Yozo feels a shock of terror, recognizing her as another "incomprehensible stranger" who will intimidate him. His drinking increases, and he begins to pawn Shizuko's clothes. One evening, returning after two nights away, he overhears Shizuko and Shigeko happily playing with a white rabbit and realizes that he is an intruder in their humble happiness. He shuts the door softly and goes back to the Ginza, never returning to the apartment.

Consequences and Significance

The flight from Flatfish's house is the point at which Yozo definitively abandons any hope of reintegration into family or society. It sets in motion a pattern of dependence on women—first Shizuko, then the madam of a bar in Kyobashi, and finally Yoshiko—that will define the rest of his life. Each relationship offers temporary shelter but ultimately deepens his isolation and self-loathing. The escape also marks the end of Yozo's career as a student and the beginning of his life as a cartoonist, a profession he despises and that he feels is a betrayal of his true artistic ambitions. The "ghost pictures" he painted in high school, which he considers his only worthwhile works, are lost, and he is left with a sense of irrecoverable loss. The flight is thus not a turning point toward a new life but a surrender to the current that will carry him inexorably toward addiction, madness, and the final verdict that he is "disqualified as a human being."