The relationship between Yozo and the old maid Tetsu

After his release from the mental hospital and the death of his father, Yozo is sent by his elder brother to live in a dilapidated thatch-covered house on the coast, a five-room structure with peeling walls and worm-eaten woodwork. There, an ugly woman close to sixty with horrible rusty hair is assigned to look after him. This woman, Tetsu, becomes the sole human companion of his final years, a relationship that recapitulates in miniature the dynamics of shame, helplessness, and violation that have defined his entire life.

Identity and Introduction

Tetsu is introduced without a name at first, described only as an ugly woman close to sixty with horrible rusty hair. She is sent by Yozo's elder brother to care for him in the remote coastal house, a thatch-covered ancient-looking structure on the outskirts of a village, about four or five hours by rail south of his hometown. The house has five rooms, but the walls are peeled and the woodwork is so worm-eaten as to seem almost beyond repair. Tetsu is the sole human presence in this decaying setting, and her role is ostensibly that of a servant, but the relationship quickly exceeds that boundary.

Life Together: Quarrels and Violation

Over the course of about three years, Yozo and Tetsu develop a relationship that he describes as being "several times violated in a curious manner by the old servant." They quarrel like husband and wife, a pattern that echoes his earlier inability to maintain stable, non-exploitative bonds with women. The violation is presented as a continuation of the abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of maids and menservants, a crime he endured in silence and that taught him to smile in his weakness. Now, in his late twenties, with his hair prematurely grey and his body ravaged by tuberculosis, alcoholism, and morphine addiction, he is once again passive before an older woman who takes advantage of him. The relationship is not one of affection but of grim routine: his chest ailment fluctuates, his weight changes, and he occasionally coughs blood, while Tetsu remains the constant, unsettling presence.

The Laxative Incident

The most telling episode of their relationship occurs when Yozo, unable to sleep, sends Tetsu to the village drugstore to buy sleeping pills. She returns with a box of a different shape, which he pays no attention to. He takes ten pills before bed but cannot sleep; instead, he is seized with stomach cramps and terrible diarrhea, rushing to the toilet three times in succession. Examining the box, he discovers it is a laxative. As he lies on his bed staring at the ceiling, a hot water bottle on his stomach, he considers complaining to Tetsu but instead bursts out laughing. The thought that he has taken a laxative in order to go to sleep strikes him as comic, and he reflects that "reject" must be a comic noun. This moment crystallizes the absurdity and helplessness of his existence: even his attempt at self-medication is thwarted by the very person meant to care for him, and his response is not anger but a bitter, resigned laughter.

Thematic Significance

The relationship with Tetsu represents the final stage of Yozo's descent into what he calls "disqualified as a human being." He has lost even the ability to suffer meaningfully; his life is reduced to a cycle of illness, petty quarrels, and grotesque intimacy with a woman who violates him and makes mistakes that could kill him. The laxative incident, with its dark comedy, underscores his complete passivity and the erosion of any will to resist. He no longer has the energy to play the clown or to seek love; he simply exists, watched over by Tetsu, in a house that is falling apart. The relationship is a mirror of his entire life: a pattern of being taken advantage of by those who are supposed to help him, and of responding with a smile or a laugh rather than with protest. In the end, he has neither happiness nor unhappiness—only the certainty that everything passes.