Ueno

Ueno, a district in Tokyo, becomes Yozo's first residence in the city after he abandons the college dormitory. His father, a Diet member, maintains a town house there, and Yozo moves into it after obtaining a doctor's certificate claiming his lungs are affected, a pretext to escape the squalor and violence of communal living. The house is described as a rather imposing mansion, and when his father is away—which is most of the time, since the Diet is not in session—only an elderly caretaker couple and Yozo himself occupy it. This arrangement gives Yozo a degree of freedom, but it also deepens his isolation: he frequently cuts classes, not to sightsee in Tokyo (he will later note that he never saw the Meiji Shrine, the statue of Kusunoki Masashige, or the tombs of the Forty-Seven Ronin), but to spend whole days reading and painting in the house. The Ueno house thus represents a transitional space where Yozo is neither fully integrated into student life nor truly independent, a limbo that foreshadows his later drift into the city's underworld of bars, prostitutes, and left-wing activism.

Life in the Ueno House

Living in Ueno, Yozo attends college only as an auditor at best, finding the classrooms and dormitory like "the dumping grounds of distorted sexual desires." His father's presence, when he is in town, remains oppressive and intimidating, though they sometimes go three or four days without seeing each other because of the father's busy schedule of receiving guests and going out. Yozo's routine consists of cutting classes to read and paint, and he also begins attending an art class in Hongo, where he practices sketching for three or four hours at a time. It is in this context that he meets Masao Horiki, a fellow art student who initiates him into drink, cigarettes, prostitutes, pawnshops, and left-wing thought—a combination that will define his Tokyo years. The Ueno house, with its imposing size and the absence of family, becomes the backdrop for Yozo's first serious encounters with the city's pleasures and dangers.

The End of the Ueno Period

The Ueno period ends when Yozo learns from the old caretaker that his father intends to sell the house. His father's term as a Diet member is about to expire, and he seems to have no intention of standing for election again, deciding instead to build a retreat in the countryside. The house is sold, and Yozo moves to a gloomy room in an old lodging house in Hongo, where he is immediately beset by financial worries. This transition marks a decisive shift: from the relative security of his father's mansion, where he could charge books, stationery, and clothing at neighborhood shops patronized by his father, to the precarious existence of a student living on a fixed monthly allowance that disappears in two or three days. The loss of the Ueno house thus accelerates Yozo's descent into poverty, debt, and the series of disastrous relationships that culminate in his suicide attempt with Tsuneko.

Narrative Significance

Ueno functions in the narrative as a symbol of Yozo's failed integration into both family and society. The house is a space of privilege—his father is a wealthy politician—but also of profound loneliness, where Yozo's dread of human beings finds no counterweight in genuine connection. His inability to navigate Tokyo on his own, his fear of boarding streetcars and entering restaurants, is temporarily masked by his reliance on Horiki as a guide, but the Ueno house itself offers no real refuge. When it is sold, Yozo is cast adrift, and the trajectory of his life becomes a series of ever more desperate attempts to find a place where he can escape his fear. The Ueno period, brief as it is, establishes the pattern of dependency, isolation, and self-destruction that defines the rest of his story.