my poor attendance finally caused the school to send my father a confidential report. My elder brother, acting on behalf of my father, thereupon addressed me a long, sternly phrased letter, warning me to change my ways. More pressing causes of grief to me were my lack of money and the jobs required of me by the movement, which had become so frequent and frenetic that I could no longer perform them
half in the spirit of fun. I had been chosen leader of all the Marxist student action groups in the schools of central Tokyo. I raced about here and there "maintaining liaison." In my raincoat pocket I carried a little knife I bad bought for use in the event of an armed uprising. (I remember now that it had a delicate blade hardly strong enough to sharpen a pencil.) My fondest wish was to drink myself into a sound stupor, but I hadn't the money. Requests for my services came from the party so frequently that I scarcely had time to catch my breath. A sickly body like mine wasn't up to such frantic activity. My only reason all along for helping the group had been my fascination with its irrationality, and to become so horribly involved was a quite unforeseen consequence of my joke. I felt secretly like telling the group, "This isn't my business. Why don't you get a regular party man to do it?" Unable to suppress such reactions of annoyance, I escaped. I escaped, but it gave me no pleasure: I decided to kill myself. There were at that time three women who showed me special affection. One of them was the landlord's daughter at my lodging house. When I would come back to my room so exhausted by my errands for the movement that I fell into bed without even bothering to
