No Longer Human ( PDFDrive )

57
on me and I, who have never been able to answer
back, dumbly obeyed. At my father's suggestion I took
the college entrance examinations a year early and I
passed. By this time I was really quite weary of my
high school by the sea and the cherry blossoms. Once
in Tokyo I immediately began life in a dormitory, but
the squalor and violence appalled me. This time I
was in no mood for clowning; I got the doctor to
certify that my lungs were affected. I left the dormitory
and went to live in my father's, town house in
Ueno. Communal living had proved quite impossible
for me. It gave me chills just to hear such words as
"the ardor of youth" or "youthful pride": I could
not by any stretch of the imagination soak myself in
"college spirit." The classrooms and the dormitory
seemed like the dumping grounds of distorted sexual
desires, and even my virtually perfected antics were
of no use there.
When the Diet was not in session my father spent
only a week or two of the month at the house. While
he was away there would be just three of us in the
rather imposing mansion—an elderly couple who
looked after the premises and myself. I frequently
cut classes, but not because I felt like sightseeing in
Tokyo. (It looks as if I shall end my days without
ever having seen the Meiji Shrine, the statue of
Kusunoki Masashige or the tombs of the Forty-