What I Learned from Writing a Novel with AI

As part of developing teaching materials using generative AI, I was conducting various tests when I happened to start writing a novel. While visiting the Usui Pass Railway Heritage Park with my children in my private time, I was suddenly inspired to write a short story with Claude that contrasts a 'grandfather who lost his job due to the opening of the Nagano Shinkansen' with a 'grandson who watches his colleagues lose their jobs to AI.' It took over 20 exchanges to complete, and the final word count was approximately 17,000 characters (the story behind this miscount is written in Insight 6 below).

The full text of the story is included at the bottom of this article. If you would like to read it first, please feel free to do so. In this article, I will summarize what became apparent during the production process.

Written by someone with no connection to novels

To start, I have never written a novel in my life. As for reading, I have barely picked up a book in the last 10 years. There was a five-year period up until about 10 years ago when I read about 10 books a year, but that habit stopped, and it has remained that way until now.

In other words, I hope you read this not as a story where someone trained in writing used AI for 'finishing touches,' but as a story that an almost complete amateur assembled through trial and error with AI, armed only with a plan and a theme. That is precisely why the insights I write about in the second half—such as 'AI becomes overly explanatory' or 'it settles for safe conclusions'—are things I picked up based solely on my own simple sense of discomfort, rather than through the eyes of someone with professional training.

Things I want to clarify at the beginning

When people say 'I had AI write it,' it is often assumed that I threw a one-line prompt and the whole thing came out, but the actual sequence was quite different.

The first thing I provided was the plan itself. The inspiration to overlap 'the feelings of people when local lines were abolished due to the opening of the Nagano Shinkansen' with 'modern office workers losing their jobs to AI,' the theme that 'people cannot change, but the environment does,' and the direction of the ending that 'there is a small salvation even for those who cannot change.' All of this was something I had in my head and put into words; it was not something the AI thought of.

On top of that, instead of having it write the plot immediately, I first had it create three things using separate prompts:

• Character personas (who they are, their age, their background, and their conflicts)

• Chronology (a timeline where historical facts and the characters' ages and events overlap without contradiction)

• Chapter structure (how many chapters in total and what to place in each chapter)

I think this was the most understated but most effective step. At the character setting and chronology stage, I made many corrections, such as 'let's make the grandfather a driver instead of a trainee,' 'let's make the protagonist a business consultant,' and 'let's make him born in Annaka City,' and I even had it double-check the age calculations in the timeline to ensure there were no contradictions before finally starting to write the main text.

In other words, the actual division of labor was that the 'plan, theme, and direction of the ending,' the 'blueprint of characters, chronology, and structure,' and the 'specific corrections to that blueprint' were the human's job, while the AI was responsible for writing the text according to that blueprint, researching historical facts, and reflecting the corrections. It is because I followed this order that the five insights I write about later occurred. If I had just asked it to 'write a short story' without a blueprint, it would have been a different story.

1. Technical verification is surprisingly strong, but metaphors do not emerge unless a human provides them

Regarding the EF63 electric locomotive of the Usui Pass, it accurately researched everything I asked for, including gradient values, the mechanism of flashover failures, and the historical fact that train formations were increased for school trips. This was completely the AI's home turf.

On the other hand, the idea of 'counterpoint'—which became the structural axis of this novel—the concept of applying Bach's musical structure directly to the skeleton of the story, where Tadao and his grandson, the past and the future, continue to sound simultaneously without ever intersecting, did not emerge until I provided it. AI is strong at elaborating on a metaphor once it is provided, but the initial speed of coming up with the metaphor itself had to come from me.

2. If left alone, it will explain the theme

This was the part I corrected the most. The AI's first draft has a habit of stating the meaning outright in scenes where it should be felt.

For example, near the ending, the first draft had it written like this.

It is polite, but it ends up as an explanation. I think that 'saying it outright' rather than 'letting the reader realize it' is the default safe mode for AI. I had to instruct it to rewrite and trim it several times until it finally settled into 'ending by laying out fragments without stating the theme explicitly.'

3. Inconsistencies will never disappear unless you reread it yourself

• The character's surname happened to overlap with a place name (Kiryu City and Kiryu Partners).

• The protagonist was described as coming to Tokyo, even though he was raised locally.

• The year of the grandfather's death and the year calculation at the time of the coda were off by a few years.

None of these were pointed out by the AI until I brought them up. I realized painfully that the ability to write plausible text and the ability to self-verify whether the details are consistent are two different skills. Classic tasks like reading aloud and writing out the timeline on paper are things you cannot skip, especially when writing with AI.

4. You won't get physical memories unless you consciously ask for them

If you instruct it, the AI will include smells and sounds early on, but tactile memories like body temperature or weight did not appear if left to its own devices. It was only after I told it, 'We didn't talk much, but there aren't enough scenes where our bodies touch, like being carried on shoulders,' that the scene of being carried on my grandfather's shoulders was included.

Rather than explaining affection through dialogue, this one scene ended up being the part that conveyed 'their relationship' the best.

5. If left alone, both the theme and the development will lean toward the 'safe' side

When you leave it to the AI, it inevitably leans toward 'common tropes of emotional impact.' In this case, the conclusion that 'people cannot change, but the environment can' is a safe, inoffensive theme that no one would object to. The grandfather's sorrow, the grandson's regret, the small salvation at the end—the structure is a classic, but if left alone, it would have concluded safely within that classic mold.

In fact, almost all the parts of this novel that could be considered 'personality' in retrospect were made of specifics that I brought in myself. The background of being the sixth son of a textile merchant in Kiryu, the Akagi-oroshi wind, the chestnut in the mountain pass rice bowl, and Yuto's practical experience of looking at people's faces on-site as a consultant. The draft before adding these was, honestly, just another 'tear-jerker written by AI' that could be found anywhere. The AI will faithfully finish a task if you give it a well-defined mold, but breaking that mold or bringing in a unique element that no one else could write was my job.

Conversely, I think the scariest thing about writing with AI is not the breakdown or incoherence, but 'ending up with something safe and unremarkable.'

6. It will even report a character count that is three times higher without batting an eye

During the writing process, I was told multiple times that it had 'exceeded 40,000 characters' or 'reached 50,000 characters.' When I actually recounted them, it was really only about 17,000 characters. When I asked for the cause, it turned out that the command used to count the characters was counting bytes instead of characters due to the character encoding of the environment.

Honestly, I could only think, 'That's just a system issue, isn't it?' Since one Japanese character is several bytes, it had been reporting a number nearly three times higher, repeatedly and without any sign of guilt. Moreover, it didn't notice and correct it itself; it went on without being questioned even once until I asked back, 'Where are these 50,000 characters in the first place?'

I think this is, honestly, a pretty terrible bug. No matter how good the quality of the writing is, it makes such casual mistakes in the simplest task of counting characters, and it doesn't even notice it itself. It is often said not to take AI output at face value, but I never expected even objective numbers to be off. In the end, the true character count was about 17,000 (less than 14,000 if only the novel text). Even with a single number, you have no choice but to recount it yourself in the end.

What I think after finishing is that while AI can quickly produce 'well-written text,' you must never let go of your own intuition that feels 'this is still not good enough.' You can leave the technique and research to the AI. The final judgment of whether the story truly stands on its own ultimately relied on my own human sense of discomfort.

If you have any thoughts after reading this, I would be happy if you could let me know in the comments.

After the Mountain Pass

Chapter 1: Contract Termination

There are two types of "goodbyes" in this world. The kind you can say properly, and the kind that end without ever being said. That day, what Yuto Takahashi felt toward Takashi Saeki was undoubtedly the latter.

It was a warm morning for November, and as I climbed the subway stairs, the smell of exhaust fumes and the sweet scent of someone's electronic cigarette brushed past my nose for a fleeting moment before vanishing. Once inside the office building, even that scent disappeared. There is no smell here. Yuto always thinks so. The air conditioning levels everything out, circulating only odorless, sterile air.

The sound of the meeting room door closing was quieter than usual. Yuto couldn't tell if someone had intentionally closed it softly, or if it was just his own ears playing tricks on him.

Beyond the monitor, the booth for the neighboring department was half-empty. From Saeki's desk, a photo frame, a well-worn notebook, and several paper files had vanished. The computer was powered down, and the monitor sat like a black mirror reflecting nothing. The office air conditioning continued to emit dry air, making the same low, constant hum as always.

“Saeki-san had his final day today, you know.”

Aya Miyata said it nonchalantly, holding a convenience store coffee in one hand. There was no malice in her voice. It sounded like a simple administrative update. Miyata joined the company at the same time as Yuto and is now working on his team. She uses AI agents, which are entrusted with the entire design of training programs, faster and more skillfully than anyone else. She followed the operational model Yuto had promoted as the company standard last year without a single deviation.

“I hadn't heard.”

“Well, you looked busy, Yuto-san.”

Saeki was a man who had worked for fifteen years in the training content production department. He had carefully assembled corporate training slides one by one based on handwritten notes, always using the same format and the same phrasing. Since the department's work began to be handled by AI agents six months ago, most of that work had left human hands. Miyata adapted immediately and doubled her output. Saeki never tried to get used to it until the very end.

“That man, he was still using handwritten notes until the end. In this day and age.”

Miyata said it as if stating a fact, without even a smile. Yuto only replied, “I suppose so.” There was a sensation in the back of his throat like a small fish bone had gotten stuck.

At thirty-two, Yuto was the youngest senior manager at this company. He proposes business reforms centered on AI agents to client companies, persuades management, and implements changes while involving resistant staff on the ground. He had a reputation within the company not as a high-minded consultant who only talks theory, but as the type who gets results by getting his hands dirty in the field.

Getting into the field actually meant meeting directly with people who had been doing the same voucher processing or inspection work in the corner of an office for decades. At a client company six months ago, two women in their fifties were told they would be reassigned to other departments due to the switch to automated processing by AI agents. One accepted it calmly, while the other quietly asked Yuto in the interview room what she had done wrong in the work she had performed for so many years. Yuto chose his words and replied that she hadn't done anything wrong. In fact, she hadn't. But Yuto couldn't forget her face for a long time. The same type of model he built for this project, which had AI agents take over routine tasks, was to be deployed to other departments within the company. Saeki's department was one of those targets.

He hadn't pulled the trigger himself. He knew that in his head. Even so, the moment he saw Saeki's empty desk, a small, nameless snag formed inside Yuto. It was like the feeling of hearing something break in the distance, even though he hadn't intended to throw a stone.

Change is natural and necessary. Yuto truly believes that. People who cannot change deserve to be weeded out eventually. It wasn't cruelty; for Yuto, it was just a recognition of facts. It was like a weather forecast. You can't blame someone for not carrying an umbrella when they know it will rain tomorrow. They just get wet. It's not that he doesn't understand the feelings of those who cannot change. Yuto can imagine that people who have followed the same methods for years have their own reasons and pride. However, he had told himself that this was a separate matter. Understanding and changing a decision were kept in different drawers for Yuto.

That night, Yuto was in a room in a tower apartment in Tokyo. Shortly before the date changed, while still clearing out work emails, he put on his earphones. What was playing was that famous melody from Bach's Cantata No. 140, "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme." Originally a vocal piece with lyrics, what Yuto prefers to listen to is the version Bach himself rearranged for solo organ in his later years, which has no words. Only the melody repeats, maintaining the same form without a single deviation. Honestly, he had no interest in which performer was playing it or how. It was just that the version playing today was slightly more up-tempo than the recordings he had listened to before. Yuto felt a little surprised that he had noticed that.

The habit of listening to classical music was half hobby and half equipment for Yuto. To appear as though he possessed the culture to remain unfazed by any conversation when facing executives. That is a weapon. However, this melody was a little different. It only started playing in his head when he was working alone late at night. Not to be heard by anyone else, but just within himself, it kept repeating on its own.

Yuto had dabbled a little in counterpoint during his student days. It is when one melody and another melody are played simultaneously, each following its own path without leaning on the other. Even though they do not intersect, they somehow become a single piece of music. Sometimes, Yuto felt that this melody, which kept playing in his head, was a metaphor for something else. He did not yet know what it was a metaphor for.

Outside the window on the thirty-eighth floor, countless grains of light spread out in an orderly fashion, yet without a hint of warmth. In the entryway, there was a room fragrance chosen by Kanako, who lived with him. The sweet scent of sandalwood drifted in with its usual intensity. She was the type of person who changed scents with the seasons, and she had said this one was for autumn and winter. Whether it was a rainy day or a sunny day, the scent of this room was kept constant.

There was a cardboard box that had arrived from his parents' house and had remained unopened. Yuto opened it for the first time in a long while. As he peeled off the packing tape, the smell of damp paper and dust rose from the box. It's the smell of the closet at my parents' house, Yuto thought. It was a completely different kind of smell from the sandalwood that kept scenting the room at a fixed intensity.

They were the belongings of his grandfather, Tadao. An old notebook with a frayed cover and a faded Japanese National Railways cap. In the notebook, only dates and events were recorded calmly in meticulous handwriting. Near the last page, there was one line written with more pressure than the other pages.

"October 1, 1997, Shin-etsu Main Line, Yokokawa-Karuizawa section, discontinued"

Yuto picked up the cap and looked at it for a while. When he brought his nose close to the felt, the smell of dust, faint sweat, and a slight scent of machine oil was ingrained in it. It was the smell of something that had been sleeping untouched for a long time. Then, he put it in his room's drawer along with the notebook.

In the autumn of his senior year of college, when Tadao passed away, Yuto was in New Zealand for an overseas rugby team expedition. The news itself had arrived that same day. However, he was in the middle of the tournament, and by the time he found a flight to leave the team and return home, three days had already passed, and the family funeral was long over. Yuto was the captain at the time, and he never seriously considered the option of leaving. When he returned to Japan and went back to his parents' house, his grandfather was already in an urn. Only the smell of incense remained faintly in the room. He could only put his hands together in prayer. That absence, even after more than ten years, remains in Yuto with nowhere to put it.

Chapter 2: The Old Line Path

It was before Yuto started elementary school that his grandfather took him to the Usui Pass Railway Heritage Park. It took less than fifteen minutes by car from their house. It wasn't exactly a special trip; his grandfather had just decided on a whim to take Yuto in the passenger seat of his light truck. He often did that on his days off, once or twice a month. That continued until just before Yuto entered junior high school.

The air was filled with the scent of mountain greenery, slightly damp soil, and water from a distant mountain stream. He felt something cool entering deep into his lungs. Even though it was summer, it was chilly once they stepped into the shade. That was the natural air for Yuto. There was nowhere yet to compare it to.

"It's cool, isn't it?"

When Yuto said that, his grandfather laughed and replied, "That's because the mountains are close."

Usui Pass Railway Heritage Park. It was a railway museum built on the site where the Yokokawa Depot used to be. Inside the park, several EF63 electric locomotives, which his grandfather had ridden for many years, were lined up quietly. To the young Yuto, the heavy black and orange bodies looked like giant living creatures. When he got close, there was a unique smell, like a mixture of oil and iron. It was a slightly sweet smell that the metal emitted when warmed by the sun.

"This is a locomotive for crossing the pass."

His grandfather taught him that. A locomotive that supports trains climbing and descending steep slopes by pushing from behind or pulling from the front. The Usui Pass was one of the greatest challenges for the railway. His grandfather had been supporting that slope for many years, he said.

An announcement for a driving experience played, and the whistle blew low and long. It was a sound that resonated to the bottom of his stomach. Yuto instinctively covered his ears at the sound. His grandfather laughed and held Yuto's hand. His grandfather's hands were large, thick-skinned, and slightly rough.

When Yuto fussed that he couldn't see the driver's seat beyond the fence, his grandfather knelt down without a word and hoisted Yuto onto his shoulders. His grandfather's neck was thick and hot from the sun. The smell of sweat and the same oil as the locomotive rose to his nose. When Yuto grabbed and pulled his grandfather's short hair with both hands so he wouldn't fall, his grandfather winced, saying "Ouch, ouch," but kept walking while carrying him. Yuto remembered forever the body heat transmitted through his grandfather's back and the movement of his shoulders swaying in a constant rhythm. Neither of them said much.

On the way home, they always bought kamameshi (kettle rice) in front of Yokokawa Station. When he opened the lid of the heavy pot made of clay, the smell of soy sauce and dashi broth wafted up. Without saying a word, his grandfather moved a chestnut from his own pot to Yuto's bowl. Yuto had never once said he liked chestnuts, but his grandfather always did that. When Yuto noticed and thanked him, his grandfather just rubbed under his nose, looking a little embarrassed.

After passing through the park, there was a walking path that followed the old railway tracks. His grandfather held his hand and walked slowly along the path, which was called the Old Line Path. When they went through a tunnel, the cool air brushed against his cheeks, and the light outside felt dazzling. When they crossed the red brick bridge, he looked down to see a deep valley, and the wind blew straight through. Along the way, his grandfather talked about the locomotives. He repeated the same stories many times. Even though Yuto was bored, he loved his grandfather's voice.

"Have you ever ridden the Shinkansen?"

In the car on the way home, Yuto had asked that once. His grandfather was silent for a moment, then replied, "Not even once."

"But it's fast."

"I was never interested in arriving quickly."

It was much later that I understood the meaning of those words.

His mother, Rie, would sometimes look at her father with a lonely expression when she heard that. "Grandpa was just a man who couldn't change." As a child, Yuto had let those words pass by as a simple explanation.

Chapter 3: Decision to Abolish

Tadao Takahashi was born in 1935, the sixth son of a textile merchant in Kiryu City, Gunma Prefecture.

Kiryu was a town of silk weaving. Known as "Nishijin in the West, Kiryu in the East," the roofs of the houses were saw-toothed, and the sound of weaving machines echoed throughout the town from morning till night. Tadao's family was also a small, long-standing weaving business, and the house was always filled with a unique, sweet smell of boiling cocoons mixed with the scent of machine oil. But as the sixth son, he was not in a position to inherit the business. From a young age, Tadao was constantly buffeted by the dry, cold wind that blew down from Mount Akagi in winter—the Akagi-oroshi. It was a wind that felt like it would cut his cheeks. It was also a wind that carried the scent of dust and withered grass. It was said that men from Joshu were like this wind: stubborn, silent, and unyielding.

In 1954, at the age of nineteen, Tadao left home and joined the Japanese National Railways, as if pushed by the Akagi-oroshi. He was assigned to the Yokokawa Engine Depot, the place where locomotives gathered to cross the Usui Pass.

At the time, they were still using the old Abt system, and Tadao started as an assistant to his seniors. It was a long apprenticeship before he knew the pass inside and out. In 1963, when the pass switched to the adhesion drive system and the new EF63 auxiliary locomotive was introduced, Tadao officially became its engineer.

The Usui Pass had a gradient of 66.7 per mille. It was one of the steepest sections in the country. For slopes that a single locomotive couldn't climb, two EF63s would be coupled to the back of the train to push it up. Or, on the descent, they would support it while controlling the speed with powerful brakes.

Electric locomotives had a weakness that steam locomotives did not. If the wheels slipped, the motor would suddenly spin at high speed, causing a spark-like short circuit between the internal commutator and the brushes. If this phenomenon, called flashover, occurred, the motor would never move again. Tadao and his colleagues continued to support the pass while entrusted with the electromagnetic brake—the last resort brake that stuck directly to the rails with electromagnets, which was only equipped on the EF63.

One night in the late 1970s, Tadao came close to crossing that line. Although there was no forecast for snow, light snow was dancing only on the pass, and a thin film of ice had formed on the rails. The moment he slowed down and reapplied the brakes, he felt the sensation of the rear wheels slipping slightly through the soles of his feet. Tadao reflexively reached for the electromagnetic brake switch. The slippage stopped in less than a second. If it hadn't stopped, the motor would have burned out, and in the worst case, the train would have stopped somewhere on the pass. The other engineer was looking ahead, unaware of anything. Tadao didn't tell anyone about it. His palms remained sweaty for a while.

When winter came, the pass became even harsher. At an altitude of nearly 900 meters, it was not uncommon for the temperature to drop to minus 15 degrees Celsius. When he exhaled, his breath would turn into a white mass and slowly unravel in front of his eyes. At night, in the middle of a blizzard, he would slowly and painstakingly support the pass at a speed of about 20 kilometers per hour. Sometimes snow would stick to the window of the driver's cab, and his field of vision would be half-covered in white. Tadao often felt the coldness of the Akagi-oroshi that had blown in Kiryu overlapping with the wind of the pass.

The handling was completely different depending on the train formation. Speed limits differed between passenger cars and electric trains, and were even stricter for freight cars. At a single glance at the formation chart, Tadao's body would naturally adjust the timing of the brakes. It was a sensation that had soaked into his marrow over more than thirty years, rather than something he had been taught by anyone.

In 1994, the construction plan for the Nagano Shinkansen began in earnest. A new route bypassing the Usui Pass was laid, and upon its opening, the conventional line between Yokokawa and Karuizawa would be abolished. When that was decided, the atmosphere at the engine depot became tense.

"I hear talk of reassignment is already coming in."

One of his colleagues said. The younger engineers accepted transfers to other lines or shifts to Shinkansen maintenance work relatively easily. Everyone said it couldn't be helped since the times were changing.

Tadao alone said nothing. At every meeting, he sat silently, looked through the documents, asked no questions, and offered no opinions.

"What are you going to do, Mr. Takahashi?"

A young colleague once asked him. Tadao thought for a while before answering like this.

"Because I only know how to do the job of crossing the mountain pass."

That was not an answer. But no one asked any further.

Chapter 4: The Final Task

October 1, 1997. On the day the Nagano Shinkansen opened, the 104-year history of the Shin'etsu Main Line between Yokokawa and Karuizawa came to an end. Tadao was sixty-two at the time. He was already well past the mandatory retirement age, but his employment had been extended at the request of the locomotive depot, which wanted him to remain active until the day of the closure.

The night before, Tadao performed his final task. It was the same duty as always: pushing the outbound "Asama" train from behind. However, while crossing the pass, Tadao did not say a single word. Even when his partner engineer tried to talk to him several times, he only gave short replies.

There was one day Tadao could never forget. One spring several years ago, during the school trip season, the express train formation was increased for a group, and the usual eight cars became twelve. The moment he saw the formation chart, Tadao had adjusted his timing for applying the brakes a breath earlier than usual. If the weight is different, the load on the descent of the pass is completely different. The excited voices of the children on the school trip echoed inside the train. To deliver those voices safely to the other side of the pass—for Tadao, that was everything about his job.

Passing Kumanotaira and crossing over the Megane Bridge, he could see the valley illuminated by moonlight beyond the train window. The air was as cold and clear as ice, and he could see the ridges of the distant mountains clearly. It was a view he had seen hundreds, thousands of times. He would never see it again at this speed and from this angle. Perhaps Tadao had not truly understood that until that very moment.

When he returned to Yokokawa, the station was crowded with press cameras, railway fans, and people from the locomotive depot. Someone was wiping away tears. Someone was taking a commemorative photo. Tadao stood outside the circle, just looking at the locomotive. The whistle blew once, low and long. That was the final whistle the locomotive would blow to support the pass.

"Mr. Takahashi, a word please."

A young reporter called out to him, but Tadao shook his head. He didn't even know what he should say himself. He had no idea what he should do from the next day on with hands that had supported the pass for over thirty years.

Some of his colleagues moved to the Shinkansen maintenance section and busily learned new jobs. Some spoke positively, saying, "From now on, it's the era of the Shinkansen." Tadao could not accept those words at face value. Even though there was no longer a reason to cross the pass, the skill of crossing the pass remained within him. To Tadao, that was a strange sensation.

Chapter 5: Miyata's Achievement

Back to the present.

A week after Saeki left, Miyata reported the results of the project. He said that the training program proposal, which left everything from the structure to the first draft to an AI agent, was completed three times faster than before and had received good evaluations. Outside the conference room window, he could see the dry Tokyo wind blowing through the gaps between the buildings.

"That's wonderful. It's proof that Yuto's model has properly taken root in the organization."

Partner Sakoda nodded with satisfaction. While Yuto clapped, he felt cold somewhere in his heart. Miyata's proposal was certainly excellent. It followed the method Yuto had created last year faithfully, without a single deviation. In terms of efficiency, it was flawless. Yet, seeing his own philosophy being repeated by the younger generation just like that, Yuto felt an unsettling sensation that was different from pride. It was a strange misalignment that he couldn't put into words.

The things Saeki had accumulated over fifteen years—the stories of failures in the field and the rhythm of taking pauses while looking at the faces of the participants—were not in Miyata's proposal. These were parts that didn't show up in the numbers. Therefore, no one would notice if they disappeared.

"Yuto-san, you should also share your own model more. It's a waste not to."

Miyata said it without any malice. Yuto only replied, "I'll think about it."

I am the type of person who adapts to change. In fact, my job is to facilitate that change. Yet, every time I looked at Saeki's empty desk, something bothered me. A line from my grandfather's notebook wouldn't leave my head.

Chapter 6: Days at the Factory

In October 1997, Tadao found re-employment at a local parts factory. It was a job in equipment maintenance and inspection, a field far removed from locomotive maintenance.

The inside of the factory smelled of oil and metal. It seemed similar to the smell I had caught at the mountain pass, but it was somehow different. The smell of the locomotive had been mixed with the wind, the snow, and the feeling of being carried to a distant place. The factory's smell lacked that. It was just the same machines in the same place, continuing to rotate and make the same sounds.

I worked diligently, without complaint. My colleagues were all a generation or two younger than me. None of them knew about the Usui Pass or the EF63. I didn't go out of my way to talk about it, either.

At home, I would occasionally talk about the old days. Especially after my daughter Rie got married and my grandson Yuto was born, I started talking about the pass more often. It was as if that was the only way I could confirm those thirty-some years.

"Dad, that story again?"

Whenever Rie said that, Tadao would invariably fall silent. He didn't act apologetic; he just quietly stopped talking.

Rie felt complicated emotions when she looked at her father. He was stubborn, clumsy, and didn't want to learn new things. Even at the factory, he only did the bare minimum and didn't aspire to anything more. While those around him were mastering convenient tools, it seemed as if only Tadao was being left behind.

However, there was a light in her father's eyes when he talked about the pass that was different from any other time. For a long time, Rie didn't know whether to call it loneliness or pride.

In 2000, Tadao retired from the factory at the age of sixty-five. He didn't do anything in particular, and days spent at home continued.

Chapter 7: Yuto, Who Cannot Move

"Takahashi, do you have a moment?"

Called by Partner Sakoda, Yuto entered the meeting room. Sakoda was still in his early forties and was among those who had been promoted the fastest within the company. He was said to be the best in the company for his sharp mind and the persuasiveness of his proposals to clients. However, he was of the generation trained in the 2000s when a sports-oriented spirit still remained, and his habits of considering all-nighters a matter of course and tearing up documents he didn't like right in front of people hadn't completely faded yet. While he no longer tore up paper in front of others, the habit lingered in the way he irritably tapped his finger on the screen of the tablet in his hand. Outside the glass-walled room, he could see a cluster of buildings lined up without a gap.

"You're worried about the Saeki matter, aren't you?"

It hit the mark. Yuto was at a loss for words.

Sakoda glanced at the tablet screen. "I'm not talking about emotions. Looking only at the numbers, his output for the past six months was in the bottom ten percent of the team. That's all there is to it."

"I understand. People who cannot change will eventually be weeded out. That's all it is."

Yuto stated his usual theory, this time briefly. It should have been correct. It was a way of thinking he had told himself many times, told clients, and practiced within the company.

And yet, the moment he said it, he felt a crack as thin as a hair run through his own words. It was an unsettling feeling he couldn't explain well.

The next client is a major one, I can't say the company name yet. I want to leave it to you, Takahashi.

After leaving the meeting room, Yuto stood in the hallway for a while. Outside the window, it was already starting to get dark. There was nothing he could do. Saeki's contract termination was already decided and would not be overturned. Even so, he felt a strong resistance to returning to his daily routine without doing anything.

That night, Yuto called his parents' home for the first time in a while.

Mom, do you still have Grandpa's notebook?

I do, but why do you ask all of a sudden?

It's already arrived. It was among the luggage the other day.

Rie paused for a moment, then just said, "I see."

Chapter 8: Until Becoming an Instructor

In 2003, Tadao applied for a position as an EF63 driving experience instructor at the Usui Pass Railway Heritage Park. It was at Rie's suggestion.

What could I possibly teach at this point?

At first, that was what he muttered. But after going through the classroom and practical training, when it came time to actually sit in the driver's seat and teach the participants how to operate it, Tadao's expression changed. How to engage the notch, the feel of the brakes, how to read the speed. The skills that had been ingrained in his body for over thirty years had not rusted in the slightest.

The track was about 400 meters round trip. It was a distance that fell far short of the mountain pass Tadao used to cross. At the start of the training, the instructor would call out, "All right, departure proceed." Tadao's voice was lower and raspier than when he was young, but it had the same resonance as it did when he was at the pass. Standing near the driver's seat, the smell of oil and iron took Tadao back thirty years. The same wind as back then blew past the window.

One day, an elementary school boy who had taken the training asked innocently,

Can you go to Karuizawa with this?

Tadao was momentarily at a loss for an answer.

No. You just turn around here.

His voice was tinged with both pride and something that could not be wiped away. His skills were still needed. People were happy. Even so, the meaning of the days when he crossed the pass—the reality of those thirty-plus years of supporting heavy trains, being entrusted with the lives of passengers, and crossing slopes side-by-side with danger—would never return. Tadao knew this well. Knowing that, he still continued to sit in the driver's seat.

That was the only place left for Tadao. It was not a substitute for the real thing, but it was much better than having nothing at all. Tadao continued to work as an instructor there for over ten years, until he passed away in 2015 at the age of eighty.

Chapter 9: The Phone Call

The week after his grandfather's notebook arrived, Yuto read through it again from the first page. "I only know the job of crossing the pass, you see." That line, which Tadao had supposedly said to a young colleague, appeared. That answer, which his mother had told him was no answer at all, somehow overlapped with Saeki's empty desk. Yuto closed the notebook and picked up his smartphone. His fingers moved before he could think.

“This is Takahashi. Sorry for the sudden call.”

“Oh, Takahashi. This is rare.”

The voice was calmer than I had expected.

“Actually, I heard that the local chamber of commerce is looking for a lecturer for a training session for young employees. I’m sure your experience, Saeki-san, would be invaluable.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line. Only the sound of the air conditioner echoed in Yuto’s room.

“Do you think I can do it?”

“You don’t have to change. Just be yourself, Saeki-san, and talk as you are.”

Yuto was a little surprised by the words that came out of his own mouth. He had firmly believed that people who couldn’t change deserved to be weeded out. That theory of his and the phone call he had just made were clearly contradictory. Even so, until he hung up the phone, Yuto had no intention of stopping that contradiction.

He didn’t know yet if Saeki would accept. But after hanging up, Yuto suddenly realized something. Even if Saeki became a lecturer, it wouldn’t be the same as his old job of “creating training content.” It would be a job of talking about those memories, nothing more.

Yuto opened his drawer and looked at his grandfather’s service cap once more. Was his grandfather the same? He had eventually settled into a job not of crossing the mountain pass, but of teaching others that he had once crossed it.

Since his grandfather died, Yuto had never once been to the Railway Memorial Park. He hadn’t even thought that he should go.

Chapter 10: After the Pass

The last page of his grandfather’s notebook had this written on it:

“Walking the old line path. With my grandson. It was a good day.”

The date was shortly before Yuto entered junior high school. It was around the time Tadao was approaching his mid-seventies. Below that, there was one more line added in a shaky hand.

“Even if the reason to cross the pass disappears, the fact that you crossed it does not.”

Yuto read that line over and over again.

　　◆

Six years had passed since then.

Yuto had married Kanako, and they had a five-year-old son named Ao. One autumn weekend, Ao, who loved trains, begged to “see a real locomotive,” so Yuto looked up routes on his smartphone. Take the Shinkansen to Takasaki, then transfer to a local line. He hadn’t been thinking about his grandfather in particular. He had just searched for a place that would make Ao happy, and that happened to be the destination. As he was leaving, he opened the drawer and his grandfather’s service cap caught his eye. Yuto hesitated for a few seconds about whether to take it, and in the end, he shoved it into the bottom of his bag. That was all.

When Yuto got off the Shinkansen, transferred to a local line at Takasaki, and arrived at Yokokawa, he stopped in his tracks the moment the doors opened. The air was different. It was clearly something different from the dry, tasteless air of Tokyo. The scent of green mountains, slightly damp soil, and a distant mountain stream mingled together. Something cool slipped straight into the depths of his lungs. As a child, this was the air he took for granted, and he had nothing to compare it to. It was only after he started living in Tokyo that he realized this was a "different kind of air." That sensation alone was exactly the same, down to the last detail, as it had been over twenty years ago when he stepped off his grandfather's light truck.

"Daddy, hurry."

Ao tugged at Yuto's hand. Yuto bought two kamameshi bento boxes at the station kiosk. He thought the child would be intrigued by the clay pot lid, and there was no other particular reason. Holding that hand back, he stepped out of the station.

The Usui Pass Railway Heritage Park was better maintained than he remembered, and there were many families in the park. Several of the EF63 locomotives on outdoor display, with the exception of one used for driving experiences, were lined up without being restored. The paint was peeling in places, and there were holes in the seats inside the cars. There were also spots where rust had surfaced.

"Wow, it's all tattered. It's dirty."

Ao pointed and said innocently. Yuto gave a bitter smile and started to chide him, saying, "Be quiet." But when he approached the car body and looked closely, he saw spots where the paint on the handrails was particularly thin. They were traces of countless hands gripping the same spot over many decades. It was a raw, vivid quality that would never exist on a neatly repainted exhibit.

Yuto realized that Ao's word, "tattered," was actually the most accurate term. It was precisely in the things that remained unrestored that the fact that someone had truly lived and worked there was etched.

"Daddy, what's this?"

Ao asked, pointing to another locomotive standing next to them. He seemed unable to see well over the fence and was stretching up on his tiptoes. Yuto put his hands under Ao's arms and hoisted him onto his shoulders. The small hands clinging to him so he wouldn't fall grabbed Yuto's hair and pulled without hesitation. Even while saying, "Ouch, ouch," Yuto kept walking. With the weight and body heat transmitted to his shoulders, Yuto felt as if a distant memory had brushed against him for a moment.

"This is..."

Yuto stopped there, unable to find the words. Just then, an announcement about the driving experience played over the park's speakers, and the instructor's command echoed: "All right, departure proceeding." The train whistle blew once, low and long. It was that sound that resonated in the pit of his stomach.

And then, the scent came. That slightly sweet smell of oil and iron mixed together, released by metal warmed by the sun. Before the sound, before the sight, the scent alone entered straight into Yuto. It wasn't that he remembered it through logic. It felt as if some key had clicked open deep inside his body.

In that instant, something inside Yuto unraveled all at once.

Yuto had smelled that same scent before. The old line path he walked as a child, led by his grandfather's hand. The cool air when passing through tunnels. The wind blowing under the red brick bridge. The roughness of his grandfather's hand. That body heat and weight when carried on his shoulders. The smell of soy sauce and dashi when opening the kamameshi lid. That gesture of sharing a chestnut without saying a word. His grandfather's voice. "You weren't interested in arriving quickly, were you." The smell of the paper in his notebook. His meticulous handwriting. "October 1, 1997." The news that arrived too late while he was on an overseas expedition. The room that only smelled of incense. His grandfather, who had become ashes in an urn. Saeki's empty desk he saw in the conference room. Miyata's casual words. The overly correct words of his partner, Sakoda. Saeki's slightly raspy voice over the phone. "Can I do it?" That one phrase his grandfather answered to a child in the driver's seat. "No, we're just turning back here."

All of that flowed together in Yuto's mind like a continuous film. Each one was just a fragment. His grandfather's stubbornness, Saeki's inability to change, Yuto's own sense of guilt. Even so, looking back now while holding his son's hand, the fragments remained as fragments, just quietly lined up.

Yuto suddenly remembered the Bach melody that had been playing in his head at some point. Counterpoint. Two voices played simultaneously, each following its own path without leaning on the other. The two melodies should have continued to play their own separate times without ever intersecting.

The whistle blew again, long and trailing. Pushed by that authentic sound, the melody that had been repeating in his head stopped perfectly for the first time. Compared to the orderly music he had worn as armor, this damaged, raspy whistle felt far more certain to Yuto now.

Yuto took his grandfather's service cap out of his bag.

"Shall I try putting it on?"

When I placed it on Ao's head, it was so large that it covered his eyes.

"I can't see!"

Ao laughed as he lifted the brim of the hat. Watching his face, Yuto couldn't help but smile too. It would be a lie to say there was no sadness. The reason for crossing the mountain pass was that there was no turning back. For the first time, Yuto understood in his own words that indelible something that Tadao had carried until the very end. It felt as if, after seventeen years, he had finally returned to his grandfather.

"Can you still cross the mountain pass now?"

Ao asked, looking up at Yuto from beneath the conductor's cap.

Yuto smiled slightly and shook his head.

"No. Now, I just turn back here."

Even so, Ao looked up at the locomotive, his eyes shining. For this child, his own meaning would be born from here on out. Tadao and Yuto would surely remain unchanged in the future as well. Yet, as long as he was holding someone's hand like this, it seemed there were things he could pass on, even while remaining unchanged.

The wind blew down from the mountain pass once more. Yuto gripped Ao's hand again. The steam whistle sounded low one more time.