by Yu Miri
When I lived with my family, we took no photos together.
By the time I was old enough to understand the world around me the war had begun, and food shortages meant my stomach was always empty.
And in the shadow of being born seven or eight years too late, the war ended without me going off to fight.
There were boys in my village who volunteered at seventeen and became soldiers, and there were boys who, in an effort to flunk their physical examination for enrollment, drank soy sauce or pretended their eyes or ears were bad.
I was twelve when the war ended.
There was no time for abjection, for feeling sad that we lost the war—all I could think of was eating or feeding others. It was difficult enough to feed one child, and I had seven brothers and sisters younger than me. There were no TEPCO nuclear plants or Tohoku Electric plants along the coast at that time, no Hitachi or Del Monte factories. Big farmers could feed themselves easily, but the few paddies my family had were insignificant at best, so as soon as I graduated elementary school, I left home to work at Onahama Port in Iwaki, lodgings provided.
I say lodgings were provided, but instead of a dormitory or apartment, we slept in a large fishing boat.
Between April and September we fished for skipjack; September to November, we caught Pacific saury, mackerel, sardines, tuna, and flounder.
The problem with life on a boat was lice. Every time I changed clothes I could see the lice brushing off, they were in the very stitching, and when I got the slightest bit warm I could feel them creeping around on my back—quite the nuisance.
I lasted two years in Onahama.
My father had started gathering surf clams on Kitamigita beach, so I decided to go back and help him.
We would go out to sea in a little wooden boat, dragging a metal harrow along the bottom, pulling up the ropes by hand, as we had no wire, our feet pushing against the boat—pull, push—my father and I pulling up surf clams day after day.
Everyone else in our village and every other village harvested surf clams, keeping at it without giving the clams time to reproduce, so within four or five years there were none left.
The year that my son Kōichi was born, my uncle pulled some strings to get me a job. He himself had left Yazawa for Hokkaido to find work, and now I headed off to harvest kelp in a fishing village called Hamanaka, near Kiritappu in Hokkaido.
During my holidays in May I planted rice, leaving fertilizing and weeding until Nomaoi, the local horse-racing festival that had been held since time immemorial. In the village of Sōma, everything from work in the fields, house repairs, even the repayment of debts is put off “until Nomaoi,” like putting things on the never-never, such a milestone is the Nomaoi festival in our calendar.
Nomaoi is held on the 23rd, 24th, and 25th days of July.
First is the night festival. The leader sets off from Nakamura Shrine in Sōma, and is joined by another rider at Kitago Honjin. Then horseback warriors from Uta and Kita townships cross and join, followed by warriors from many other townships who join at Ota Shrine and at Odaka Shrine.
The second day marks the main festival. At the sound of a conch shell horn and war drums, the five hundred horsemen advance at once, and the Kacchu Keiba race and flag competition commence at Hibarigahara.
The third day is the Nomagake. At Odaka Shrine, men clad in white, sporting white headbands, capture wild horses with their bare hands and offer them as part of a religious ritual. Because it costs so much to rent a horse or put together a set of samurai armor, the poor had almost nothing to do with the festival, but when I was five or six, I went to the deputy general’s house with my father and he put me on his shoulders so I could see the preparations for the horse show.
“They’ll set off at 12:30.”
“12:30 on the dot. I’ll return immediately and let everyone know.”
“Thank you. Could you please tell Kitago Temple to prepare?”
“I will. Sir, I beg your pardon for the unpleasantness involving the horses at Utago Honjin. I shall return immediately.”
“Thank you again. Take care on the road.”
“Sōma nagareyama, na-e, na-e, ssai!
Naraitakya gosare, na-e, e-ssai!
Gogatsu no saru, na-e, na-e, ssai!
Are sa o Nomaoi, na-e, e-ssai!”
The samurai straddled their horses and headed off down the footpaths between the lush rice fields—it was fun to see all of their different flags waving in the breeze. “Oh, that one’s got a centipede on it!” “Look at the snakes on that one!” “That flag’s got a horse rearing up on it!” I shouted at my dad from his shoulders, pointing up at the flags.
—
When I left home to go work in Hokkaido, it took two nights on the train to get there. I took the Jōban Line from Kashima to Sendai, then the Tōhoku Main Line to Aomori. From there, I took the ferry to Hakodate, arriving in the morning.
In Hakodate, I boarded the Hakodate Main Line, needing to cross the Tokachi Mountains and Karikachi Pass, but even with two engines the train could barely muster the steam needed to move forward. We alighted with our bags, and still the train could barely gather enough speed to overtake us on the platform.
This was the same year as the 9.5 magnitude earthquake in Chile. I remember that eleven people died in Kiritappu from the ensuing tsunami. I was surprised to see household items like blankets hanging from electric poles, and I asked my uncle, who had been living in Hamanaka for a while, “Did the water really get that high? Really?”
“It did. They say it was about six meters. And with the 1952 Tokachi-Oki earthquake, a big tsunami came, cutting Kiritappu off from the mainland and turning it into an island. Originally it had been connected by a bridge but the tsunami washed the bridge away,” he explained. We stood by the seafront, our bodies stiff in the cold.
The sea was covered with kelp. It could get to be over fifteen meters long, so we dragged a rod behind the boat to gather it to us, then pulled it in by hand. When we returned to port, the kelp was unloaded onto horse-drawn carts then spread out to dry on the beach, until the whole beach was black with kelp.
I did this for two months, then returned home in October to harvest rice. This pattern continued for three years.
I spoke with my father, whose bones had started aching and who wasn’t long for agricultural work, about how my brothers were hoping to go away for school and how Yoko and Kōichi would be needing more money soon. I decided to go to Tokyo to look for work.
The year before the Tokyo Olympics, on the cold morning of December 27th, 1963, I left my house while it was still dark, went to Kashima Station, and caught the first Joban Line train at 5:33. It was just past noon when I arrived at Ueno Station. I was embarrassed by my soot-streaked face, pitch-black from the smoke of the locomotive after all the tunnels we’d passed through, and I remember my face was reflected over and over in the windows of the train as I walked along the platform, pulling the brim of my hat down then up again.
I got a room in a dormitory in Taishido, Setagaya. The dorm was a prefab, and each man had a six-mat room with a shared toilet and bath. In the mornings and evenings, those of my colleagues who could cook made rice, miso soup and some simple side dishes, which they shared with me. Because of the heavy labor we had to do, if we didn’t eat two bowls of rice a day our bodies would simply have stopped functioning.
Nothing so useful as canned meals existed then, and even if they had, I wouldn’t have had the money to buy them, so after breakfast I would fill a bowl with rice, put a plate on top, tie it up in a cloth, and take a train to the site. We had an hour’s break so I would buy croquettes or a deep-fried cutlet from the shops near the site to eat with my rice.
Our job was constructing athletics facilities—the track and baseball field and tennis and volleyball courts to be used in the Tokyo Olympics. Although this was construction work, I never s
aw any heavy equipment like bulldozers or diggers, and we laborers down from the countryside wouldn’t have been able to wield those machines anyway, so everything was done by human force: we dug the earth with picks and shovels and carried the soil away in handcarts. Many of us were from farming families in Tōhoku. Everyone joked about how construction was just like plowing the fields. At five when we put our work aside we’d go for a drink together, but for better or worse, I couldn’t hold my drink. Nevertheless, so many times when someone said, “C’mon, tonight’s on me!” I couldn’t say no, and I would try to go along with things out of politeness. Eventually people stopped asking me out as one glass of beer was my limit.
My daily wage of a thousand yen was three or four times what I could get working the same hours back home. Overtime was paid at time and a quarter, so I worked late every night with pleasure and went out to work on Sundays and holidays, too.
Pay was totaled on the fifteenth. Every month I sent home twenty thousand yen or thereabouts. This was about the same as a teacher’s monthly earnings at the time, and in today’s money this would be about two hundred thousand yen, I think.
—
“Work’s all dried up these days,” said the homeless man, snapping off a maple branch. His jean jacket reminded me of something. The white splotch on the back, perhaps caused by spilled bleach, was shaped a lot like Hokkaido, which made it all the more certain—that was my jacket. I’d found it at a trash collection point in Hirokoji on textile-waste day, and I treasured it on those chilly days in early spring. I’d left it hanging from the ceiling of my tent, but obviously someone must’ve taken it—after I disappeared.
“With the economy this bad, they treat you like shit wherever you go—big companies, small companies, doesn’t matter,” said an old woman with white hair like a bird’s nest, her layered, tattered skirts fluttering. She lit up a Hi-Lite cigarette and took a drag.
I know this face… those smooth cheeks, so out of place on her aged face… I know them. Good morning, she’d greet me sometimes. We must’ve stood and chatted before…
“The places with thirty or forty employees are the worst off, they’re the most unprepared.”
“The other day, I was on the Odakyu Line.”
“Goes to some pretty trendy places, doesn’t it?”
“That’s where Shige used to live, before he died.”
“Shige’s dead?”
“Yeah, he died. They found him gone cold in his tent.”
“Well, I gotta say, he was pretty old.”
The woman’s eyes sank suddenly, glazed. I wanted to comfort her, but I could not put my hand on her shoulder or give her my condolences.
I knew Shige. He was an intellectual. He was always reading discarded newspapers, magazines and books. I think he must have once had a job where he used his head.
One day someone threw a kitten into his tent, and he used the money he made selling cans to get it neutered. He named it Emile and doted on him. When we were evicted from the park he’d put Emile in his handcart when he moved, and when it rained he’d shelter him with his umbrella.
And Shige’s the one who told me about the hall with the face of the Buddha built by a priest from Kan’ei-ji Temple, on the hill on the other side of the “time bell,” which had been built to mark time for the people of Edo at five in the morning and evening, and at noon.
“The Giant Buddha lost its head four times; three times in earthquakes and once in a fire, which really is too tragic. The first time it fell off was in 1647, and since it would have been a shame to leave it that way, the monks went all around Edo one day asking for alms to fund the repairs. Nobody gave them a thing. But as the sun was beginning to set on their way home, a beggar approached and put some small change in their alms bowl. And with that, it’s said that the donations started coming in and the monks were able to put together the Giant Buddha, which was almost seven meters high. Almost two hundred years later, the head fell off again due to a fire, and though they put it back exactly as it had been, ten years later in another earthquake, it fell off again and had to be repaired again. It made it through the Battle of Ueno in 1868 unharmed, but in the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake it was completely destroyed.”
He was a special person. He could speak at length on any subject like a teacher, and possibly he really might’ve been a teacher before he became homeless.
On that particular day, I had been telling Shige about a radio tower. It was so famous in Hamadōri, the area that I came from, that it was almost synonymous with Haramachi, and it was a symbol of the town until it was demolished in 1982. Its construction was completed in 1921, and two years later it sent the telegraph that informed the entire world of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake: “Major earthquake noon today in Yokohama, followed by major fire, whole city in flames, unknown number dead, all transport and communication facilities destroyed.”
Then Shige told me that though the surrounding area had been set ablaze, Ueno Park had not burned, largely due to the water in Shinobazu Pond. The Matsuzakaya Department Store opposite the park was completely destroyed. Local residents, and even people from as far as Nihonbashi and Kyōbashi flooded into the park, seeking refuge from the flames. Some had brought everything they owned in large handcarts hoping to return to their families in the countryside. So many flooded in that they blocked the roads around the station, as well as the tracks, so no trains could move. The base of the statue of Saigō Takamori was plastered with notes from those seeking missing friends and family members, of which there were many. Emperor Hirohito, then the imperial prince, came in military uniform to inspect the park. He saw how incredibly important this park, crowded with victims, was in times of disaster. In January 1924, the reigning Emperor presented the park to the city as a New Year’s gift. Thus, it has the official name of Ueno Imperial Gift Park.
As he spoke, he looked tenderly at Emile, who lay on his side in the grass with both eyes closed, the end of his long tail twitching.
I never told Shige that I had once seen Emperor Hirohito up close.
On August 5th, 1947, at 3:35pm, the royal train stopped at Haramachi Station. The Emperor disembarked and spent seven minutes at the station.
I had just returned home from a stint away, working at the harbor in Konahama.
The sky was oppressively blue. The calls of the brown cicadas shook Honjinyama itself, and the mingming cicadas chirped constantly, as if in competition. The liquid sunshine quivered and licked at us, and the green leaves and white shirts on people’s backs were all so bright that I struggled to keep my eyes open, but as one of the twenty-five thousand people waiting in front of the station for the Emperor, I kept my hat on my head and stayed perfectly still.
At the moment that the Emperor, dressed in a suit, descended from the royal train and touched his hand to the brim of his fedora in greeting, we cried out, “Long live the Emperor! Banzai!” as if it were being wrung out of us, and we raised our arms in the air, a wave of banzai welling up.
“Can you believe that, that Shige’s dead?”
“The ash from your cigarette almost never falls.”
“When you’ve been smoking for eighty-five years you get pretty good at it.”
“You started smoking when you were a baby, did you?”
“Shige’s dead!”
“Did you do it with him?”
“Go hang yourself!”
“What are you getting so worked up for, you filthy old bag.”
“You bastard! I’ll have your fucking heart right out of your chest!”
“Oh, you’re scarier than an old hag from San’ya... Look at that fucking tick!” The old homeless man slapped at his own shin.
“That’s an ant, you idiot.”
The old woman’s gaze fell to her legs. She looked at the leather shoe on her left foot, then the running shoe on her right foot and noticed that the laces were u
ntied but did not move to retie them.
“Oh, quit fidgeting around and sit down. Sit!”
“I’d sit if there were seats anywhere.”
“Just sit down.”
The old man sat down on the concrete wall surrounding the tree and took a piece of paper out of his pocket.
“This might get me about five thousand yen. If I win, you can have half.”
The woman leaned over and read out the words on the betting slip.
“Evening session, 35th Running of the Emperor’s Cup, eleventh race, trifecta, #1, #12, #3 five hundred yen; first: #1, Oeraijin, jockey Kimura Ken; second: #12, Miracle Legend, jockey Uchida Hiroyuki; third: #3, Tosengoraiasu, jockey Hashimoto Naoya.”
She dropped her cigarette, crushing it under her leather shoe, yet smoke still rose from the butt. A line of ants marched past her feet, climbing up a tree one by one, but ants don’t make their homes in trees. In Ueno Park—this imperial gift—each tree has a round, plastic tag attached to its trunk, like a locker key does. This tree was labeled Green A620—I try now to remember the feeling of its smooth, dry bark, the feeling of ants crawling across my skin—but ants don’t make their homes in trees. The ants marched back down the tree. They went down the asphalt slope speckled with pigeon droppings and headed toward a group of huts, surrounded by metal panels with pictures of trees on them and hidden by a blue tarp with a design of white clouds rigged up over the metal paneling.
A radio in one of the huts was tuned into a debate in the National Diet.
“The government is fully aware that many citizens have complex feelings regarding the accident in March last year, and we know that we must act responsibly on this issue dividing the nation, which is why the government intends to provide a full explanation in due time.”
“Mr. Saito Yasunori!”
“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The current security protocols are based on the myth that nuclear power is completely safe, and the idea of restarting the nuclear power stations while working under these protocols provokes anger in all who can see the inherent contradictions of the situation. Many voices of protest are rising in opposition to this absurdity. I call on the Prime Minister now to reflect on the situation and…”