The Izu Dancer and Other Stories: The Counterfeiter, Obasute, The Full Moon

by Inoue Yasushi

  A corner of the plain was quickly becoming obscured, and just as I was thinking that I heard the sounds of an approaching shower, raindrops began to fall right where we were. We left the place.

  That night, I stayed over at the Togura inn. And I wrote a letter to Kiyoko suggesting that she at least seriously consider working in Tokyo. At midnight the shower turned into a downpour.

  Footnote

  * The near resemblance in sound of these two names is coincidental; obase, which means something like "little valley" has no connection with the meaning of obasute.

  THE FULL MOON

  (Mangetsu)

  I

  NOTHING in the career or Miyuki Kagebayashi was as significant and as memorable as the harvest-moon night of 1950. Whenever a Stockholders' General Meeting took place in the company's V.I.P. room, it was always the practice to have the company officers join in the social reception which was held afterwards at one of the best southside Japanese restaurants. Even in the case of that day's Emergency General Meeting, there was to be no exception to this policy. There were as many as thirty-eight persons arranged in a U-shape in the banquet hall of the new building of the southside restaurant, where these receptions had been held once or twice before.

  Company President Yunoshin Otaka was up front with his back to the tokonoma. Seated flanking him were the two big stockholders, the President of the S-Securities Company and the Managing Director of the A-Bank. Kagebayashi sat next to the Managing Director of the Bank. The remaining places up front were occupied by the Directors, and the whole array of Division Chiefs and Section Chiefs was arranged along both arms of the U. Kagebayashi, whose place until now had always been at one end of the Directors' seats, had been moved up closer to the center. With that one exception, the order was the same as before.

  The place had a slightly different atmosphere than usual. There were almost the same number of geisha scattered among the guests; but although the banquet had already been underway for almost an hour, there was just a little burst of commotion in one corner, and elsewhere nothing much was going on. Occasionally a shrill cackling and chattering arose from one or another section where the junior officers were, but it seemed entirely out of harmony with the rest of the atmosphere, as though a little firecracker had inadvertently gone off, and afterwards only the cold sound of dishes banging together echoed through the room.

  No one knew why the group of Division Chiefs and Section Chiefs, who were lined up on both sides of the U, weren't as boisterous as they usually were. While they were eating and drinking, they would occasionally joke with each other, but mostly they just shot glances sideways down the table toward the abstaining big-shots up front. A strangely uneasy mood pervaded the place.

  For some unknown reason the geisha knew right from the beginning that something not so funny was going on at that banquet. From the time they had first entered the banquet hall, shuffling along in two rows like a procession of Peking ducks, and had gone to take their places opposite their guests, the women quickly and perceptively sized up the situation and recognized that there was a tenseness in the atmosphere of that room.

  When the sliding doors opened, revealing the dancing stage which seemed unpleasantly and overly white under the fluorescent lights, President Otaka suddenly left his place. The old man, who wore a double-breasted suit in the finest taste and who was famous for always being well-dressed and irascible, bowed ever-so-slightly and, passing behind the group up front, went out of the banquet room into the hallway. He had a competely expressionless look on his face as he walked off toward the entrance.

  When he saw the President leaving, Kagebayashi assumed that Otaka was undoubtedly going home. For Otaka this had certainly not been a very pleasant banquet, and he must have realized more than anyone else that this banquet could not liven up so long as he stayed there. Kagebayashi paid his compliments to the short Bank Manager beside him, who had great signatory powers in the company, and said, "I probably ought to go along with Otaka-san tonight. I think I'll go with him."

  The Bank Manager in his naturally husky voice told him that would be fine and to go ahead. Kagebayashi made a slight bow of respect toward the President of the Securities Company and then left unobtrusively so that the others would pay no attention to him. There had been a good reason for his saying "Otaka-san" instead of calling Otaka "shacho" There was no longer any reason for using the term shacho, or president. To come right out with it—just three hours earlier Otaka had ceased to be the shacho, and Kagebayashi himself had taken his place as the company president. Thus Kagebayashi confirmed that he was by nature the kind of person who would call his superior "Otaka-san" the moment he had ceased to be the shacho.

  Kagebayashi followed Otaka to the entrance. When he got there, Otaka was sitting on a step at the threshold having his shoestrings tied by Teruko, the younger sister of the woman who owned this restaurant. Two or three of the Division and Section Chiefs had happened to discover that Otaka was leaving, appeared at the door of the dining room, and came out to the threshold.

  Kagebayashi also put his shoes on and went out of the vestibule as though he too were leaving, but he did not get into the car with Otaka. Instead, he ordered Teruko to dispatch Otaka's car and to send for his own.

  "Oh? Are you leaving?" the astonished Teruko asked. It was all so strange to see Kagebayashi, who under most circumstances had been like Otaka's shadow and never left his side, usher Otaka more or less brusquely into a car and send him home in the car alone. Even beyond that, it surpassed all comprehension to have Kagebayashi himself leave a banquet early, and alone.

  Kagebayashi waited in front of the entrance for two or three minutes until his car came. On leaving the banquet hall he had stated that he was going to accompany Otaka, so he felt somewhat embarrassed about staying behind after sending the erstwhile company president home. But much more intense than his embarrassment was the compulsion to be alone as soon as possible, to pinch himself with his own fingers to verify whether this tremendous good fortune which he had seized for himself was true or not.

  His car came gliding up from beyond the grove. As Kagebayashi was about to get in the car, he noticed Toyama, Chief of the Secretariat, coming up to the driveway.

  "Let me see you home," said Toyama, who had seen him about to get into the car. Toyama was a young man whom Otaka had spotted and had promoted successively in an unprecedented way to the position of Chief of the Secretariat at the young age of between thirty and forty. He was said to have the looks and personality of a movie star—the kind of man who got all the girls in the company excited.

  Kagebayashi felt rather ticklish about Toyama's escorting him instead of Otaka home. A shrewd fellow, he thought. On the other hand, Kagebayashi could not find fault with Toyama for wanting to go home with him instead of seeing Otaka home. After all, the fact that Otaka had ceased to be the president of the company and he, Kagebayashi, had become the shacho could not be known to anyone except the several Directors. This was something that had just been decided three hours earlier, and the Members of the Board had pledged to keep this fact secret until its formal announcement some three days later. The upcoming reshuffle of personnel could not possibly have reached Toyama's ears. Therefore, if Toyama did know about it, it could only mean that he had independently sensed it through his own intuition.

  Actually, that's what had happened in Toyama's case. With the opening of this Emergency General Meeting, it was generally anticipated that there would be some large-scale shifts in personnel, particularly at the upper levels of the company, but no one expected the retirement of Otaka who had come to be known as "the one man for the job." When Otaka was in charge of S-Industries, it was he who made the company as great as it is today. Here, in a year or two, he had founded three new subsidiaries, and it was he in particular who had to take the responsibility for anything that went wrong. However, a thing like Otaka's retirement was something that couldn't happen, not even in a dream. Only to Toyama, however, did the thou
ght occur that this could possibly be the case. Toyama had his own personal way of looking at people, and that was that anything at all can happen. That was what he thought of people. Toyama's character had been molded in that direction during his unfortunate childhood. There was the fact that his father had lost his business and committed suicide; there was the fact that his mother had a lover on the side and left home; and there was also the fact that he was taken and supported by a foreigner during his university education—all of these things belonged in his category of anything at all can happen.

  Seeing Otaka leave his place and Kagebayashi going after him, Toyama had gotten up and left the banquet hall to go along too. He had been unable to sense anything from Otaka's manner. The sullenness that Otaka had manifested seemed no more than his usual unpleasantness, so even though he was in the lowest depths of chagrin, it was impossible to tell that Otaka was unusually sullen.

  Kagebayashi also had a similarly sullen expression on his face, but he seemed to be sullen under the pressure of some good fortune of his own. Up until now, Kagebayashi had trained himself in such a way that he could turn on a degree of conviviality in his face even under the most adverse circumstances. So, in Toyama's eyes, Kagebayashi's sullenness connoted something really extraordinary. And it impressed Toyama that Kagebayashi's sullenness was nothing more than powerful sweetness and light—all done up in brown wrapping paper. Toyama knew that he had gained his present position on account of Otaka, but noticing that Kagebayashi was leaving to see Otaka off, he somehow suddenly realized that from now on it behooved him to cut himself off from Otaka and to start getting close to the other fellow. There's no time like the present to make this switch.

  There was one other person who came to get into the car. It was the younger sister of the proprietress of the restaurant, Teruko. She was a widow and thirty years old this year. There were people who had tried to act as go-betweens in her behalf and had asked around for her, but she was very fastidious, and one by one she had pigeon-holed all discussions of remarriage. On seeing Toyama and Kagebayashi get into the same car, she suddenly took it into her head to tell them that since they were surely both going now to a tea house on the northside, she might as well go along with them.

  "Is it all right if I come along too?" asked Teruko, quickly wedging her body, which she always boasted was as resilient as a ball, in next to Kagebayashi.

  "Hey! What the hell!" exclaimed Toyama, somewhat flustered. Since he always so excited women, he was in the habit of thinking that the actions and behavior of all women revolved around him as the epicenter of their attention. Even in this instance, there was little doubt in his mind that Teruko had come to get into this car because he was there. And that made him feel awkward in front of Kagebayashi.

  "It's all right! Toyama-san, be still." Teruko whispered.

  "No. It's just impossible today."

  "All right then, let's just go and have a drink and talk," said Teruko. Then after a while she turned on a sweetish voice and said, "How about it, Shacho-san?"

  Toyama gasped. Kagebayashi also gasped, and instantly and unconsciously his body twitched. To Kagebayashi there was an ominous feeling in hearing the young woman distinctly call him Shacho-san.

  "Tonight is harvest moon. Let's go moon-viewing. What do you say, Shacho-san?"

  Kagebayashi did not correct her when she referred to him as the company president. Instead, naming a northside tea house, he said, "Toyama, shall we go to Wakimoto's?"

  It was harvest moon, but it was cloudy and the moon did not show its face. At Teruko's words, both Kagebayashi and Toyama were peeking out of the car window, and only the driver was impervious to the moon. He was demonstrating his indifference—because there wasn't the slightest tremor in his body.

  II

  GOING to Wakimoto's had the character of going on to another party. Up until now, Teruko used to call Kagebayashi Mr. Managing Director or Kage-sama, but in the car and from then on she used the term shacho-san liberally and without exception. The probability of a personnel shakeup at S-Industries had reached her ears some time back, but when she watched Kagebayashi's manner as he saw Otaka off, Teruko knew that the shakeup had definitely occurred today. Then, on sensing through a well-calculated guess that Kagebayashi might have become president of the company, she had taken a stab at calling him shacho-san. Since it was apparent that she had not missed completely, she continued to employ this new appellative even after they arrived at Wakimoto's. Toyama, however, had been more discreet and had not called him shacho. Nevertheless, as Teruko persisted in saying "Shacho-san, Shacho-sanToyama was finding it impossible to continue calling him "Mr. Managing Director."

  After getting to Wakimoto's, Kagebayashi, possibly because he felt relieved and relaxed, drank excessively— more than usual. Among his colleagues, he had the reputation of being someone who never became intoxicated, but tonight he got a little drunk, and he himself became aware of this by the wobbling of his legs when he got up to go to the toilet.

  When Kagebayashi emerged from the toilet, he thought about the man who had exerted the greatest effort in getting him named to the office of company president and who had been happiest about the final result. This was a Director named Kitazaka. Kagebayashi felt that he just had to invite Kitazaka to this joyous place—today, right now. He had the rather sentimental feeling that he wanted to shake this man's hand and drink a toast with him.

  Kagebayashi lifted the receiver of the telephone in the hall and called the southside restaurant. It was the proprietress of the restaurant who answered.

  "The party is all over and everybody's just leaving," she said. Kagebayashi, heedless of all the other people there, had her call Kitazaka to the phone and told him where he was.

  "Celebrating already?" Pretty fast! said Kitazaka. Then he lowered his voice to a near-whisper and added, "I'm coming right over."

  A half hour later there was the sound of a car pulling up, and Kitazaka's flushed face appeared at the door of the room. He looked as serious as usual. On seeing Toyama there, Kitazaka looked at him as though he thought Toyama was out of place there, but otherwise ignoring him, he said, "Pretty fast, huh? Celebrating your presidency, I mean."

  Toyama now knew definitely from what Kitazaka had said that Kagebayashi had really been made president of the company. You see, anything at all can happen. From then on Toyama also, without compunction, called Kagebayashi shacho.

  At about that time, the moon appeared for the first time. When the moon came out, a maid opened the sliding doors of the veranda. Various forms of Japanese pampas grass were ornately arranged in a flower vase. Although the other people did not move from their places on the tatami, Teruko went out onto the veranda and sat down there to gaze at the moon. At this moment Teruko became clearly aware that she was really in love with Toyama and that she had slipped away from the southside restaurant just to be alone beside him.

  The party was getting lively. Four or five young geisha appeared and surrounded the new company president. The woman who owned the tea house also went over and sat beside him. Kagebayashi was being called shacho by everybody. At some point along the line he began to get used to it, and it even began to seem natural for him to be called shacho.

  "When a man makes money, he starts to want power and rank; after that, women; and when he finds no pleasure even in women, then it's prestige and decorations and honors, huh? What makes me think so is that even a man like President Otaka went blindly after decorations," said Kitazaka.

  Kitazaka had joined the company five or six years after Kagebayashi, and in actual age he was in his mid-forties, ten years younger than Kagebayashi, but he looked older than the new shacho. He was of a sincere and outspoken nature and never frivolous.

  Kagebayashi chimed in with, "Man is a very curious beast," but deep down in his heart, he realized that he—Kagebayashi—actually had always played a role in getting Otaka what he wanted—money, power, women, and decorations. How I suffered in secret because I tried to
protect that man! It was no common ordinary task to be Otaka''s wet nurse! The weight of all those long years of working like a horse under Otaka was suddenly bending the body of the reeling, drunken Kagebayashi.

  "Um-h!" Kagebayashi unwittingly let out a little grunt as though he were groaning.

  "What are you groaning about?" the proprietress laughed. But Kagebayashi found nothing to laugh about in what had caused him to let out a grunt.

  Kitazaka was talking. Kagebayashi's attention was caught when he heard Kitazaka's words vaguely drifting toward him: "So, it ends up that this year's moon-viewing party at Kagiya's has been canceled."

  It had been the custom every year for some twenty-odd officers of the company to get together with Otaka and hold a moon-viewing party on the evening of the full moon either in September or October. Kagebayashi would not entrust the management of these banquets to any of the young Division Chiefs or Section Chiefs but always undertook the responsibility himself. There was a reason for not simply fixing the date in either September or October. If it happened to rain on that day, they would certainly incite the displeasure of Otaka. As he did every year when September rolled around, Kagebayashi sent someone to the Weather Bureau to investigate the probable weather conditions; if he found out that it would definitely be clear around that time, they would go ahead with the preparations, but if there was the slightest danger of rain, he would postpone the moon-viewing till October.

  This year too, the same as every year, Kagebayashi had turned his attention to the moon-viewing party. When inquiries were made at the Weather Bureau ten days before, they were told that it probably would rain in September around full-moon time, so they had given up and had decided to postpone until October. As it turned out however, instead of raining, it was a beautifully clear day. But it was on that very day that it was unexpectedly decided that Kagebayashi was to become the President of the Company.