The Mad Kyoto Shoe Swapper and Other Short Stories

by Rebecca Otowa

  “One of the teachers was taken ill this morning and is now in the Dai-ichi Hospital in critical condition. We are sending her a get-well message.”

  Joanne fumbled for a black pen. “That is terrible. Which teacher was it?”

  “The math teacher, Kikuchi-sensei.”

  Saeko was swimming in dark brown depths. She felt large and soft, warm and peaceful. Then a light appeared, floating toward her through the murk. As it approached she felt herself shrink and dwindle into something more like her usual small, hard, conscious self. She opened her eyes. Everything was white, not brown. Drifting in the white was a tan-colored blob that gradually resolved itself into the top half of a face she didn’t know. The bottom half was obscured by a surgical mask.

  “So, Kikuchi-san, you are awake. That’s good. I am Dr. Masashi and you are in the Dai-Ichi Hospital.”

  “Hospital?” Saeko murmured. All the secrecy and pain of the past several months returned in a rush. She felt tears of shame gather in her eyes. “Did you find it?”

  “The tumor? We certainly did. Everyone was surprised it was so large! How long have you been hiding it?”

  “I knew I didn’t have much time left,” Saeko said brokenly. “I didn’t want to spend my last months on earth in a hospital, wasting money, causing trouble to everyone, causing grief to my husband and my son. I wanted everything to be nice for them, right up to the end.”

  The doctor blinked. “End? What end? We took the tumor out. It was benign. Everything is fine now. You just need to rest. You are exhausted and underfed, as well as being ill. You women always take too much on yourselves! Why, I wonder.” His eyes twinkled, and he left the room.

  Saeko closed her eyes and snuggled down in the bed with a huge sigh. Why do we women do what we do? Don’t you know, Doctor? Don’t you know, my husband? Kenji? Joanne-sensei?

  Because of love. It’s all about love.

  Later, when Saeko next left the dark brown place for the white place, she noticed a patch of red in the middle of her field of vision. She focused gradually on the nightstand beside her. There sat a KitKat bar, topped with a miniature red bow, and a small note in English.

  “To Kenji: Happy Valentine’s Day from Joanne-sensei.”

  Saeko smiled sleepily. Her thin white hand went out to the chocolate bar. She carefully removed the little red ribbon and set it aside. Then she unwrapped the KitKat, and ate it down to the last crumb.

  The Turtle Stone

  1955

  Taro was the eldest son of the family who owned the Tsuru-Kame sweetshop. Today he was fifteen years old.

  He awoke, as usual, just as dawn was creeping into the small-paned window above his head. He sat up, surrounded by snow-white mounds of warm quilt. Into his nostrils came the scent of woodsmoke from the fires being stoked below, and into his ears came the clack of wooden trays being stacked. Another day at the sweetshop was beginning.

  Even though it was his birthday, Taro would not have a party or presents. It was just an ordinary workday for him. He had officially turned fifteen on the previous New Year’s Day; according to custom, everyone else in the family also became a year older on that day.

  Taro dressed quickly and hurried down the steep wooden stairs to the living room. The round, low table was set for breakfast, and next to it stood a large lacquer rice caddy and a hibachi brazier topped with a pot of fragrant, steaming miso soup. As usual, there was no one there. Taro snagged a piece of yellow pickle from the plate on the table and munched it as he stepped through the curtain and down into the kitchen. He stuck his feet into wooden clogs and took a white apron from where it hung on the wall. “Good morning,” he called.

  “Hurry up!” exclaimed his mother, thrusting a tray of leaf-wrapped kashiwa-mochi sweets at him. “Put these into the display case, and get those shutters open.” Taro entered seamlessly into the familiar activity of the early morning sweetshop. All around him were wooden tables, his sisters standing at them shaping sweets; wooden steamers piled high over blazing gas jets; dark brown bean paste piled on china plates; his father presiding like a king over all, and his mother, the hardworking queen, inspecting the sweets before they would be presented to the day’s customers.

  Carrying the rectangular tray, Taro pushed through another curtain into the cool darkness of the shop. He put the tray down on top of the glass display case, opened a sliding door at the front of the shop, and shifted aside one of the heavy wooden shutters as well, in order to step outside. The sun was just coming up, horizontal bars of light shining through the tall cedars of the shrine a hundred yards away. The air was cool and crisp, and he took a big lungful of it. Tiny green leaves decorated every tree in sight. It was full spring, just past festival time, the season of rice cakes folded in aromatic oak leaves and the cute little rice balls, three on a stick, tinted green, white and pink.

  Even though it was so early, the little street was already dotted with shopkeepers, sweeping the paths and throwing ladles of water to lay the dust in front of their shops. Taro called a greeting as he shoved aside the rest of the shutters that covered the shop front and thrust the glass doors wide open. Then he got a glass of water and carried it outside to a huge boulder that stood just outside the shop, on one side of the entrance. This boulder, a natural stone in the shape of a turtle, was the namesake of the shop—Tsuru-Kame, meaning Crane and Turtle, traditional symbols of good luck and longevity. A long life of good work, happy family life, rock-solid business—this was what everyone prayed for. Taro poured the glass of water over the stone and watched it glisten in the sun, his mind aglow with gratitude.

  Inside the shop again, he opened the back of the display case and, with a light touch, placed the kashiwa-mochi one by one in rows behind the glass. The white of the rice cakes and the dull green of the oak leaves looked fine against the light wood of the shelf, powdered with a few grains of rice flour. Around him the familiar wooden walls and cabinets looked down, now glowing with coins of sunshine that passed through the tree branches. Taro worked on, placing the slanted stands at the front and filling them with cellophane bags of colored boiled sweets, lining up the white paper bags of salty rice crackers, interrupting his work every few minutes as fresh trays of sweets were handed out from the kitchen. Lastly he went outside again with the dark-blue split awning curtain, and stretched up to hang it so that the sweets would not be hit with full sunlight. This was the final chore of the early morning, and it signaled that the shop was open for business.

  As the sun rose in the sky, the Tsuru-Kame workers took turns snatching a hasty breakfast in between manning the shop or continuing to make sweets, while customers filed in and out. All their meals were taken in this fashion while the shop was open. Glancing up at the loud-ticking clock on the wall, the mother excused herself to prepare lunch—the house kitchen was at the very back of the house, placed so that the ordinary smells of oil and soy sauce and onions wouldn’t interfere with the delightful aroma which wafted out into the street, enticing customers to spend an extra coin or two on sweets to brighten their day.

  Taro’s stint in the shop was almost finished. He rearranged the sweets in the display case neatly, so that the gaps left by previous sales wouldn’t show, and thought about lunch. The little shopping street was now crowded, men in work clothes, ladies in striped everyday kimono with big shopping baskets on their arms, the occasional motorcycle or three-wheeled car threading through the people. The constant crowd roiling past the shop was hypnotic, so that Taro had to shake himself when addressed by someone who stood on the other side of the counter. He focused on a quiet, thin man, formally dressed in kimono and hakama trousers, and recognized him as the local teacher of the tea ceremony, Yano-sensei. “Yes, sorry, may I help you?”

  The teacher smiled. “Hello. May I speak to your father? I wish to order sweets for a tea meeting next week.”

  Taro bowed low and excused himself. Instead of calling familiarly through the curtain, he walked bodily into the sweets kitchen, approached his fath
er, and spoke in an undertone. This was the way he had been taught to show respect to important customers, or clients, as they were called. The father moved toward the shop curtain, removing his apron.

  Taro knew that Yano-sensei was one of their best clients. He always ordered sweets by the dozen before an event, and he always wanted something special. Traditional tea sweets were much more elaborate than the ones sold to passersby, so it was a good opportunity for his father to display his prowess as a sweets maker. He listened from behind the curtain, noting the respectful language exchanged between two men who recognized each other’s mastery. He imagined his father carefully writing down the order, making a little sketch of the desired sweet as Yano-sensei described it, his words and movements perfected over generations. One day, he, Taro, would stand there and take orders from important clients. He would be the master.

  Taro’s mother passed behind him. “Special birthday treat for you with lunch,” she whispered. “Go and eat.”

  1990

  Taro stood in the morning sun and poured water over the turtle stone, as he had done almost every day since he was no taller than the boulder himself. Now, however, things were a little different. Five years before, he had installed a small formal garden in front of the shop, with the boulder as its centerpiece. A few reeds, a good-luck nanten plant with sprays of white flowers that would later become sprays of red berries, and a white-pebbled miniature path winding through a bed of thick green moss. A knee-high bamboo fence separated this garden from the street.

  Taro watched the water run down the stone, then fetched a watering can and wetted down the rest of the garden. The moisture would evaporate quickly in the summer sun, already hot. He felt a little sorry for these plants that had to breathe car exhaust all day, but this was the name of the game now—he had to think of anything that set his shop apart from the others, and enticed the eyes of the tourists who trooped past on their way to the shrine.

  He passed into the shop, pushing aside the good old dark-blue awning. There was a small paper with a symbol of a black diamond printed on it, pasted onto the worn wood of the door lintel. It was the sign of mourning—his father had passed away five months ago, as the whole neighborhood knew, and this little paper would stay on the doorway until his father’s first-year memorial service rolled around, a subtle message that the shop had been passed on to the next generation.

  Taro watched with sharp eyes his own son Shintaro, now twelve years old, who had recently been given the early-morning job of arranging the sweets for the day’s custom. Satisfied, he told Shintaro to go get ready for school, and called one of his sisters, now middle-aged, to watch the shop. He had made some changes to the inside, as well. The wooden walls and cabinets were still there, as was the entrance—he had learned, along with the other Commercial Association members, that a traditional façade was just the thing to bring in the tourists—but now the shop was much brighter, thanks to modern lighting, and the display cases were made of brushed aluminum with curved glass fronts. They liked tradition, these tourists, but they also liked a hygienic atmosphere, especially where food was involved. Taro had put a couple of tables and chairs outside under the awning, with a view of the tiny garden, and the shop now served a simple menu of drinks and, in summer, shaved ice. He suddenly remembered the traditional cloth banner reading “Ice” in flamboyant turquoise writing, and hurried to set it up outside. There would be a good trade in shaved ice today, he thought.

  This was still very much a family enterprise. Taro ran it with his two elder sisters, whose husbands were salarymen elsewhere in the city. The sisters lived with their own families in separate houses nearby, taking turns helping in the shop. Taro’s wife also took a turn—she was a local woman who had grown up visiting the shop, and who did her best, although she wasn’t born into a sweets-making family.

  Taro returned to the kitchen to check on the production of the day’s summer sweets, which were made by pouring sweet-bean-flavored gelatin into small lengths of green bamboo and refrigerating. He now had a couple of young employees, who were skilled enough but required some watching nevertheless. As he bent over inspecting the finished sweets, his sister sidled up to him and said quietly, “Yano-sensei is here.”

  Taro flung off his apron and bustled into the shop to see the tea teacher, a slight, quiet old man, dressed formally as usual, standing before the counter. He murmured greetings to the old man, congratulating him on looking so well, receiving in return the repeated condolences on the death of his father. As he stood, his pencil poised over his pad ready to write down the order, he had a vivid memory of his father doing the same thing, all those years ago. Taro took pride in continuing to supply the important neighborhood clients in the traditional way, even though so much had changed. He took Yano-sensei’s order for several kinds of sweets for a picnic-style tea meeting in the Imperial Palace grounds a week hence, asked a few questions about delivery, and bowed him out of the shop.

  A couple of foreign tourists stood by the bamboo fence and gaped at this traditional Japanese transaction happening right before their eyes. Then they came in diffidently and pointed at the sign that showed photographs of the various types of shaved ice offered by the shop. Seated in the deep shade under the awning, they sampled their Japanese experience with expressions that ranged from relief to awe to smugness, their conversation suitably chastened as they took in the ancient boulder and the worn wooden entranceway. One of them sketched the diamond-shaped mourning symbol on a paper napkin and put it in his pocket. Taro beamed as he peeped at them from behind the curtain. If he was attracting foreign tourists, he knew the sky was the limit. The combination of longtime local custom and the interest of foreigners would ensure the success of the sweetshop for years to come. Shintaro would inherit a flourishing business.

  2005

  It was a chill, cloudy day. A flurry of red leaves chased each other in front of Taro as he made his way down the street toward the shop. The season of Full Moon crackers and walnut-flavored jellied rice cakes was upon them, and the good old aromas of the shop wafted toward him.

  Taro was sad and depressed. Today he had taken leave of his good friend and client Yano-sensei. The funeral had been very well-attended, neighbors from shops and classrooms all over the neighborhood, as well as Yano-sensei’s considerable family and his students from years past, all crowding into the old townhouse with its formal garden. Taro was glad they had decided to hold the funeral at Yano-sensei’s house in the traditional manner, instead of relegating it to one of the garish new funeral homes. Still, the solemnity of the send-off at the end, the black and gold hearse blaring its horn in melancholy farewell and the family standing motionless in black as it left, had been spoiled by a crowd of gawking foreign tourists across the narrow street. They chattered among themselves in several languages, pointing at the hearse and taking photos, as if it were a prop specially arranged for their enjoyment. This final indignity to a grand old man of the neighborhood had shaken Taro deeply.

  He came in sight of the shop. He had had to remove the tiny garden because the shop next door, a newly built Western-style bakery, wanted the space for parking, but thank goodness, he had been able to keep the turtle stone. It still stood proudly between the bumpers of parked cars, showing off its bond with the centuries-old shop behind it: the Crane and Turtle Sweetshop. At least he still had his shop and his stone to pass on to his son.

  As he approached, he saw with horror that a couple of tourists, eating something on sticks, were sitting on the turtle stone. He stomped up and, waving his hands, made them understand that they were to get up and go away. They complied slowly, looking over their shoulders at the black-clad old man. A few other tourists watched the scene, and as soon as Taro went into his shop, they sat down on the boulder themselves and unwrapped their convenience store lunches.

  Taro gasped with outrage. He felt dizzy and sat down at one of the little tables inside the shop. (The tables had been moved inside a few years earlier in response to lo
ud demands from the Tourist Association for air-conditioned seating.) “Shintaro!” he called as soon as he got his breath back.

  Shintaro appeared from the rear of the shop, wiping his hands on his apron. Taro scowled at the sight—kitchen aprons were not allowed in the shop during business hours, and Shintaro knew it. But he decided not to address that issue now.

  “Those tourists are using the turtle stone as a chair! They are eating things on the stone out there! And not even things they bought in our shop!” he gasped. “That stone is not a park bench—it is the symbol of our shop. I’ve had enough. We have to do something!”

  Shintaro smiled wearily. “I know, Dad, it’s awful, but that stone is now on public property. It’s part of the street. At least they let us keep it, that’s something, isn’t it?”

  “Let us keep it?” The old man was beside himself. “It belongs to us! Our family and our shop have been here for generations! It’s humiliating. I’m going to make a sign that says people are forbidden to sit on our turtle stone.”

  Shaking his head, Shintaro went back into the kitchen. He had been engaged in an experimental production of a new sweet that he hoped would bring in more custom—a cake shaped like the nearby shrine gate. He doubted if his father understood that their business was hanging by a thread. Boulder or no boulder, the place was going down.

  The next day a hand-lettered sign reading, “Please do not sit on this boulder” appeared at the base of the turtle stone. Unfortunately, the sign was only in Japanese, and the foreign tourists continued to use the turtle stone as a seat as they ate their snacks and lunches.

  2015

  As soon as Taro awoke, he knew that it had snowed during the night. An eerie blue-white light entered his window, and utter silence pervaded the house. Taro was immediately alarmed. Where was the sound of clattering trays? Where was the scent of hot steamed wood? They ought to be preparing the New Year sweets. This was one of the busiest times of year for the Crane and Turtle Sweetshop. What laziness! These new workers were unbelievable. He threw on his clothes and stormed out of the room.