(3) Don’t call attention to yourself, speak to no one, and never spend more than five minutes inside the temple. It was essential to keep a low profile. A visit of just a few seconds might be noticed; but on the other hand, if he stayed too long, he ran the risk of his chosen shoes disappearing with their rightful owner before he could swap them.
(4) When entering, decide on the shoes to be swapped as quickly as possible, and when leaving, put them on without hesitation. This had come only with practice. After several imperfect swaps which left him limping, he learned to gauge the size by sight when scoping out the shoes.
(5) Wear only those shoes during the interval between swaps. This was essential in order to maximize the sensation he craved: the lovely way his feet and the “new” shoes gradually melded together. Jiro sometimes walked clear across town for a swap, but it was worth it to feel the eerily refreshing coolness of the strange shoes at the next destination. Now, the only shoes he owned were the most recent swap. This was the price he paid—willingly—for his obsession.
3
The city sighed with relief as the sun disappeared and cool breezes fanned outward in the twilight. Jiro approached his apartment building, climbed several flights of metal exterior stairs and unlocked the flimsy door of his flat. Stepping out of his latest acquisitions in the cramped entryway, he entered the tatami room and opened the tiny fridge to get a plastic bottle of tea. Then he paused in front of a large black-and-white movie still, of Bogie and Bergman in a clinch in Casablanca. Smiling crookedly, he repeated his mantra (in Japanese): “Of all the gin joints, in all the cities, in all the world.” Casablanca was Jiro’s favorite movie, and that line seemed to him to embody the essential absurdity of existence. He always greeted the photograph in this way when he returned to his room.
This little box in the sky, his bolt-hole, was as neat and inconspicuous as Jiro himself. Several black-and-white movie stills tacked on the wall were the only decoration. Beige curtains framing a completely empty balcony, neutral quilt cover and cushions, nondescript brown mat in front of the spick-and-span kitchen alcove—all from the discount store. Black clothing on hangers suspended from the picture rail. A low table with a black laptop, an old-fashioned windup alarm clock, and a few papers. Jiro kept the room clean and cooked for himself, mostly rice and soup. His daily routine was just as rigidly circumscribed—early rising, mornings spent at the computer where he managed websites for a living, afternoons napping or walking around town, evenings watching DVDs of old movies in his room.
Motionless on his futon, the young man blended so well into the room that he was almost invisible.
Jiro’s past had been as silent and colorless as his present. His mother and father led unexamined, humdrum lives. It was a mystery how they had mustered up the energy to conceive a child. They called him Jiro, which means “second son,” even though he was an only child. He often wondered about this. Any natural baby boisterousness Jiro had shown had been repressed with cold disapproval, until his existence hardly left a dent in their bland self-sufficiency. Neither of them was creative, neither had a temper or a love of animals or a hunger to travel or an appetite for chocolate or any of the other ordinary quirks of humanity. The father went every day to his job under flickering fluorescent lights in a nondescript company in a grimy concrete building in a dreary corner of Osaka. The mother kept the house, did the laundry, and cooked bland, unmemorable meals. Her only discernible character trait was her obsessive neatness, which her son had inherited.
His childhood home had been a silent place, with next to no conversation. He never talked about his school life, just as his father never mentioned the office and his mother never chatted about the dinner menu or neighborhood gossip. He did, however, occasionally hear muffled sobs from the kitchen late at night before his father returned.
As a teenager Jiro went to school, studied, and came home. He made no impression on the other students and received none. Never having seen his parents interact socially with other people, he had no model for doing so. In his final year of high school, after a wartime-era film was shown at the school, Jiro developed an interest in vintage cinema, and even went so far as to join a film club at university. But he never told anyone what he thought about the films, never went out drinking afterwards with fellow club members or participated in the discussions. He got to know the various genres quite well, Japanese, European, and American; he frequented art houses and sent off for DVDs of obscure films—always black-and-white, nothing more recent than 1960.
Shortly after graduating from university, Jiro set himself up as a freelance website designer. He was moderately successful, especially with dull, fact-filled corporate websites. He talked to his clients exclusively by email, a mode of communication that exactly suited his reclusive personality. He had no friends and no visitors; his face-to-face contacts were almost entirely limited to shopkeepers. Jiro was alone, and he liked it that way.
4
“Excuse me!”
The voice behind him was loud and firm. Jiro froze, heart leaping, in the dark entryway of the temple.
“I think those are my shoes,” the voice continued.
His face white as paper, Jiro squinted over his shoulder at the well-dressed young guy standing close behind him. His intelligent face was framed in the turned-up collar of a trendy black leather jacket over an expensive white cashmere turtleneck. He looked like a film director. All this registered instantly in Jiro’s razor-sharp perception, despite his paralysis. Then his mind supplied one of the two words that would save him. Swallowing convulsively, he croaked, “Mistake.”
“Yeah.” The guy let a casual, friendly hand fall on Jiro’s shoulder, and with the other, he pointed down through the gloom at two almost invisible pairs of black shoes. One pair had Jiro’s feet in them.
“Sorry.” The other word that would save him fell from Jiro’s nerveless lips. He slid his feet out of the shoes and moved aside, struggling to conceal the panic that had flooded him at the young guy’s touch. With a smile of acknowledgment, the film-director type slid his feet into his shoes, pushed open the ancient wooden door, and strolled out into the sunshine.
Jiro took a deep, uneven breath and slipped on the other shoes. Their hateful, stale familiarity made him momentarily lightheaded, but he managed to exit the temple with his face set in its usual impassive mask. He walked quickly along, seething with nausea and frustration. Those shoes had been perfect. Why did the guy have to come out at that exact moment? Today’s shoe-swap had been a failure, and failure frightened him.
As he walked, Jiro had to admit that his shoe-swapping habit was becoming unmanageable. From his enjoyment of the drama, he had moved on to the mysterious, subtle transition as the strange shoes became his own. Now, increasingly, it was the strangeness itself that gave him the greatest charge of excitement—and the freshness wore off quickly. As the shoes became more familiar, they also became more repulsive, so that lately he was obliged to swap shoes more and more often. He was taking risks, visiting likely temples at more frequent intervals—not even going into the temples themselves, but simply loitering in the entranceway till everyone was out of sight, then rapidly completing the swap and stumbling away without any pretense at nonchalance. It was too risky. He had to get hold of himself.
When he reached his room, he scuffed off the hated shoes convulsively and tore off his socks for good measure, before stepping onto the cool, clean tatami mat with a cry of relief.
5
Early the next morning, after an excruciating sleepless night, Jiro spent a half hour using a kitchen knife to scarify the inside of the hated shoes and make them uncomfortable enough to be wearable. Something inside him watched with incredulous amusement. How had it come to this? The road he had walked the past three years was spiraling down into a place he could scarcely imagine. But he was powerless to stop.
He left his apartment on autopilot and walked aimlessly in the cool dawn. He tried to keep his mind off his feet, but it wa
s no use: his only desire was to find another pair of shoes to swap. He turned corners and crossed streets completely at random, gradually winding upward into the hills east of the city. Suddenly, coming out into a wide square, he found himself at the gate of the immense Kiyomizu Temple complex. This was a place he seldom visited—it was one of the most famous tourist destinations in the city, too crowded for shoe-swapping. But now, in the early light, it was practically deserted. Although the huge wooden gate was shut, a small postern at the side was slightly ajar, and he slipped inside.
Working his way deep into the temple precincts, trudging up stone paths and climbing steps, Jiro began to despair of finding a shoes-off place. Besides, there was no one around—would there be any likely shoes anyway? Not here, not here … He turned corner after corner, concentrating so hard that he didn’t realize the ground was rising. He shuffled across a wooden deck, came into bright light, and realized he was under the sky. He was standing on the famous balcony. A short distance in front of him was the railing, and beyond was the drop, sheer as a cliff to the fog-wreathed tops of trees far below.
And—could he really be seeing this?—there on the deck, right up against the railing, was a pair of black sports shoes, neatly lined up with their toes pointed toward the drop.
Jiro held his breath as he approached the shoes. Everyone knew the phrase “leaping off Kiyomizu Temple,” a proverb which meant coming to a momentous decision. The huge balcony, facing its gulf of air, had been a notorious suicide spot in days gone by.
Everyone also knew that people committing suicide removed their shoes and lined them up carefully before they launched themselves into eternity.
As if in a dream, he walked slowly up to the railing, noticing everything—the tiny droplets of fog clinging to the ancient wood; the pearly sun glowing through gauzy mists; the scent of pines on the hillside. Scarcely breathing, he reached a hand out to the railing. He couldn’t bring himself to look over the edge and see what he knew he must—the broken body far below.
Was he really considering swapping shoes with a suicide victim? And what would happen then? Would he be forced to jump as well? But there was no other choice. He could not face the return journey to his flat in the hateful scarified shoes. His heart full of despair, Jiro prepared to swap. He shifted his weight and stepped out of the shoes.
“Hey, man.”
A casual, friendly hand fell on his shoulder. The shock made Jiro topple forward, and the hand’s grip tightened.
“Look out! This place is dangerous, you know.”
Jiro turned in astonishment. It was the film-director type from the day before. The warm, confident voice, the leather jacket, the handsome face, were the same. The intelligent eyes took him in with equal astonishment.
“Hey! Of all the gin joints, in all the cities, in all the world!” the young guy exclaimed. Jiro’s whole body jolted at the familiar phrase.
“If it isn’t Mr. Mistake-Sorry! What are you doing here?” Jiro couldn’t answer. He gazed down at his stocking feet on the worn, mist-fuzzy boards, at the ruined shoes he had been wearing, and then at the suicide shoes. That brought his tongue back to life.
“A suicide.” He pointed down at the shoes, and then over the drop. “Tell someone.”
The young guy glanced down and burst out laughing. “What do you mean? These are my shoes. I left them here yesterday. They got a bit dirty during the shoot, so I rinsed them off and left them here to dry. I guess I forgot them when I borrowed another pair from the cameraman. What a laugh! They’re probably wetter than ever in all this fog.” Jiro’s uncomprehending face made him chuckle all over again. “I work here. We’re making a film.”
Jiro couldn’t speak. The stranger looked at him.
“Hey, are you okay? Sorry I startled you. No suicide. I’m right here, I’m fine.”
With a huge effort, Jiro formed the word “Casablanca.”
“Huh? Oh yeah, that’s my favorite movie. I know it by heart. Here’s looking at you, kid! Those old black-and-whites are a passion of mine. By the way, my name’s Yoshiro.”
Something strange was happening to Jiro. “Me too. Casablanca. Me too,” he said through the roaring in his ears.
“Want to go get some coffee? You look kind of cold.” Yoshiro looked down. “Look at your shoes! They’re ruined! You can’t wear those. And these ones of mine are still really wet”—stooping to feel the shoes next to the railing.
“That’s okay.” Jiro determinedly reached down, pulled off his damp socks, and stuck them in his pocket. For the first time in his life, his bare feet touched an exterior surface. The dewdrops prickled his soles. He felt an enormous sigh come straight up from his freed feet. On the way, it melted his frozen chest and loosened his throat. “I don’t need shoes.”
“Well, all right!” Yoshiro exclaimed. “Let’s go.” He put an arm around Jiro’s shoulders, and they walked off together, Jiro’s white bare feet winking in the morning sun.
Author’s Note
Each story in this collection is based on some inspiration, for which I am indebted to specific persons or groups. I’d like to explain where these inspirations came from.
The story lines of “A Year of Coffee and Cake” and “Love and Duty” were suggested by anecdotes told to me by members of the Association of Foreign Wives of Japanese.
Those of “Trial by Fire” and “Showa Girl” were suggested by events in the past that have become cherished stories in my husband’s family.
“Rhododendron Valley,” “Genbei’s Curse” and “Three Village Tales” were inspired by actual occurrences in my village in Japan.
“The Mad Kyoto Shoe Swapper” and “Rachel and Leah” are based on personal experiences. “The Turtle Stone” comes from my observation of declining traditional crafts in the city of Kyoto, although this story is not based on any real life sweetshop.
“The Rescuer,” “Uncle Trash,” and “Watch Again” are modern stories that were suggested by news items set in urban areas.
I’d like to thank my family, friends, and the people that surround me every day, and the richness of my life in Japan in general. Without these experiences, these stories, and the characters in them, would never have come to life.
“Rhododendron Valley” first appeared in Kyoto Journal #79.
“The Rescuer” first appeared in edited form in The Best Asian Short Stories 2018 anthology (Kitaab, Singapore 2018).
The Mad Kyoto Shoe Swapper and Other Short Stories Page 14