The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945: vol. 1 (Modern Asian Literature Series)

by J. Thomas Rimer

  “This is all we got.” The dancing girl dropped some fifty-sen coins from her fist into the older woman’s palm. I read “The Story of the Lord of Mito” out loud for a while. Then they talked about the baby that had died while they were on the road. They said the baby was almost as transparent as water at birth and did not even have the strength to cry. Nevertheless, it lived for a week.

  My common goodwill—which neither was mere curiosity nor bore any trace of contempt for their status as itinerant entertainers—seemed to have touched their hearts. Before I knew it, they had decided that I should accompany them to their place on Ōshima.

  “The house where Grandpa lives would be good. It’s big, and it would be quiet if we chased Grandpa out. You could stay as long as you wanted. And you could study.” They made this announcement to me after conferring among themselves.

  “We have two small houses. The one in the mountains is usually empty.”

  Moreover, I was to help out during New Year holidays when they performed at the port in Habu.

  I realized that their sense of the road was not so hardened as I had first supposed. Rather, it was more of a lighthearted attitude that had not lost the scent of the fields. They were bound together by the familial affection you would expect between parent and child or brother and sister. The hired girl, Yuriko, was the only one who was sullen around me. Perhaps she was at the age when a girl is most bashful.

  I left their lodging house halfway through the night. The girls came downstairs to see me off. The dancing girl placed my clogs at the door so I could step into them easily. She stuck her head out the gate and looked up at the bright sky.

  “Oh, the moon! We’ll be in Shimoda tomorrow. How wonderful. We’ll have the baby’s forty-ninth-day services. Mother will buy me a comb. We’ll do all kinds of things! Would you take me to see a movie?”

  The port of Shimoda—it had the air of a hometown that the itinerant entertainers who traveled around the hot springs in Izu and Sagami longed for when they were on the road.

  5

  The entertainers were carrying the same luggage they had hauled through Amagi Pass. The puppy rested his paws on the woman’s arm, looking like a seasoned traveler. Just outside Yugano we found ourselves again in the mountains. The sun hanging over the sea warmed the slopes. We gazed toward the morning sun. Kawazu Beach spread wide in the sunlight out where the Kawazu River flowed.

  “That’s Ōshima over there, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Of course it is. See how big it looks. Please do come,” the dancing girl said.

  Perhaps the autumn sky was too dazzling; the sea near the sun looked misted over, as it is in the spring. It was another twelve-mile walk from there to Shimoda. For a while the ocean was blocked from view. Chiyoko began to sing a carefree song.

  Along the way I was asked whether I preferred to take the main road, which was easier, or a steep path over the mountains that was well over a mile shorter. Naturally I chose the shortcut.

  It was an abrupt climb through the trees. I feared we would slip on the fallen leaves. I got so winded that half in desperation, I pressed down on my knees with the palms of my hands to pick up my pace. Every time I glanced back, the others had fallen farther behind until I could only hear their voices among the trees, except for the dancing girl, who was holding up her skirts and trudging along behind me. She was trailing me by about two yards, neither trying to close the distance between us nor dropping farther back. When I turned and spoke to her, she paused as if startled, then smiled and replied. When she spoke to me, I waited, to give her a chance to catch up. But I should have known that she would stop short and refuse to take a step until I did. When the path twisted and grew even steeper, I quickened my pace again and found the dancing girl climbing intently, as always, just a couple of yards behind me. The mountains were still. The rest of the group was so far behind I could no longer hear them talking.

  “Where is your house in Tokyo?”

  “My home isn’t Tokyo. I live in the school dormitory there.”

  “I know about Tokyo. I went there to dance during the cherry blossom season. . . . I was little then, so I don’t remember anything about it.” Then she went on. “Do you have a father?” “Have you ever been to Kofu?” She asked all kinds of questions. We talked about going to see a movie when we got to Shimoda, and again about the dead baby.

  We emerged at the mountaintop. The dancing girl placed her drum on a bench in the dry grass and wiped the perspiration from her face with a handkerchief. She started to brush the dust from her legs, then suddenly crouched at my feet and began to brush the hem of my hakama. I jerked away, and she dropped to her knees with a thud. She brushed the dust all the way around my kimono, then dropped the hem. I stood there breathing deeply.

  “Sit down,” she said.

  A flock of small birds appeared beside the bench. It was so still I could hear the dry leaves on the branches rustle when they alighted.

  “Why do you walk so fast?”

  She looked flushed. I thumped the drum with my fingers and the birds flew away.

  “I’m thirsty,” I said.

  “I’ll go see if I can find some water.”

  But shortly the girl came back empty-handed through the grove of yellow trees.

  “What do you do on Ōshima?”

  The dancing girl mentioned two or three girl’s names and began talking about something I could not follow. She seemed to be describing Kofu, not Ōshima. Apparently the names were her friends at the elementary school she had attended until second grade. The dancing girl just rambled on.

  We had waited about ten minutes when the three younger people reached the top. The older woman arrived another ten minutes after them.

  On the way down, Eikichi and I purposely hung back, talking at leisure. When we had walked about two hundred yards, the dancing girl came back up from below.

  “There’s a spring farther down. They said you should hurry down. They’re waiting until you get there to take a drink.”

  When I heard they had found water, I ran. Fresh water sprang from between some large rocks in the shade of the trees. The girls stood waiting around the spring.

  “Please, you go first,” the woman said. “The water will get all cloudy if we put our hands in. You’d think it was too dirty after us women.”

  I scooped up the cold water in my hands and drank. The women lingered. They wrung out some damp hand towels and wiped themselves.

  When we rejoined the Shimoda highway at the foot of the mountain, we saw several threads of smoke from charcoal-burning huts. We sat down to rest on some timber stacked by the roadside. The dancing girl crouched on the road, combing the puppy’s shaggy fur with her pink comb.

  “The teeth will break,” the woman warned her. “It’s OK. I’ll get a new one in Shimoda.”

  Ever since our stay in Yugano, I had been hoping to be given the comb she wore in the front of her hair as a memento, so I did not want her using it on the dog, either.

  Eikichi and I spotted bundles of thin bamboo piled by the roadside. Remarking that it would be perfect for walking sticks, we reached them ahead of the others. Following on our heels, the dancing girl located a thick piece taller than she was.

  “What are you going to do with it?” Eikichi asked.

  She seemed puzzled for a moment, then held it out to me. “Here. It’s a walking stick. I pulled out the thickest one.”

  “You can’t do that. If someone sees him with the thickest one, they’ll know we stole it. We don’t want to get caught. Put it back,” Eikichi said.

  The dancing girl returned the bamboo pole and caught up with us. This time she handed me a piece of bamboo about the size of my middle finger. Then she threw herself flat on her back on the path between the rice paddies beside the road. Breathing heavily, she waited for the other women.

  Eikichi and I walked together as before, this time ten or twelve yards ahead.

  “It wouldn’t be hard to pull them and replace t
hem with gold teeth.”

  I turned around when I overheard the dancing girl’s voice. She was walking with Chiyoko. The older woman and Yuriko were a short distance behind them. The dancing girl did not appear to notice me looking back.

  I heard Chiyoko reply. “That’s right. Why don’t you tell him?”

  I gathered they were talking about me. Chiyoko had probably commented that my teeth were crooked, so the dancing girl had suggested gold teeth. They were discussing my looks, yet it did not bother me. I felt so close to them that I did not even care to eavesdrop. They continued their conversation for a time. Then I caught the dancing girl’s voice again.

  “He’s a nice person.”

  “You’re right. He seems like a nice person.”

  “He really is nice. It’s good to have such a nice person around.”

  This exchange had an echo of simplicity and frankness. Hers was a child’s voice expressing her sentiments without censure. I, too, was able to meekly consider myself a nice person. Refreshed, I lifted my eyes and surveyed the brilliant mountains. I felt a vague pain behind my eyelids. Twenty years old, I had embarked on this trip to Izu heavy with resentment that my personality had been permanently warped by my orphan’s complex and that I would never be able to overcome a stifling melancholy. So I was inexpressibly grateful to find that I looked like a nice person as the world defines the word. The mountains looked bright because we were by the ocean near Shimoda. I swung my bamboo walking stick back and forth, lopping off the heads of the autumn grasses.

  Here and there along the way stood signs as we entered villages: “Beggars and itinerant entertainers—KEEP OUT.”

  6

  Koshuya, a cheap lodging house, was located just within Shimoda on the north side. I followed the entertainers into a second-floor room that had all the appearances of an attic. There was no ceiling, and when I sat near the windowsill, facing the road, my head almost touched the roof.

  “Do your shoulders hurt?” the woman kept asking the dancing girl. “Do your hands hurt?”

  The dancing girl moved her hands in the graceful gestures she used when playing the drum. “No, they don’t. I can play. I can.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that.”

  I hefted her drum. “Hey, that’s heavy.”

  “It’s heavier than you thought, . . . heavier than that bag of yours.” The dancing girl laughed.

  The entertainers heartily greeted the other people staying at the inn. Naturally, they were all entertainers and carnival people. Shimoda appeared to be a temporary roost for these birds of passage. The dancing girl gave a copper coin to one of the innkeeper’s children who came toddling into the room. When I stood up to leave Koshuya, the dancing girl hurried down ahead of me to the entryway and set my clogs out for me.

  “Please be sure to take me to a movie,” she whispered, as though to herself.

  A man who was likely a day laborer guided us halfway to our destination. Eikichi and I went on to an inn where, he said, the former district mayor was the innkeeper. We bathed, then ate a lunch of fresh fish.

  “Please use this to buy some flowers for tomorrow’s services.” I gave Eikichi a small packet of money before he returned to his lodging house. I had to return to Tokyo on the morning boat the next day because I had no more money with which to travel. I told Eikichi that school was about to start, so I could not stay with them any longer.

  I ate dinner less than three hours after lunch. Alone, I crossed the bridge to the north of Shimoda and climbed the hill Shimoda Fuji to view the harbor. When I called at Koshuya on my way back, the entertainers were eating a dinner of chicken stew.

  “Won’t you at least have a bite with us? It’s not very appetizing now that we women have put in our chopsticks, but maybe this could be the makings of a funny story.” The woman took a bowl and chopsticks out of the wicker basket and asked Yuriko to wash them.

  They pleaded with me to delay my departure at least one more day, as tomorrow would be the forty-ninth day since the baby’s death. But again I used school as an excuse and declined their invitation.

  The woman spoke again. “Well, then, during winter vacation, we’ll all come out to meet your boat. Just let us know what day you’ll arrive. We’ll be waiting. Now don’t try staying at an inn or anything. We’ll meet you at the boat.”

  When only Chiyoko and Yuriko were in the room, I invited them to a movie. Chiyoko held her stomach saying, “I don’t feel well. I’m too weak to walk that far.” She slumped down, her face pale. Yuriko stiffened and hung her head. The dancing girl was playing with the innkeeper’s children on the stairs. When she heard me, she clung to the woman, begging for permission to go to a movie with me. She returned crestfallen. She set out my clogs.

  “What do you mean? There’s no harm in letting him take her by himself,” Eikichi interjected. But the woman would not assent. I thought it indeed strange that she would not let us go together. As I went out the door, the dancing girl was stroking the puppy’s head. The atmosphere was so restrained that I could not speak a word.

  The dancing girl lacked the vitality even to lift her face and look at me.

  I went to the movie alone. The woman narrator read the script of the silent movie by the light of a tiny lamp. I left as soon as it ended and returned to my inn. Resting my elbows on the windowsill, I stared out into the night town for a long time. It was a dark town. I thought I might hear a faint drum sounding far away. Inexplicably my tears fell.

  7

  While I was eating breakfast the next morning, Eikichi called to me from the street. He was wearing a crested black haori. Apparently, he had dressed formally to send me off. There was no sign of the women. I felt sad. Eikichi came up to my room.

  “Everyone else wanted to come see you off, but they went to bed so late they couldn’t get up. They won’t be coming. They said they’ll be waiting for you this winter, so please do come.”

  The morning autumn breeze blew chill in the town. Along the way Eikichi bought four packs of Shikishima cigarettes, some persimmons, and a mouthwash called “Kaoru” for me. “Because my sister’s name is Kaoru.” He smiled faintly. “Mandarin oranges aren’t the best thing to eat on a boat, but persimmons are good for seasickness, so you can have these.”

  “Here. You take this.” I pulled off my hunting cap and placed it on Eikichi’s head. Then I dug my school cap out of my bag, and we laughed as I smoothed the wrinkles.

  As we approached the dock, I was struck by the sight of the dancing girl crouching near the water. She remained motionless until I reached her. Silently, she lowered her head. Her makeup, the same this morning as it was the previous night, made me feel even more sentimental. The rouge at the corners of her eyes bestowed a youthful strength, as though she might even be angry.

  “Are the others coming?” Eikichi asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Are they still asleep?”

  She nodded.

  Eikichi went to buy my ticket for the boat to Tokyo and our passes for the launch. While he was gone, I tried to make small talk, but the dancing girl said nothing. She just stared down at the water pouring from a drainpipe into the sea. She just kept nodding over and over before I even finished speaking.

  “Granny, this fellow looks nice.” A man approached who looked like a laborer.

  “You’re a student, aren’t you? Going back to Tokyo? I think I can trust you. Would you accompany this old lady to Tokyo? She’s had some hard times. Her son was working at the silver mine at Rendaiji. But he and his wife both died in the flu epidemic. They left three children behind. We couldn’t think of anything else to do, so we talked it over, and we’re sending them back to their old hometown. That’s Mito in Ibaraki Prefecture. But this old woman doesn’t understand anything, so when the boat gets to Reiganjima in Tokyo, would you put her on a train to Ueno? I know it’s a lot of trouble, but we’re begging you. Just took at her. Don’t you think it’s pitiful?”

  The old woman stood th
ere with a blank expression, an infant strapped to her back. Two girls, about three and five, held her hands. I could see big rice balls and pickled plums in her dirty bundle. Five or six miners were looking after the old woman. I was pleased to accept the task.

  “Thank you. We’re counting on you.”

  “Thank you. We really should see her all the way to Mito, but we can’t.” The miners expressed their gratitude.

  The launch rocked violently. The dancing girl kept her mouth shut tight, staring at the same spot. When I grabbed the rope ladder and looked back, she tried to say good-bye but gave up and merely nodded one last time. The launch headed back to the wharf. Again and again, Eikichi waved the hunting cap I had just given him. As the launch receded in the distance, the dancing girl began to wave something white.

  The steamship left Shimoda. I leaned against the railing and gazed at Ōshima in the offing until the southern tip of the Izu Peninsula vanished behind me. It already seemed long ago that I parted from the dancing girl. When I glanced into the cabin to check on the old woman, I saw a group of people gathered around her in a circle, consoling her. I felt relieved. I entered the cabin next door. The waves were choppy on Sagami Bay. I was tossed left and right as I sat. A crewman passed out small metal bowls. I lay down, using my bag as a pillow. My head felt empty, and I had no sense of time. My tears spilled onto my bag. My cheeks were so cold I turned my bag over. There was a boy lying next to me. He was the son of a factory owner in Kawazu and was on his way to Tokyo to prepare to enter school. The sight of me in my First Upper School cap seemed to elicit his goodwill.

  After we talked for a while, he asked, “Have you had a death in your family?”

  “No, I just left someone.”

  I spoke meekly. I did not mind that he had seen me crying. I was not thinking about anything. I simply felt as though I were sleeping quietly, soothed and contented.

  I was not aware that darkness had settled on the ocean, but now lights glimmered on the shores of Ajiro and Atami. My skin was chilled and my stomach empty. The boy took out some sushi wrapped in bamboo leaves. I ate his food, forgetting it belonged to someone else. Then I nestled inside his school coat. I felt a lovely hollow sensation, as if I could accept any sort of kindness and it would be only right. It was utterly natural that I should accompany the old woman to Ueno Station early the next morning and buy her a ticket to Mito. Everything seemed to melt together into one.