“That’s so sad,” Yumiko’s mother said. “I hear too that his wife tripped on the vines in her plot in the community garden and broke her neck. Such an irony! Hers was the only garden growing in this heat.”
“Didn’t they have a daughter?” Yumiko’s father asked. “A girl your age, I think, Yumiko. What was her name?”
The ghost girl spoke, startling them all. “Her name,” she said, “was Mayumi.”
House of Trust
by Sachiko Kashiwaba
translated by Avery Fischer Udagawa
My mother wore a strange frown.
“Hajime, is it true you’ve been taking kimono fitting classes? Mrs. Tamura from across the street said to me, ‘So, I see Hajime-chan goes to the kimono school over by the train station.’ I was shocked!”
I nodded. Mom’s frown grew deeper.
“Why are you going to a place like that? When did you start?”
“First year of middle school.”
“Three years ago . . .” She fell silent.
“I have a good teacher,” I told her. “It’s this older lady named Tsuki Sasaki. She must be close to seventy. She said that since I’m a guy, the other students and I might be uncomfortable around each other in classes, so she gives me private lessons once a month. My allowance more than covers the fee.”
I kept talking to try and wipe the frown from Mom’s face, but she was looking at me as if seeing her son of sixteen years for the first time.
“Mrs. Tamura must have seen me when I helped out the other day,” I continued. “Whenever there’s a big tea ceremony or something and dozens of people have to put on kimono, Tsuki-sensei gets hired and she dresses them. But she’s getting on in years, so with a large group of people, she gets tired just tying all the obi. So I get pulled in to help. It’s a great job. Tsuki-sensei pays me well. And the people like me—they say that when a guy ties the obi, they don’t come undone. I could get a license to teach kimono fitting if I wanted. Tsuki-sensei says I should. She told me it’s always been men who have tied the obi for geishas and apprentice geishas.”
“Is that the kind of work you want to do, Hajime?”
“Not really.”
“Then why? Why do you have to learn kimono fitting? And how could you go off to that place without telling your parents!” She slapped the table, her eyes narrowing.
She acted like I had been going someplace horrible. But the masters of the schools of tea ceremony and traditional flower arrangement are men, and a lot of men study those arts. There are even cooking classes for men only. So why was my taking kimono lessons such a big deal? And I hadn’t kept it a secret.
“I told you I wanted to learn kimono fitting.”
“When?”
“When I was in sixth grade. Don’t you remember?”
“You did?”
“I did. You said you were going to teach me yourself, but then you didn’t.”
My mother frowned. “Hmm . . . I did help you put on a yukata that one winter, didn’t I?”
“Exactly. You taught me how do a yukata and then nothing else, remember? But I figured out pretty quickly that you go running to the beauty shop whenever you have to wear a kimono, so you were probably the wrong person to ask.”
“Nobody needs to know how to put on a kimono without help. If you can wear a yukata, that’s plenty. Plus you’re a boy. Hajime, please tell me you’re not doing this because you want to wear a furi, a furi . . .” Her voice choked and she began to cry with big tears.
I finally understood why she was getting so worked up. Furisode are the long-sleeved showpiece kimono worn by young women at coming-of-age ceremonies and weddings. What was my mother thinking? I’m almost five feet ten inches tall and a hundred fifty-five pounds. I guess I’m on the skinny side. But thanks to the swimming I’ve been doing since grade school, my shoulders at least are broader than average. Just what kind of furisode did she think would fit me?
I started laughing.
“There’s nothing funny about it!” Mom yelled.
I was wondering what to do about this when the telephone rang.
Having seen that her son was apparently not learning kimono fitting because he wanted to wear a furisode, Mom had at least stopped crying. After glaring at me to make sure I stayed put, she picked up the phone.
“It’s for you, Hajime. It’s your father.” She held out the receiver.
“Hajime, is that you?” said my father’s voice. “Tomorrow’s the day. Get over here quick.”
I knew immediately what he was talking about.
“Got it. I’m on my way!”
I already had my jacket in my hand.
“Where do you think you’re going?” my mother called as I headed out the door. “We’re not finished here!”
“To Dad’s shop. Look, I’ll quit the kimono lessons.”
After saying that, I jumped on my bike. The timing could not have been better. The lessons were all for this moment.
Three years ago, my father quit his job at a company and opened a small handyman shop on the outskirts of town.
“Even if you do have to change jobs, why a handyman shop?” Mom was always grumpy in those days.
“Working with my hands is all I’m good at,” Dad told her. “Plus I’m not qualified for anything else. Look, if I can just get the customers to trust me, I’ll have plenty of work.” He named his shop House of Trust. He was so excited he was like a different person.
Mom and I both knew that the corporate world was no fit for Dad, a quiet man who wasn’t very good at socializing. In his tiny one-man shop, he was able to work just the way he wanted to and seemed happy. I was thrilled to see my father acting like that and began to hang out at the shop every day after school.
On that particular day three years ago, a light snow was falling just like today. The mountains were already covered in snow.
A bare concrete floor. A kerosene heater. A wooden desk and vinyl couch bought from the secondhand store. My father and I used to sit on that couch and do nothing but play shogi. Despite Dad’s excitement about starting his business, he only occasionally had jobs, and it was mainly my shogi skills that were going somewhere.
It was dark outside already, so I think it was after four o’clock. The glass door to the shop opened briskly and, along with a dusting of snow, a woman came rushing inside. She was tall.
“Is it true a handyman will do whatever job people need?” she asked, almost yelling.
She must have come in a big hurry, because her cheeks were flushed and her whole body was practically steaming. Her hair was very long but tousled, and she wore a slightly dirty down coat over a worn-out sweater. If her hair had been shorter, I swear I would have mistaken her for a man.
My father nodded. “Whatever you need,” he said.
“Good. The old fellow I always used to go to died, and I don’t know anybody else I can ask. I tried a housekeeping service, but they only list women. I can’t work with women.” She pulled a piece of paper from her coat pocket. “The address is here. You won’t need my name. There’s only one house in the area anyway. Please come by tomorrow morning at nine.”
She started to leave.
My father hurried to stop her. “What would you like me to do? I’ll have to prepare.”
“You don’t have to bring anything. I want you to clean,” the woman said. “And I want you to do my kimono and my hair,” she added.
“Kimono and hair . . . ?” My father’s words trailed off.
Dad could deftly handle carpentry work, appliance repair, cooking, and even sewing, but he had never even imagined that he would be asked to do a job like this.
“Whatever I need . . . right?” The woman knit her eyebrows.
“Perhaps if you tried a beauty salon . . . ,” Dad suggested.
“I can’t work with women!” she shouted.
“There are male beauticians.”
“The only beauticians who could do kimono were women. I’ve been running a
round this whole day searching, and I’m out of time. You told me you would take the job. How can you call this place House of Trust?” The woman stamped her foot like a spoiled child.
It seemed like the flame in the kerosene heater grew smaller all of a sudden. My spine tingled and I scooted closer to Dad. I was sure he was going to turn the job down, but to my surprise he said, “Very well. I’ll see what I can do.”
He could just have been reacting to those words, “How can you call this place House of Trust?” But looking back, I think he actually accepted the job because, even though she was yelling at him, the woman looked desperate.
“Oh, good,” she said. “I actually have a marriage interview tomorrow. It’s last-minute and I was in a panic.” She laughed a little as if embarrassed.
Her face looked kind of pretty then, even to me. It hit me for the first time that she was young.
The woman left, and my father unfolded the piece of paper with the address on it. “Gentagoya?” he said. He tilted his head quizzically, and then his jaw dropped. “That’s the climbers’ rest hut clear up on Mount Takamori! I’ll have to leave now or there’s no way I can even make it there by tomorrow morning.” He paused. “But I thought the newspaper said old Mr. Genta died and the hut might be closed now. And it ought to be closed for winter in the first place—has been since he was alive.”
“Maybe the person who just came in here was his successor?” I offered.
“Could be. And maybe we’re not into true winter yet.”
Dad and I both grew convinced of those things.
“Anyway, I’d better get ready. Hajime, I’m going home to prepare for the climb. You go to the bookstore and buy whatever you can find about how to put on a kimono and do hair,” my father requested.
I ended up climbing Mount Takamori together with Dad the next day. It was a Sunday, and he seemed nervous about going by himself.
Mount Takamori is one of the taller mountains near my town. It has unusual alpine plants and even a swamp that features in local legend. In the summer it has a lot of climbers, but it’s a bit of a tough course in wintertime if you’re not really into mountaineering.
We drove as far up Mount Takamori as possible and spent the night in the car. Both my father and I were so focused on getting to Gentagoya—more than two-thirds of the way up the mountain—by nine in the morning, that we completely forgot we were supposed to help put on a kimono and fix a woman’s hair once we got there.
We reached the top third of the mountain as the sun was rising. The mountainside was already covered with snow, but the sky was clear and the sun was warm, and we were sweating when we reached Gentagoya just before nine o’clock. It was perfect climbing weather, but we didn’t see anybody else on the mountain. Later, I heard that there were severe blizzards on the lower half of the mountain that day.
Gentagoya consisted of nothing but a simple cooking area and a large room with a wooden floor. Both the doors and the windows were flung wide open, and the woman from the day before was unfolding her kimono in the large room. The kimono was the same blush of vermilion red that the sky turns just before sunrise. Even now, I still remember that color.
My father cleaned the hut, and I heated water in the steel barrel bathtub behind the building.
While the woman bathed, Dad and I opened up the books I had bought. We decided to sweep the woman’s hair into a high bun called odango, and to tie her obi into a drum-shaped knot called otaiko, since the book said it was the most common style.
Dad and I are both pretty good with our hands. I would like to say we did fairly well for a first attempt, but I couldn’t, even to flatter myself. The woman’s coil of hair, which was as thick and long as a large snake, ended up towering over her head like a Tibetan temple stupa supported by dozens of pins. Her obi, which we somehow managed to tie, stuck flat against her back like a dried squid. And she seemed to find it hard to move, probably because we tied everything too tight.
Still, she was beautiful. It seemed impossible that she could have looked like a man the day before. I’m sure my father thought so too. But still he told her, “There will be no charge.”
I agreed with not charging her. This was a matter of trust.
“But you got it done somehow,” she said. “I could never have put this on by myself. This is the only nice kimono I have.”
The woman seemed happy just to be able to wear the vermilion kimono, and acted so pleased with our inferior effort that we were even more embarrassed.
Just then, I felt strongly that I wanted to arrange the kimono more beautifully for her. I really did. “Allow us to do a better job next time,” I said loudly. “I will practice.”
I actually said “next time,” even though she was meeting a potential groom. . . .
She started to give me a look, but then she chuckled. “Next time,” she said as we were leaving, “you’d better tie me a fukura suzume.”
Back then, I had no idea what that meant. But I found out later from Tsuki-sensei that when someone wears a furisode, you tie the obi into a “plump sparrow” shape, or fukura suzume. It’s especially flattering on tall women.
Heading back down the mountain, my father muttered, “That person, she couldn’t be possibly be the kami of the mountain, could she? Her dislike of women and all?”
I too thought she might be the mountain’s kami, or spirit, but I didn’t say anything.
I have no idea what happened to Gentagoya after that. A paved hiking course opened up on the other side of the mountain, so everybody began to climb from that direction instead. A new mountain hut was also built on the side opposite Gentagoya.
And my father and I have never spoken about our experience there. Dad never asks me whether I am taking kimono lessons. I never ask him anything either. But I know that he has been going to hairdressing school, because sometimes he comes home smelling like my mother does after she gets a perm.
We haven’t said a word, but my father called me today. That’s because he trusts me. And together, we are going to put the trust back in House of Trust. I can tie an obi into a fukura suzume, a bunko, you name it. I can even tie hakama. As for Dad, I bet he can sweep that long hair up into any hairstyle you could imagine.
I open the door to the shop to find Dad tying the laces on his hiking boots. “Another marriage interview?” I ask.
“Nope. A wedding,” he answers.
And he smiles.
Staring at the Haiku
by John Paul Catton
The story goes like this:
A young trainee teacher is patrolling long, empty high school corridors, making sure all students have gone home. His footsteps echo down the halls, and beyond the windows it’s already dark, the hot, steamy twilight of a Japanese July. He’s nervous; summer is the time for ghost stories, and all kinds of tales are going through his head.
Then he hears crying.
It’s coming from the end of the corridor. He walks through pools of shadow to the classroom, opens the door, steps inside. He flicks the switch; the lights don’t work. Strange. But in the dark he can make out a girl, in school uniform, sitting at one of the desks. She’s turned away from him, her head hanging down, long black hair over her face, and sobbing like her heart’s broken.
“Every student should have gone home,” he says, trying to keep his voice firm.
The girl doesn’t turn around, just keeps on sobbing, her hair masking her face, and the teacher is feeling creeped out by now.
“Are you all right? What are you doing here on your own?”
He walks into the classroom, reaching out a hand, and gently taps the girl on the shoulder. As quick as a striking snake, the girl turns toward him, her hands snatching at the teacher’s arm with razor-sharp nails. She flicks back her long hair, and her face . . .
Her face is . . .
Her face, is like . . .
Well, what do you think it was like? Welcome to . . .
www.yokai.com
which is the
most amazing blog ever on Japanese ghosts, written by yours truly Tomoe Kanzaki! In English! I’m seventeen years old and a student in the Global Studies class for returnees, here at Chiyoda High. Now I’ll let the other ghostbusting ghostbloggers in the Club introduce themselves—scroll down for the introductions!
Hi, I’m Shunsuke Wakita. My birthday’s January 27th and my blood type is B. I like PE, and I’m in the baseball club at school. My family lived in Ohio for three years and Frankfurt for two years. My ambition is to get into a good university—or become an F1 racer. Yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
Hi, I’m Xin Yao Liu! I’m an exchange student in Japan for a year, and I’m from Chongqing in southwest China. My strong point is I’m a quick reader—I can finish a novel in less than a day. My ambition? I’m interested in science, so I’d like to be a pharmacist.
I’m Hideaki Sakamoto. I like all sports, but I’m in the kendo club. I like animals, pasta, Japanese curry-rice, going to karaoke parties, hanging out in Shibuya. In the future I’d like to travel around the world and then get into male modeling. Or maybe the other way around.
I’m Reiko Bergman. I’m half Japanese, or a haafu, as they say here. My father’s American and my mother’s Japanese, and we lived in New York for eight years. My other nickname is Rekijo, which means “History Girl,” but I’m not a geek! I just like stories from long ago, and I’ve got a good memory.
And like I said, I’m Tomoe, and this is my blog. I could tell you more about myself, but I won’t, because we’ve got ghost stories to deal with!!
Assignment 1: Staring at the Haiku
The last two weeks of February. The time of year for final exams, graduation ceremony, and then spring break, when every teenager within a hundred kilometers of Tokyo tries to get into Tokyo Disneyland at the same time. It’s also the season for Girls’ Day, on March 3rd, when families put up a special display of Japanese-style dolls in their houses, and have hamaguri clam soup with sweet sake to celebrate. For some reason Boys’ Day on May 5th is a national holiday but on Girls’ Day we still have to go to school. Boys get all the lucky breaks, huh?
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