Pathway to Japanese Literature

The Harmonium and the Fish Town

1 Father was skilled at playing the harmonium.

My earliest memories of music begin with Father’s harmonium.

We had been bored for a long time, jostled by the train; Mother sat beside me reciting sutras while I ate a banana, tears streaming down her face.
“Perhaps she had been saying something like, ‘All because I entrusted myself to you, I’m forced to suffer like this.’”
Father, while occasionally pressing down on the harmonium inside the white furoshiki bundle with his hip, smoked shredded tobacco that had turned mostly to powder.

We had made such long journeys with our entire family more than once.

Father closed his eyelids and was speaking kindly to Mother.
“You’ll see,” he was probably saying.

The train snaked along the sinuous shoreline.
The motionless sea and towering clouds appeared to my fourteen-year-old eyes like a shining wall.
Surrounding that spring sea was a town flying many Japanese national flags.
Father, who had been sitting with his eyes closed, no sooner caught sight of the vermilion Japanese national flags than he hastily stood up and leaned his head out the train window.

“Looks like there’s a festival in this town. Why don’t we get off and see?”

Mother stood up while tucking away her sutra scrolls into the drawstring pouch.

“It’s truly a lovely town. With daylight still to spare, let’s get off and earn our meal money.”

And so we three shouldered our bundles and stepped down into the seaside town where Japanese national flags fluttered.

Before the station stood a large willow tree with pale new buds.
Beyond the willow clustered two or three soot-stained inns.
Above the town sailed great cumulus clouds, while shop signs bore countless fish paintings.

As we walked along the seaside street, a sharp whistling sound—two short bursts—came from a house bearing a fish-shaped sign.
When Father heard that whistle, perhaps recalling the harmonium he had been carrying on his back, he took it out from the furoshiki bundle and slung it over his shoulder.
Father’s harmonium was terribly old-fashioned and large, with a leather belt attached to allow shoulder carrying.

“Don’t start playing it yet.”

Mother, likely embarrassed because this was a new town, lightly grabbed Father’s arm.

When we reached the front of the house from which the whistling flowed, young men covered in fish scales were beating fish bones in time with their sharp whistles—Hoot! Hoot!

The fish on the sign was a sea bream clasping blue bamboo leaves in its gills.
For a while, we were engrossed in watching the men’s amusing gestures as they made kamaboko.

“Hey, you! The Japanese flags are out—wonder what’s going on here.”

The red-eyed man stopped his bone-beating hands and turned listlessly to open his mouth.

“The mayor’s come.”

“Whoa! What an astounding commotion!”

We fell into step once more and began walking.

The beach had many small boat landings.
Beyond the sea, slick as a river, lay a soft island.
On the island, many trees could be seen that looked as though they were scattering white flowers.
Beneath the trees, something like a cow plodded along slowly.

2 It was an intensely refreshing scene.

I bought one tempura—lotus root with its holes amply stuffed with mustard and deep-fried.
And so Mother and I shared that single tempura while gazing at the island.

“C’mon now, let’s get movin’... Sells or don’t sell—either way’s fine...”

Perhaps sensing some faint desolation, Mother gripped my hand tight and pulled me toward the wharf as we walked on.

Father wore a military policeman’s uniform ribbed with yellow stripes across his chest. Playing his harmonium while chanting “One-two, one-two,” he climbed toward the sloped town.
When Mother heard Father’s harmonium playing, she hung her head and blew her nose with a sharp sniff.
I kept vacantly licking my oil-stained palm.

“C’mere, give me that nose. Let’s see about this.”

Mother wrapped the hand towel she’d had hanging from her collar around the tip of her little finger and stuck it into my nostril.

“Look how black it’s gotten.”

The tip of Mother’s little finger wrapped in the hand towel had turned black like a shiitake mushroom.

Above the town was an elementary school.
A wheat-scented breeze drifted through the air.

“My, what a lovely view we’ve here.”

While flapping her hand towel to brush dust from her topknot, Mother narrowed her eyes at the sea.

Having finished my lotus root tempura, I watched the old woman at the fried food stall sizzling octopus legs on the stone landing.

“I swear, this child... Wouldn’t care if her belly split clean open!”

“I wanna eat octopus legs.”

“What nonsense you spoutin’?!
“Don’t you see how poor Father an’ me are?!”

In the distance, Father’s harmonium was carried on the wind.

“When we get on the train, I’ll feed you something good again…”

“No! I want octopus!”

“So now you’re trying to cause trouble?”

Mother took out a striped wallet with a tassel and shook it before my nose.

“See? Even this won’t get through that thick head!”

In Mother’s thin palm spilled two or three large two-sen coins dusted green.

“Don’t you see we’ve no white coins?
No white coins mean no octopus legs!”

“So red coins won’t buy them either?”

“You...!
Think you’ll stuff your belly fat while Father and I starve?!”

“What’s the use in wanting to eat?!”
Mother struck me with a sharp slap.
Schoolchildren returning home were waiting for the ferry.
When they saw me being hit, the children burst out laughing.
My nosebleed flowed down into my throat.
I gazed at the blue sea’s glare while choking back salty tears.

“I want to disappear somewhere—anywhere.”

“Even if you say you’ll go somewhere, with that stubbornness of yours, people won’t have anything to do with you…”

“Who cares if they don’t bother! I want to go somewhere far away—all by myself.”

“You—as long as you get your way, stuffing yourself with bananas and wolfing down lotus roots! Even rich folks’ kids wouldn’t eat like that!”

“Rich folks’ children are always eating sweets anyway—acting like we should thank them for those rotten bananas…”

“This girl’s at the age to become a proper bride, yet all she does is go on about food!”
“If you keep slapping me like that, look—my nose will start bleeding again…”

Mother took a celluloid comb from her cloth pouch and smoothed down my hair.
My bushy hair fluttered up into the air with a rustling sound each time the comb’s teeth ran through it.

“With that wild mop of hair, your head’d go up in flames if a spark caught.”

Rubbing the comb’s teeth against her mouth like a harmonica and applying saliva, Mother smoothed down the curls on my forehead and said.

“If Father’s business picks up, he’ll buy you anything…”

3 I had them take down the luggage from my back.

Inside the purple furoshiki bundle lay picture books, watercolor paints, and sewing practice materials.

"He’s just making that harmonium wail! Go check if he’s sold anything!"

I raced up the pier toward the hillside town.

The cramped town made even stray dogs appear oversized.
Above the rooftops, festival canopies billowed as girls with cherry-blossom hairpins trailed along in single file.

"Now then—though this marks our humble company’s first visit to your distinguished town, rest assured we shan’t foist upon you such fraudulent goods as toad ointments!"
"Now then—with profound reverence for His Highness of ×× Palace’s gracious patronage, our medicinal wares differ entirely from those common products found hither and yon..."

In the ant-like swarm of people, Father’s voice could be heard, drenched with sweat.

A fisherman’s wife bought fetal poison remedy.
A girl wearing a cherry blossom hairpin bought eyedrops contained in a seashell.
A dockworker bought bruise ointment.
From his gleaming black briefcase worn shiny with use, Father produced one peculiar medicine after another as if performing magic tricks, parading them before the encircling crowd’s eyes.

The organ lay on the lumber.

The children were fiddling with the organ’s mysterious keys. Wooom!
Wooom!
In this manner, the organ would occasionally let out a sudden discordant noise and shudder.
Then the children burst out laughing like popping beans.
When I heard the sound of the occupied organ, I couldn’t bear it and pushed through the crowd’s legs.

“Now then—for uterine concerns and women’s ailments, there exists no remedy more potent than this Oichinii medicine.”

When I pushed aside the children clustered on the lumber, I pulled the organ close and slung it over my shoulder.

“What do you think you’re doing?!”
“It’s ’cause I’m…”

When the children saw my boyish figure with its cropped hair,

“Tom-boy! Tom-boy! Half-boy girl, hey!” they chanted.

Father adjusted his faded military cap slightly and turned to look at me.

“Quit causing trouble!”
“Hurry up and get back to Mother!”

Father’s eyes looked sorrowful.

The children once again swarmed around the organ like flies and pressed its white keys.
I ran across the lumber with quick, light steps as if walking a tightrope, then rubbed my waist with gestures reminiscent of an acrobatic girl I’d seen in some town.

“Your obi’s come loose!”

A boy carrying bamboo stilts on his shoulder pointed at me.

“For real?”

I tied the loosened obi around my waist, tucked the hem between my legs, and deftly twisted it around to show them.

The boy was laughing.

In the square lined with white-walled fertilizer warehouses, dried fish that glittered like needles were piled up like a mountain.

Surrounding the square, street udon stalls were lined up like birds as the laborers stood slurping their udon with slick, rapid sounds.

In the glass cases of the street stalls, rice crackers and tempura looked delicious.
I leaned against the glass case and stared fixedly at the rice crackers and tempura.
The glass case’s surface was misted over.

“Whose child are you? Can’t be leanin’ there!”

A woman nursing a baby scolded me while sucking up its snot.

4. A light flickered on in the vermilion temple tower atop the mountain.

Mackerel clouds billowed from the island's ridge as I walked toward the pier, singing a song.

Lights must have come on at the pier—vendors with baskets on long poles surrounded the white steamship's hull, calling out loudly.

Mother was leaning against the pier's luggage while looking up toward the waiting area.

“What were you up to? Did you go check on Father?”

“Yeah, I went! They were selling like mad up that hill!”

“For real?”

“For real!”

As Mother retied the purple bundle around my waist, her eyes shone with delight.

“Gotten warm out—wind’s all clammy-like.”

“Gotta pee?”

“Don’tcha mind—just do it there.”

Beneath the pier floated a great deal of algae and debris.
Shadow-like fish fluttered about beneath the algae and debris.
The returning ship puffed out its chest like a pigeon.
As the tide swelled against the ship's waterline, a pale moon appeared in the sky.

“It’s like horse piss.”

“But still, you were holdin’ it in forever.”

Growing impatient with how long this urination was taking, I strained hard and peered at my own crotch.
Beyond the puffy white hillock, the sky and ship were reflected upside down.
I bent over until my neck ached.
From beyond the white mound, urine scattered in a mist glittered as it wet the pier.

"What’re you doin’? If you fall, I won’t save you, y’know. Look—Father’s comin’ back."

"For real?"

“’Tis true.”

A pleasant sea breeze blew against my crotch.

“You must be worn out, eh?”

When Mother shouted this, Father called to us from above the stone steps while wiping his head with a hand towel.

“How ’bout some udon?”

I grasped Mother’s hands and shook them.

“So happy! Father, you sold a mountain of them, right…”

The three of us sat on a street stall bench eating udon.
In my bowl lay a triangular piece of fried tofu.

"Why don't Father and Mother have any fried tofu in theirs?"

"Quiet!"
"Children should eat without chatter..."

I threw a piece of fried tofu into Father’s bowl and smirked.
Father blissfully ate it.

“Must be quite novel here—why not stay a couple days and see?”

“At first they called you a disabled soldier, but others said you looked modern playing the organ.”

“Hmm… Would’ve been good to let you hear a couple of rousing tunes…”

I poured swirling hot water into the remaining udon broth and sipped it like milk for a long time.

Lights came on in the town like a ring.
Perhaps because the market was nearby, fish-selling women with flat tubs balanced on their heads passed by, calling out, “Evening sale! Step right up for the evening sale!”

“Well now, this seems a queer sort of place. From the train window I saw temples aplenty, but fishermen too in numbers—our medicines ought to sell here.”

“Aye, queer indeed.”

Father counted out a heap of white coins and passed them to Mother.

“Hey... Want some octopus legs?”

“I ain’t handin’ any over! Father, don’t go gettin’ mad now—just sayin’ we oughta chuck that organ into the sea, eh?”

“What’re you bellyachin’ about now?!”

Father pulled a pencil from the spine of his small notebook and checked it against the medicine box contents.

5 When night fell, the mountaintop swarmed with crowds coming to view the night cherry blossoms, bustling like swarms of moths.

We settled into an inn near the station by the tracks and lay prone, still sweaty.

“Well now, this town’s crawling with workers! You ever seen any place get this rowdy just for cherry blossoms?”

“What’s with this mad crowd moonin’ over blossoms? Downright bafflin’.”

In a manner that suggested she couldn’t care less, Mother snorted through her nose while untying the cloth bundle.

“C’mon now—stand up and look over here. Pretty as a picture, I tell you.”

Opening the sooty low shoji, Father called to me while removing his soiled knit patch.

“Even though we’re about to eat sushi, you don’t want to see…”

I didn’t even try to stand up.
Mother chuckled cynically.

Lying prone on tatami mats swollen like boils, I had Mother take out the reader, then raised my voice and began reciting a passage from “Hogoshoku.”
Mother must have been proud—or wanted to show pride—in how I could read aloud so clearly and fluently.
“Hmm, is that so?” she would often respond gently.

“Farmers are such fools—hanging kettles on looper caterpillars?”

“Must be ’cause those looper caterpillars look like tree branches, eh?”

“What kinda bug’s that anyway?”

“That’s a common bug you find out in the country.”

“Hmph—they’re long ones, ain’t they?”

“They’re near silkworm-like.”

“Father—you really saw ’em?”

“’Tis true.”

On the stain-covered wall, my shadow appeared black like a child’s. Each time the wind blew in, the lamp’s glass chimney flared up, and someone passed through town saying, “Rain’s coming.”

“My, what a stinky room! How much did you agree to pay for this?”

“’Tis sixty sen just for staying.”

“My stars, how cruel this wandering life is!”

It was so quiet that the sound of waves seemed to seep into my belly.

The futon set consisted of three layers; as usual, holding my reader, I silently crawled under the covers and lay down.

“Mother! It’s already evening—aren’t we going to eat anything?”

“Enough with your nonsense! Once you’re in bed, you’d best stay put!”

“Didn’t we eat udon?”
“You think we’re holding all these white coins and not buying you anything? Once we pay the inn and settle with the medicine wholesaler, that money’ll be gone! Get to bed early and rise early—come morning, I’ll let you eat your fill of white rice.”

As Father folded the zabuton in two and tucked it under my hem, he said...
When I heard the words "white rice," tears streamed down my face.

“When you’re hitting a growth spurt like this, no wonder you’re always so hungry…”

“If we don’t start getting regular meals soon now, ain’t there any decent work left?”

Neither Father nor Mother seemed aware I lay crying at the futon’s edge.

“That child reads so well—if we could just settle somewhere proper-like, I’d send her off to school.”

“If we could just sell one more day tomorrow, we’d be allowed to stay here...”

“This here’s a fine place. Ever since we got off at the station, I’ve been feeling right content.”
“What do they call this place?”
“Ono-michi—go on, say it proper.”
“Ono-michi, you mean?”
“Sea and mountains both close by—makes for a good spot.”
Mother stood up and put out the lamp.

6. In the garden of this house stood four or five pomegranate trees.
Under those pomegranate trees stood a shallow well with a large enclosure.
When she opened the shoji on the second-floor veranda, those pomegranate trees and the well came into view directly below.
The well water contained a high amount of salt; when you washed your face, your tongue would turn slightly salty.
They drew about two days’ worth of water into the earthen jar on the second floor.

On the veranda were a charcoal brazier, a horse trough, an iron pan, and abalone-shell plant pots; the six-tatami room had neither a closet nor an alcove. This was the scene of our settled second-floor rented room where the three of us lived.

When morning came, she spread a white cloth over the borrowed futon.

Downstairs lived a couple around fifty years old, who always kept about two weather-beaten rickshaws in their dirt-floored entryway. I had never seen the landlord pulling a rickshaw, but perhaps he lent them out to someone—from time to time, one of the rickshaws would disappear. The landlady spent every day on the veranda overlooking the pomegranate trees, rolling fortune papers into white kelp and tying sashes as piecework.

The kitchen here was perpetually desolate; we never caught the scent of anything resembling food. The well, its surround being shallow, often had cats and dogs falling in. Each time this happened, the landlady would hold up a mirror with many bald patches from above and peer into the deep well.

“There must be some power in Ono-michi town—good thing we didn’t go all the way to Osaka.”

“If we’d gone all the way to Osaka, we’d truly be strugglin’ right about now.”

Around this time, both Father and Mother appeared slightly plumper to my eyes.

I ate my fill of rice every day.
Happy days continued.

“Eat till your belly hardens—long as you’ve got rice inside, nothin’ to fret over.”

“Say—Mother! Auntie and them downstairs... they eatin’?”

“Why wouldn’t they? Can’t work if you don’t eat.”

“But last night—when I went to the toilet—the landlord was tellin’ the landlady, ‘They took even the rickshaw—better off dead,’ cryin’ all the while.”

“Is that so! That rickshaw must’ve been taken by the moneylenders too.”

“Do they even have relatives? I’ve never seen them eating proper meals anywhere.”

“It ain’t like that at all—the landlord here worked on ships when he was young till machinery broke his leg, see? With nobody givin’ a damn, the landlady does nothin’ but roll kelp to keep ’em fed. Pitiful, ain’t it?”

“Would going to the police do any good?”

“They’ll just say nobody knows a thing about it and laugh their heads off!”

“But even if they do bad things, wouldn’t someone get angry?”

“Who’d care?”

“They break people’s legs and act like they don’t know a thing!”

“They’ve got the money—can’t fight that.”

“Is the landlord downstairs some kind of idiot?”
“What nonsense are you spouting?!”

Father carried his organ and lunchbox, wandering through town all day chanting “Oichini-i! Oichini-i!” while selling medicine.

“Try headin’ to the fishin’ town—once word spreads that Oichini-i’s medicine has arrived, everyone’ll come runnin’.”

“That getup’s turnin’ right peculiar, ain’t it.”

A long spell of clear weather continued.

In the mountains, the cherry blossoms scattered, and all at once the surroundings took on a verdant hue.

In the distance, the first frogs had croaked.
White pyrethrum flowers had bloomed as well.

“Aren’t you going to school?”

One day, when I was bringing back rose flowers I'd picked from the mountain tea plantation and planting them at the base of the pomegranate tree, Father returned from his sales rounds and said this to me while washing his face at the wellside.

"You want to go to school? A thirteen-year-old entering fifth grade—there's no such thing. You're not going."

"If I go to school, there'll be good things for me."

"Will they let you into sixth grade?"

"If I keep quiet, they might even put me in sixth grade—since I can read well enough…"

"But still, arithmetic would be difficult, wouldn't it?"

“Well, study up. I’ll take you tomorrow.”

Being able to go to school felt both anxious yet joyful.
That night, my heart thumped wildly, and like a child, I counted the white numbers floating behind my eyelids.

Around midnight—or perhaps it was—just as I began dozing off, a tremendous splashing sound came from the well out back, as if a heavy stone or something had fallen in.
Even dogs and cats—given the well’s depth—had until now only made lapping sounds when falling in, yet this was an unfamiliar, thunderous splash.

“Mother! What was that?”

“Were ya awake? Wonder what that was...”

As we talked, water splashed again with a mournful cry rising up.
The landlord downstairs was crawling around the room while shouting.

“You! Wake up!”
“Someone’s fallen in the well!”

“Who?”

“Wake up and get over there quick—might be Auntie for all we know...!”

My body was trembling violently, and I could no longer speak.

“What on earth happened?”

“You come along too now! Let the kids stay asleep!”

Father went thudding down the ladder steps, shouting as if to splinter them.

When I was left alone, the air pressed in from all around.
I could no longer bear it—I opened the storm shutters and slid open the paper screens.

The pomegranate leaves glistened like hyacinth bean leaves, and a crimson moon, round as a tray, hung above the mountains.
Something darted across my skin.

“What’s happened?!”

Before I knew it, I raised my voice and shouted down below.

I saw Mother holding a mirror and a lamp.

“Here! Grip this rope as hard as you can!”

Father was shouting like this while tying the rope's end to the central pomegranate tree's trunk.

"I'm goin' in now! Just hang on and keep handlin' that rope, will ya!"

Mother's panicked voice could be heard too.

“Masako! Get down here now!”

Father looked up at me peering down and bellowed.
Because I was cold, I slung Father’s yellow-striped coat over my back and scrambled down to the wellside.
On the veranda, the landlord was shouting in a panicked voice that erupted into frantic bursts of laughter.

“Since you’re a good girl, go run to the doctor and tell them to come quietly!”

The stone pavement glistened slickly under the faint lamplight.
A lukewarm night wind blew through everyone’s hems.
Inside the well, multiple ropes hung down as groans welled up with “Uun, uun” sounds.

“Hurry up and go already! What’re you dawdling for?”

I stepped out into the disorienting midnight town. The sound of waves and wind mingled, and a fishy smell pervaded the streets. As befitted the season of Lesser Fullness, something like the twang of a shamisen drifted from afar.

When had I slipped my arms into it? With the collar buttoned at my neck, I found myself wearing Father’s clownish military police uniform.
Perhaps because of that, when I knocked on the corner doctor’s house, the half-asleep rickshaw puller bowed courteously with a level of politeness I had never heard before.

“Whether it be one o’clock or two o’clock matters not—such is a doctor’s duty. If I but hasten there, the doctor shall surely rise and arrive promptly.”

8. The landlady who had fallen into the well came up clutching a soaked cloth-wrapped bundle in one hand.
Inside that black cloth bundle were a satin whalebone sash and a sea otter fur hat that the landlord had bought during his sailor days.
The landlady must have been on her way to the pawnshop through the back door after waiting until late at night.
The pawn ticket fell from between folds of the landlady’s obi.
Mother—perhaps thinking “This woman must be going through hardships too”—hid the pawn ticket so the doctor wouldn’t see.

“That was a close call.”

“Is she all right?”

“Since there are no bruises, as long as no gynecological complications arise, she should be fine as she is.”

The kelp rolls from the landlady's side work—the ones I'd once longed to taste—lay scattered in the corner of the room. I popped five or six pieces into my mouth. The Japanese pepper needled my tongue with a stinging heat.

“She’s come up alive now,” Mother said. “No sense dredging the well.”

Come morning, we gargled noisily with that same water. The landlady’s geta floated in the well’s depths. I borrowed a tarnished mirror to angle light down the shaft and fished out the wooden sandals with a bamboo basket. At each corner of the stone enclosure, Mother heaped small mounds of purification salt and chanted “Onbarajaa, Yuuseisowaka,” palms pressed together in prayer.

A cloudy day, with a rain-laden wind blowing.

Father, wearing the landlord's soiled ogura-cloth hakama over his kimono, took me to the mountain elementary school.

On the way to school, there was a shrine enshrining Emperor Jimmu.
Behind the shrine was a railroad bridge with trains running beneath it.

“If we ride this here, we could get all the way to Tokyo even staying silent the whole time.”

“Can’t we go beyond Tokyo?”

“Barbarians live out there—women and children can’t go.”

“Is there sea past Tokyo?”

“Well now—even your old man hasn’t been that far.”

It was a school with endless stone steps.
Father kept stopping to rest on the stairway.
The schoolyard stretched wide as a desert.
Flower beds at each corner held Japanese apricots, clematis vines, udo shoots, thistles, lupines, azaleas, and Japanese roof irises.

Above the school building, the mountain ridge was visible. When I looked back, the sea was hazy, and several nearby islands came into view.

“You wait here now.”

Father clasped his hands over his hakama ties and entered through the white gate of the teachers’ room.
The land must have been particularly suited to willows—there in the courtyard’s center stood a large willow tree with tender new buds, its back swaying limply like a sheep’s.

I touched the merry-go-round, rode the rotating log, and inhaled the new school’s scent.
But somehow, I felt suffocated.
I stepped outside the school gate, nearly breaking into a run down the stone steps, but when Father shouted “Hey!”, I shuddered like a bird shaking off water and ducked through the teachers’ room doorway.

In the teachers' room, small bookcases resembling canary cages were lined up in two rows.
In the center was a brazier.
There sat Father and the principal side by side.
When Father saw my face, he bowed courteously.
Thinking I too must bow accordingly, I performed a deep ceremonial bow.
The principal looked thoroughly satisfied.

“Let me take you to the classroom.”

“In that case, I shall take my leave here.”
“Well now, I humbly ask for your kind consideration.”

When Father left through the gate, I became sad.
The principal was a tall man.
I recalled a saying I’d learned at some school—“Step back seven feet to avoid treading on your teacher’s shadow”—and followed behind the principal from a distance.

“Quit dawdling and walk faster!”

The principal turned around and scolded me.
Outside the window at the pump well’s puddle, something went clatter... clatter.

When I opened the warped storm-shutter-like door, a wave of children’s breath engulfed me.
“(Girls’ Sixth Grade Class I)” read the placard hanging above the blackboard.
I had skipped half of fifth grade to enter sixth.
A faint unease lingered.

9 The rain continued for a long time.

I gradually grew to dislike going to school.
When I grew accustomed to school, the children swarmed around me and jeered, "Oichinii's new fraud commander's daughter!"
I thought Chaplin’s new fraud commander and Father’s appearance bore no resemblance.
That is why I thought I would tell Father about it someday, but he had completely rotted away from the long rains.

The yellow millet rice continued.
Every time I ate a meal, I couldn’t help but think of a stable.
I did not eat lunch at school.
During lunchtime, I would go into the music room and play the organ.
I skillfully played the organ using Father’s sheet music.

I was often scolded by my teacher because my language was rough.
The teacher was an overweight woman over thirty.
From beneath the large visor of her bangs always peeked out a mop of hair like a rag.

“You must use Tokyo speech.”

So everyone began using the beautiful phrase 'uchi wa ne'.

I would sometimes forget and say “washi wa ne,” only to be mocked by everyone.
When I went to school, I delighted in seeing many beautiful flowers and lithographs I’d never seen before, but the crowd of children never stopped calling me “Shinbakataishō.”

“Don’t you want to go to school anymore?”

“If you’re talking about elementary school, I never finished! Look at you, Mother—can’t even read a book, always dozing off anyway!”

“But still, you’re making such a fuss…”

“What’s so fussy about it?”

“I won’t say!”

“Won’t you tell me?”

“I don’t want to talk about it!”

The rain continued day after day so relentlessly you'd want to slash it with a sword.
The landlady downstairs spent every day inserting fortune slips and Japanese pepper into kelp before tying them into her obi.
Now even the yellow rice was becoming scarce.
Mother had the landlady downstairs find her a job threading wire through tags.
When Mother competed with Father, she was better at threading wire.

I pretended to go to school and headed for the mountain behind it.
The mountainside’s scent seeped through my flannel kimono, pungent and insistent.
When the rain began to fall, I covered my head with a furoshiki and played while leaning against a pine trunk.

It was a fine day.
When I climbed the mountain and lay down in the shade of a bush clover thicket, a man with gym-teacher-long hair was playing with Miss Oume, the rice merchant's daughter.
Perhaps thinking it was an embarrassing situation, I descended the mountain.
The pearl-colored sea glinted painfully against my eyes.

Father and Mother began frequently saying things like, "Shall we try going to Osaka?"
I didn't want to go to Osaka.
Before I knew it, Father's military police uniform had vanished too.
So whenever I remembered when the organ disappeared, my chest felt packed with salt crystals until I could barely breathe from sadness.

“Maybe I should try pulling a rickshaw?”

Father said this, utterly corroded by despair.
At that time, I had come to like a boy—something that felt excruciatingly embarrassing.
The boy I liked happened to be the fishmonger's son.
One day when I was passing by that fish shop, though we'd never spoken before, he called out to me.

“I caught a fish, uh, uh—want one? What’d you like?”
“Black sea bream.”
“Black sea bream? You don’t want somethin’ better?”

There was no one inside the house.
The boy sniffled wetly as he wrapped the black sea bream in newspaper for me.
The black sea bream was still fresh and lively, its scales gleaming silver.

“How many layers you got on?”

“You mean kimono?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s warm out, so I’m not wearing many layers.”

“Here, let me count your collars.”

The boy counted my collars with his fish-scented hand.
When he finished, he pointed to a leatherjacket fish and said, “Want this one too?”

“Fish—I like ’em all.”

“It’s good being a fishmonger—you get to eat fish.”

The boy said he’d take me fishing on his family’s boat someday.
I felt a suffocating tightness in my chest like blood was surging upward.

When I went to school the next day, that boy was the fifth-grade class leader.

Through whose introduction I never knew, Father procured all sorts of cosmetic lotions at ten sen per bottle.
There were blue bottles too.
The red bottles, the yellow bottles—all had beautiful forms.
The patterns featured lilac flowers, and when shaken vigorously, a flour-like cloud would rise from the bottle’s bottom.

“My, how beautiful!”

“If you say it’s ten sen, maybe even girls would buy them.”

“Even I’d want to buy some.”

“Such cheeky talk.”

Father had learned this sort of song from somewhere to sell the cosmetic lotion.

One bottle gives you cherry-blossom cheeks

Two bottles gives you snow-white skin

“Ladies and gentlemen!
Do purchase!”

If you don’t buy, you’ll just turn into charcoal briquettes!

Father spent five whole days getting the organ to match this tune.

“You said they’d rot if we didn’t sell them quick!”

“Is it really okay to sell such awful stuff?”

“Well, whether it’s good or bad don’t matter—we can’t eat if we don’t sell. Ain’t no other way.”

On the outskirts of Onomichi Town lay a village called Yoshikazu.
There was also a sailcloth factory where many female factory workers and fishermen’s wives worked.
Father often went out there.

I thought I liked this modern kind of business.
I stole one red bottle and hid it beside the hando urn.

“As times progress, I wonder if things can be made both cheap and modern.”

Throughout the town, the song “One bottle gives you cherry-blossom cheeks” caught on.
The cosmetic lotion sold well every time they took it out.

Around that time, an old woman came by who walked around selling beef from a basket. Since there must have been good profit, Mother bought it generously and often. When we added konjac, it turned a blood-like color, and even though we said "This must be dog meat or something," the three of us often ate that red meat because it was cheap.

"I told you it was dog meat."

The landlady downstairs gave the meat she'd bought to a dog, and when it refused to eat it, she confirmed that it was indeed dog meat.

The day came when the rain cleared up crisply.

One day, when I returned from the mountain school, Mother was choking back tears.

“What happened?”

“Father, well... has been taken to the police.”

I will never forget the sorrow of that moment.
My eyelids grew heavy like wax paper.

“Mother’s just going to the police station. You be a good girl and wait here.”

“I’m going too.—I wanna tell Father to come home.”

“If you go, you’ll just get scolded—stay put!”

“No way!
“No way!
I don’t wanna be left alone!”

“I’ll slap you if you don’t quiet down!”

After Mother went out, I wailed.
Even when the landlady downstairs crawled up and lay down beside me, I kept crying loudly.

“Father said—Ah, Auntie!
“During the war, people made fortunes stuffing stones into cans—he said his doings were smaller than grains of sand…”

“Don’t cry now, your father ain’t done nothin’ wrong—it’s them what made the stuff that’s to blame, you know.”

“No matter what I do, I just keep crying!
“I can’t even eat!”

I ran to the police station in the center of town that evening.

I leaned against the iron door with arabesque patterns and waited for Father and Mother to come out.
“Onbarajaa, yuuseisowaka.”
I gripped the iron bar and prayed vaguely to the sky.

I grew lonely.

I could hear the rattling sound of a bell coming from the water police station at the back.

I went around to the back, climbed up a warped pale blue-painted window, and peered down.

The electric lights were blazing harshly.
In the corner of the room, Mother appeared smaller than a mouse through my eyes.
Father was being slapped sharply by the police officer before Mother.

“Come on, sing us a song!”

Father played the organ in a strange voice as he sang,
“Two bottles for snow-white skin.”
“Sing louder!”
“Ha ha... Slap on some flour and call it snow-white skin—cheap trick, ain’t it?”

Sadness welled up inside me.
Father was being slapped indiscriminately by the police officer.

"You idiot!
You idiot!"

I let out a simian cry and ran toward the coast.

“Masako!” I heard Mother’s voice call out, but deep within my ears, something distant like grinding gears kept screeching endlessly.

(Showa 6th Year, April)