Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

The postman entered with footsteps that sounded like a policeman’s.

“Is there a Fukushima Iso here?”

He said this in an impatient tone and took out a thick envelope affixed with two red revenue stamps from the bundle of postcards and letters.

It was precisely the hour when Dotonbori’s nightscape was about to come alive. The theater across the street seemed to be in intermission, and Sanyu-ya’s shop had suddenly become so crowded with orders from the second-floor banquet rooms, the main theater building, and advance teahouses that both the cashier’s counter and kitchen were in a frenzy.

“Fukushima Iso… Here, here!” called busy Ofumi, thrusting her pale hand out from the cashier’s counter.
The men and women with work sashes kept swirling around the postman, yet remained too absorbed in customers to take the thick sealed letter from his hand for their mistress.

“You ought to put up a nameplate. Can’t address it proper without knowing which household this is.”

The grim-faced postman tossed the envelope toward the counter without ceremony, pivoted sharply, and stomped out through the noren curtain—nostrils flaring at the kitchen’s eel smoke as he departed.

Because the large order of forty servings from the advance teahouse had been grilled and ready, and she had settled accounts with up to twelve groups of customers on the second floor as well, Ofumi finally retrieved the thick sealed letter from beneath her knee and began scrutinizing its exterior closely.
The handwriting was unmistakably familiar at a glance, but there was no sender’s name.
Though blurred, she could nonetheless make out the characters 'Tokyo Central' that marked the postmark.

What the... How absurd.

Muttering quietly to herself, Ofumi placed the thick sealed letter into the cash drawer just as it was, but after a while took it out again to examine. Yet breaking the seal now felt terrifying.

“Fukushima Iso… How’d he find out I changed my name? Weird.”
“Wonder if Uncle told ’im.”

Ofumi thought this and again gazed intently at the characters of the thick letter’s address.

Each time the colors changed on the neon sign displaying "Sanyu-ya" that illuminated the riverside roof behind them, Ofumi’s back became hued with reds, blues, purples—shifting patterns of light reflected on the glass-paned shoji doors.

The once bustling crowd of customers had thinned to just one group each on the second floor and downstairs.
The pair on the second floor, who had been there for nearly an hour since their third sake flask was replaced, seemed likely to skip out on their bill, so the hired maids crept up the stairs one after another.

II

The new hired maid mistook him for a customer, and Ofumi’s uncle Gentarō entered.

“Welcome!” When the new maid shouted this, everyone burst into laughter. Some were doubled over with laughter.

“Uncle, you’ve come at just the right time. A letter like this just arrived, hasn’t it? I felt uneasy lookin’ at it alone, so I was thinkin’ of callin’ you over.”

Ofumi, without so much as glancing at the maids who were still guffawing, looked up at her uncle’s large frame standing before the cashier’s counter and spoke.

“Where’s the letter from?”
"...Isn’t it from Fukuzō?"

Gentarō, his thick waist slightly bent with age, swayed unsteadily as he filled the narrow passage beside the cashier’s counter. Revealing the small knot of his stiff obi, he entered the three-mat room behind him.

There were chests and fly-proof cabinets and all sorts of furniture piled up like storage, leaving only about one tatami mat’s worth of space for people to sit. In that narrow open space where Gentarō sat cross-legged with his large frame, he clumsily attempted to smoke tobacco—a habit he’d taken up after turning fifty—by pulling out the tobacco pouch tucked at his waist. But with neither a brazier nor an ashtray present, he idly fiddled with the kiseru pipe packed with tobacco while gazing at the beautiful play of lights on the opposite riverbank. The opposite riverbank was Sōemonchō, where lights from some sort of establishments swayed and glittered upon the river water like scattered fireflies trampled underfoot. The early autumn night wind carried a chill, and ripples formed upon the river.

“You guessed right, Uncle.
...It came from Tokyo, hasn't it?
...Here it is.”

After verifying the mixed silver and copper coins from the second-floor customers who seemed likely to skip their bill, then accepting new customers’ orders for beer and crucian carp tempura salad, Ofumi found a brief moment of respite. She turned around and said:
In her hand was a thick sealed letter.

“So it’s from Fukuzō after all. What’s he saying this time?...Asking for money again?”
“I know already.”

Gentarō squinted his eyes, holding it up to the light streaming from the shop as he peered at the envelope’s address in an attempt to read it, but it was too dark to make out.

“Maybe I should have you read it first, Uncle… I haven’t opened it yet.”

Though she said this, the sealed letter remained tightly gripped in Ofumi’s hand, showing no sign of being passed to Gentarō.

“You might as well read it first yourself. …It came to you after all.”

“I don’t know what it is, but I feel scared, you know…”

“Don’t be absurd. What nonsense are you spouting?”

With a sneer curling at the tip of his nose, Gentarō kept fiddling with his unlit pipe.

“Then I’ll go read it over there.”
“...Uncle, mind the counter awhile. When that viper eel order comes in at five, have Kinta check the fish tank. ...Kinta, you got that?”

Lightly rising to her feet, Ofumi spoke to her uncle and the chef Kinta, then entered the dim three-mat room still gripping the thick sealed letter.

“Alright, I’ll take over now. Heave-ho!” With a grunt, Gentarō raised his thick waist from the floor, grasped his kiseru pipe in his right hand and tobacco pouch in his left, then took Ofumi’s place at the cashier’s counter.

Kinta the chef, wearing a headband of tie-dyed cloth, was splitting eels with a smooth, almost mechanical motion when he glanced sideways at Gentarō’s face and smirked.

“If we don’t turn on the lights here too, ’tis downright unbearable. Mother’s a thrifty one, says we needn’t bother, but ’s too dark to manage a thing here, Uncle. Twenty-eight bulbs we’re burning already—addin’ one measly five-candlepower won’t make a lick of difference now, will it Uncle?”

Groping through the three-mat room's shelf loaded with clutter and making it clatter, Ofumi spoke loudly as if muttering to herself, then struck a match with a snap and lit the hand lantern.

In the candlelight flickering in the river wind, Ofumi’s well-fleshed profile glowed white as she intently unfolded the long letter. Gentarō occasionally glanced back at her while thinking—had his niece already turned thirty-six?

Gentarō kept thinking how recent it all seemed—those mornings watching his niece’s retreating figure as she left for elementary school clutching her woolen lunch bag, called “Off to school, Fukushima-san!” by friends. Yet here he now saw above Ofumi’s bowed head, immersed in reading her runaway husband’s letter, the same butterfly-wing chignon she’d worn since her wedding day when taking in an adopted husband, never once styled differently.
The butterfly-wing chignon trembled faintly as if shivering.

“He hasn’t written anything at all. …Just goes on and on.”
“…Says he’s sick an’ needs money sent, then asks how the kids are doin’… Claims he’s finally learned his lesson this time—says he’s sorry an’ wants t’crawl back… Same old tune.”

Though her mouth spoke as if it were nothing, Ofumi's eyes—abnormally bright as they stared fixedly at the letter—were faintly revealed in the candlelight.

"Well then Uncle, have a look at it."
"What a riot 'tis."

Trying to appear indifferent while forcing an artificial smile at her lips, Ofumi reluctantly discarded the letter there. She stood up, approached behind her uncle, and wordlessly attempted to take over the cashier's counter.

“Heave-ho!” With another laborious heave of his hips, Gentarō crawled his large frame into the three-mat room where the hand lantern still burned and settled into place.
The kiseru pipe remained unsmoked since earlier, clutched in his right hand alongside the brush.

“Uncle—the brush… the brush.” Ofumi retrieved the cashier’s brush from her uncle’s hand and sat languidly on the zabuton cushion still retaining the warmth from his plump knees, then forced out a yawn as if squeezing out what refused to emerge naturally.

Gentarō finally managed to light his tobacco with the candle flame, made his poorly cleaned pipe whistle noisily, and awkwardly exhaled smoke as he cast his eyes upon the letter that lay carelessly opened.

“That someone knows about ‘Fukushima Iso’ on the envelope—it’s downright baffling.”

When Ofumi had read three or four lines of the letter and said this, Gentarō twisted his neck to look at her while still bent over the document.

“Back when Fukuzō was around, I kept telling him—‘Oiso’ pairs better with ‘Fukushima’ than ‘Ofumi,’ see? Since ‘shima’ means island, ‘iso’ [seashore] makes the name flow right. …That’s why he wrote it this way now.”
“My own name was Fukushima Fukuzō too... but too much ‘fuku’ [fortune] brings ill luck. So I told him Fukushima Riki’s better ’cause the stroke count’s auspicious—said he should go by Riki. But did he write it that way? ...When he wrote to my place, he properly used Riki and addressed it to Mr. Fukushima Teruhisa.”
“He doesn’t use ‘Gentarō’ with me.”

Gentarō tried to steer the conversation toward his favorite topic of name divination.

"What a tangled mess it's become, everyone having two names each," she said. "...But I wonder if changing Fukuzō to Riki would make him the slightest bit better as a person."

Affecting a casual tone of idle chatter, Ofumi sought her uncle's judgment about her runaway husband.

"Even if that bastard changes his name, it won't change a thing."

Having said this nonchalantly, Gentarō straightened his posture and readjusted his cross-legged position.
Ofumi briefly inspected the grilled eel and rolled omelette that had been prepared, attached the number sixteen tag, and had the hired maids take them upstairs.

“Just the other day, when I had the name divination master look into my own affairs, I mentioned Fukushima Fukuzō’s name and his age of forty-four. Right away, the master said, ‘This man’s no good—a wastrel whose debauchery’ll never end.”
“The only time it’ll stop is when his life runs out.”
“‘His nature being cold-hearted and cruel, even if he manages to gain some standing from here on out, he’ll just fail again—and through repeating such things, gradually sink into worse ways,’ he said.”
“Spot on, ain’t it?”

Finally setting down the kiseru pipe that had become completely clogged, Gentarō spoke in a thoroughly somber tone.
Ofumi pretended not to hear, keeping her face turned toward the kitchen as she made a disgusted expression.

III

Gentarō once again lowered his head and was about to resume reading the lengthy, half-finished letter when a loud voice suddenly rang out from the river below.

“Hey… hey… Sanyu-ya… Hey… Sanyu-ya.”

With a grunt of “heave-ho,” Gentarō lifted his heavy body, opened the glass-paned shoji at his waist, and cautiously placed one foot on the two-shaku-wide wet veranda extending over the water when another loud voice rang out from the river.

“Hey, Sanyu-ya!... Two servings of eel rice, will ya?”

“Uh, well...” Giving a strange reply, Gentarō peered into the river, but all he could see were the dazzling reflections of multicolored advertising lights; the details of the dark flowing water remained unclear.

“Uncle! Uncle!” called Ofumi’s voice from behind. When he turned from the cashier’s counter, she stood with both hands at her left hip, gesturing as if laying down something long.

“Ah, a saber, ’tis?”

Finally comprehending, Gentarō answered Ofumi in a low voice,

“Right away, we’ll prepare it for you,” he shouted toward the black water.

When Gentarō fixed his gaze and peered intently toward the voice that had called “Alright, hurry it up,” he saw a small boat clinging to the stone wall directly below as if pasted there. Inside it, dimly lit by a red lantern stained with oil smoke, two pale figures squirmed restlessly.
The reason one of those pale figures suddenly turned black was that it must have donned an overcoat.

The order from the water's surface—which had bypassed the usual serving sequence and rushed the chef—was promptly prepared. Along with an additional dish of food, pickles, and teapots added separately, everything was placed in the flat basket with a long rope kept ready for such occasions, then lowered down to the water by Gentarō's hand.

“Thank you,” came a strange voice from the water’s surface, prompting Gentarō to let slip an absurd smile.

A hired maid entered the three-mat room, stepped out onto the wet veranda, gazed at the crimson lights across the river while tapping the railing and softly humming a trumpet tune—when abruptly,

“The gentleman from Uemachi… Ms. Yachiyo, you’re something else.”
“She took the whole summer off, didn’t she?”
“...Heard she’s back now, but I wonder if she made enough to retire proper.”

The riverside residence called Kaga-ya—where Yachiyo of Tomita-ya lived, she who was hailed as the district’s top geisha—shone with especially vivid lights across the bank, while the sharp plucks of shamisen picks seemed to drift over from that direction.
The sky brimmed with stars that appeared to rival the lights and colors of both shores reflected in the black river water.

The curly-haired hired maid with a dark complexion and large feet, who had started gossiping about the top geisha, resumed tapping the railing and humming her trumpet tune when Gentarō offered no response.

Gentarō, who had spread the letter before him and sat with arms firmly crossed, saw after a short while that the emptied dishes in the basket were being hauled up from the river by a hired maid's hand, then suddenly turned toward the cashier's counter.

“This—how much’s it gonna be?” he blurted in a shrill voice.

“That’ll do just fine—tell ’em same as last time.”

While flicking the abacus beads, Ofumi answered without turning around. Almost simultaneously, the knowing maid peered down from the wet veranda—

“That’ll do—same as last time!” she shouted.
From the water’s surface came an indistinct reply, its meaning lost.
Soon the small boat—bearing a single dim red lantern, soot-blackened and faint—glided soundless across the black water, scattering reflections of both banks’ lights as it rowed away into darkness.

IV

Gentarō, who had been sitting with arms crossed in thought, once again lowered his head and turned to the lengthy letter.
This time he read it aloud in a low voice, but it took quite some time to finish.

From the cashier's counter, Ofumi used her sharp eyes to manage the constant stream of arriving and departing guests while ensuring all twenty-eight male and female hired hands worked diligently, her entire being strained to the limit.
As the night grew later, the stream of customers steadily increased.
From the entrance hung with noren curtains, through the T-shaped tawara earthen floor connecting the downstairs hall and second-floor staircase, water was constantly sprinkled, while above it the sound of footwear resonated incessantly.

With the peak period approaching just before the theater’s closing time, Ofumi stood and retightened her obi in preparation for the coming battle, though she occasionally glanced back to gauge her uncle’s expression as he read the letter.

“Send twenty yen… It’s written right here, isn’t it?” Gentarō squinted his eyes and looked toward Ofumi.

“That’s how it is,” Ofumi replied lightly, as if discussing someone else’s matter.

“Just how much debt does Fukuzō have exactly?”

As Gentarō pressed on speaking, Ofumi made mental calculations amid her busyness.

"There must be about a thousand yen," she answered as casually as ever, as if discussing neighborhood gossip.

"Last time it came out to about twelve hundred yen in exposed debts, and before that too there was every bit of eight hundred yen, wasn't there?... Add this thousand now and it makes three thousand."
"...One pricey adopted son he turned out to be."

Ofumi tried to bury Gentarō's words—now naturally dripping with sarcasm—in her busyness, pretending not to hear them as she spotted a male and female hired hand whispering furtively in a dark corner.

“Tomekichi! Otsuru! What are you two doing? In the middle of this rush…”
“In the middle of this rush… Isn’t it thanks to the business that this many customers keep coming to eat?”
“Those who neglect the business – we won’t keep ’em in this house! Scram right this instant!” she shouted in a shrill voice.
The male and female hired hands, as if struck by lightning, darted apart to either side.

“He’s come begging to borrow another twenty yen from Mitsuya, ain’t he?… When he ran off this spring, he already owed thirty yen to that same Mitsuya.”
“How in the world does he have the gall to say such shameless things?”

As if pursuing relentlessly, Gentarō showered the itemized list of Fukuzō’s debts onto Ofumi’s back.

“Where’s Mitsuya?”
“That Hisakichi who was doing deliveries at home last year—he’s now at Maruri in Shimanouchi.”
“While staying there, this spring he apparently asked Hisakichi to lend him one yen.”
“When he gets desperate, he loses all sense of shame and reputation, I tell ya.”

Resuming a casual tone as if making small talk, Ofumi kept glancing back over her shoulder while nodding along to her uncle’s words.

“That sheer gall of his—beggin’ at Mitsuya and sake shops and katsuobushi dealers we trade with... Even when they tell him they won’t lend another red cent, those suppliers still cough up cash thinkin’, ‘What if Fukuzō comes crawlin’ back?’ Can’t really blame ’em though.”
“If he did slink back here, he’d still be Sanyu-ya’s master after all.”
“That’s when their payback’ll sting like hellfire, ya know?”
“Truth be told, them suppliers ain’t exactly rollin’ in clover themselves.”

With his words taking on a tone of feigned sympathy, Gentarō let out a heavy sigh.

“From when he was an apprentice at a udon shop till he turned forty-four, he’d been here in Osaka—born in Yamato but same as any Osakan.”
“There’s even folks we don’t know about—leave ’im in Tokyo like that, he’d just keep sendin’ beggin’ letters everywhere and pile up more debts, I tell ya.”
“What a damn mess this is.”

Her manner of speech finally took on a tone that suggested this wasn’t someone else’s affair anymore, Ofumi’s blue veins throbbing visibly across her broad white forehead.

“Ah, ‘We humbly request you kindly send hamo skin’… What kind of nonsense is this?” said Gentarō, laughing as he read the small characters at the very end of the long letter.

“It’s ’cause vinegar-dressed hamo skin’s his favorite thing in the world, see.”
“…’Cause they don’t have that in Tokyo, see.”

Recalling her husband’s favorite food, Ofumi’s heart grew more and more unsettled.

“Slice the hamo skin thin, marinate it in vinegar-soy sauce overnight, and serve it on warm rice—it’s quite passable, see,” said Gentarō while rolling up the long letter, his tone feigning cheerfulness.

V

Okaji, who had retired to Ōhama in Sakai and was raising three grandchildren, entered carrying Ke, her three-year-old grandchild.

“Mother, you came at just the right time. Uncle’s here too,” Ofumi greeted her mother with a cheerful face.

“Welcome, Madam,” the veteran male and female hired hands said in unison, momentarily adopting postures as if at attention.

“There there, little one.
“There there, your mama’s here.”
“There there, Gramps is here,” Okaji sang in a lilting tone to the grandchild on her back as she shuffled into the three-mat room where Gentarō sat cross-legged.

The grandchild, once set down from her back, puckered up immediately upon seeing either her mother’s face or her great-uncle’s, and clung to her grandmother’s bosom.

“What a trial,” Okaji murmured wearily. With her thinning hair pulled back tightly, she adjusted the small butterfly-shaped bun that had come undone with both hands, then hurriedly scooped up her grandchild and let them play at her withered breast.

“That child resembles Fukuzō the most,” said Gentarō in a heavy tone, fixing his gaze on the child atop his sister’s lap.

“If he takes after him down to the core, that’ll be the end of it.”

Laughing, Okaji quietly pulled away the small hand gripping her withered breast and adjusted her collar.
The grandchild finally left the grandmother’s lap and, with an air of curiosity while looking toward the great-uncle, shook their pale, flat face with narrow eye corners and toddled unsteadily toward the damp veranda.

“If it were a boy we’d have worries, but since it’s a girl, well… that’s some relief.”

Amid the shop’s battlefield-like bustle, Ofumi turned around from the cashier’s counter and said irritably.

Acting as though she hadn’t heard this, Okaji picked up the kiseru pipe before her brother and tried to take a puff, but frowned upon finding the pipe clogged.

“Brother, it’s clogged again.
This’s what ya get with amateur smokers,” she said, looking down as she fashioned a paper spill and began meticulously cleaning the pipe.

“A letter’s come from Fukuzō.
...Go on and read it,” said Gentarō, shoving the thick sealed letter in front of his sister.

“Is that Fukuzō’s letter…? I was just thinkin’ of usin’ it to make a paper spill for cleanin’ this kiseru.”

After merely glancing at the sealed letter, Okaji frowned deeply and continued cleaning the kiseru pipe, dragging out its vile black residue.

“Well, since it’ll just take a moment—read that letter.”
“We can’t discuss this unless you read that.”

“If it’s Fukuzō’s letter, I can guess most of what’s in it without reading… Bad eyes or not, this light’s too dim to make out the words anyway.”
“Then you read it out loud for us.”

Setting the kiseru pipe down and deftly trimming the shortened candle wick, Okaji took a satisfying drag from the now smoothly drawing pipe and exhaled a thick cloud of smoke.
Gentarō stared at his sister’s face with an air of admiration for her superior way of smoking tobacco compared to his own.

The grandchild returned to the grandmother’s lap again and, without playing with the withered breast, assumed an innocent expression before falling soundly asleep.

“Reading Fukuzō’s letter aloud feels downright awkward... Well then, let me just rattle off what’s written inside.”

Gentarō said this and, while assuming a posture as if bracing himself,

“Well now, he’s got the usual request for funds here… Took a proper thrashing this time—twenty yen… Then there’s transferring the shop’s deed to Fukuzō’s name.”
“Even if we put on naniwabushi recitals, moving pictures, or Naniwa-za shows now and then, he’d still kick up a fuss about it.”
“Just agree to this much and he’ll slide right back into the old arrangement—claims he’ll settle the debts he made himself, so no need to worry… Rambles for pages, but strip it down and that’s the meat of it. Oh aye—and send a yen’s worth of hamo skin while you’re at it.” He tossed the letter aside after reciting its contents with a theatrical flourish, rolling it backward before letting it drop.

With a fearsome expression plastered across her face, Okaji listened unblinkingly, an acrid half-smile clinging to her lips.

"What drivel—now it's us beggin' him to come crawlin' back? ...You think we'd bite at such transparent bait?" she scoffed, settling the child onto a zabuton before yanking a shikibuton from the cupboard and draping it over the small form.
The whispery breaths persisted beneath the restaurant's din—soft yet insistent as tide against pilings.

“Wasn’t that Naramaru deal—buying him for a thousand yen over three days and making a thousand back, breaking even—Fukuzō’s crowning achievement in show business? …Every other venture’s been pure loss.”
“If he gets mixed up in that sort of thing again, who knows what’ll happen.”
“…We won’t put on any of those shows whatsoever.”
“The shop’s registration can be transferred only after he returns it, assesses his conduct, and settles his own debts.”
“Furthermore, he must write a signed pledge stating he won’t run away from home under any circumstances.”
“…If he doesn’t firmly promise all this, then this time—this very time—I won’t let him cross our threshold.”

Despite being just four or five years shy of seventy, Okaji—her face remarkably unwrinkled and neatly composed for her age—strained her facial muscles and raised her voice loud enough to reach both the shop’s staff and customers.

At the cashier’s counter, Ofumi kept flipping through the ledger with an air of feigned ignorance.

Six

Though the bustle outside showed no sign of abating even past ten at night, the shop grew quiet.

“Mother, you should stay over tonight. …You can’t possibly leave now.”

Having finally regained control of her body now that her hands were free, Ofumi left the cashier’s counter and stood by her mother’s side.

“I don’t need to leave yet, but dragging a sleeping child onto the train would be such a hassle. It’s been ages—guess I’ll stay over then.”
“…Is Brother leaving already?”

Gentarō, who had been dozing atop that day’s newspaper, looked around in surprise,

“Ah, I’ll be going now,” he said, reaching out to put away the tobacco pouch before his sister, but the kiseru pipe remained in her hand—she who had been smoking nonstop all this while.

“It’s so cramped here… Lying down in this spot takes me back to when I rode that thirty-koku boat on the Yodo River.”
“…Might as well wait for a food boat to show up.” Okaji returned the kiseru pipe to her brother and lay down beside her sleeping grandchild.

“Uncle, how ’bout we go get some zenzai? …Been ages since Mother minded the cashier’s counter for a spell.”
“Well now, Mother—you’ll handle it just fine, won’tcha?”

As if she’d forgotten everything, speaking with breezy ease, Ofumi started getting ready to leave.

“No need. My eyes may’ve gone bad, but I’ve been doing this work till now—managing the cashier’s counter when it’s quiet like this, I can still handle that much.” With that, Okaji sat up briskly and took her seat at the cashier’s counter.

“Well, since your intentions remain unchanged as ever… Uncle, let’s go.”

With the spirited Ofumi leading the way, Gentarō bent his thick waist and shuffled through the shop’s noren curtain, emerging onto the bustling Dotonbori street.

“A cow led to Zenkoji pilgrimage, as they say—but here it’s a horse leading the cow away.” Squinting her eyes beneath the cashier’s counter’s bright electric light, Okaji smiled as she watched the two depart.

Seven

Across the street in front of the theater, a red banner had been put up, on which was written the number of attendees for a full house.
There, crowds of people had gathered in a dense black mass, bathed in the glow of flower-shaped electric lights as they gazed at the billboards.
The playbills, which depicted everything from the prologue to the climax in a vulgar style that couldn’t quite be called ukiyo-e or anything else, were hung all across the front of the theater; even their wide crepe fabric borders adorned with bamboo and sparrow patterns looked garish.

Ofumi and Gentarō made their way through the crowd, passing women with thick red-and-white makeup adjusting their kimono hems and others clutching light green cloth bundles containing box-like objects, then turned toward Sennichimae.

“They say ya don’t find many folks in Western clothes round Sennichimae.”
“Now that ya mention it, that does seem to be the case,” said Gentarō, keeping his eyes on as many individuals as possible in the crowd that threatened to collide with them at any moment.

“Soldiers are an exception, ain’t they?”
“But they’re all wearin’ Western clothes now.”

Saying this in her usual light tone, Ofumi turned with a smile into the narrow alley behind Hōzenji Temple. Passing through an area where shops displaying food lined both sides, when they entered this alleyway, the smell of food seemed to well up again from deep within.

In the alley stood vaudeville theaters too. The path was so narrow that barely one person could pass through at a time, making the ticket takers' booming calls for customers seem liable to pierce passersby's eardrums. Glancing briefly at playbills bearing performers' names lining the alley, Ofumi came to stand before the large Okame doll displayed shrine-like on a signboard beside Zenzaiya further ahead.

“This Okame doll’s an old one, isn’t it. Keeps the same face no matter how many years pass… Must’ve been here since you were a kid, Uncle.”

With a strangely impressed look on her face, Ofumi did not move from in front of the Okame doll. The white face that seemed to overflow with smiles, the black hair swept back, the blue and red hues of its kimono, the figure bent forward as if welcoming customers—all appeared utterly unchanged from decades past when Ofumi had first seen this doll. From her childhood when she first saw this Okame doll until today, so many things had happened. And Ofumi found herself thinking such things again, wondering just how much longer this doll would keep smiling like this from now on.

“Since my late grandma said it’d been here since her childhood, it must be ancient beyond reckoning.”

Having said this, Gentarō too found himself wanting to imagine all manner of scenes from when his grandmother—who had passed away the year before last at seventy-one—was a child gazing upon this Okame doll. Back in those days, Sennichimae was said to have been a graveyard, but this area was already bustling like this, with crowds of people strolling about while sniffing the aromas of food arrayed in shopfronts. All that food entered people’s bellies, and those people themselves gradually died off. And then new people would emerge one after another—preparing food, arranging it, walking about—only to gradually die off in turn. How much longer will this Okame doll go on watching all this in this way?

While standing there vacantly pondering such things, Gentarō found himself growing woozy,

“There might be a fire tonight—burn everything to ashes for all I know,” he muttered loud enough for even his own ears to catch. Startled by his own words, he hunched his shoulders and glanced around.

“What are you goin’ on about? …A fire breakin’ out? Where’s it gonna burn down? …Honestly… Get a grip already, would ya?”

Ofumi grinned, pulling her uncle’s sleeve as she spoke.

“Come on, let’s hurry in and have some zenzai, shall we? What’re you dawdlin’ for?” Suddenly looking flustered, Gentarō tried to duck under Zenzaiya’s noren curtain.

“Uncle, Uncle… Don’t stand there dawdlin’. Come over here.” With brisk steps, Ofumi walked from the cramped entrance of the chic little eatery across from Zenzaiya and stood on the tawara earthen floor, water sprinkled so liberally that her feet grew damp.
The compact stepping stone was completely soaked with water, the faint light of the basket-shaped lantern reflecting upon it.

“Ah, Madam, welcome in.
“My, it’s been ages! Quite the cold shoulder you’ve been giving us, haven’t ya?
“Come on in.”

The plump woman in a red apron, carrying a tray laden with food, noticed Ofumi standing by the stepping stone as she passed through the narrow hallway and chattered briskly.

“Since I came up here meaning to stay, ain’t no way I’d turn tail and leave.”

Having said this, the woman in the red apron gave a slap to Ofumi’s back—Ofumi having kicked off her geta onto the stepping stone—and,

“Oh, Madam…” she began, putting on an exaggeratedly exasperated look, but the moment she spotted Gentarō’s large figure following behind and entering,

“Oh—you’ve brought someone? …Well then, come on up.”
“Please come this way,” she said gently, guiding them up the cramped staircase to the second floor.

From the steep, tea room-style staircase—slender and delicately constructed—to the hallway, Gentarō filled his large frame to capacity, creaking as he went while being mindful of the low ceiling that seemed ready to graze his head, following behind the maid and Ofumi into a sharp turn leading to the back of the second floor.

“I can’t stand things like zenzai.”
“If we went to a place like that, Mother would get angry—that’s what I told her.”

Surveying the several groups of customers dining behind the many standing screens in the spacious room across the way, Ofumi spoke in a relaxed manner, with evident satisfaction.

“Madam, welcome in.”

“Madam, it’s been an age, hasn’t it.”

With such remarks, four or five red-aproned maids—some thin, some plump—came out one after another.
Each time this happened, Ofumi wrapped something white in tissue paper and gave it over, which Gentarō watched with keen eyes while smoking his tobacco in an awkward manner.

The plump maid brought over a tray laden with elaborately twisted utensils that chimed faintly like small bells.

"Why don't you have a cup?" said the maid as she retrieved a cup sunk at the bottom of the cup washer, shook off the water, and first offered it to Gentarō.
Gentarō gave only a fleeting glance at the yellowish sake poured before him on the counter, never pausing his clumsy handling of the tobacco pipe.

“This ain’t no high-class spot like Jūtei or Irifune we’re at—mightn’t suit your tastes... But go on and have some anyway... Miss.”

Ofumi, having gulped down the first cup offered to her, said this and then had the maid pour a second round while—
“Miss, this gentleman here might look like some country bumpkin, but he’s known at all the best places—Jūtei, Irifune, even Tomita-ya.”
“Don’t you go treatin’ him like some nobody to be tucked away in a corner.” Her voice already carried the slur of intoxication.
“Truly, he can’t be tucked away in a corner.”
“Such a refined gentleman you are—why don’t you have a cup?” The maid slid the Bizen-ware sake decanter toward Gentarō with her knee.

“He went around with Naramaru-han, you see.”
“Even Geiko-han, Yachiyo-han, and Yoshiisa-han—he knows them all.”

Having said this, Ofumi recalled when her husband Fukuzō had secured Naramaru for three days with a thousand yen, drawing a full house, and been hailed as “Master of Sanyu-ya” again and again while making the rounds of teahouses.
And now the absurdity of it all came surging up—Uncle Gentarō following behind Fukuzō without being properly a supervisor nor part of the entourage, experiencing for the first time in his life the taste of teahouse revelry.

“Stop talkin’ nonsense,” Gentarō finally said with a hint of laughter as he picked up his cup and drank about half of the cold sake.

The maid served small portions of Ofumi’s favorites—sea urchin and sea cucumber intestines—on individual plates, arranged various other elaborate dishes, then withdrew from the room for a time.
Ofumi drank three or four cups by herself and then poured from the hot replacement sake decanter into Gentarō’s cup with a gurgling sound.

“Your mother’s had an inkling about your drinking for a while now. But what with the shop being so busy and Fukuzō’s troubles, she’s probably biting her tongue—though she must be irritated as all hell. Still, you’d do well not to overdo the drink.”

While wolfing down nothing but side dishes, Gentarō said gently.

“Just leave it be, Uncle.”
“You should save your opinions for when I’m not drinking.”
“When you give me your opinions while I’m drinking, the sake loses its flavor.”
“……Uncle, it’s not like you don’t know a thing about splurging money yourself.”
“Come along with me to Horie this time.”
“My face’s too well-known around these parts—let’s call someone pretty over in Horie.”

Having said this, Ofumi drank four or five more cups without touching any of the food, and in the end summoned a cup, had it filled, and gulped it down.

Without another word, Gentarō ate the raw fish sushi that Ofumi had ordered for him.

VIII

When Ofumi and Gentarō left the small restaurant, it was well past midnight.
The vaudeville theaters had long closed, and the narrow alleyways lay hushed, as if exhaling the fatigue accumulated since daytime.

“When I was about six, see—I went running ahead of dead Obā to that Okame doll display, when clang! I smacked my dotama [head] against something hard. Didn’t even hurt from the pain……’Cause I’d gone and bumped my head right against a samurai’s sword tip.
"I was more scared than hurt, thinking the samurai might get angry."
"The face of that samurai laughing at me—I can still see it clear as day.……And then there was that other time when my head went right into the tip of his sword’s hilt—bumped it again, I did."

With the nostalgic tale of times past that had been recalled—which made the drunken Ofumi laugh—Gentarō walked ahead through the thinned-out crowds of Sennichimae toward Dotonbori.

"You're such an old-timer yourself, Uncle. Ain’t like seein’ ’em on a theater stage—you saw a real samurai wearin’ two swords back then, didn’tcha?" Ofumi said with a chuckle, following close behind her uncle without any particular sign of drunkenness.

“If I go home now, Mother’ll catch the liquor smell—so I’ll walk a spell to clear my head. Let’s part ways here, Uncle.”

Having said this, Ofumi turned west at the intersection and walked away. Gentarō followed after her as if giving chase, and together they circled briskly from Ebisubashi Bridge toward Sōemonchō.

At Tomita-ya, Itamikō, and Yamatoya alike, sleepy lights glowed, and even the lively town lay damp.
Now and then they came across made-up women being escorted away, who seemed almost like foxes or some such creatures.

“I think I’ll go to Tokyo for a bit…… Tonight’s the night, you know.
......If I take the night train there and come back on the next day’s night train, Mother will keep it quiet for us, won’t she?
......That’s how I want to go and settle things somehow…… Even if we leave him as he is, there’s no way around it.
I can’t keep this up no more—runnin’ that business alone with all them hands to manage......Take a day off in between, so during that time you’ll handle the cash counter for me, Uncle.”

Her drunkenness had completely subsided, and Ofumi earnestly began to say such things.

“Meeting Fukuzō now is downright unthinkable,” said Gentarō, thoroughly at a loss.

IX

At Nihonbashi Crossing, after putting her uncle aboard an all-night streetcar bound for the children-filled Uemachi house, Ofumi stopped by a still-open kamaboko shop in Dotonbori where she bought one yen's worth of hamo skin, instructed a sleepy-looking apprentice to prepare the parcel for mailing, then hurried home carrying it.

Since her mother Okaji seemed not yet to have fallen asleep in the three-mat room, she stealthily pushed the parcel of hamo skin beneath the cashier’s counter, went to the downstairs toilet, and turned on the light switch—the sudden illumination revealing the shadows of two hired hands standing there: a man and a woman.

“Tomekichi and Otsuru again… Get out. Now.”
“I’ll hand over this month’s wages.”
“With you lot around, the whole house loses discipline.”

Raising her voice loud enough to rouse all sleeping maids, Ofumi’s temples pulsed with angry veins.

“What’s all this? Makin’ such a racket at this hour.”
“Anyway, let’s settle this tomorrow.” Seizing the moment when Okaji emerged shivering in her nightclothes, the two hired maids fled separately to their beds.

Still grumbling under her breath, Ofumi secured the front door and tucked the key deep into her pocket as usual. She gently touched the parcel of hamo skin she’d just stowed beneath the cashier’s counter, then set about preparing herself for bed.

(January, Taisho 3)