The Silver Spoon (4 page)

I liked best the fox shrine
¹⁰
which still stands at Izumi-chō by the Kanda River. Early mornings when there was no one around I often amused myself throwing stones into the river or pulling the ropes attached to the bell that looked like a huge nut. My aunt would choose a clean stone for me to sit on or simply put me down on the steps of the shrine before offering prayers. The way the perforated coins clattered down the alms box was fun. Whatever god or Buddha it might be, she would first pray: May this child grow strong.

One day, I was looking at the river, clutching the wooden fence while my aunt held my sash from behind. White birds were going back and forth, fishing. The way they flew silently about, gracefully fluttering their long, soft-looking wings, seemed a sight specially arranged for a weak child so susceptible to pain. I was uncommonly elated. But, unfortunately, a woman peddler carrying eggs and wheat cookies on her back came by for a rest, so, as always, I at once clung to my aunt's back. The woman put down her burden, took off the towel from her head, and, as she wiped her neck with it, chatted pleasantries so cleverly that she managed to charm even a coward like me. By the time I had made the timid decision to get down again from my aunt's back, she was opening a box filled with alluring wheat cookies. Picking up a particularly fragrant one shaped like an elongated gold coin and, twirling it at the tips of her fingers, she placed it on my palm, cooing, “Good boy, good boy.”

My aunt could do nothing but pay for it. Even today, when I see a woman peddler wearily take down from her shoulders a basket pasted over with tanned paper and begin to show me white, reddish eggs half buried in husks and wheat cookies whose fragrance pleasantly assails my nose, I feel the urge to buy all that the poor woman has. The fox shrine has been renovated into a more presentable state and draws many more people today, yet the same willow that was there then still streams in the cool wind.

6

On days when she did not take me to the fox shrine, my aunt would take me to the Field of the Jail, putting enough money for offerings and admissions in her grubby wallet. This was where the famous Tenma-chō Jail
¹¹
used to be—but now there were various sideshows. Also, small merchants would set up rows of booths selling horned turbans cooked in their own shells, popped beans, orange water,
¹²
and, in season, corn, roast chestnuts, and pasania nuts. At the entrance to a makeshift playhouse with a red-and-white striped curtain around it, a man sitting cross-legged holding wooden clappers and tabs for wooden clogs would occasionally cup his hands around his mouth and call out,
“Hōban! Hōban!”
Another man would hold a chicken right under the snout of a chained wild dog from time to time just to make it squawk. A suspicious-looking
kappa
¹³
with a plate on his head splashed about in a pool of water.
Deroren
sermon-givers
¹⁴
just blew on the conch and jangled metal sticks, at times reciting,
“Deroren! Deroren!”
These were utterly uninteresting to me, but my aunt liked them and took me to see them often.

Once, a rare thing, a puppet theater was playing, with the billboard picture showing someone looking like the princess I'd seen in picture books dancing with a drum on a grass hill covered with cherry blossoms in full bloom. Elated, I got to go inside, but immediately there was a horrible clanking noise and a creature, face and limbs all red, with his sleeves tucked up with a twisted sash, jumped out, shocking me into tears. Later I was told it was meant to be Tadanobu the Fox of
The Thousand Cherry Trees.
¹⁵

One of my favorite shows was a wrestling match between ostrich and man. A man with a twisted headband and in body armor of the kind used in fencing would prance out like a challenging bird, and the ostrich, annoyed, would kick at him. Sometimes the ostrich would be wrestled to the ground, his neck held down; sometimes the man, kicked about, would run away, crying, “You got me! You got me!” Once, when the latter had just happened, the man whose turn was next was eating from his lunchbox in a corner when the ostrich, now lingering nearby with his human opponent gone, sneaked up and suddenly lunged out to snatch the whole lunchbox. The way the man jumped away in consternation was funny and the spectators burst out laughing. But my aunt shed tears.

“The ostrich is starving but can't even get his own meal,” she said. “I'm so sorry for him.”

7

For me to be born in the midst of Kanda was as inappropriate as for a
kappa
to be hatched in a desert. All the children in the neighborhood were brats training up to be Kandaites. Not only would they not play with a wimp like me, but they never missed a chance to torment me. In particular, the son of the
tabi
¹⁶
dealer across the street would, if my aunt wasn't very careful, suddenly materialize from behind me, slap me on the cheek, and run away. I was so frightened, I grew afraid of going outside.

When I stayed inside, my aunt would put me up to the high window facing the street, make me clutch the grille, and holding me in that position from behind, tell me the names of the things that came into view—the horse, the cart, and so forth. One of the chickens belonging to the rice dealer across the street was crippled, having once been run over by a cart. Whenever she saw it out on the street, with one leg always tucked up, wing and tail feathers tattered and dusty, my aunt never failed to say, “Poor chicken!” so that I gradually came to dislike seeing it.

Usually I played in a very gloomy three-mat room where the Buddhist altar was. At night it became my bedroom, but sometimes my older sisters worked in it. My two sisters, twelve or thirteen at the time, were grammar school pupils, and I still remember how they used to produce black books from their Western-style envelope-shaped bags, spread them out on the old wooden desks, and practice writing. One of the desks was about three feet wide with two drawers that had brush handles, coiled in paper, stuck into the holes of its two missing knobs. The other one, with shallow drawers, was so small that it could barely accommodate a child's folded legs underneath. These desks, handed down from my brother to these sisters, went on to be handed down from them to me, and then from me to my younger sister, for decades.

If my aunt stood me on the smaller desk to look out the window facing the garden, I could see big azalea bushes growing close to the black fence. On summer days, they swelled with fabulous red flowers and, though in the midst of the town, they enjoyed the occasional visit of butterflies who came to have a meal of honey. The way the butterflies fluttered their wings as if in a great hurry was entrancing to watch. At such times, my aunt would pop her head round from behind my shoulder and say that the black butterfly was the grandpa of the mountain house and the white ones and yellow ones were all princesses. In fact, the princesses were lovely, but the Old Man of the Mountain House looked scary as he flew about, flapping his big coal-black wings.
¹⁷

Also, my aunt would take out for me various toys from a basket with a lid that was meticulously covered with pages from children's books. Of the many toys I had, I loved most a clay dog painted black that we had picked up from the ditch in front of the house. His face had a suggestion of gentleness that I liked. Aunt called him Divine Dog, made a shrine from an empty box and other things, installed him in it, and offered prayers. I also treasured the clumsy Rouge Ox.
¹⁸
In fact, these two were the only good friends I had in the whole world.

8

Besides these toys, we had all sorts of weapons such as swords, halberds, bows, and guns. My aunt would turn me into a perfect warrior by equipping me with things like a lacquered helmet and an armor-piercing dagger. Then she'd put on a headband tied at the back and pick up a halberd herself. We'd then each deploy ourselves to either end of the long corridor to engage in mock battle. Now ready, we approached each other slowly, warily. The moment we came face to face at the center of the corridor, I'd call out,

“Are you Shiōten?”

To which the enemy would respond:

“Are you Kiyomasa?”

Then the two in unison:

“Splendid we now meet!”

Then simultaneously we made clattering sound effects with our voices, “
Yā, takatakatakataka
!” jabbing and slashing at each other, the outcome of the fight undecided for a while. This was a scene in the Yamazaki Battle, and I was Katō Kiyomasa, my aunt Shiōten, Governor of Tajima. In time, we'd throw away our weapons and grapple. After some spectacular fighting, Shiōten would see that Kiyomasa was tired, mutter an indignant “Darn!” and fall. I would then proudly sit astride her back, pressing her down. Profusely perspiring, she played Shiōten to the hilt.

“Don't take me prisoner!” she begged. “Cut off my head!”

So Kiyomasa would draw his short-sword and try to saw through her wrinkled neck, Shiōten grimacing as she bore it. The fight would end when she closed her eyes, pretending to expire, her body, all strength gone, turning into a rubbery mass. But on rainy days I would insist on repeating the same thing seven or eight times until Shiōten could hardly stand from exhaustion.
¹⁹
My aunt nonetheless kept it up, even while whimpering, “Can't do anything about it! Can't do anything about it!” until I became bored with the game and offered to quit. At times, too exhausted, my aunt couldn't get up for a while after she was beheaded. When that happened, I'd fear she might have really died and would gently shake her.

9

During the Myōjin Festival,
²⁰
our neighborhood, because of what it was, would become awfully boisterous, the young men of the town making the rounds of houses, decorating the eaves with red and white paper flowers and hanging lanterns marked with
tomoe
²¹
or the circle of the sun. I was happy that the eaves of my house were also decorated with flowers, with lanterns hanging. On days such as these some stores would cover the floor with a carpet and set up the Shijinken.
²²
Two gaudy heads were reverently placed on a platform along with a large divine sake bottle offered to them in which forlornly stood a rolled dedicatory sheet
²³
shaped like a sharply cut bamboo. The golden lion had glaring silver eyes and was crowned with a jewel ball,
²⁴
while the scarlet
komainu
²⁵
had glittering golden eyes with a wild mane. My aunt, exercising the same skill that she used in making the Divine Dog and the Rouge Ox my friends, made the lion and the
komainu
friendly to me too, and I didn't burst into tears despite their scary faces.

KANDA MATSURI: KANDA FESTIVAL

Young males of the town, from youths to children who could barely walk, all in
yukata
uniform, headbands stylishly tied around their heads, sleeves tucked up smartly with a saffron-colored hemp cord—I love those hemp cords adorned with bells and tumblers—wearing no footwear except white
tabi
and showing off their bulging calves, strutted about, each waving the largest
mandō
²⁶
he could manage. Candle flames flickered both in the lanterns under the eaves and in the
mandō
lights that flew about through the town. From the tips of the top-heavy
mandō
, dyed red and white, hung ample clusters of votive paper. It was pleasing to see them sharply twirled about in the air. At each strategic point of the town a group of adults and children gathered around their barrel
mikoshi
²⁷
to work out fighting tactics.

LANTERN WITH TOMOE DESIGN

My aunt, who was fond of all such things, once took me out as well, after tucking my sleeves up and fitting me with a headband to look like everyone else. With my red flannel pants showing under the tucked up hems of my kimono and my long sleeves tied up with a cord, I was carried on her back, holding a small
mandō
. Unfortunately, one of the brats who had clustered around their Barrel King spotted me and suddenly threw a couple of stones at me.