The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (26 page)

The first three months after Japan’s surrender in August were heavy with despair, the sky a thick, smoky blanket that wouldn’t lift. But by early November, the air had become an icy chill. Fumiko feared a long, cold winter and stayed close to home, urging Hiroshi and Kenji to do the same. But it wasn’t just the despair and destruction that disturbed her about this new postwar Tokyo. She edged past another pair of cigarette-smoking, gum-chewing, chocolate-giving
gaijin
soldiers who patrolled the streets. Fumiko loathed these towering men with their strong smells and loud voices, the
panpan
women who entertained them, and the gang-run black market, which charged exorbitant prices for food and goods. Even with the blackout curtains taken down, the slit trenches filled in, and the nightly scream of air-raid sirens silenced, the Japanese people still went hungry. They moved through the streets like shadow figures, and it felt to Fumiko as if another kind of war had just begun.

Despite the Allied forces’ steady presence, Fumiko was lucky if she could bring home a bit of rice mixed with soybeans, or powdered milk, or eggs for Yoshio and her grandsons. Food remained scarce,
government distribution chaotic, and the high prices on the black market forced most people to survive on watery soups, sweet potatoes, the roots of plants, acorns, insects and rodents, and a type of steamed wheat bran bread that was formerly fed only to cattle and horses. People were still dying daily from starvation. Each time Fumiko bit into the coarse, bland bread, she imagined what Ayako would say.
“It isn’t even good enough for cattle and horses!”
Then Ayako’s laughter would fill Fumiko’s mind as it used to fill the small room behind her friend’s bakery.

One day, Yoshio simply refused to eat the bran bread anymore. “It upsets my stomach,” he said, preferring to pick at the boiled sweet potato in his bowl. Hiroshi and Kenji were cleverer; she knew they pocketed the bread, most likely to feed the stray dogs. She didn’t think it was possible for them to lose more weight after the war, but they became shadow figures like all the rest. When Fumiko felt the bread lodge drily in her own throat, she had only to remember her friend’s sweet, light
kasutera
, the thin, loaf-sized sponge cake, and her mouth would water.

She often thought of Ayako while she waited in the food lines, and her sorrow ran even deeper than her anger. She felt as if her breath were squeezed out of her. Three months past the surrender, Ayako was still missing. Ayako-san, along with her daughter and grandson, had moved to Hiroshima to stay with relatives until the war’s end. After the bombs were dropped, Fumiko could only wait, praying that they’d been spared. Each morning she braced herself, fearing the news she waited for day after day. Had Ayako gone into the other world where her two husbands and lost child waited for her?

Sometimes, Fumiko felt Ayako’s loss was unbearable, a current that flashed through her body, growing more severe as the days passed. Some nights she lay still on the futon, so as not to wake Yoshio, and she wondered if he could feel that current surging through her or hear the slight hum that grew louder each passing week. When she closed her eyes, images of Ayako, Mikiko, and little Juzo flickered through her mind, keeping her awake. The following day she moved through the world in a daze, dozing wherever she sat down.

Fumiko glanced at the long, hopeless food lines and kept walking, no longer cringing at the loud American soldiers who took up most of the walkway. She ignored them like a dip in the road and slipped past, her sandals click-clacking as she went about her own business. “Slow down, Mama-san, what’s the hurry?” a soldier called out, but she just pulled her kimono tighter and walked faster, shaking his voice away.

She kept walking until she neared the train station. She thought of returning home and making Yoshio walk with her; it would do him good to get out into the fresh air, but she could already hear him say to her,
“I see all I need to see from here.”
But the sky had cleared to a pale blue, like an open door that suddenly made her feel courageous. She held her head high and looked clearly around for the first time in a long time. With so many buildings destroyed in the bombings, it was a miracle that so many train lines were still running. Fumiko marveled at the crowds of people hurrying in and out.

The faces she saw changed as she entered the train station, no longer just anxious women waiting in food lines, but beggars and soldiers, vendors and the homeless who had nowhere else to go. On the platform, Fumiko found herself pushed by the hordes as a train rattled slowly into the station. People crowded off and then on, pulling her along as they boarded.

Downtown Tokyo near the Sumida River looked like a wasteland. Where tall buildings once stood, Fumiko saw only rubble for miles around. Occasionally, a lone building stood, like the last can on a shelf. No space had been wasted, however. Flattened and bombed-out areas had already been turned into vegetable gardens. On every block were notice boards with handwritten sheets of paper that described missing persons. When the wind blew, they looked like hundreds of white flags flapping up and down in surrender. The homeless families increased in number as she walked along the downtown streets, their
scant belongings tied in bundles beside them. Stories of the displaced spread through every household as war widows and orphans wandered the streets begging for food. “Anything, anything,” they whispered, forcing her to look away. And yet, the most heartbreaking faces Fumiko saw were those of Japanese soldiers who had returned from war, having cheated starvation and death, only to find their homes incinerated and their families missing or dead. With nowhere to go, they roamed the streets aimlessly, dazed and despondent like phantoms, still dressed in their ragged uniforms. She was furious at a government that would abandon its soldiers. Fumiko longed for the suffering to end as she walked slowly down the ravaged streets going nowhere in particular. She looked upon the bleak city in ruins, hoping against hope that it might someday be rebuilt.

After the surrender, Hiroshi stayed close to home as his
obaachan
wanted him to do. But a few weeks later, when the call came for volunteers to help fill in the slit trenches that had been dug for defense purposes, he was more than happy to sign up. The occupying forces hoped to quickly erase any outward signs of the war. Hiroshi was just thankful for the pure, physical work of digging; it made him wake up each morning and shake off his stupor, the listlessness that slowed his movements. He wanted nothing more than to work his muscles again until they ached, until his clothes became stiff with dirt and sweat. He wanted to draw long, slow breaths in hopes that the air around him might lighten his heart and mind. At eighteen, he could do little else for his devastated country but fill in the slit trenches he had once helped to dig. Every day there were new rumors of food shipments coming in, of buildings that would be resurrected, and of schools reopening, but week after week, everything remained in flux. By the end of November, Hiroshi was sure of only one change: the long, narrow scars by the side of the roads had all but disappeared.

A few days into December, Hiroshi awoke early and realized he’d forgotten to do one important thing. He dressed quickly without waking Kenji. Downstairs, his grandparents were surprised to see him up so early.
“Ohayo gozaimasu,”
he said, as he walked through the kitchen and out the back door so quickly, he scarcely heard his name and the sound of his
obaachan
’s questioning voice trailing behind him.

In the backyard, the sky was just awakening, a pale gray light that gradually revealed the outlines of a world he’d known all his life. It was like a photo being slowly developed. The air was thin ice as the yard came into focus. He stretched his tall frame, shook loose his arms and hands, and did a few leg squats until he felt the pull of his calf muscles. Why hadn’t he thought to fill the gaping wound in his own backyard before this morning? Wasn’t it the most personal scar of all, mocking them every day?

Hiroshi pulled away the plank that covered the entrance to the air-raid shelter, and stepped down into the dark, closed tomb. He lit a lantern and shook his head. To think the flimsy structure could have provided any kind of real protection! He shivered from the cold and the damp, earthy smell, then quickly set to work removing each board that had been wedged in to support the dirt walls. One by one, he dragged the pieces out before he emerged a final time to pick up the shovel. The ground wasn’t frozen yet, as in some winters. He and Kenji had built up the dirt walls and laid a piece of corrugated metal on top as a roof before covering it with more dirt. He began digging until his shovel tapped metal, then he cleared away the dirt and pulled the roof off, leaving a gaping hole. Hiroshi swung the shovel against the raised dirt walls of the shelter with a
thwack
, followed by several more hard blows—
thwack, thwack
—against the walls. He went another round of hits before he heard the earth breaking apart, gradually giving way. He stepped back and watched the dirt sink into the hole as big as the oversized graves he’d helped dig to bury the countless unidentified dead after the firestorm. He wanted to bury this air-raid shelter, too, and with it, the past. He shoveled the rest of the earth into the hole and thought of his
ojiichan
taking down the watchtower, which had stood on the same spot but had risen
above the ground. It was time, Hiroshi thought, to move forward. Warm from the work and his desire for a stronger, better future, he knocked down another side of the wall and watched it collapse into the gaping hole.

Sho Tanaka picked up a piece of charred wood that fell apart in his hands. The two-story wooden building where his sumo students slept and ate had burned to the ground, along with Hoku’s caretaker house. “Hoku,” he murmured to himself. He hadn’t been seen since the morning of the firestorm, nine months ago. It was Hoku who had pounded on their door that fateful night. “The planes are coming this way,” he warned, quick and urgent. By the time Tanaka had gathered Noriko and the girls, Hoku was gone.

On the other side of a stone walkway, the building housing his office and the practice area had miraculously survived. Had the winds suddenly shifted, the fire gone elsewhere? Tanaka shook his head and continued to clear the debris into a growing pile. The Japan Sumo Association financed most sumo stables, including the Katsuyama-beya. Tanaka could only guess when they’d be able to help restore the stable amid all the other destruction. Until then, he would have to get the stable back up and running on his own.

With the girls back in school, Sho Tanaka spent most afternoons sitting in his small upstairs office, which was drafty in winter. Occasionally, a quick shot of black-market whiskey, or sake, warmed him against the cold and the loneliness. The persistent smell of smoke filled the room and seeped into every crevice. He ran his hand over the top of his smooth pate. When the war ended in August and he began to lose his hair, Tanaka feared the cloud of radiation from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had somehow poisoned him. He’d read accounts of survivors’ symptoms, and couldn’t bear to think of leaving his young daughters without both their parents. The doctor had found no medical explanation for his hair loss, and
Tanaka had scoffed when he suggested an emotional cause. After all, the entire country was emotionally devastated. He didn’t tell the doctor that deep down, his terror grew when he lay alone at night, his thoughts bouncing between raising two daughters alone and trying to rebuild the Katsuyama-beya from its burned ruins.