The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (7 page)

One afternoon, Akira Yoshiwara suddenly broke his usual silence. “Gently,” he said, his chisel never stopping. He didn’t look up, and it was as if he were talking to himself, though Kenji knew that the words were directed at him. “Never force the chisel, let it glide against the wood.”

After the features were sufficiently carved out, Yoshiwara took down a stack of sandpaper and taught Kenji how to sand the mask smooth without injuring the wood. He watched Yoshiwara, whom
he suddenly saw as his sensei, the teacher who would show him how to create the masks he so loved.

“Here, now you try,” Yoshiwara said. “Go gently or you’ll leave scratches on the surface. Think of the wood as skin, as a living thing, smooth to the touch,” he said, stroking the rough cheek of the mask. Then he handed the mask and sandpaper to Kenji.

The smoothness of skin. Like a living thing, Kenji repeated to himself. They worked side by side in a comfortable rhythm. He copied his sensei’s every move until the sanded wood felt smooth against his fingertips. Finished, he waited, as his heart raced, while Yoshiwara examined the mask and nodded his approval.

With the exception of the week during Obon in August, Kenji spent most of his summer afternoons at the mask shop. When he arrived back at the shop the first morning after Obon, Kenji immediately felt something different, a stirring in the air that wasn’t there the week before. Akira Yoshiwara was at his workbench, a slight smile on his lips as he looked up and waved Kenji in. “For Otomo Matsui,” he said, looking down at the mask he was working on. Kenji knew that Yoshiwara was commissioned by individual actors to make their masks, including the great actor Otomo Matsui. He’d seen many actors come to the shop for their masks, but fewer now, Yoshiwara told him, as the war in China progressed. “Before all this foolishness,” his sensei added, “they flocked to my shop like birds to their nest.”

“Have they gone to fight in China?” Kenji had asked.

“Fight and die,” Yoshiwara answered. “Did you know that hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers have already died in China?”

Kenji shook his head, anxious and confused. Weren’t they winning the war in China?

“A real tragedy,” his sensei muttered.

Then Yoshiwara lightened again. He stopped working long enough to explain that word had come that Otomo Matsui needed a new
Ayakashi
, a ghost-warrior mask, in only a few weeks’ time.
Otomo Matsui came from four generations of Noh actors, his sensei went on, and his father was the great actor Toshiko Matsui, who had performed for the emperor himself. Descendants of aristocracy, they had always performed the most difficult
shite
role, the principal character that remained onstage for almost the duration of a Noh play. Yoshiwara carefully chiseled and sanded the
Ayakashi
mask from start to finish by himself, while Kenji noted the extra care he took with every step.

Finally, just past
Shubun no hi
, Autumn Equinox Day in September, Matsui was scheduled to pick up the
Ayakashi
mask. Yoshiwara dusted himself off, changed to a fresh brown raw silk kimono with a gourd pattern on it, and tied his hair back. Kenji felt his nervousness as he glanced at the clock, picked up a block of cypress, and set it back down again, his usual calm demeanor rattled as he turned to speak.

“Otomo Matsui is coming himself to pick up the
Ayakashi
mask,” Akira said. “Usually, he sends an assistant.” He began to pace the floor. “Do you realize what honor he shows me?”

Kenji nodded. There was something frenzied about the way Akira was acting that made Kenji want to calm him.

“Maybe his assistant has been called to fight in the China war like so many others,” he stammered. He hadn’t thought to bring up the war just then, but it slipped from his lips.

Akira Yoshiwara stopped his pacing and looked at him. “Perhaps,” he said, but no more.

Usually, Kenji stayed in the back room and out of sight whenever someone came into the shop. And it was no different when Otomo Matsui arrived that afternoon to pick up his mask. Instead of bringing a large entourage, he came alone, and Kenji stole quick glances between the curtains at the elegant figure that strode in wearing a formal black silk kimono, embroidered with four white diamond crests. Matsui carried a beautifully wrapped box in gold and black
washi
paper. The air seemed to shimmer with his presence, though he wasn’t much taller than Yoshiwara. The actor studied the
Ayakashi
mask, his
long fingers holding it up against his face, checking to see that all the dimensions were correct before he lowered the mask and praised Akira Yoshiwara’s care and artistry.

“Yoshiwara-san, there is no finer artisan of the mask than you. I will wear it proudly.”

Yoshiwara bowed low. “Matsui-sama, you honor me by wearing my masks,” he answered.

When Otomo Matsui turned around, Kenji saw his dark, deep-set eyes, the high forehead and strong chin. He appeared to be in his early forties, a bit older than Yoshiwara-sensei. His face would have been truly perfect if it hadn’t been for his slightly crooked nose. His voice was deep and resonant and Kenji imagined he was a wonderful
shite
onstage.

Still, it was not so much the appearance of Otomo Matsui that intrigued Kenji; rather, it was the first time he’d seen Akira Yoshiwara show such awe and respect toward anyone who came to his shop. This time his sensei was the one who bowed low to Matsui when he entered. He spoke in a soft, comforting tone, served him tea, and bowed again when Matsui handed him the gift he had brought. Kenji thought he was watching a different man. Yoshiwara’s face appeared flushed as the actor left, carrying the carefully wrapped ghost-warrior mask in his hands.

The day after Otomo Matsui’s visit, Yoshiwara was in an unusually talkative mood. His sensei always stopped working in the afternoon to serve tea accompanied by
sembei
crackers or English biscuits, which Kenji guiltily wished he could share with Hiroshi and his grandparents. Rice rationing of one cup a day had begun during the past year and he knew how his
obaachan
worried. He longed to ask the artisan where he was able to get so much food when everyone else had so little. But then, he was one man, not an entire family, and from what Kenji observed of his furious work habits, the artisan rarely stopped to eat much at all. So when Yoshiwara turned around for some rags on the shelf, Kenji didn’t hesitate to slip three biscuits into his pocket.

“I believe it’s time for you to see a real Noh performance,” Yoshiwara said, turning back again.

At first, Kenji thought he was teasing him. “When?” he asked.

Akira Yoshiwara laughed and fingered the small ivory cat Otomo Matsui had given him. “First you must go home and ask your grandparents. And tell them it is by invitation of the great actor Otomo Matsui.”

Kenji stood awkwardly. “Yes, sensei.”

“In order to be an artisan,” Yoshiwara said, glancing up from his table as he mixed some
gofun
powder into the first layer of whitewash, “it’s important to experience the masks in performance, then to start at the beginning, just as I did when I was young.”

Yoshiwara stopped mixing then crossed the room to pull a book down from one of the top shelves. “I have something I want you to study,” he said, handing the large, leather-bound volume to Kenji. “Take this home and memorize it.” Then Yoshiwara returned to his painting.

With the palm of his hand, Kenji brushed the handsome brown cover made of fine, soft calfskin, and carefully opened it, glancing down at the highest-quality
washi
paper. Turning to the title page, he read its flowing, gold characters:
The Book of Masks
.

After Kenji had gone home, Akira sharpened his chisels and cleaned his paintbrushes. The boy was so much like him, so filled with wonder and fascination about the masks. And they were both orphans, though he knew no two stories were alike. He had walked away from his family, while Kenji had never known his parents, and sometimes Akira wished for the same—the luxury of invention, of believing in the family that might have been. Sometimes, without his knowing, he found himself re-creating the memory of their faces in a mask—the slight arch of an eyebrow that belonged to his mother, the sharp, turned-down mouth of his sister when she sulked, the dark, endless stare of his father. They came back to him at the most
unexpected times. After more than twenty years, they weren’t so far away, after all.

Akira looked up at the shelf where
The Book of Masks
had been, feeling suddenly bereft. It had been there on the top shelf since the day he opened the mask shop, twelve years ago. Now the vacant spot was a distraction, as he glanced up and then away again several times like a child, hoping it might magically reappear.

Just then, Nazo jumped up on the table. “Yes, Nazo, I’m all yours now,” he said. As he stroked the cat, Akira relaxed. It had been a busy week. It seemed a dream to think the day had come that his masks would garner the highest price from the most important actor in the theater. And now he had perhaps found his heir apparent. Akira was as certain that Kenji would make a fine artisan as his own sensei, Wakayama-san, had been of him. It showed in his passionate concentration, as if gazing into each mask was like falling in love. He knew it was the right time for the boy to begin learning the craft from the bottom up. He glanced again at the empty spot on the shelf; the book he’d once received as a gift from Wakayama-san was a fine place for Kenji to start. In it were the detailed drawings of each of the eighty masks used in Noh. It would also give Kenji an introduction and brief description of the two hundred fifty plays written during Japan’s feudal years, stories that Akira had come to know by heart and that had become a part of his life, though he had never set foot onstage. He smiled down at Nazo. After all, the drama of his own life was more than enough theater for him.

Akira Yoshiwara had been born in the port city of Yokohama, less than twenty miles from Tokyo; he was the eldest son of well-to-do parents. His father was not an educated man, but one whose business acumen had made him a great deal of money in the fish-canning industry. He had had high expectations for his eldest son to follow in his footsteps and take over the family business. But ever since Akira could remember, he had hated the factory—the constant noise of the machines, the slimy slip of his sandals against the wet wood floor, the
rough, uneducated workers who teased him as he walked through the building to his father’s office. “Ah, look who honors us with his presence,” they called out. “It’s about time to get those clean hands dirty!” they taunted when he stopped by after school at his father’s insistence. But worst of all, he couldn’t bear the stink that permeated everything, especially his father’s clothes. Every night when he came home, the odor of whiskey and dead fish hung heavy in the air of their house. Even after his father had bathed and soaked in the
ofuro
every evening, the fish smell still seemed to course through his bloodstream and seep out of his pores. When his father was angry, his red-rimmed eyes grew wide and bulged so that Akira thought he was even beginning to resemble a fish. It wasn’t a life he could ever imagine for himself.