Blue Bamboo: Japanese Tales of Fantasy

“Hell, that’s nothing compared to the fellow staying upstairs here. You could scour the entire Ginza in Tokyo without finding a man like him. Can he fight? Phew! He’s been in jail, you know. Expert at karate too. Look at this pillar. You see how it’s caved in here? He did that with his fist.”

None of which, needless to say, contained a speck of truth. Distressed, I’d shuffle downstairs, call Sakichi over, and speak to him in a low voice, pursing my lips in disapproval.

“Don’t be saying crazy things like that. I won’t be able to show my face around here.”

Sakichi would smile and say: “Nobody takes it seriously. They know I’m making it up as I go. As long as the story’s interesting, they’re happy.”

“Is that so? Regular lovers of the arts, eh? But listen, no more lies like tha

t, all right? You’re making me nervous.” And with that, I’d go back up to the second floor and resume work on my story, which I’d entitled “Romanesque.” Before long, however, I’d hear Sakichi’s booming voice again.

“Talk about holding your liquor, there’s nobody who can touch the fellow upstairs. Every evening he drinks a quart of saké, and all that does is make his cheeks a little rosy. Then he stands up, real casual, and says, ‘Hey, Sakichi—let’s go to the baths.’ After a quart of saké, mind you. At the baths, he whips out an old Japanese razor and shaves, nothing to it. Not so much as a nick. Sometimes he even shaves my beard. Then, as soon as we get home, he goes right back to work. Cool as a cucumber.”

This too was a series of lies. Every evening, whether I asked for it or not, a half-pint bottle of saké would be on my dinner tray. Not wanting to appear ungrateful, I’d guzzle it down quickly enough, but it was, remember, saké delivered directly from the brewery, not at all diluted, and therefore extremely potent. On one bottle you’d get as drunk as you normally would on two or three. Sakichi didn’t drink the saké from his family’s brewery, claiming it would make him gag to think of the inflated profit his brother turned on the stuff, and so whenever he wanted to drink, he went elsewhere. I, therefore, unseemly though it may have been, would get drunk alone at dinner, draining my bottle of saké and then, as my head began to swim, digging into the food; and no sooner would I finish eating than Sakichi would invite me to the baths. Not wanting to seem selfish by asking to be allowed to rest awhile first, I always accepted, and off we’d go. In the baths I’d feel as if I were going to faint, or die. I’d stagger toward the dressing room to make my escape, but Sakichi would stop me, tell me I needed a shave, and kindly offer to give me one, and again I’d find myself unable to refuse, surrendering with a lame, “Well, if you really don’t mind...” Utterly exhausted by the time it was all over, I’d wobble home, mutter something about doing a little more work, crawl upstairs, collapse on the floor, and fall fast asleep. Surely Sakichi was aware of all this, and I’ll never know why he insisted on telling those preposterous yarns.

The yearly festival of the famous Grand Shrine of Mishima was fast approaching. The young ruffians who gathered at Sakichi’s shop were all members of the festival committee, and each day they excitedly hashed out their various plans and ideas—dancing platforms, parades, floats, fireworks, what have you. I was told that Mishima’s fireworks display boasted a long tradition and included a special event in which fireworks were set up in the shrine’s pond so that, reflected on the water, they appeared to come bubbling up from the depths. Large, printed programs listing the names of some hundred different fireworks to be launched were distributed to all the houses, and with each passing day the festival spirit began to infuse the town with a strangely poignant, pulsating buoyancy.

On the morning of the day of the festival the weather was fine. When I went out to the well to wash my face, Sakichi’s younger sister took the kerchief from her head, bowed deeply, and said, “Congratulations,” and I surprised myself by returning this traditional festival greeting with minimal awkwardness. I found Sakichi dressed in everyday clothes and maintaining an aloof attitude as he puttered about in his shop. When the usual gang began to arrive dressed in gaudy yukata with the same wave-shaped pattern, festival fans stuck in their sashes and matching hand towels draped around their necks, they all offered us their congratulations on the day. I’d felt rather restless since waking up that morning but didn’t have it in me to join the youths in pulling the floats through the streets, so I went upstairs and sat down to do a bit of work. Soon, however, I was back on my feet, pacing the room. I leaned on the window sill and looked down into the garden, where in the shade of a fig tree Sakichi’s sister was washing our clothes as if it were just another ordinary day.

“Sai-chan!” I shouted down to her. “You should be at the festival!”

“I hate watching men strut around!” she shouted back, and went on with her scrubbing. “It’s like when an alcoholic walks by a liquor shop,” she added in a normal tone of voice. “It makes me shiver all over.” I could tell she was laughing by the way her squarish shoulders jiggled. Though she was only twenty, the sister seemed more mature than Sakichi, who was twenty-two, or myself for that matter, her elder by four years. She had a healthy, energetic way about her and virtually acted as guardian to Sakichi and me.

Sakichi too displayed an irritable edginess that day. Though he would have liked to enjoy himself frolicking about with the boys, his pride positively forbade him to don a gaudy wave-pattern yukata, and he reacted by taking a particularly cynical view of the whole affair. “Ah, what a load of rot this is,” he said. “I’m closing the store for the day. We’re not selling saké to anyone!” And with that he got on his bicycle and rode off. Shortly afterward I received a telephone call from him, telling me to come join him at the usual place. I changed into my clean yukata and flew out of the house, feeling as if I’d been rescued. The “usual place” was the shop with the old man who was so proud of having warmed saké for fifty years. I found Sakichi and another young man named Ejima there, drinking grimly. I had drunk with Ejima two or three times before. He, like Sakichi, was the disaffected son of a wealthy family, and as far as I could tell he did nothing each day but seethe with anger toward the world. He was every bit as handsome as Sakichi, who you must know possessed what could only be called a beautiful face. And, sure enough, Ejima too took a dim view of the festival and was expressing his defiance by deliberately putting on his shabbiest everyday clothes and hunkering down in this dark shop, sipping at his saké as if it were poison. I joined them, and we sat drinking in silence for some time; but outside it was growing ever noisier, with throngs of people clumping by, firecrackers going off, and sellers loudly hawking their wares, until Ejima, apparently unable to bear it another moment, stood up abruptly. “Come on. Let’s go to the river,” he said, and strode out of the shop without even waiting to hear our response.

The three of us tramped through the town, intentionally choosing back streets, each of us casting meaningless aspersions on the festival. (“Shit. Just listen to those idiots!”) We were soon outside the town limits, heading in the direction of Numazu, and by sundown we’d reached Ejima’s summer home on the bank of the Kano River. We went in through the back door and discovered an elderly man, clad only in a shirt, in the drawing room.

Ejima shouted at him: “What the hell? How long you been here? Out gambling all night again, were you? Leave us. Go home. I brought some guests.”

The old man scrambled to his feet and briefly flashed us a courteous smile, whereupon Sakichi bowed so deeply and respectfully that I was startled.

“You’d better put something on,” Ejima said indifferently, “or you’ll catch a cold. Oh, and before you leave, call up and have some beer delivered, and something to eat. The festival’s a bore, so we’re going to sit here and drink ourselves blind.”

“Very well, my lord,” the old man waggishly replied. He draped himself in his kimono and trotted off, and no sooner was he gone than Sakichi burst out laughing and said: “That’s Ejima’s father. He thinks his son is heaven’s gift to the world. ‘Very well, my lord’—did you hear that?”

Before long the beer arrived, along with a variety of tasty dishes, and I remember us at some point harmonizing on a lyric I couldn’t make any sense of whatsoever. Blanketed in the evening haze, the swollen river before us flowed leisurely along, lapping the green leaves on either bank. Its waters were a deep and astounding shade of blue, and, apropos of absolutely nothing, I found myself thinking that this must be what the Rhine looked like.

When the beer ran out, we headed back to Mishima. It was quite a long hike, and even as I shuffled along I nodded and nearly dozed off any number of times. Catching myself, I’d open my eyes a slit and see a firefly zip past my brow. When we got back to Sakichi’s house, his mother was there, having come from Numazu for a visit. I excused myself, went upstairs, hung my mosquito netting, and went to sleep, only to awaken shortly to the sound of loud voices. I looked out the window and saw that a ladder had been propped up against the eaves. Sakichi and his mother were on the ground at the foot of the ladder, engaged in a beautiful dispute.

For the finale of the fireworks display, they were going to send up the “two-footer,” a rocket two feet in diameter that had for days been the topic of excited discussion among the young people in town. It was almost time for the two-footer to be launched. Sakichi intended to have his mother see it, and wasn’t going to take no for an answer. He was still quite drunk.

“I wanna show it to you—what, you don’t wanna see it? We’ll have a good view on the roof... I told you, I’ll carry you up there. All you gotta do is grab hold of me!”

His mother was balking at the idea. I saw the sister there, too, her outline pale in the dim light, and she seemed to be chuckling to herself. Though no one else was around, the mother looked about timidly, then finally sealed her resolve and climbed on Sakichi’s back.

“All right. Up we go!” The mother was about sixty, and definitely on the plump side. Sakichi didn’t seem to be having an easy time of it.

“No problem, no problem,” he said, slowly pulling himself up the first rungs of the ladder. I watched them and thought: That’s it. That’s why Sakichi’s mother is so devoted to him. That’s why, however selfish and reckless his way of life, she’s willing to defend him even if it means pitting herself against her eldest son. I went back to bed contented, feeling I’d seen something better than a two-foot skyrocket.

I have many other vivid memories of Mishima, but I’ll save them for some other time. “Romanesque,” the piece I wrote that summer, was praised by a few people, and it has been my fate ever since, in spite of an utter lack of belief in myself, to carry on with my clumsy attempts at writing. Mishima is a place I’ll never forget. The impact that summer had on my life was such that it would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that all the work I’ve done since has been the result of what I learned there.

Now, eight years later, it’s no longer pos

sible for me to wheedle money from my sister; I’m out of touch with my family and am merely another undernourished, impoverished writer. Recently, having finally come into a fair amount of ready cash, I took an overnight trip to Izu with my wife and her mother and younger sister. We got off the train at Shimizu, visited Miho and Shuzenji, and the following day, on the way home, we stopped at Mishima. It’s a great place, a really great place, I kept telling the ladies as I whisked them off the train, and while I showed them about the town I tried to work myself into high spirits, recounting my memories of Mishima as amusingly as I could but gradually growing more and more crestfallen and finally slipping into such a funk that I completely lost the will to speak. The Mishima before my eyes was a desolate place, inhabited by strangers. Sakichi and his sister were no longer there. Ejima probably wasn’t either. The youths who’d once assembled each day at Sakichi’s shop were undoubtedly at home, yelling at their wives with sour, know-it-all looks on their faces. I couldn’t find a trace of the old atmosphere anywhere. But perhaps it wasn’t that Mishima’s colors had faded but simply that my own heart had grown old and withered. That carefree Imperial University student has since had eight solid years of trial and tribulation. I’ve aged a good two decades in those eight years.

As if things weren’t bad enough, it began to rain. My wife and her mother and sister did their best to praise the town, saying it was nice and quiet and relaxed, but their faces betrayed their perplexity and discomfort. Exasperated, I guided them to the drinking shop I’d once frequented. The building was so filthy that the women hesitated before passing through the gate, but I insisted, raising my voice in spite of myself, saying: “It’s a foul-looking place, but the saké’s good. There’s an old man here who’s spent the better part of a century doing nothing but heating up saké. This shop’s a legend in Mishima.” Once we were inside, however, I saw that the old man in the red shirt was no longer there. An insipid-looking waitress came out and took our order. The tables and benches were the same as before, but an electric phonograph occupied one corner of the shop, a large poster featuring a vulgar illustration of a movie actress hung on the wall, and the atmosphere was thick with decline. Hoping to sweep away the gloom by at least bringing a festive mood to the table, I ordered an extravagant spread.

“We’ll have broiled eel, grilled prawns, and egg custard, four of each. If you can’t prepare it here, send out for it. And bring us some saké.”