Fish of the Seto Inland Sea

Kei remembered a saying, ‘An old man should not have a cold shower’. It was a warning to old men against rash behaviour. There was a particular reason that the news of his illness disturbed her. She went into the butsuma where the ancestors’ name tablets were kept and prayed.

As she sat in supplication, she could hear in her mind Shuichi’s shrill voice calling, ‘Oji-isama! Oji-isama!’ It had been in the spring. Tei-ichi told the boy off for running around like a puppy. He said, ‘A man should never hurry, Shuichi.’ The boy said, ‘Yes, oji-isama,’ but could not hide his agitation.

‘Now, what is it?’ Tei-ichi asked.

‘There is a gigantic white snake in the butsuma, oji-isama. You should come and see. It’s hanging between the lintels like a bridge. Something bad is going to happen.’

‘In spring all snakes come out of hibernation. It is not at all unusual to see one in the house. A lot of them live among the stones of the wall.’

‘But o’Shige san said that this one is the old spirit of the house. He comes out only when a bad thing is going to happen. Last time it appeared, otohsan died.’

‘Tell Shige we have only one old spirit in this house and that is me, oji-isama.’ Shuichi looked at his grandfather and saw that his eyes were dancing with fun. ‘It is not just in spring that I am around. I am always here to guard the house. Nothing bad will happen in our family.’

Shuichi laughed and seemed to have dismissed the white snake from his mind, but Kei had not forgotten. She and Shige shared the same beliefs. Since then, she had felt uneasy whenever something happened to a member of her household. If Ayako had a cold, she had been more worried than before. Every time Shuichi set off on an adventure, she had prayed for his safety. In Shobei’s case, it was unfortunate that Rinji had not offered to undertake the inspection himself or at least accompanied his father. One thought followed after another and Kei sat in the room for a long time. Eventually she got up and told herself that, after all, Shobei would get better. He might have stayed home realising himself that he ought to be more careful.

Ayako’s stay at the Miwas’ was extended from a week to two and then three. Instead of their mother coming home, the children were called to the Miwas’. When Haruko arrived with the other children, she saw by the entrance a broad-brimmed oilskin hat and a coat that had once belonged to Shintaro. Shobei had come home wearing them and soon afterwards had taken to his bed. No one had thought of putting them away.

When Haruko had seen him on her way home from school a few days before the flood, Shobei had been wearing the oilskins.

‘Oji-isama,’ she had called, as he had not noticed her and passed by.

‘Oh, Haruko.’ He had looked surprised, then he smiled. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘Yes, oji-isama.’ She had nodded.

‘Good. Good.’ He had looked as though he had wanted to tell her something but large drops of rain had started to hit them.

‘Hurry home. You’ll get wet. I’ll see you soon.’

He had stood and watched her go. He had looked as robust as ever.

While her sisters shied away from their paternal grandfather, Haruko respected him and at the same time felt close to him. Her father had trusted her and she felt the same sympathy from his father as well.

Haruko was surprised to see how Shobei had changed within a few weeks. His face was ashen and gaunt.

‘I am scared,’ Takeko whispered when they came out of the room. Shobei’s wife, Ayako, and a nurse took turns to sit by him.

Tei-ichi had just gone and Rinji arrived.

‘How is he?’ he asked, moving his lips without making a sound.

‘Just the same, but he had a small amount of rice gruel,’ his mother replied in a low voice. ‘Come and have supper with us.’

Shobei lay in his study and away from the main house, but everybody tiptoed and tried not to make a sound. During the meal, however, there was some conversation and an exchange of outside news.

‘I will go and sit by oji-isama,’ Haruko offered, ‘so that the nurse can come and eat. I am not hungry. I will eat later.’

‘Thank you, Haruko san.’

She went into the room quietly. Her grandfather looked asleep but when the nurse closed the sliding screen, he gestured to her by a slight movement of his hand to come near him. He spoke to her in a hoarse faltering whisper.

‘Your speech ... was well-written.’ He stopped and Haruko waited. ‘General Akashi ... was very ... impressed, so was I ... and the headmaster.’

There was a smile on his face.

Shobei was referring to a general who had been invited by Haruko’s school to give a talk to the pupils and, as was often the case with a distinguished visitor to the area, Shobei had invited him after the talk to his house for dinner.

General Akashi was an unusual hero of the Russo-Japanese war, Haruko was told. His achievements were reputed to have made a significant contribution to Japan’s victory, but he had never met the enemy in the battlefield. As a colonel, he had spent the entire war in the capitals of Europe, meeting the leaders of anti-Tsarist underground groups, helping them with funds which had been entrusted to him by the Japanese government.

When it became known that the school was going to invite General Akashi and had selected Shuichi to make a speech of thanks, Shobei called Haruko to give her some advice. Everybody, including the teachers, counted on Haruko to write Shuichi’s speech.

At the school, General Akashi’s talk had been about the courage of other people who were passionate about saving the Russian people from destitution, and the surrounding countries from Russian tyranny.

Shobei impressed on his fourteen-year-old granddaughter that courage was needed to pursue a career with little public recognition.

‘You ... should have been a ... boy,’ Haruko’s grandfather repeated from his bed in a voice which was barely audible. Haruko nearly replied, ‘So that I could be a spy, oji-isama?’, but she noticed that his breathing had become more laboured. His windpipe began to make a whistling noise.

‘Are you all right? I will call someone.’ As she was going to stand up, his eyes gleamed for a second. He was clearly impatient and agitated. He seemed to try to draw Haruko’s attention to the shelf above his head on which she could see a wooden box.

‘The box, oji-isama?’

He looked satisfied and relieved. He breathed, ‘Your Shi’ ... oji-isama ... okahsan.’ His eyes were closed. His head rolled a little sideways.

‘Someone, come quick.’ Haruko ran out of the room, shouting. The first person who came running out was her uncle Rinji. He collided with Haruko and nearly knocked her off her feet. As she reached the main house, she looked back and saw her uncle coming out of the room. He was carrying the wooden box under one arm. As he ran, he looked like a picture of a devil with wide open eyes and flowing hair. His free arm was moving from front to back as though he was swimming in the air, staggering with the size and the weight of the box.

On a clear autumn day, a long cortege went through the village. Shuichi was again the chief mourner and walked behind the coffin, but this time he was no longer an infant, and was wearing a black kimono and hakama. Haruko in a white kimono walked behind with Ayako and her sisters.

From Shobei’s village and also from the surrounding villages, a lot of people came to see the last of their landowner.

They whispered and shed tears as Shuichi walked by. ‘Poor child! He was born into such an excellent family, but he has had to attend two funerals and he is only ten years old.’

After the funeral, the Miwas’ big house was in turmoil with a crowd of relatives and friends milling about losing each other and finding unexpected acquaintances. Everybody had thought that Shobei would live for a long time.

Tei-ichi followed the priest to the entrance and thanked him. As he was walking back to the living room, he saw Haruko waiting for him in a corridor.

Oji-isama,’ she said. ‘Have you found out what happened to the box Rinji ojisan took with him?’

‘What box?’ Tei-ichi had totally forgotten about it, although Haruko had told him everything that had happened.

‘Oji-isama, I have told you already. The wooden box that Miwa oji-isama always kept in his study. He had it by his bed after he had been taken ill. He has told me many times that it has important documents.’

‘Why, isn’t it in his study?’ The question was just a reflex. He did not mean it. He knew very well that the box was not in the study. He reflected on his carelessness and as the implications dawned on him, he was belatedly alarmed. He had not fully realised the importance of the contents of the box. He saw impatience and concern in his granddaughter’s face, even a little reproach.

‘Oh, I know. I am sorry. I have been so busy. I’ll talk to Rinji ojisan. He must be keeping it in a safe place. Don’t worry. Leave it to me.’

Having told Haruko to leave the matter with him, he wondered what he could do. Shuichi was Shobei’s heir and no one could dispute his legal position, but his material inheritance was a different matter. Tei-ichi needed documentation to act on his grandson’s legal status. He would approach Rinji but if Rinji’s intention was to seize the family fortune by force, recovering it in any civilised way did not seem possible.

Soon after the funeral, Rinji moved back into the main house. Rumour had it that he began vigorously collecting repayment of the loans that Shobei had made.

‘There is no one more dangerous than a fool,’ Tei-ichi muttered. He was worried.

Shobei’s brother intervened and suggested that they should take the financial situation and the issue of the missing will to court. Tei-ichi opposed this strongly on the grounds that a family dispute right after Shobei’s funeral would disgrace the honourable man and his family.

‘If the worst comes, I am able to look after my daughter and her children,’ he insisted in front of the relatives.

Eventually Rinji agreed that some property and the rent from it should be given over to Shuichi for his education on condition that Rinji would manage the money till Shuichi was twenty-five. That was all that Shuichi was to receive out of everything that Shobei, one of the largest landowners and the richest man in the area, had carefully guarded to pass on to his grandson and his future descendants. As for Ayako and the three granddaughters, there was a piece of land already notified under their names with Tei-ichi as their guardian.

8

Takeko is Seventeen

A year after Shobei’s death, Takeko finished school, and by that time there had been a few marriage proposals for her. When a family friend came to talk about the prospect of a match for her daughter for the first time, Ayako could not help feeling a slight shock, although she had been conscious of the possibility for some time. She herself had married at an even younger age. Takeko was certainly not too young to marry.

‘It is eighteen years since I married,’ Ayako was thinking while she watched the visitor’s mouth which moved incessantly, telling her and Kei about a family that she thought suitable for a daughter of the Miwas. Living with her own parents as though she had never left them, Ayako had pushed away the idea that one day her pleasant family life had to be broken up and that, one after another, her daughters would leave her.

In a few years, Haruko would leave home and then Sachiko, too. When Shuichi left for Tokyo to go to university, which Ayako hoped he would, then what? Yasuharu would marry. Masakazu would marry. Even Hideto would marry. Everybody was kind and considerate to her in the family, but eventually she would have to leave and live with Shuichi and his wife. Where would that be?

‘I thought it would be really a very advantageous match for you,’ the woman was saying. ‘I’m sorry to say it, but your family is not exactly as it was a year ago, is it? They are saying a lot of things about Rinji san, and although I told them that it is all foolish nonsense, you know how they are, those village folks, if you listen to them. I told them, after all the Miwas are a distinguished family. But I must tell you that in a few years time, they will forget about Shobei san. Rinji san seems to be wasting a lot of money on some sort of investment that the son of that stonemason is involved in. They are crooks, those people. As I was saying, you don’t have to take what they are saying seriously. This is a great match and honestly you cannot expect a better one ...’

Ayako excused herself and went to the kitchen where Kiyo was arranging a fine tea-set on the table.

‘Where is o’Shige san?’ Ayako asked, as it was usually Shige who made tea for guests.

‘She is out in the back somewhere. She says she doesn’t like that lady.’

‘Oh.’ Ayako feigned surprise and took the tea tray. As she went back into the room, the woman turned to Ayako.

‘I was just telling your okahasama. The Matsudo family are even bigger landowners than your father-in-law used to be. But they say they do not mind having a daughter-in-law from a poor family so long as she is pretty and good. To tell you the truth, they don’t need any more money.’

In a flat voice, Kei cut in. ‘Thank you. We know who the Matsudos are. But we don’t know anything about their son who, I assume, is the one who might marry our Takeko. How old is he and what sort of person is he?’

‘Oh, a very nice man. Very nice, indeed. He is, I think, about twenty-three or thereabouts. He is at home. He went to school, but school was not interesting enough for him.’ She laughed, making a short ‘ho ho ho’ noise through a puckered mouth.

‘I see,’ Kei said. ‘It was so very kind of you to think of us. As you said yourself, more or less, a girl without a father does not exactly have good prospects for marriage. We know our place and we would like to find our Takeko a match which is suitable for us. Thank you for coming.’

‘Okahsan,’ Ayako said, after the visitor had gone, ‘is it wise to make an enemy of her? She will spread some kind of fabricated story.’

‘I will not let anyone insult us in our own house. In any case, who wants a man who could not finish even basic schooling? You can tell he is a good-for-nothing, lazy lad.’

The name Matsudo did not reach Tei-ichi, as mother and daughter did not bother to repeat the conversation to him, but the following proposal was brought to him directly. An acquaintance came to sound out a match with a family running a large draper and haberdasher shop called Tagawa-ya. It had an extensive frontage opening on to the busiest street in a big town which was the political as well as the commercial centre of the prefecture.

Tei-ichi would have said that it was not a convincingly good match, but he found himself less particular than before.

‘A merchant?’ Kei raised her cleanly-arched eyebrows. Tei-ichi had felt the same mental reaction when he was told about the match.

Nearly half a century had passed since the collapse of the Tokugawa feudal regime. Tei-ichi reflected, ‘What a lot of social and technical changes and progress we have experienced.’ Yet, he had to admit that he was not entirely against the old rigid class system. After all, when he was born, feudal lords were still travelling up and down the main roads to and from the capital which was called Edo and not Tokyo, in palanquins surrounded by samurais each bearing two swords and wearing a topknot.

Samurais were at the top of the class system in those days. They had the right to kill anyone, anywhere. The rice-growing farming class was the next in rank. Rice was important. The economic power of each feudal domain was determined by the amount of rice it produced. The samurais’ stipend was calculated in rice. Then came the artisan class. The merchant class occupied the bottom position. They were not allowed to wear silk, and their houses were inspected lest they should be too luxurious. Dealing with money was despised and the profession whose ultimate purpose was the accumulation of wealth had to be at the bottom.

When Tei-ichi was little, his father told him a story about a castle which was besieged, and how the defending samurais had to eat the mud walls to survive. Even then, those who accompanied their lord to the peace negotiations in the enemy camp did not touch the food offered to them. They were so proud, and could withstand material temptation.

If he told such stories to his sons they would listen, but Tei-ichi knew that to his sons these were only epic tales. Times had changed.

‘Well, we are living in a new age,’ Tei-ichi said to Kei and Ayako. ‘We cannot be prejudiced against new ways of thinking in the modern world. Our feudal period ended because the samurais could not maintain themselves economically and had to rely on merchants. You see, the standard of life was going up and up, yet the amount of rice produced could not be increased beyond a certain limit. It was the economy ...’

Tei-ichi showed his scholarship and would have gone on lecturing them with his interpretation of the arrival of the Meiji era, but the women did not seem to be impressed. They listened respectfully, but as soon as they were left alone, Ayako said, ‘It’s sad to think that the status of the Miwas has fallen, okahsan. In the olden times, no one considered it proper to think of such a match, however prosperous their business was.’

‘Oh, it is good to have a lot of proposals. To accept or refuse is our prerogative. We would worry about our fallen status if nobody thought of match-making with us,’ Kei said, trying to cheer up Ayako and herself, and added with conviction, ‘It’s not the Miwas’ status which has sunk. It is the Tagawa-yas’ status which has gone up. That is what otohsan calls the new age. In ten years’ time, the likes of them will be members of the Prefectural Assembly and the National Parliament.’

In the end they decided to go ahead with the prospective match with Tagawa-ya. The draper’s son was in Tokyo. After graduating from one of the universities, he was staying on to study English, they were told. He had been hoping to go to Europe to learn business, as he was convinced that soon the time would come when people would wear more European clothes than the traditional kimono. However, the situation in Europe was taking an ugly turn and war was about to break out. He would stay home and wait for an opportunity. For the same reason Yasuharu’s plan of going abroad was postponed. It was 1914. Archduke Ferdinand had been assassinated and the ripples from Sarajevo were felt as far away as Kitani village.

When Tei-ichi heard of Tagawa-ya’s son’s ambition, his last feelings of hesitation disappeared and he positively looked forward to the successful conclusion of the negotiations.

Kei and Ayako wanted to settle Takeko’s marriage within a year or two at the latest. There were two more daughters to think of and it was necessary for the eldest to marry, otherwise she would hinder the younger ones’ chances. Encouraged by her family, Ayako visited the go-between friend’s house.

‘We are very grateful that you have taken the trouble to think of my daughter, Takeko. We think that the match with Tagawa-ya san will be very desirable and I came to ask you to proceed with the negotiations.’

The friend also expressed in formal language her pleasure at being of use and promised to do her best to arrange the match, but she was slightly confused about who Ayako was until she had time to think about it.

‘Surely she could not be older than her late twenties. No, if this is Takeko san’s okahsan, she has to be at least about thirty-four.’ The friend was calculating in her mind and admired how young Ayako looked.

Tagawa-ya himself was a plump and happy-looking man, with humble manners. On several occasions, when Kei and Ayako had visited the draper’s shop, he had been sitting among the young employees, greeting a customer, telling his assistant what to do, being consulted about what to buy. The shop was always full of customers and they could tell that the business was flourishing.

Ayako and the Shirais needed at least a year to prepare for the marriage. Once the marriage was finalised, there would be much to do. Since Takeko was marrying into a family which handled kimono materials, it might not be necessary to have a lot of kimonos made, but a chest of drawers, a dressing table, a desk, bedding, all had to be specially made. The lacquered utensils had to be ordered from Kyoto. Good lacquering would take over a year.

Since Ayako’s wedding had been organised mostly by Shobei, it was Tei-ichi’s first experience of handling arrangements, and when he was shown the shopping list, he said with a sigh, ‘They say three daughters are the ruin of a family, and they are quite right.’

Ayako had made up her mind to spend all that Shobei had left for his granddaughters on their weddings. It was the last luxury the Miwas would be able to afford.

About a month after Ayako had asked the go-between to proceed with the marriage negotiations, she came back to Kei and Ayako to tell them that Tagawa-ya was very pleased about the prospect of having Dr Shirai’s granddaughter as their son’s bride. They had sent someone to Takeko’s school to find out about her, and had heard that she was a very polite, gentle lady and there had never been any problems.

Tei-ichi was known among his neighbours as an honourable person, particularly since he had intervened in the family feud over the inheritance.

‘They also heard about your second daughter, Haruko san,’ the go-between friend said, ‘and should you have already accepted another proposal for Takeko san, they would be pleased to ask for Haruko san. She seems to be a highly intelligent young lady and Tagawa-ya san thinks that she would be a very suitable wife for his son who also likes books and studying. After all, we are in a modern age. It is not shameful for a girl to like studying.’

‘That is very thoughtful of Tagawa-ya san, but Haruko is still only fifteen and we hope Takeko will make a good wife for their son,’ Ayako answered politely.

The Shirai side wanted to settle the negotiations and exchange the gifts of engagement as soon as possible and were disappointed when nothing happened for a few months. The next step was to set a date for the meeting of the two young people before the marriage was finalised.

‘Tagawa-ya san is saying that their son is coming home from Tokyo next month, and then we will know when to get together,’ was the message.

‘We’d better visit Mrs Kawamatsu with some presents,’ Ayako said to Kei, referring to the go-between friend. ‘She has been coming and going between our houses for some time.’

‘When all is formalised, we will give her proper presents. For the moment, you will go to her taking perhaps a bottle of saké and a box of cake,’ Kei suggested.

Another month had passed without further news. One day, Mrs Kawamatsu finally returned but when they saw her, they knew the news was not good before anything was said.

After an exchange of seasonal greetings, the visitor said, ‘I will not beat about the bush. I will be straightforward and say I come to apologise today. Tagawa-ya san is so embarrassed and angry as well.’