Tokyo Seven Roses: Volume I: 1 - Hardcover

Inoue, Hisashi

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0857280430 ISBN 13: 9780857280435

Publisher: Anthem Press, 2013

Synopsis

Tokyo Seven Roses' is set in Japan during the waning months of WWII and the beginning of the Occupation. It is written as a diary kept from April 1945 to April 1946 by Shinsuke Yamanaka, a fifty-three-year-old fan-maker living in Nezu, part of Tokyo's shitamachi (old-town) district. After the war, Shinsuke learns by chance that the Occupation forces are plotting a nefarious scheme: in order to cut Japan off from its dreadful past, they intend to see that the language is written henceforth using the alphabet. To fight off this unheard-of threat to the integrity of Japanese culture, seven beautiful women – the Seven Roses – take a stand.

About this title

About the Author

Hisashi Inoue (1934–2010) is an award-winning Japanese scriptwriter, playwright and novelist, and winner of the Kishida Kunio Stage Drama Award (1972), the Minister of Education Award for New Artists (1972), the Naoki Prize (1972), the Japan SF Grand Prize (1981), the Seiun Prize (1982) and the Tanizaki Jun'ichiro Prize (1991).

Jeffrey Hunter has worked as a translator and editor for 25 years, specializing in religion, philosophy, art, architecture, and both modern and Edo-period literature.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Tokyo Seven Roses Volume I

By Hisashi Inoue, Jeffrey Hunter

Wimbledon Publishing Company

Copyright © 2002 Hisashi Inoue
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-85728-043-5

CHAPTER 1

1945

April 25

Early this morning my older brother, who lives in the corner house down the street, carried our betrothal gifts over to the Furusawa family residence in Senju. I had handed him 500 yen in cash and a bolt of cloth for hakama trousers, for which I bartered two hundred and fifty fans to take to them. This is a very large outlay for us since, with the shortage of materials these last years, we haven't made any fans for some time now, and quite honestly it's the most we can afford, given how things are these days.

When my brother came back, he said, "It seems that when the Furusawa boy met Kinuko for the first time at the restaurant the other day, he was so shy he never looked up and saw only her hands. So the morning of the day after tomorrow, the 27th, they're going to send him over here. Mrs. Furusawa says to make sure that Tadao gets a good look at the girl who's going to be his bride."

Kinuko blushed, and Fumiko and Takeko teased their older sister that she probably didn't see Tadao's face, either.

My wife and I talked it over and decided that Kinuko and Tadao should go together to the Shinbashi Embujo Theater, which just happens to be the opening day for Kikugoro VI. If we let them go on their own, they're sure to at least see each other's face.

The double cherries in front of the Takahashi house are in bloom. People walking by on the street are stopping to point at them.

April 26

I got up early today to repair my three-wheeled truck, but just couldn't get it going. I've taken a job with Furusawa Enterprises delivering fertilizer and tools to farmers in Katsushika, so I was desperate to get the truck up and running, but no luck. I listened to Masao Sasaki on the radio at noon performing "The Watchman's Rounds" on the mandolin. That picked me up a little, and I decided to take the truck into town to have it looked at; with me pulling the truck with a rope, Fumiko steering and my wife pushing from behind, we managed to get it to Daihatsu Motors in Nihonbashi Hon-cho.

The mechanic looked it over and told me the truck was completely worn down. "If we had the parts, we could probably get it running again," he said, "but we don't have anything in stock. There's nothing we can do." So we ended up dragging the miserable piece of scrap through the burned-out wasteland back home to Nezu. I wanted to cry. I called Furusawa Enterprises on the phone, told them the situation and apologized. Then I went to my brother's house.

"I was hoping to get a little business delivering stuff around town, but with the truck kaput, it's all over. I'll start making the rounds again tomorrow for supplies for fans. You went to a lot of trouble to introduce me to the Furusawas. I'm sorry I let you down," I said, bowing to him.

"You know, I know this saké brewer in Toride," my brother said. "Remember — I think it was about five years ago — he ordered two thousand fans with his company logo to be printed on them? That order that I got for you, remember? Anyway, the other day I went to get some saké from him, and he said he had a three-wheeled truck he didn't need anymore, and asked if I knew anybody who'd be interested. He wanted 7,000 yen, with a down payment of 1,000 yen, the rest in installments. Why don't you go see him on Monday? Or if you prefer, I could buy it and rent it out to you."

My brother reached into his cash box and took out five 200 yen notes recently printed by the Bank of Japan. The paper and printing of the 100 yen notes these days are really cheap and crappy, but these brand-new 200 yen bills have the crisp sound of genuine money. I thought how nice it would be to drive through the countryside in the spring, instead of slogging through the dust and ashes of Tokyo. I accepted the crisp bills and headed for home.

I know it's not really fair to call my truck a piece of junk. After all, I bought it eight years ago, in the spring of 1937, when business at our Yamanaka Fan Shop was booming. We'd gotten the exclusive commission to produce the commemorative fans that the Asahi Shimbun was giving to all their readers to celebrate the achievement of a new world record, when the paper's airplane Kamikaze broke the Asia-to-Europe record on a goodwill flight, making the journey from Tokyo to London in 94 hours, 17 minutes and 56 seconds. We had twelve or thirteen employees then. When the Korakuen Baseball Stadium opened in September that year, we made the commemorative fans for that, too. That little three-wheeler certainly more than paid its dues. By all rights, I shouldn't badmouth it.

And the reason I even thought of starting a delivery service was because we already had that three-wheeler, which of course led to us getting to know Furusawa Enterprises, and now to Kinuko marrying into the Furusawa family. That little truck wasn't such a troublemaker at all — in fact, it was more like some beneficent deity who descended from heaven to grant our every wish.

When I was walking by the Takahashi house next door, I suddenly heard the roar of a B-29. A single plane. That was odd. I quickly looked up into the night sky; there hadn't been even a cautionary alert siren, not to mention an air-raid siren. Maybe this was just reconnaissance. But reconnaissance flights came during the day. Then, what really scared me, after the sound of the engine strangely faded, there was the roar of a whole formation.

"Ah, Mr. Yamanaka is out wandering the streets," called out Shoichi. He's in his first year at Azabu Middle School. He was sticking his head out of the second-floor window of the house, laughing. "You're the fifth person to fall for it. It's just a record." Shoichi's head disappeared inside for a moment, and the sound of a formation of B-29s stopped a few moments after.

"Nitchiku just put out this record of B-29s exploding," Shoichi said, back at the window and waving a pamphlet. "See —'Death-defying Recording Finally Completed!'"

"What a stupid thing to put out at a time like this. To say nothing about the kind of people who would buy it," I said, glaring up at him.

"Don't be unpatriotic," Shoichi jeered. "This was produced by the Fortification Department. And it's recommended by the General Defense Headquarters and the Ministry of War."

Shoichi can be a troublemaker, but he's a good boy at heart and he's generally pleasant and cheerful. In fact, sometimes I like him better than Kiyoshi, even though Kiyoshi's my own son. Kiyoshi studies hard, but there's something dark about that kid. I waved goodbye to Shoichi and headed on my way.

When I got home, my wife, Kazue, was sewing Kinuko's kimono. Lately she's been up until dawn sewing away, preparing Kinuko's trousseau, which includes a set of futon and three kimonos. It's a big job for one person.

"Don't overdo it. You need to take a break. If you push yourself too hard, you're going to collapse in a heap before the wedding takes place," I told her.

"If an air-raid siren goes off," she replied, "I'm going to tie everything in Kinuko's trousseau in a big bundle, and I want you to carry it to the air-raid dugout in Ueno Park. If these are destroyed in a raid, I'll kill myself."

I pulled my low desk over next to my wife to write in my diary.

April 27

I woke up early this morning and went to Ueno Station to stand in line for a train ticket. It was a sunny day, with just a couple fluffy white clouds drifting from east to west. More than two weeks have passed since the last air raid; the station, no longer thronged with air-raid refugees leaving the city, was back to its normal routine.

When the train crossed the Arakawa Canal, after Kita Senju, the scenery changed. The yellowish-brown, charred city blocks were gone, replaced by green fields of barley, with little swaths of yellow and pink — mustard flowers and cherry blossoms. In the area around Kanamachi there are rows of willows, the fresh spring leaves on their weeping branches act as a kind of wall that reflects the light so brightly it can be hard to see.

I arrived at the Yamamoto Saké Brewery at exactly 10 a.m. The proprietor wasn't there — he'd been drafted to work at the army's woolen cloth factory in Kashiwa — so I tried to explain my business to his retired father, but I couldn't seem to make any headway.

"I can't say anything about the truck unless I ask my son," the old man said. "Who are you, anyway?" "I'm Yamanaka, from Nezu. A few years ago you placed a large order for fans with your company's logo on them."

We repeated this exchange several times, until finally the old man yelled at the top of his lungs: "We don't want any fans!" He kept shouting angrily, "No fans! No fans!" I couldn't get another word out of him.

Eventually, the missus of the house came out and told me that a big steel drum that was tossed out of a B-29 had fallen a few yards from her father-in-law, and he'd never been the same since then. "On top of that," she went on, "he's been in a bad mood the last few days. He loves broiled eel, so when the government decided to turn all the eel ponds around here into rice paddies, and I happened to say that from now on there wasn't going to be any more broiled eel over rice, he started sulking. When they reach this age, they're just like children."

I had seen the government decision in the Asahi Shimbun this morning while I was waiting in line at Ueno Station. The headline read: "Say Goodbye to Broiled Eel." According to the article, Minami Shonai Village, a model farming village at Lake Hamana in Shizuoka, where the famous Hamana eels come from, is going to convert sixty-three hectares of eel ponds into paddies that can be double-cropped with rice. This year they are going to convert the first forty hectares, with the goal of producing two thousand additional bales of rice and increasing their delivery to the government by one thousand bales over last year's harvest. Apparently, eel-cultivation ponds are being converted into rice paddies all over the country.

Now, nothing could make me happier than having more rice, but I also like broiled eel. I don't know whether to feel sad or happy. That's all right; from now on I'll have broiled eel in my dreams. That's one of my talents — to be able to dream about my favorite foods. When I get into bed, I might say to myself, "Tonight I'm going to dream about tuna sashimi and all the rice I can eat," and then without fail, that's the dream I have. Tonight I'll order up dreamland broiled eel.

Mrs. Yamamoto said that she'd tell her husband about my coming about the truck and assured me that he'd be willing to sell it, which is a relief, and I handed her the five 200 yen bills as a down payment. After that good news, I asked if she would sell me some food. I bought five sho of soybeans, three kamme of potatoes and two large bunches of mitsuba greens for 10 yen. For someone like me from Tokyo, to get all that for 10 yen was like committing highway robbery. Mrs. Yamamoto also told me about some other farm families in the area who might have food for sale, and I went to two places. I got one sho of rice, another sho of soybeans, two bunches of onions and two kamme of wheat flower, all for 45 yen. In the past ten days I've been able to buy, one way or another, a dozen packets of ajinomoto, five packs of high-quality seaweed, five hundred momme of sugar, a large bottle of Yamasa soy sauce, five hundred momme of salt cod and a bottle of ketchup and Bull-Dog sauce — and on top of that, everything I bought today. We'll be able to send Kinuko off to her new home with quite a feast. There should even be enough left over for the party when she comes back for her home visit after the wedding. If only we had a little fish or meat, it would be perfect. But I'm not complaining.

It was nearly five in the evening when I got back home. When my wife saw what I brought back she squealed like a little girl. She really looked happy. Then Kinuko came home. She had rendezvoused with Tadao at Keisei Ueno Station.

"Didn't he see you home?" I asked.

Kinuko replied that he'd have walked her home but was too embarrassed to come in. "And," she continued, "along the way we ran into Shoichi, who said to Tadao, 'You're a lucky man. You're marrying the beauty queen of Nezu Miyanaga-cho,' which made Tadao blush to the gills and dash off."

Takeko, pushing up her sleeves, said, "That Sho-chan! I'll give him what he deserves the next time I see him! Don't worry, Kinuko, I'll take care of him! I'm the one that got him into Azabu Middle School. I helped him study, which is why he passed the exams. He acts humble and polite in front of me, but I won't let him get away with this!"

"He's at that age," said Fumiko, putting her chopsticks down. "He thinks he's clever. Do you know what he said to me this morning? 'Congratulations on becoming the new beauty queen of Miyanaga-cho.' He was just dying to say it, I could tell. Boys that age are hopeless."

"The new beauty queen of Miyanaga-cho? That's a compliment. He was trying to be nice," said Takeko.

That was when Kiyoshi slapped his chopsticks down on the table and went upstairs. The atmosphere was growing oddly tense, so I changed the subject and asked Kinuko how the performance at the Shinbashi Enbujo was.

"The curtain was delayed. We had to wait a very long time for it to start."

"It's always like that on the first day of a run."

"When Tied to a Pole was over, Kikugoro came out in his costume as Tarokaja and spoke to the audience. Everyone loved it. But then he said that eighteen of his fellow actors, including Koisaburo and Gennosuke, have gone missing in the air raids, along with countless other victims. Omezo is the only one in their entire troupe who hasn't lost someone in the attacks. The same was true of the musicians, and the majority of them have gone off somewhere, so that the only shamisen player left is Wasaburo. He said most of their costumes, sets and props had gone up in flames, and what we were seeing was their best attempt to make do. 'All we have left is our art,' he said. 'Our art is not just makeshift, or something we've managed to rescue from the flames; we've worked to polish it all our lives, and we're confident it's worth your while.'"

"That's just the kind of thing you'd expect from Kikugoro VI."

"And he went on, 'I'm born and raised in Edo. Our family has lived here for generations, and we've enjoyed your patronage for many long years. If we can offer you some entertainment and cheer, if we can encourage the warriors of industry who are working so hard to increase our nation's fighting power, we'll have made our small contribution to the war effort, and we're determined to remain here in the Imperial capital to the bitter end.' Then he said how, due to paper shortages, newspaper space has been restricted and they aren't able to advertise, so he was afraid many people don't know they're still here performing and doing their best to keep up people's spirits. So he said to please tell all our friends and neighbors that they're still performing at the Shinbashi Enbujo. And that we all needed to do our best to remain steadfast and brave until we triumph in our sacred struggle. That," continued Kinuko, "was the message that Kikugoro VI delivered to us. But he is so thin. When I saw him last fall with you, Father, he was almost fat. In this last half-year, he's become little more than skin and bones."

"It's the same with everyone."

"During the intermission we ate our bento box lunches. Tadao's had a beef cutlet in it. It was delicious."

"How were your seats?" my wife asked.

"First class. In the orchestra, seats 11 and 12 in Row T."

"That's great!"

"They cost 15 yen 50 sen each. Tadao paid for mine."

"You should have gotten second- or third-class seats and saved the difference. But I guess it can't be helped; it was a special occasion, after all. When you're a member of the Furusawa family, though, you have to try to save as much money as you can."

"Did you have a chance to talk to Tadao?" asked Fumiko.

"He talked a lot about the family business. Tadao is only twenty-four, but he's already taken over from his father and is working hard. He says he has a license to drive a truck, and the business makes about a million yen a month."

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Tokyo Seven Roses Volume I by Hisashi Inoue, Jeffrey Hunter. Copyright © 2002 Hisashi Inoue. Excerpted by permission of Wimbledon Publishing Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0857280430
• ISBN 13: 9780857280435
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 329