Chapter 1 Part2 (2/2)

“Hm-hmph,” the Nidaime snorted under his breath and took a look around the small room, eyes taking notice of the sliding door to the closet that I slid shut in a hurry just minutes earlier. Behind it, he was sure to find a drooling Akadamsensei, hugging the daruma doll and dreaming of Benten’s backside. I was on pins and needles that the Nidaime would see right through it any moment now, but he made no attempt to investigate the closet, just muttered, “Tanuki are such admirable little creatures,” in an indescribable tone that could be one of admiration or one of exasperation.

“Tanuki are indeed admirable,” I said. “If there is anything you need, simply say the word. I’m sure there must be some inconveniences after being gone for so long. And there is still the need to find your furniture and household belongings.”

“Yes, indeed. It appears those Kurama fools tossed them from Nyoigadake.”

“If you would, sir, may I suggest leaving this matter in the hands of this Yasaburou?”

Those household possessions flung from Daimonji by the Kurama tengu must have been picked up and horded by the tanuki dwelling in Kyoto. But if the Nidaime claimed owners.h.i.+p over them even at this late a date, it was not impossible to get his collection that had been sucked into the tanuki’s lairs back.

When I informed him of that, “I would be very grateful,” he replied, produced a gold coin from his pocket and tried to get me to take it. “I cannot allow you to work for free.”

“But tengu are made to drive tanuki to work hard. Tengu are greater than tanuki, after all.”

“I do not like being indebted to others, Yasaburou-kun,” the Nidaime then said. “Besides, I’m not a tengu.”

〇

The Nidaime’s return to the country sent significant ripples through the tanuki world.

To the furb.a.l.l.s with short lifespans, witnessing the arrival of a brand new tengu was a rarity that may or may not happen only once in a lifetime. So the ever curious tanuki, wanting to get a look at that new tengu, stalked Hotel Okura in Kawaramachi-oike. Among the stalkers were even elderly furb.a.l.l.s with not much longer left to live  who were supposed to stay holed up immovably in the Tanukidani temple. Before long, an irresponsible rumor went into circulation that stealing a look at the new tengu was sure to extend one’s lifespan.

With the tanuki world clamoring on and on, I got summoned by the head of tanuki society, Yasaka Heitarou, and went to pay him a visit in Gion together with my eldest brother.

As we walked from the east end of the s.h.i.+jouoohas.h.i.+ bridge, heading to the Yasaka temple, I kept grumbling under my breath how annoying all this was.

From my experience, nothing good was in store for you when you were summoned by the Nise-emon: it was either to lecture you under the accompaniment of a Hawaiian melody or to task you with some troublesome job.

As far as my brother explained it to me, at a meeting held the day before with him and Yasaka Heitarou presiding, the discussion on how to better deal with the Nidaime produced no real conclusion, except for a half-backed one along the lines of 'Let’s ask Yasaburou’s opinion, for starters’ to evade the issue.

“You’re the only who had any opportunity to hold a real conversation with the Nidaime,” my brother stated. “Besides, you also excel at handling Akadamsensei. That is, tengu and your name basically go hand in hand, you see.”

“I’m no tengu expert.”

“Stop complaing and make yourself useful to the tanuki world once in a while.”

A big tanuki named Yasaka Heitarou was not only the head of the Yasaka clan that held the territory stretching from the Maruyama Park to Gion, but also the Nise-emon governing all the tanuki of Kyoto. His office was located in a back alley of Gion-Nawate that was lined with tiny snack pubs and bars, in the building of a closed down proctology clinic. That clinic took care of Kyoto tanuki’s behinds for many years, and I, too, was a patient there at one time when a mushroom grew out on my b.u.t.t back when I was little.

The waiting room of the defunct clinic was crowded with tanuki who came to appeal to the Nise-emon, and me and my brother patiently waited for our turn, seated on an old leather-covered couch. At long last, we were escorted to the Hawaiian-styled examining room where Yasaka Heitarou, sprawling in a rattan chair and plucking at the strings of an ukulele, greeted us.

“Hi there, sorry for the trouble. Welcome to Fake Hawaii.”

On the walls of the examining room a very Hawaiian blue sea and indigo sky were painted, in the corners there were planted a few fake palm trees, and the s.p.a.ce on the walls was crammed with an a.s.sortment of Hawaii-related articles such as hula girl dolls, wreaths and aloha s.h.i.+rts. Hawaii had become Yasaka Heitarou’s yearned-for promised land, and ever since he had gone on a recreation trip there in his youth, he wanted nothing more that to push the position of the Nise-emon on my brother as soon as possible and escape to his southern land of dreams. It was his dearest wish to spend his time playing with coconuts on the Hawaiian beach after retiring.

“Nothing like thriving business, isn’t it,” said I.

“It’s not profitable, but this flood of customers never stops. It’s so aggravating, really.”

Since as the head of the tanuki world, the Nise-emon was expected to bring the tanuki of Kyoto together, whenever there was a quarrel, he had to step in and arbitrate, during any big tanuki a.s.sembly he was to take charge, and it was also his duty to show the way to little tanuki who were in search of the correct way to live as a tanuki. Sometimes, he even had to give advice on love affairs. That said, tanuki were creatures liable to easily overlook the bigger issue and lose themselves in pointless arguments over some minor stuff. Thus, the problems that visitors wanted Yasaka Heitarou to settle for them rarely required quick wit and mental gymnastic bordering on acrobatics, Oookstyle [*4], to solve. For that reason, when a complicated problem related to tengu fell into his lap, Yasaka Heitarou found himself at a loss.

Offering me and my brother chairs, Yasaka Heitarou produced a Mango Frappuccino from the fridge. The ukulele sang in staccato. The atmosphere of a southern island steadily filled the room.

“Well then, Yasaburou. I’m going to ask this because I regard you as an authority on the tengu world…”

Hearing such flattering words did make me feel better.

“The Nidaime… is he the real deal?”

If Yasaka Heitarou was asking whether or not the Nidaime was a genuine tengu or a legitimate heir of Akadamsensei’s, then it was probably for the sake of observing what was considered manners such as sending formal greetings from the tanuki world and holding an official welcome ceremony. After all, the Nidaime set foot on his native land for the first time in a hundred years, that had to be celebrated with lavish. However, considering the big fight that, as everyone knew, had occurred that same century ago, there was tremendous strife between Akadamsensei and the Nidaime. Not only had sensei not acknowledged the Nidaime in any shape or form, there were even suspicions that he thought of making Benten his successor. While there was nothing technically wrong with extending courtesy to the Nidaime on behalf of the tanuki world, it was out of question to incur Akadamsensei and Benten’s anger and irrational crackdown on tanuki right after, which was where the problem lay.

I was asked to relay the full particulars of my encounter with the Nidaime.

“As far as I can tell, he is a tengu through and through, no question about it. It is strange that the man himself insists he’s not one though… Maybe it’s because he somewhat lacks self-awareness as a tengu.”

“That spells trouble in dealing with him.”

“Things between the father and the son look as bad as ever, too, and when Benten-sama eventually returns, there will be a world of trouble, no doubt. If we recklessly get involved in this, fur on our b.u.t.ts is sure to catch fire.”

“Stop enjoying this, Yasaburou,” my brother chided.

“Well, it’s fine,” Heitarou remarked. “…So, what do you think, Yaichirou-kun?”

My brother folded his arms and frowned.

“I think my brother is an idiot. That said, I believe his judgement is correct.”

Yasaka Heitarou seemed to be in thought as he plucked at his ukulele.

The reason why Yasaka Heitarou succeeded our father, the previous Nise-emon, after he had fallen into the Friday Fellows Club’s pot, was because they were childhood friends. While tanuki society ran about in confusion, playing a desperate push-and-shove game of Os.h.i.+kura Manju [*5] after losing their head, Heitarou, upset and dillydallying, was mercilessly pushed out of the circle as the fall guy. At the time, Ebisugawa Souun still lacked dignity to seize the Nise-emon position, and many tanuki were of the opinion that they’d be better off leaving it to almost anyone, even Heitarou, than Ebisugawa. Ever since, while not having produced achievements worthy of special mention to his name, neither had Yasaka Heitarou made many big blunders, the fact of his continuous service, decent if lacking pa.s.sion, to the tanuki world in such an uncharacteristic role being quite admirable in and of itself.

“In the end, we’re just tanuki. Haste makes waste.” Before long, Yasaka Heitarou ended his musical performance and slapped his knees. “As a sly old tanuki that I’m supposed to be, I say we wait and see. We’ll decide which side to wag our tails once the stance of the tengu world on the matter has been made clear. For the time being, look out for any movements in the tengu world.”

〇

What I requested of Yasaka Heitarou was to spread the word as far as possible that the tengu stones that the tanuki had picked up and deep-pocketed belonged to the Nidaime and appeal for their return.

I asked Kiyomizu Chiijitarou from the antique store on Teramachi-doori street to provide a corner for the tengu stone collection retrieval and inspected the articles that the tanuki had been bringing there. It was as heart-breaking as taking the knife to the flesh for the tanuki to have to part with the tengu stones they had painstakingly collected, and many of them made a dramatic scene in front of the secondhand store. Among them even were those who loathed and cursed me for going and sticking my nose where it didn’t belong.

The a.s.sortment of articles that the Nidaime had brought back from England was astoundingly diverse.

A writing desk, western canes numbering ten-something, a few dozens of men’s leather shoes, a wooden wardrobe, plenty of suitcases, a collection of distance gla.s.ses, devices for experiments such as magnifying gla.s.ses and microscopes, lots of indoor slippers, silverware and candlestands, a violin, a chessboard, a mysterious bundle of keys, 3 overcoats, a lamp, a bathtub, Persian carpets, tweet caps, hundreds of Western books, sc.r.a.ps of newspaper articles… And that was only part of it. The chaise that my little brother and I had found at the foot of Nyoigadake was turned in, as well.

Thus, for about a week, I was being kept so busy that there was no time to even think about tsuchinoko.

Tsuchinoko represented the dream, but tengu were reality. During that period, the Nidaime lived at the hotel in Kawaramachi-oike. Those good looks of his and natural majestic air characteristic of tengu held the hotel staff captivated, and they treated him like a regular customer of many years. His appearance and mannerisms of an old-fas.h.i.+oned English gentleman fit nicely into the hotel’s big solemn lobby and tea room, his honor and dignity as a tengu just returned home displayed amply. A walk about an hour long that he would take at 5 in the afternoon was his everyday routine, his path always the same, and it mattered not if it rained. In the crowd of s.h.i.+nkyougako street the Nidaime’s form was extremely conspcious, unfailingly turning the heads of every pa.s.serby. Upon returning to the hotel, he would always check the time at the front door, and his motions, from opening his pocket watch to the angle he tilted his chin at to confirm the dial was so unchanging it was like a picture on a stamp. The Napoléon gold coins that seemed to appear from the pockets of his coat one after another in an endless stream hinted at the Nidaime’s outrageous financial a.s.sets, but unlike some, he didn’t squander that wealth on extravagant night amus.e.m.e.nts, seemingly having a truly calm and peaceful lifestyle.

Everyday in the evening, I went to deliver the items that had been collected from the tanuki that day at about the time when, by my estimations, the Nidaime would be back after his walk.

“h.e.l.lo, Yasaburou-kun. Much obliged to you today again.”

With each my repeated visit, the hotel room was steadily being rebuilt into an orderly pseudo-Europe. The tengu just back from abroad welcoming me in a white dress s.h.i.+rt without a single blemish on it seemed quite comfortable surrounded by his favorite furniture. He repeatedly tried to push gold coins into my pocket, but having my pride as a tanuki, I turned him down every time one way or another.

“I don’t like being indebted to people,” the Nidaime would say.

“Well, sir, I’m a tanuki.”

“Allow me to rephrase then. I don’t like being indebted to tanuki.”

“To be honest, I’m planning on asking for a much bigger favor eventually, such that gold coins will not measure up adequately enough. I’m being kept so busy I cannot even go out to search for tsuchinoko.”

“And there you have it. I have a feeling I’ll be tricked if I’m not careful.”

“Having enough leeway to allow yourself to be tricked is a wonderful thing.”

“Well said. Is that a pearl of tanuki wisdom?”

The Nidaime showed a wry smile, and I was off the hook for the time being while still staying true to my adamant refusal to accept gold coins.

Incidentally, there was something about his recovered collection that weighted on the Nidaime’s mind, a thing called an air gun of German make. Crafted by a German engineer in the 19th century, it was a mechanism equipped with a powerful pump that compressed the air to launch a lead bullet. Having pa.s.sed though several hands on its way from the continent to the British Empire, the gun remained a prized possession of a certain aristocrat for many years before being auctioned off which was when the Nidaime bought it; from the photo of it, it looked as beautiful as any bra.s.s instrument. When I hear the words 'air gun’, I imagined a toy that launched soft and fuzzy sh.e.l.ls like airy hairb.a.l.l.s, but “It’s nothing that adorable,” the Nidaime chuckled. With that gun rumored to have been used to a.s.sa.s.sinate a minister of a certain country, if they happened to be shot from it, a creature like tanuki would be Heaven-bound in no time, apparently.

“I a.s.sume you, my furball friends, don’t like guns, do you?”

“No, we most certainly don’t. That said, I’ve never had a chance to see one upclose myself.”

“If you could find it with all due haste, I would be grateful. There is sure to be trouble if it were to be misused.”

As a matter of fact, while I was frequenting the Nidaime in this manner, Akadamsensei still lived knowing nothing about the Nidaime’s return to the country. Finding a tanuki who would want to be on the receiving end of a rage explosion over making such a report was impossible, and seeing as sensei stayed holed up in his apartment the whole time, he simply had no chances to learn the news in the first place.

When I dropped by at a time with a multi-compartment bento box in hand, I found sensei in the middle of his four and a half tatami mat room, seated at a low tea table as if clinging to it and writing another love letter to Benten he kept on sending.

Sensei is always the last to know, how pitiful, how lamentable.

Just when my thoughts trailed hazily along those lines, sensei suddenly sent a glare my way.

“Yasaburou.”

“What is it, sir?”

“Are you hiding something from me?”

“Bringing that up this late in the game, sir?” panicking, I spoke up jovially. “I do have a lot of secrets, that’s for sure.”

Sensei snorted, putting finis.h.i.+ng touches to his love letter. “…Oh well, no matter. They must be silly trifling things either way.”

〇

Akadamsensei, left out of the loop about the Nidaime’s homecoming, learned about everything when May had already reached its second half and it had been 2 weeks since the Nidaime’s return.

The only ones who could tell sensei, nigh-permanently cooped up in his apartment, the truth were his few old tengu friends. When I heard the rumor that Iwayasan Kinkoubou was seen pa.s.sing though the Demachi shopping district with a 1 s...o...b..ttle decorated with a mizuhiki cord [*6], I thought, 'The time has finally come’.

Apprehensively, I decided to drop by sensei’s apartment, but by the time I did it had already been vacated.

Following that, Akadamsensei had disappeared from Kyoto, and hasty tanuki made a fuss, jumping to a conclusion that he went into hiding fearing retaliation from the Nidaime. However, those of us who had actually studied under sensei, starting with me, objected, insistent that with him, of all people, such a thing was just impossible.

It was true that our former mentor had lost the ability to fly through the sky freely years too early, and for someone who became a good-for-nothing old geezer who was like a thorough collection of all the nasty and wicked traits tengu possessed despite his total inability to do anything tengu-like, he shamelessly remained a selfish leecher and an overbearing tanuki-bullying braggart, yet there was also no denying that his tengu pride was the only thing he had in such abundance that it could start dripping from his nose at any moment. That is, he was the kind of person who would rather die a ridiculous death by cras.h.i.+ng into freeze-dried tofu than give the likes of tanuki a cause to point fingers and run their mouths about him running away in the fear of the Nidaime.

'Mark our words, sensei will be back, without fail,’ a.s.serted the Akadama tanuki pupils.

And not even a few days later a tanuki came out and claimed that he saw sensei moving about the k.u.mogahata region.

The parts of k.u.mogahata, located to the north of Kyoto, that slipped deep into the Kitayamasugi cedar forest after you went north and upstream the Kamogawa river and left the urban area, were the turf of Iwayasan Kinkoubou since very long ago. To us, removing himself from the world below full of earthly affairs and tanuki hair and cooping up in a lofty place like that looked like proof of just how serious Akadamsensei was being. There could be no doubt that our great teacher went to train his body and discipline his mind that had grown rusty and dull from his many years of reclusive life, fully intenting to confront the Nidaime now that he had been back.

“That’s Akadamsensei for you. Even corrupt, he’s still Nyoigadake Yakus.h.i.+bou.”

After this news, in the tanuki world sensei’s stocks seemed to have gone up somewhat.

T/N:

[*1] Nidaime (ニ代目) lit. the Second: make no mistake it’s not a name, just a counter that serves as a convenient way to identify him, so everyone calls him that (similarly to the use of words like sensei, danna, kaichou, etc). His full tengu name would be Nyoigadake Yakus.h.i.+bou the Second, by the norms of English.

[*2] Minamiza theater (南座): one of the most famous and earliest kabuki theaters (wiki); its current building was built in 1929 which we could take as the year when the conflict between Akadama and the Nidaime took place.

[*3] Daruma (達磨): I’m sure every anime or manga fan knows what a daruma is (wiki just in case), so here I’ll just mention that when new, both its eyes are unfilled, and you fill in the left eye when you found a wish or an ambition you want to make reality and the right one after you’ve achieved it.

[*4] Oooka judgement  (大岡裁き): originates from the decisions made by a legendary judge of the 17th century Oooka Tadasuke who is famous for making his decisions with exceptional wisdom, fair-mindedness and kindness (wiki)

[*5] Os.h.i.+kura Manju (押し競饅頭): a children’s game where partic.i.p.ants stand back-to back in a circle and try to push one of them out of it (wiki)

[*6] 1 s...o...b..ttle ( 一升瓶 ): sho is a traditional j.a.panese unit for measuring volume equal to 1.8 liters; Mizuhiki (水引) is a decorative cord out of twisted rice paper (wiki)

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