Even though it was Sunday, the daily schedule went as usual for Yamada until about 9:30. He took his time eating his toast as he read the newspaper, then went into the bathroom. He returned to the table, and had one cigarette. Usually at that time he would think about a book that was late being published, or about new plans, or about a promised interview or visit he had put out of his mind and, halfway through the cigarette, he would stand up and go get dressed. At that point, his wife Shigeko would be in the kitchen cleaning up after the meal, and would switch on the dishwasher.
On this Sunday, however, when he returned from the bathroom for a smoke, the table was occupied by Tamiko, the big sister. She had opened up her problem book without being told, and had started studying. Her little brother Shigeru, on the other hand, was sprawled out on the tatami making a picture of battling airplanes and tanks. Vocalizing the gunfire, he drew vigorous lines from the muzzles with a red crayon; some of the red strayed onto the tatami. This child did not like to study, and Shigeko always complained that it was so much trouble to get him to do his homework.
With the children before his eyes, he relaxed with the knowledge that this was a day off. He did smoke a cigarette as usual, but did not turn his mind to his work. Today he could not hear the sound of the dishwasher from the kitchen. He exaggerated in thinking he heard that sound every day. In fact, it may have been only three times a week.
"Papa," his son called out suddenly. "Weren't you an army lieutenant, papa? How many men did you have under you?"
"I instructed the new men during exercises, but-- actually I was something like a teacher."
"What about when it wasn't an exercise?"
"There weren't any men under me."
Yamada remembered an ill-tempered guard. He had served as a cadet for several months-- although he was called a lieutenant, he was a Potsdam lieutenant, and was not in a position to give orders to anyone. The non-commissioned officers and men all ridiculed Yamada and the others as amateur officers. And when he associated with regular officers, he felt a psychological pressure like a raw recruit on a militia squad.
This guard had observed the forms of respect, but there was no telling what he said or did in the shadows. Once he had noticed the guard howling "Our cadet guy really gets them dirty" as he pounded his underwear at the wash table. If he had been sent to the front and wounded, not one man would have sobbed out "Squad leader!" with tears coursing down his cheeks.
"But if you were a lieutenant, papa, there must have been men under you."
"None."
Yamada's reply was somewhat testy. He had been beaten a number of times before becoming a cadet. That doesn't mean he wasn't beaten afterwards. The poundings were all from his superior officers. Yamada, however, had not beaten anyone. In other words, whatever his rank had been, there was no one lower than him emotionally.
Shigeru sensed his father's mood and changed the subject.
"You're pretty important in your company, aren't you, papa?"
"It's not really a company. It's a bookstore. There are three of four people under me."
"But aren't you on the board of directors?"
Then Tamiko, who had been studying, spoke up.
"Mother said not to tell people, since a director wouldn't be living in a public housing project."
"That's not true, is it, papa?"
Shigeru dropped his crayons and stood up. It was understandable that Shigeru wanted his father to be someone important. But it would cause problems to spread the image of a brave soldier or a promising businessman among his son's friends. His son's friends would just flare their nostrils-- his worry came from thinking about the amused smiles when the friends told their fathers what they had heard about little Yamada's father.
Perhaps for that reason, Tamiko's precocious commentary was not really welcome. If that is what she really thought, it would end any idea she had of impressing her friends. She was in 4th grade, and seemed to have the common sense of the housewives at the project. What concerned him even more was that Tamiko's words were without doubt a reflection of his wife Shigeko's views. They had been married more than 10 years and there was no need for her to think of him as the prince of her dreams, but if she gave ideas like that to her daughter, there was no telling what she really thought of him.
It was true that he was a director. He had tried going back to college after demobilization, but college life is somehow unsatisfying for one who has poked his head into the world of adults, and he was unable to invest himself in his studies. Some of his army friends had some paper and money, and went into publishing. For a while, anything that was printed could be sold on the margins of the market, and he had a good part-time job as a student editor, but then the recession came. At that point, two years had passed since he left college, and still being a new imployee, he could hardly move to another company, so he struggled for money along with Hagiwara, the company president who was the same age. The name and location of the company changed a number of times, and he had two children by the time it stabilized as a publishing company of seven or eight people.
Yamada usually never thought of himself as a company director. A portion of the scant inheritance he received when his father died had been invested in the company. That money was to have financed his marriage to Shigeko, so their married life had to begin in a state no different from elopement. But in any case, Yamada had been a director since that time. Life as a director's wife, however, can range from good to not so good, and he had not known Shigeko felt herself to be at the lower end of that range, and had communicated her discontent to the children.
When Yamada told his son that yes, he was a director, he was frankly surprised, and felt a confusion that reddened his face.
When she finished studying, Tamiko stood up, put away her things, and got ready to go out.
"Where' you going?"
"Piano"
"Right. I'm going to the grandstand. To play ball." Shigeru stood up, trampling on his paper.
"You can't catch a ball."
Shigeru looked like his sister had touched a sore spot. He winced, but put up a bold front. "Oh yeah? Are you saying I'm bad? Are you?" he said threateningly.
But Tamiko ignored that; she put her music in her bag and left. Shigeru recovered his composure, pulled on his cap and ran off, leaving his drawing materials scattered around. When he looked at the sister and brother, they seemed to be a miniature version of Yamada and his wife. Before he knew it, he was in Shigeru's place, hating Tamiko.
"I'm going to sweep, if you'll move," Shigeko said, pulling the sweeper in. Her face looked red and swollen from the heat of the kitchen work. Looking at that face, his desire to pick a fight subsided.
"Shigeru leaves everything scattered around. It would help if you'd tell him to straighten things up."
Shigeko was irritated, but unlike his son, he was unable to put up a front and bluster. He couldn't say, "Oh yeah? Are you saying I'm bad? Are you?"
Yamada thought he could understand how Shigeru felt. In elementary school he had always been the loser in quarrels and sports. He was pretty good scholastically, but not enough to make it to first or second place. He had been dissatisfied with his mediocre self. He had wished there was something he could lead his class in. One student was far ahead in mathematics, and even the boys that couldn't learn anything had the skill to lead the class in swimming or shop.
There was another student with mediocre talents like Yamada, but he was the son of a retired major general, so he was highest ranked among those with military relations. Yamada's father was an engineer. He wondered once if perhaps an engineer was as important as a major general, and had asked that night at dinner. Before his father could answer, his mother had made a stern face and scolded, "You children! That's not something you should worry about."
At his school desk, Yamada had created his own kingdom. The old desk at the school was scarred, and there were the remains of ink someone had spilled. In that, Yamada saw mountains and rivers and seas. His pencil box and textbook became the government and the army.
He had two favorite pencils. One was made in Japan and was just one of a dozen he had bought, but for some reason the softness of the wood and the hardness of the lead were just what he liked. The other was a German pencil. He named them General Yamada and General Adler, and when he ran into a difficult problem, he would order one of the two generals to attack. General Yamada was best at grammar, and General Adler's specialty was mathemathics.
Yamada was the absolute monarch of his little kingdom. Even the victorious General Adler was tossed in the waste basket when he bungled an easy calculation. He was also a good ruler. He always took good care of his subjects, and although General Adler had been an exception, when a pencil got too short he usually wrapped it in paper and buried it at sea, in the river next to the school.
Another important personage among his subjects was a three-edged ruler called the Doctor, who was the world's leading authority on synthetic petroleum. Even General Yamada would obey the Doctor when deciding how long to draw a line. The Doctor was the kings most trusted advisor.
The Doctor was an idealization of the real Yamada's father. The day after he had asked about his father's position in society, his mother had told him, "Your father does research on alcohol. Japan isn't able to obtain petroleum. And so, alcohol is very important as a fuel for the army."
This may have been an answer his parents had worked out to the question he had asked the previous day. Apparently his father didn't have great influence in society, but had an important job that would influence the fate of Japan. That thought satisfied Yamada.
Self respect of this form naturally disappears as one gets bigger; when he reached the upper grades of elementary school his kingdom crumbled and all his subjects disappeared. He remembered finding satisfaction and comfort being in the upper part of the middle. When he wanted to take the college entrance exam and when he became an army officer candidate, it may have been from a desire to confirm that he was in the upper middle. When he entered college, he was happy to see that he could do as well as others, and when he became a cadet, it seemed to assure him that his will and his body were as strong as the average. Even now Yamada didn't think of himself as a great editor, and he had no ambition to make his company the best publishing house in Japan. He was pushed around by the problems he confronted each day, and like it or not, he had to pour every effort into that work.
To say that he was satisfied with that situation, or that he was reconciled to it, would be wrong. He didn't know just when, but the idea that his life was like that had set the limits of his actions. Just as the position of one's eyes is determined by his height, Yamada thought of the world as what could be seen from his own life. He realized there was an existence outside his field of vision, but did not think it had any meaning for him.
The children's words had been a shock to him. That was because they implied criticism of him. What Shigeru said was a request that he be upper upper instead of upper middle, and it was conceivable that Tamiko's words both recognized that Yamada was middle middle and expressed shame in such a father.
"What are you thinking? Did you want to do something today? It's really hot. I don't know what we should do."
Shigeko, who had finished the sweeping, said this as she came out to Yamada on the veranda. Yamada noticed that he was seated on a faded tarp, and had smoked several cigarettes.
"Have a seat." Yamada put Shigeko in a chair, and brought some juice from the refrigerator.
"Thank you. You didn't do this sort of thing for me even before we got married."
Shigeko just had a swallow of juice, and handed the glass to Yamada. He took a swallow and handed it back, saying "You drink it." This time Shigeko finished it in one drink, and stared up at Yamada's face.
"What have you told the children about me?"
"That you're a clerk in a bookstore. Is that wrong?"
"That's fine."
That is what he called himself when Yamada and Shigeko first met. Shigeko had been a student at a women's college, and when Yamada's company published the complete works of Iwano Homei, she had come to the company asking for materials for her graduation thesis. Yamada had thought Shigeko was beautiful. He thought she had shown so brightly he could not look her straight in the eyes. And so he had said, "I'm the clerk of this bookstore. But why would a lovely young lady like you be interested in a trashy writer like Iwano Homei?" /1
"If that's the case, why do you sale books by trashy writers?" Shigeko replied with a serious, slightly pale face. That, in any case, had been their first conversation.
"Maybe I shouldn't have. But Tamiko had come across your business card, and asked about the title. That's why I answered like that."
"Okay. That's fine. But did you explain the meaning of the words 'clerk at a bookstore'?"
"I didn't. Shigeru apparently thought of the man at the bookstore where he buys his magazine every month, and looked disappointed."
When Yamada had called himself a clerk in a bookstore, it had been a boy's pose in front of a girl, contrary to the words themselves. When he was with Shigeko, he had the illusion he was upper upper instead of upper middle, but didn't want to convey that to her.
He didn't know just when, but one of their early meetings was at Tokyo Station at 9 a.m. People on their way to work flooded through the wickets like a swollen river after the rain. He hadn't realized Tokyo Station was so crowded that time of day. His own workplace never opened before 10:00. Consequently, he looked at the crowd of people before him and their hurry to get to work as something foreign to him. Actually, he even had a sense of superiority. As he watched middle-aged men, out of breath, running across the intersection, he had the illusion that they were docile cattle under his supervision.
"I'm sorry to be late." When Shigeko arrived, Yamada was watching the stream of people from the shelter of a pillar.
Yamada remembered saying something affected like, "I'm working on the spirit of these people. I'll write a book to change the direction of the flow."
Shigeko had said "I'd like a job like yours," her eyes flashing. Subsequently Yamada did not write a book to change the flow of people, and Shigeko became a collaborator in his life, not his work.
However, this memory of the two of them could not be told to others. It could not be revealed even to the children. The phrase "clerk in a bookstore" was a special memory with a special meaning just for the two of them. Like the words "brave soldier" or "capable businessman," they were somewhat embarrassing. But "clerk in a bookstore" was also a comfortable phrase that others could take literally.
"That Shigeru is asking how important I am."
"Yes, I heard while I was sweeping. But maybe it's better for children to be able to say their papa is a big man. My father was always proud of my grandfather. He distinguished himself in the Osaka summer campaign."
"Grandparents and parents are different though. Not many parents will say 'I'm really great,' but they don't mind saying how great the grandparents were."
Yamada did not have a clear image of his grandfather. He had only gone to his grandfather's place one time. In his childhood he had heard the story of how his grandfather had lost everything in oil, and as much as fled in the night from Niigata to Tokyo. In his mind, the scene of this story was a large but ramshackle landowner's mansion. The surrounding clay was crumbling, and through the gaps one could see the main house with fallen roof tiles, like a haunted house.
In his memory, however, there had no contact between Niigata and his home. He had heard that a distant relative lived in the house, and he had a vague recollection that, when a youth from that family came to work in Yamada's father's company, the close-cropped, unsociable boy had come to greet his family.
In the autumn after the war ended, Yamada went with his father to buy rice from that family of distant relatives. When they got off the crowded train, they had missed their bus, so the two of them walked the long road with empty rucksacks on their backs. It was a cold day,with heavy clouds spread all across the sky. His father walked cheerfully in front, reminiscing about bitter experiences climbing this road through the snowstorms. The rice in the fields had all been cut, and the poles for drying it stood here and there like rugby goals.
"Those are called hasa. The sheaves of rice are hung there, head downward, to dry. And then . . ."
His father went on with some endless story. This was probably his first trip back since leaving the village at age 12 or 13.
"They say the autumn sky is high, but that's not the case here," Yamada said.
"If there are any showers from a sky like that, it will be snow. I remember walking over the snow to school on the Emperor's birthday, November 3rd."
When they reached the entrance to the village where his father had been born, he stopped to look around. Then, "There it is-- my father's house!"
He pointed in the direction of a persimmon tree. Yamada could see part of an old, thatched roof in a gap between other roofs.
It was not a spacious landowner's mansion. A stone wall about a foot high, atop which hiba was sprouting in places, ran along the road. There was a scarred storehouse to the left when they went through the gate. In short, this was only a farm of middling size. Moreover, the distant relatives who lived there had a cool attitude toward those who came from Tokyo to buy from them.
The middle-aged woman who had come out of the earthen-floored entry room barely changed expression when Yamada's father gave his name.
He asked, "Is Haruo doing well?" naming the youth he had helped find work in Tokyo.
"Huh. Last April we got notificatio that he had died in battle."
"Well, well."
Yamada's father made a few more remarks to establish his connection to this family, but the woman's expression remained unchanged.
When he stated his business, she just said, "All the relatives in Tokyo are coming to buy rice these days." Then she added, "I was just going to the cooperative," and left.
The two waited a long time at the edge of the house. His father was silent now. Then he looked up at the roof of the storehouse, and said, "That person spoke with a Niigata accent a lot like father's, didn't she?"
He answered with a sullen "Um."
Finally the woman came back. She said, "Come in here," and showed them into the entry room. She measured out rice from an open bale in the corner. The white rice gleamed like pure white sand in the dim light of the entry room.
"Don't attract attention going back. There'll be trouble in the neighborhood if the rumor starts that I'm selling on the black market. And if the police pick you up, please don't say you bought from me."
The two had counted on spending the night there; at least they had told their family not to worry if they were late returning. Now, however, asking to stay was out of the question.
Now the rucksack cut into his shoulders. For the first time in several months, Yamada thought about the when he had been in the army. When they reached the road, the father and son stopped to exchange words. He was suddenly perplexed by the weight that had been added to his back. Besides that, there was still a lot of time before the next train to Tokyo.
"Let's go to the graveyard for a bit."
His father started walking in the opposite direction from the station. As they followed the wall around that farmhouse, they came to a leveled area, at the edge of which was a river. On the other side of a wooden bridge was a steep rise. They left the path at that point, and 20 or 30 meters further along they came to a small, level area where there were a number of gravestones lined up.
"This is your great grandfather's grave," his father said, pointing to the grave closest to Yamada. "When I came back to see him after the ceremony at the end of my first year of school, he was already dead. Now that I think of it, it must have been a stroke."
His father placed a handful of rice from his rucksack in front of the gravestone, and joined his hands. Yamada did the same thing before the gravestone next to it. He didn't know whose grave it was, but it was certainly one of his ancestors.
That completed, they sat down with their backs against the gravestones. Before them stretched thatched roofs, then two or three farmhouses, then fields of cut stumps that continued to the black mountans in the distance.
"There was oil in Kashiwazaki, and some people got rich. And so your grandfather mortgaged some of his hill property, and began drilling in the back hills. He had no scientific knowledge, and so all he struck was water. Although he was a landowner, he only produced the little bit he farmed himself, and he had financial difficulties immediately; his fields and hills were taken by the money lender. Selling off your ancestors' land is really a shameful thing for farmers. So he sold the remaining fields to a distant relative, left for Tokyo, and started a rice shop. He knew rice, and had experience buying and selling in his own country, it seems."
"Did you decide on applied chemistry after grandfather failed in oil?"
"No, that wasn't it. When I was in middle school, I was told that synthetic dyes were a big thing, but Japan's technology was no good. This was when textiles were the flower of Japanese industry. I decided to study dyes and take advantage of this. I didn't have the money to go to college, so I went to a vocational high school. I got involved in alcohol and synthetic oil, but the connection to his failure was pure coincidence."
With a quiet laugh, his father pulled a cigarette from his pocket, torn it in two, and handed half to Yamada. Smoking shoulder to shoulder with his father, he had a feeling of closeness to his father for the first time in his life. The little village and harvested fields were at their feet, and their ancestral graves were behind them. To Yamada this was an unfamiliar view, but his father may have thought the place where he was sitting was where he should be buried, looking down on his own home and fields. His father's sentiments, mixing with the tobacco smoke that drifted past his nose, pressed on his heart.
"Have our ancestors always lived here?"
"No, just five generations back, I think. The story is that an old man brought a young man here from the mountains, bought a house and fields, handed over the genealogy, and returned to the mountains. If you think about it, it was probably the son of the mistress of some landowner over there."
It occurred to Yamada that the old man and the young man must have been about the same ages as his father and himself. That ancient father had given his son property, but his descendents several generations later had only come to buy rice, and had to leave without going into the village.
"The genealogy?"
"When your grandpa left for Tokyo he entrusted it to the family that lives in that house, with the idea that he would return in better circumstances, but that family says they don't remember receiving it. That sort of muddle is the reason I haven't come here before now."
"Then for our family, grandfather was the first generation and I'm the third. Commoners from the beginning. Isn't that best-- the current style?"
"Your grandpa felt bad about the genealogy. The chart was gone, but he remembered the key points, he said. There was the emperor Kanmu, then some imperial prince, then skip 11 generations and his son was Mamezo, and his son was Hachizo, and on like that. Would descendents 12 or 13 generations from the emperor have names like Mamezo and Hachizo?"
Yamada laughed out loud, but his father was tight-lipped. Finally he finished his smoke, looked at his watch, said "let's head back," and stood up.
Yamada hadn't been to his father's village since then.
Around noon the daughter who had gone to piano and the son who had gone to play baseball returned home. Shigeko served some cold somen noodles. the contrast between the white flow of noodles and the ice cubes atop them was refreshing. The smell of the children's sweat, with a medicinal tinge of ginger mixed in, invigorated Yamada's nose.
"How was piano, Tamiko?"
It was because of a sense of satisfaction at surrounding the dining table with his wife and children that Yamada asked such a thing.
"How? Just the usual."
Tamiko supped up her noodles with a face devoid of emotion. Shigeru chomped his food, spattering the table with soup, and appeared not to hear anything his father and sister were saying.
"You must be getting good. I'd like to hear you some time."
"You can't. I can't practice if we don't have a piano," she said with some force.
"But even when we had one, I couldn't rehearse too much. With one in the house, playing became burdensome, and I ended up not liking music." Shigeko tried to smooth things out, but it sounded less like an attempt to soothe her daughter's discontent than a round-about way of bragging that she had a piano when her friends' parents did not.
"Mother, I wish you hadn't sold that piano," Tamiko said regretfully.
"After the war we were hard up for money. We exchanged it for rice."
"Were you good, mama? Could you play with both hands?" Shigeru broke in.
Shigeko gazed at her own fingers. When she was a girl, her hands had been white and plump and warm. Sometimes in movie theaters Yamada had caressed her smooth, resilient hands. Peoples' hands are the first part to start getting old. He saw her face and figure every day and they didn't seem too aged, but her hands had lost their look of long ago. The veins, which in the old days had looked like shadows deep within the white skin, had floated to the surface now. The backs of her hands, on which not a single pore had been visable, had crepe-like wrinkles when the skin was stretched tight as well as when it was relaxed. Her hands had changed from the supple hands of a girl to sinewed, sexless hands; he doubted Shigeko could play piano now.
"I'd like to buy a piano, but there's no place to put it in an apartment, and more than that, the neighbors would complain." Shigeko spoke mournfully. Perhaps she too had noticed how her hands had changed.
"It's all right. I don't care if you buy one. That was the promise at the start."
Tamiko looked at Yamada as she spoke. The promise at the start was when Tamiko said she wanted to take piano, but had to give up when told there was no room. But Shigeko had surrendered when she saw Tamiko running her fingers gracefully across the dining table, as if playing a piano, as she sang.
She tried to persuade Yamada: "If she wants one that much, it may be that she has real talent." But his mind was made up. Anytime there had been musical instruments in the apartment block, they had become seeds of strife among the neighbors. If she learned piano, she would want to buy one, and then they would have to be prepared to leave the apartments for a separate house.
It wouldn't be impossible to buy a piano, if it were on monthly payments. But it looked like buying a piano would be the prelude to a radical rebuilding of his family life. And that situation had led to the promise that it would be all right to take piano, but impossible to buy one. Judging from her parents, it was inconceivable to Yamada that Tamiko had any musical talent out of the ordinary. He was optimistic that she had said she wanted to take piano because of a girlish infatuation with music, and so would quickly tire of it and quit. But because of the promise, he had been told he didn't have to buy one, and had said no more as a father.
"If you really like piano, Tamiko-- if you're serious and not just playing around, I'll buy one. If the neighbors say anything, we'll explain it's because Tamiko is important to her father."
"It's all right. I've got this thing."
Tamiko pulled a long strip of pasted-together pieces of paper from the music bag beside her. When it was unfolded, he could see that a full-size piano keyboard had been drawn on it with a marker. The white margins at each end were full of thumbtack holes.
"I spread this out and do finger exercises. I imagine the sound in my head. The only problem is it doesn't sound any different when I make a mistake."
When children are whining, it's enough just to scold them. It is when they show real understanding that being a parent is hard. Because of the incident that morning, Yamada felt that Tamiko doubted his economic capability.
"Please don't use that. I'll buy you a piano."
When Yamada was a child, he had learned the story of Ninomiya Kinjiro in ethics classes./2 Instead of admiring the story of fighting against hardship, Yamada had wondered angrily why his protectors weren't doing anything. But when he grew up and had children of his own, his emotions were stirred by the pain felt by the parents who could do nothing for Kinjiro. Tamiko was a modern child, however; she knew nothing of Kinjiro, and even less of the sadness of parents.
"Really?" she said doubtfully, looking from one to the other of her parents faces, but finally a smile changed her expression to something more lively.
"Tomorrow after school please come to the company with mother. By then I'll have looked into stores that sell them."
"Papa, there's something I want too. I want a rubber ball."
After the ball was purchased at the stationery shop,/3 Shigeru ran off without a word to Yamada. His intention was probably to start playing baseball as soon as possible. After buying cigarettes at the shop next door, he turned his leisurely steps in the direction that Shigeru had run. It was not that he wanted to see the place where Shigeru was playing. It was too hot for a walk, but he was feeling active and wanted some sort of exercise. The reason for that was that he felt good about buying his daughter a piano and buying his son a ball. It was a sense of satisfaction he didn't want Shigeko to know about. She had been about to tell him "That sort of thing isn't natural," so he decided to talk a walk alone.
"There are any number of fathers who wouldn't buy a piano. There are some who wouldn't even buy a 25 yen rubber ball."
Yamada was well aware that his sense of satisfaction was what the newspapers called the vanity of parents. It had much in common with his sense of satisfaction and embarrassment when he heard Shigeko was pregnant. It was self-satisfaction with his own strength. After he had heard from Shigeko of her first pregnancy, he had looked at the hand mirror he used for shaving and, as he lathered his chin, had muttered to the fellow in the mirror, "Hey, you're pretty capable."
At the edge of the apartment complex, ground had recently been cleared in preparation for construction of a second section; various construction materials were gathered there, and the foundation work had been started. A number of ball games were going on simultaneously, and one could see players pitching, committing errors, batting and running all at the same moment.
Not knowing which game Shigeru was participating in, Yamada walked around the poor footing of the empty lot. Wherever her looked, Shigeru was not on the team then in the field.
"This time we're pulling you out for a pinch hitter."
He looked, and saw Shigeru nod slightly as he was told that. He was siting cross-legged on the ground five or six steps in front of Yamada. He was being consoled by boys two or three years older than him. In fact, the child's ball being used in the game right in front of Yamada was still new and completely white. It was without question the one he had just bought for Shigeru. Before there was time for Yamada's displeasure at that to show on his face, the boy in the batter's box hit a big foul, and the white ball flew out of the vacant lot and into a potato field. The batter and several other boys scrambled over the fence and into the field.
"Hey, don't mess up the field," someone bawled out in a shrill voice. Apparently this happened a lot, and they got scolded by the farmer. No one was able to find the ball.
"Yamada-- you go look for it! It's your ball, isn't it?" the boy on the mound called out. Shigeru slowly stood up and walked to the fence.
The pitcher said, "Where's the old ball? Let's have the old one," and someone tossed him an earth-colored ball. He immediately started his wind-up. Shigeru was left alone in the field. He stood in the center of it, not knowing which way to turn.
Yamada left quickly. He wondered if Tamiko's piano wouldn't end up like Shigeru's ball, and his earlier joy at buying a piano was almost completely gone.
When Yamada got back to the apartment, Shigeko had just finished her afternoon cleaning.
"Tamiko?" he asked, taking some beer out of the refrigerator.
"She was so happy, she went to tell her friends."
Yamada couldn't match Shigeko's happy look; a glum smile was the best he could manage.
"When they bought me a piano when I was a girl, I really felt burdened with obligation. Then when I didn't do well, I was criticized for wasting all they had spent on the piano. That's why I don't like money."
"Pianos cost a lot back then."
"That's true, but you're pretty smart when it comes to buying pianos. I just wonder where to put it. We could move your bookcase in here, and put the little china cabinet in the kitchen. That would block the way in and out of the kitchen a little."
"We've actually got a lot of stuff. It just multiplies before you know it."
"Before you know it? I remember every piece. The refrigerator was four years ago, from the bonus when the Build Your Learning Power did well. The TV was when Growing Healthy Children was a best seller."
"Um, that's right. It was the night of the party to celebrate the company moving out of the president's living room and into that stand-alone temporary building that Tamiko got started."
"You're so crude."
Wondering if Shigeko was embarrassed, Yamada drank down the beer from a glass on the drainboard.
Hadn't the two children and all the family property been created by the two of them? He brought money, and Shigeko turned it into things. She changed his passion into children. It had all started in that shabby reception room that had been remodeled from the entryway of the company president's house, when he had asked, "Why would a lovely young lady like you be interested in a trashy writer like Iwano Homei?"
He had spoken nonchalantly, but "lovely young lady" was the central phrase in what he had said, and that must have been what stimulated Shigeko the most, too. And so the two had met several times on the excuse that she was doing her thesis about a trashy writer, but that was literally a pretext. He was seeking an occasion to nonchalantly use the words, "lovely young lady," and Shigeko was waiting to hear those words. And so the second time he spoke them, the two got engaged.
"Lovely young lady?"
"Eh, where?" Shigeko, on hands and knees wiping the floor with a cloth, lifted her head.
"You, and your Iwano Homei thesis."
"What are you talking about?"
"The thesis-- how did it come out? Did you get a good grade?"
"Bad. The worst. You kept calling me saying you'd found some new material or something. When a woman meets with a man, she gets nervous and can't really study."
"'Lovely young lady?' In classical terminology they'd say 'ah, lovable maiden.'"
"Don't you know? When the two venerables, Izanagi and Izanami/4 circled aroud the place called the Pillar of Heaven, that's what he said. He said, 'Hi, cutey.' The first time the goddess said, 'Say, handsome,' but things didn't go well. In our case, we circled around Iwano Homei instead of the Pillar of Heaven. I said 'lovely young girl.' It's in the Kojiki-- our story is."
"You're drunk. And on just two beers."
"No, listen. The two venerables created the eight islands, one after the other. We bought futons and dinnerware first, then rented a room. Next we had Tamiko, not Amaterasu. Shigeru is our Susanowo-- or more like Tsukiyomi no Mikoto."
"It's true that we've gotten along so far without needing help from others."
"For transcendental things, we're it for the children. We have created their universe."
"You've really got your nose in the air about buying that piano."
"No, this is different."
He didn't think that they needed to work harder than other parents, or to feel any extra pain when their children were harrassed by others. Nor did they need impressive ancestors. Every husband and wife pair made itself its own creation myth. Just as each ethnic group has its own mythology, each of the hundreds of families living in identical rooms in this apartment complex had its unique myths.
Wasn't the kingdom that Yamada had built on his schoolroom desk as a boy a reflection of his need for a myth? That kingdom was beautiful, but it was a lonely one with no people. The king held absolute power, but he was all alone.
No doubt that isolation had continued, in different forms, throughout his school, army and community life. In the Kojiki he had read, the first seven generations of gods from the beginning of heaven and earth performed their roles and manifested themselves as individuals, without being male or female. Then Shigeko had come into his life, they had children, and they remade their own creation myth without even thinking about it.
Two or three years earlier, Shigeru had often compared Yamada's penis with his own while they were bathing. Within the family, Yamada's penis was the stag's horn, the beard of Jupiter. It was not an organ for life as a couple with Shigeko. Once at a zoo he had seen a stag that had caught its antler in the chain-link fence while feeding. He must not become like that stag. For the children, at least, they should be a god and goddess.
The time when the two of them wanted each other as man and woman had passed. Within the family, they were father and mother. This father and mother had forgotten that they were gods who had created the children's universe; they had bent over and tried to bring themselves down to the level of their children's eyes. For that reason, the children had come to think too little of them, and to actually think of themselves as people of the middle.
Yamada stretched out on the tatami thinking such thoughts, and apparently fell asleep; when he awoke there was a pillow under his head, and a towel over his stomach. He could hear the voices of Tamiko and Shigeko in the next room.
"Someone scribbled on the mat around Kazumi-chan's father and mother's wedding picture."
"It's probably not scribbling."
"Something was written there, and removed with ink remover. I think they took it off because they didn't want Kazumi-chan to read it."
". . . ." Shigeko was apparently did not have a response.
"There are traces of ink remover, and you can read about half of it. Kazumi-chan has read it all, but won't tell me what it said."
Yamada laughed without thinking. He didn't know Kazumi-chan's parents. He laughed when he thought of the earnest face of the child when she read the sweet words written in the album. He had no thought of making fun of the couple who had written love talk in an album, then erased it when the child got older. A single man or woman might laugh at a couple who had gotten use to-- and enjoyed-- being together with unadmirable companions. Yamada, however, could not do that. He would not laugh even if he heard that Kazumi-chan's father were an academic or a company president. At least he wouldn't mock in front of Tamiko, or explain that such things shouldn't happen.
If he said such a thing to an adult, it would be in a tone of self-satisfaction or "What did I tell you!" but it would be better not to say anything at all to his own daughter. Even if the father is a convict, the mother has to put her husband in the best light for the sake of the children.
"Don't you have a wedding photograph, mother?"
"I suppose we must."
Once when Tamiko was a baby, Yamada had come home and found Shigeko showing her wedding photos to a friend from college. Yamada had blown up, and said she shouldn't brag of her success to others, and since then the wedding photos had been stuck in the back of a cupboard.
"When you got married, did you wear Japanese clothes or a dress?"
"A western dress. With long sleeves."
"Did you keep it?"
"It's disappeared."
In fact, it was a rental dress. Shigeko was the daughter of a former soldier; he had managed to send her as far as college, but they couldn't ask her parents to make the wedding preparations.
"Were you pretty, mother?"
The conversation in the next room stopped. Shigeko was wondering how she should answer. They say that any bride enjoys looking at her photographs. Tamiko was hoping her mother had been beautiful when whe was young. Until this morning, Yamada would have answered sourly that she had been ordinary looking. But, in fact, hadn't Shigeko been beautiful? Shigeko had not been a star or a model, and many men might have though she was plain, but hadn't Yamada thought she was beautiful? That beauty was not something that could be discovered in the photo at the back of the cupboard. That only contained the image of a young, fresh, plump girl-- Shigeko's beauty and his manliness were the essence of the greatness of their myth. It existed in their memories, and from the children's perspective it was something that had to be taught.
"She was pretty!" Yamada called in a loud voice. The two in the next room caught their breaths, and it showed in the faces they turned toward him.
"Mother was pretty. And so I decided, 'I have to fool her somehow and make her my bride.'"
Perhaps she could not speak when she faced Tamiko. But the face in the next room was a bright one.
"Oh, father-- you woke up!" He could hear Tamiko choke back a laugh. Shigeko didn't say anything. It was as though the mother and daughter had switched roles, with Tamiko being the lively one and Shigeko too shy to speak. Sometime he would tell Shigeru stories of the war. Then he might not be so taken up with baseball all the time.
Yamada suddenly remembered sitting in front of the gravestones with his father, looking down at his father's birthplace and the dry, harvested paddy fields. Perhaps some day he and Shigeru and Tamiko would look down on the ruins of their mythology. Perhaps the children would be disillusioned by that sight, and would want to embrace Yamada.
The conversation of the mother and daughter in the next room had turned to the topic of the piano.
3. Stationery shop: I don't know why. Perhaps the young clientele came for pencils and notebooks, and part of the scant available shelf space was turned over to small toys, gum, and so on. At this time (late 50's or early 60's, I assume) there may have been a few sporting goods stores or toy stores, but not close to home. Such purchases would usually be made at the department stores in the center of town. The 25 yen cost of the ball was equivalent to about 7 cents; 50 yen would buy a cheap bowl of noodles at a stand-up noodle bar.
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4. Izanagi and Izanami: According to the Kojiki (712, Record of Ancient Matters), which relates the creation and early history of Japan, these were not the first or best of gods, but they did create Japan. That is, Ame no Mitakanushi no Kami, dwelling on the High Plain of Heaven, created two more gods as a reed sprouted in the jelly-like mixture of sky and earth. Four pairs of male and female gods were created next, and then Izanagi no Kami and Izanami no Kami. Ame no Mitakanushi no Kami ordered Izanagi and Izanami to create something solid-- Japan-- in the mire; they did this by dipping in a spear and dripping out an island called Onogorojima. They moved there, and (getting to the point of the footnote) erected the Pillar of Heaven and circled around it. When they met on the other side, the goddess Izanami called out "ah, lovable youth" to Izanagi; this constituted a marriage ceremony. The children of this marriage turned out poorly, so they went back and repeated the ceremony, this time with Izanagi calling out "ah, lovable maiden." The pair went on to produce the eight islands of Japan (not including Hokkaido) and numerous other gods and goddesses; the last born was the fire god, burns from whom caused Izanami's death. The sun goddess Amaterasu Omikami (the highest of the Shinto deities actively worshipped, as far as I know), the moon god Tsukiyomi no Mikoto and the macho storm god Susanowo no Mikoto are identified elsewhere as children of Izanagi and Izanami, but according to the Kojiki they resulted from his cleaning up after escaping from his visit to the late Izanami in the underworld.
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