The Street of a Thousand Blossoms by Gail Tsukiyama
The train was stifling and crowded with families, every empty space filled with suitcases, wooden boxes, straw baskets, cloth furoshiki hiding small bits of food—entire households reduced to what they could carry. Since the start of the Pacific War, people moved in waves of crowds. They gathered at train stations, on the streets, in front of Takahara’s Dry Goods Store, filling the space with the low murmur of voices and the uneasy laughter that Kenji knew was fear.
Kenji pushed toward the window seat to get another glimpse of his grandparents. They appeared so old and frail, standing on the platform. Hiroshi stood tall beside them. All around, crowds of people clutched their travel vouchers and scrambled to get on the train, to get away from the military police, to leave the beggars and black marketeers behind.
Kenji could hardly breathe and struggled to open the window, giving up in a sweat. He sat back in his seat and heard his ojiichan’s voice again.
“Take care of yourself,” his grandfather whispered to him on the train platform.
He felt a flicker of fear. Of course he would. “You and obaachan don’t have to worry about me,” he answered.
“I’m not.” He smiled. “But you know how it is when you get older. We’re never satisfied unless we repeat ourselves.” He pushed several yen notes into Kenji’s hand and smiled. “One day, you’ll know.”
Kenji hugged his grandfather tighter, then pulled away and bowed to him, forgetting for a moment that he could no longer see. But his ojiichan’s hands reached out and caught his shoulders. “You and Hiroshi are the future. No matter what happens, you must remember to look forward, to bring honor to our family and to yourself.”
Kenji nodded, his throat closing. He tasted bitterness on his tongue and his throat hurt at the thought of leaving. And where were Yoshiwara-sensei and Nazo at that moment? He bowed low again with the weight of his grandfather’s hands still on his shoulders. He stood straight to see that his obaachan was crying, something he’d rarely seen growing up.
The train slowly pulled away, jerking forward, then hesitating before finding its rhythm. Kenji swallowed and didn’t turn away from the window until the last glimpse of his grandparents and brother had vanished from his sight. The train picked up speed as it rumbled through the outskirts of Tokyo. It looked like a battlefield. Slit trenches lined the roads like open wounds, buildings were boarded and abandoned, long snaking lines of women and children waited for rations under the lifeless gray sky.
But as the train continued northwest toward Nagano, he saw the scenery change. The stark rubble of buildings became flatlands, giving way to the slow rise of mountains and valleys as the train hugged along the sides. A rush of wind rattled through the car as drops of rain whipped the window, cooling the stagnant heat. As the rain grew in strength, Kenji gazed at the mountains, half-hidden by fog that hovered like smoke over the trees. The peaks rose in varying shades of brown and green that lightened as they reached up toward the gray sky. They made him think of Hiroshi and reminded him of sumo, powerful and majestic. Below, there was a scattering of wood houses on the valley floor, crisscrossed by rice paddies and fields of brown earth and patches of green. Kenji took a deep breath. Even in the crowded, stifling train, he imagined the air down in the village of Imoto to be sharp and sweet, like a mouthful of cool water.
8
Foxflare
1945
By February, the bombing had grown more intense. The air-raid sirens blared at least twice, sometimes three or four times a week. Yoshio sighed, relieved that Kenji was safely in the countryside with his niece Reiko, and though he wished Hiroshi were, too, he was secretly glad that his older grandson had stayed with them. At almost eighteen, Hiroshi was a tall and strong young man. Yoshio couldn’t imagine how he and Fumiko could cope without him. Even with so little food, he grew taller, like a weed that pushed through a small crack. Fumiko had told him as much each night, describing even the smallest changes she saw in the world around them. Yoshio knew his daughter, Misako, would have been proud of both of her sons.
His sight was taken over by sounds and smells. Yoshio stood in the kitchen and heard a distant buzz. He knew the planes were coming again. The sirens would follow. During the past year, it seemed that the Americans bombed specific targets, and now, with each Japanese defeat, the explosions grew more frequent and inched closer to residential areas. It became routine to rush to the bomb shelter in the backyard where the watchtower once stood. For once, Yoshio was glad for his blindness, for the darkness that shielded the anger and shame, the weight of sadness that sent them down into the ground instead of up toward the sky.
The sirens usually blew just after sunrise and they scrambled to the underground shelter in a practiced order—first Fumiko, donning the padded cloth headgear she had sewn for each of them, followed by Yoshio, who was carefully guided down into the dirt cavern by her, and lastly Hiroshi, who carried the water and first-aid bag, and secured the opening with a door he’d fashioned out of wood scraps salvaged from the tower. It wasn’t more than a hole in the ground, shored up by random pieces of wood, but they squeezed in and sat down on the damp earth. Yoshio leaned back and pressed against the cool soil. A sudden, sharp explosion shook the earth and sent loose dirt raining down on them. Yoshio tasted the sharp, salty dirt that whipped against his cheek. He shivered at the closed dampness of being buried alive and squeezed Fumiko’s hand as he felt her lean toward him.
In the cramped space of the shelter, Yoshio thought of his parents for the first time in a very long while. Although they’d died more than twenty years ago, he still heard his mother’s voice as if she were right there with him. “It is the Kitsune,” she told him, “the devious fox that has led the Japanese people into yet another terrible situation. It is the kitsune bi, the foxflare that illuminates the path that will lead Japan to disaster.” He shook his head to dispel the long-forgotten folktale his mother had told him as a child.
“Kitsune,” he mumbled aloud.
“What are you saying?” Fumiko asked, releasing his hand to the winter air.
Yoshio shook his head. Another distant explosion shook the earth and he wondered how fast they might die if the shelter should cave in on them. How had they come to this point, hiding in a hole in the ground, tormented by a hunger that would kill them if the bombs didn’t? He breathed the dank air and cleared his mind of such ideas. Instead, he thought of his mother again, recalled how she had said that a black fox was a sign of good luck, while a white fox meant calamity. And what was the last myth? He concentrated and saw only darkness. Another bomb fell, closer still, so loud he could feel it in his teeth. The impact shook more dirt loose; it rained against his back and down his neck. He heard Hiroshi whisper, “It will be over soon,” while Fumiko chanted softly in a rhythmic murmur that once again put him at ease. He closed his eyes and waited. Ah yes, now Yoshio remembered the last myth; three foxes together foretold disaster. And here they were, like three foxes trapped in a hole with disaster just above them.
Thunder
The distant roar of the planes sounded like thunder to eight-year-old Aki, a low, faraway rumbling that followed the lightning streaking the black sky, as it did before a bad storm. After each flash of light, she counted the seconds before the next loud rumble, just as her father had taught her when she was little. Ichi, ni, san, shi, go… the five seconds between meant that the thunder was a mile away. Rain would then follow and there was nothing to be afraid of. It’s just nature’s way of having a fit of temper, her father had assured her, and he never told her anything that wasn’t true. Still, the noise of the planes was something else, a thunder she couldn’t keep count of when it came with no lightning before and no rain afterward.
More than anything, Aki wanted to go home. She didn’t like being in the countryside, almost four hours from Tokyo in the village of Ikaruga, away from her parents and living in a boardinghouse, southwest of Nara, with the rest of her classmates. Under the Group Evacuation Law, students were rotated out to the cou
Occasionally, she heard the roar of the planes overhead in the afternoon and looked up to see the scattering of big metal bugs swarm the sky, dark and menacing. And then they were gone. Recently, the roar of the planes came just after sunrise, waking the girls from a deep sleep, as they were hustled, cold and groggy in their monpe pants and cotton padded headgear, toward the air-raid shelters. When the siren went off again, signaling the all clear, they trudged back to their beds, sometimes forgetting to take off their padded headgear as they fell back into an anxious sleep before the morning bell rang.
During the afternoon, Aki and her classmates worked in their assigned groups to clear the fields, while Haru worked in a mosquito-net plant near the school they attended in the mornings. Aki didn’t like her group, which was made up not only of her classmates but also village students. They were rough and without manners, and often got her entire group into trouble. If one student from their group had to be disciplined, they all were. Aki hated it when they were made to line up in two rows facing each other. Upon the teacher’s command of “Now!” they took turns slapping each other across the face, once or twice, sometimes more, depending on the teacher. The first time Aki felt the sting of a slap across her cheek, she pulled back and slapped the boy across from her just as hard, and saw the pink welt of her handprint spreading across his cheek.
“I want to go home,” Aki whispered to Haru at dinner.
“We can’t go home yet.”
“Why?”
Haru pushed her hair away from her eyes. “We have to stay for six months until the next group of students comes.”
Aki had lost track of how long they had been in Ikaruga but it seemed too long already. “How much longer?”
She didn’t tell her older sister that sometimes she cried at night because she was so unhappy. Some of the teachers in Ikaruga were abrupt and mean, always looking over their shoulders as if someone were sneaking up behind them. Aki thought they had moved to the countryside to be safe, but instead, she was frightened by the strict, unfair discipline, all the open space around her, and by the thundering planes that flew overhead toward the big cities where people like her parents and the sumo stable were.
“It won’t be much longer,” Haru said.
“How much?”
“One more month,” Haru answered. She pointed to Aki’s bowl and made her eat all of her sweet potato. “Then we’ll go home, I promise.”
Aki smiled, poked at the sweet potato with her chopstick. She was tired of eating the same thing night after night and never feeling full. Slowly, she finished eating as Haru watched her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had rice or soba noodles. It made her happy to think that soon she wouldn’t have to work in the fields any longer, or sleep in the room with all the other students, or be watched day and night by the teachers. Aki wanted it to be like before the war, back at the sumo stable, where she was free to run about and watch her father train the big boys to be sumotori. That night, lying on her cot, she began counting the days until they returned home, just as she counted the seconds before she heard the next roar of thunder and knew how far away it was.
Lightning
Six months ago, in August, when Kenji had arrived in the village of Imoto in the Nagano prefecture he had been disappointed that the mountains he saw from the train were mere shadows looming in the distance. The village itself was spread out on the flatlands, small farms dotting the landscape, their fields a muddy mess against the endless gray sky. Most of what they grew, the barley and sweet potatoes, was given to the military. Still, Kenji relished the calmer, slower pace in the countryside.
Aunt Reiko was waiting on the platform, thin and dark-haired, with streaks of gray that made her appear older than Kenji had imagined. She waved when he stepped from the train. He put down his suitcase, and bowed low upon meeting her. He hoped to see traces of his okasan in his aunt, since they were blood cousins and not far apart in age. He searched for some resemblance, but the woman who stood before him looked nothing like the photo of his mother. Her thin shoulders were stooped as if she carried a great weight, and her hands were rough and red from farmwork. But once he looked into her eyes, he saw a glint of youth and beauty, eyes that could bring life to the most inanimate mask. And when she spoke, her voice was open and straightforward, drawing him in.
“You must be Kenji-chan.” She bowed to him. “And this is your uncle Toki,” she said, smiling.
A short and stocky man with close-cropped hair stood next to her. When he turned, Kenji saw that his right arm was missing.
Uncle Toki looked Kenji up and down and grunted. He pointed at his suitcase. “Any more?” he asked.
“No,” Kenji answered.
“Then come,” he said, turning around abruptly. “There’s work to do.”
Aunt Reiko smiled shyly and touched Kenji’s arm lightly in reassurance. “We are terribly happy that you’re here,” she said softly.
Kenji was wrong; he was sure there was a resemblance to his mother, after all. He picked up his suitcase and followed her outside. The station was no more than a one-room wooden building, and beyond it, a small village surrounded by flat brown fields.
At the edge of the village was a burned-out building. Kenji caught up with his aunt. “Was that building bombed?” he asked, pointing to the charred frame. He knew the Americans had increased their bombing raids now that they had captured the Mariana Islands.
Aunt Reiko shook her head. “Imoto has been untouched by the war so far. Except…,” she began, then stopped with a glance at her husband, Toki.
Kenji remembered his grandparents saying that his uncle had lost his arm during the fight for the Philippine Islands. What must it have felt like to wake up and have your arm missing? He wondered if the arm were still somewhere in the Philippines, withered down to the bone, once white, now darkened by time and dirt and neglect. Or if the wound, now healed to a shiny-scarred nub, still hurt with a phantom pain that throbbed and ached constantly.
“This fire began from lightning,” Aunt Reiko said.
“Lightning?” he repeated, catching the last of his aunt’s words.
“A dry storm. We never did have rain that night, just the lightning and thunder.”
Kenji glanced back at the building, imagined the thin veins of light coming closer, touching down on the building, which exploded into flames. Uncle Taiko, his ojiichan’s friend from the bar, had once told him that lightning without rain signified impending disaster. Kenji felt a stab of uneasiness but nodded to his aunt and kept the rest of his thoughts to himself as he followed along. It was lightning that had destroyed the building. If only Japan could harness lightning as its secret weapon, he thought, perhaps then they really could win the war.
The farmhouse is brighter than I expected. I’m sure it’s Aunt Reiko’s touch that fills each room. I was greeted with a piece of art just as I walked into the entrance hall—a raku vase with muted colors and fine lines. It surprised me, leaving the vase out on display with no fears of it being confiscated by the kempeitai. And what a breath of fresh air! Not one officer in sight since arriving in Imoto. Kenji wrote down his first impressions of Imoto in his notebook, hoping to share them later with his grandparents and Hiroshi. But on his first evening at the farmhouse, he knew as soon as his pen touched the paper that it was Yoshiwara-sensei he was writing to.
Aunt Reiko and Uncle Toki had two children, Kenji’s second cousins, an older daughter who was married and living in a village nearby, and a younger son, Hideo, who at sixteen was a year older than Kenji. After a few strained days of getting to know each other, they fell into a quiet rhythm working together in the
Hideo doesn’t talk much, Kenji wrote, but neither do I. Yet in some strange way, we seem to understand each other. It’s no wonder, with his father, Uncle Toki, so abrupt and angry; I’d be afraid to say anything, too. He noted that his cousin was shorter and more compact, resembling his father’s side, while he had grown taller and thinner in the past months.
Kenji was fortunate to have his own small room, which used to belong to Hideo’s now married sister. He put down the pen, stood up from the desk, and rubbed his hands. In less than a month, his were as rough and red as his aunt’s. And his fingers were always cold and stiff, as if the blood no longer traveled to the tips. It brought to mind Yoshiwara-sensei opening and closing his fists after a long day of working on a mask. Kenji did the same now, remembering the warmth of the wood as he sanded each mask with light, even strokes. He carefully took out The Book of Masks, still wrapped in his sweater, his fingers growing warmer as they traced the dark lines of each mask.
Throughout the fall and winter, Uncle Toki sent them out to the far field to collect anything they could find to feed the military horses, any shrub or weed that had withstood the winter. Now, as spring approached, grass was scarce even though the skies had cleared in the past week and brought the sun’s warmth.