The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (2 page)

Almost twenty years ago, his youthful agility had rekindled a national passion for sumo wrestling. In a country devastated by atomic bombs that flattened cities and scarred their spirits, Hiroshi’s speed and strength had helped to revive the pride of his nation with every victory. He had barely been able to contain the joy he felt as he climbed the ranks. Not until he found courage enough to touch
with two fingers the nape of his wife, Aki’s, neck did any thrill ever match it.

Hiroshi pushed off his covers and stretched his body the full length of his extra-large futon, his muscular girth still impressive at his age. He had always valued strength and speed more than some other
rikishi
, sumo wrestlers who gained inordinate amounts of weight to dominate a match by their size. At thirty-seven, he was a good deal older and, at six feet one, more than a hundred pounds lighter than the heaviest wrestlers, who weighed in at four hundred pounds. Hiroshi sat up and fingered the faint rise of a scar that ran along his hairline and ended at his right temple, then rubbed his belly and pushed his rough feet to the edge of the futon, his calluses a souvenir of barefoot practice on dirt and wooden floors.
So many years
, he thought, and he touched for luck the soles of his feet, first the left, then the right, as he did every morning. As Hiroshi heaved himself up from the futon and reached for his kimono, he felt again that first step onto the
dohyo
. The smooth, sacred clay surface of the elevated straw ring was a blessing after years of discipline, training, and rituals. The scratching of his bare feet on the tatami mats made a sad insect sound, not unlike the swish of salt thrown down on the ring to drive out the evil spirits.

Competition had been a strong and potent drug. Everyone and everything disappeared as soon as he entered the ring, as if his life were narrowed to that very moment in time and nothing else mattered. Nothing and everything. He wondered once more if it had all been worthwhile—the sacrifice of family, friends, and lovers for a sport. And only now, too late, could he see the cost of it all as Aki’s accusing stare flashed through his mind.

A sharp knock on the shoji door brought him out of his reverie. He quickly tightened the sash of his
yukata
kimono, and grunted permission to enter.

The door slid open. It was Haru, dressed in a dark blue padded kimono with a pattern of white cranes. It looked new, yet strangely familiar to him, as if Aki had once worn one similar to it. It was Haru who had first introduced him to her sister, a lifetime ago. Aki was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen—her clear, milky-white skin, the smooth, sharp curve of her chin, her hidden fragility.

Haru’s movements were quick and sure, her dark eyes as intense and intelligent as they always were. Every morning, no matter the weather, she was out walking in the garden with his five-year-old daughter. And though Takara shared her mother’s classic beauty, he saw Haru’s strength emerging more and more in her each day.

Haru bowed. “We’ll be leaving for the stadium soon,” she said. “Kenji-san is coming for us after he picks up your
obaachan.”

He watched Haru’s poised figure and the same straight nose and thin, crescent-moon eyebrows that had also graced her sister, Aki. They would all be there at his retirement ceremony, his grandmother, brother, Haru, and Takara.
“Hai,”
he said, swallowing.

She moved across the room to slide open the shoji windows, admitting a cool breeze from the west. It filled the room with a sudden breath of promise. He cleared his throat but said nothing.

Instead, it was Haru who spoke, as she looked out at his acre of
sakura
trees. “A day of no regrets,” she said, as if reading his thoughts.

And suddenly, something tender and inconsolable gripped his chest, an entire life boiled down to these last hours. He rubbed his eyes and nodded, always amazed at her astuteness. “What do you see?” he asked.

Haru turned to him again. “Such beauty …,” she began, without finishing her sentence.

Late again, Hiroshi weaved in and out of the crowds near the Momiji teahouse. Sweat trickled down his neck and he pulled at the undershirt that was sticky against his back as he squeezed through the swarm of pedestrians clogging the labyrinth of narrow alleyways. They stopped to admire the deep blue and bright pink flowers blooming in the flower boxes—a heady fragrance drifting through the warm air. Eleven-year-old Hiroshi was already late to meet his grandfather and younger brother, Kenji, at the Keio-ji temple on the other side of Yanaka. He had dashed from the open, grassy field of the park where he and his classmates spent their afternoons practicing the wrestling techniques they learned in school—the oshi, hand push; the tsuki, thrust; and the yori, body push. “These are the fundamental moves of sumo wrestling,” his coach at school, Masuda-san stressed, “the foundation on which we will build.”

Once again, Hiroshi had lost track of time.

In the Yanaka district of northeastern Tokyo, the sloping streets were lined with traditional one- and two-story wooden houses. Despite the crowds, Hiroshi loved Yanaka for its familiar and quiet way of life, for the tantalizing smells of grilled fish kushiyaki and the sweet chicken yakitori sold from wooden carts. When he wasn’t in a hurry, he even loved the maze of winding alleyways with blooming gardens that hid the old wood houses and the small, unassuming shops with their cloth banners hanging outside, selling
hanakago
, or
bamboo flower baskets, handmade
washi
paper, and the soft silken tofu his grandmother loved to eat cold during the summer. The narrow streets offered a wealth of escape routes for the chase games he and the neighborhood children played—places you could get lost or hide in until you wanted to be found, or not found.

But now, it was impossible for him to navigate them quickly. Men his grandfather’s age sat at battered wooden tables and played
shoji
, oblivious to the crowds as they pondered each chess move. Hiroshi squeezed by a woman in a kimono, a baby tied to her back; the round-faced girl with dark eyes followed his every move.

Once he neared the
ginza
, vendors lined the streets, selling everything from grilled corn and sweet potatoes, to roasted
sembei
rice crackers and baked squid. The enticing aroma of the spicy shoyu crackers reminded Hiroshi of his empty stomach, but he didn’t dare stop. The muscles pulled in his sore calves as he hurried up the hill. He wrinkled his nose at the pungent vinegary smell of
tsukudani
, a kind of Japanese chutney his grandparents ate over their rice, which came from a nearby store and hung heavy in the air. He was short of breath by the time he reached the Keio-ji temple to find his grandfather and Kenji waiting outside.

“Ah, the young master arrives,” his grandfather teased. He sat on a stone bench in the shade of a ginkgo tree sucking on his pipe, his cane resting against his knee.

Hiroshi bowed low. “I’m sorry to be late,
ojiichan,”
he said, pausing to catch his breath.

“Sumo, eh?”

Hiroshi nodded. At eleven, he was already the top wrestler in his class, perhaps the entire school. He’d grown taller and stronger in the year since he began taking the sport seriously.

Kenji pouted. “Why else would he be late?”

“I lost track of the time,” Hiroshi confessed, trying to appease his brother. He’d already been late several times this month.

“Did you at least win the match?” His
ojiichan
leaned forward on his cane and stood.

Hiroshi straightened up and answered,
“Hai,”
though it was just practice, not real competition.

His
ojiichan
stepped toward the stone path and smiled. “Good, good. Hiroshi will be a champion one day. And you, Kenji, will find your place soon enough,” he said gently. “Now, shall we take our walk?”

Yanaka was one of the few areas of Tokyo not devastated by the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923, a distinction their
ojiichan
proudly repeated to Hiroshi and Kenji. He pointed his cane toward the same old temples that had once surrounded the Edo castle and had been moved to Yanaka after surviving a big fire, almost three hundred years ago.

“The temples withstood both disasters virtually unscathed,” his
ojiichan
said—the miracle of it emphasized in the rise of his voice. “And look there,” he continued, directing their gaze to the lone smokestack of what was once the Okira bathhouse. “Not everything was spared. Okira-san never rebuilt after the quake, but he left the smokestack as a symbol of Yanaka’s resilience. You boys must never forget.”

Hiroshi wouldn’t forget, not just because he couldn’t walk thirty feet down any road without seeing an ancient temple, but also because his
ojiichan
was the embodiment of that same fortitude. He looked into his grandfather’s eyes. A cloudy film covered his dark pupils. Hiroshi wondered how much his grandfather could really see, and how much he saw from memory. He tried to imagine what it must feel like to slowly lose one’s sight behind a thick, dense fog that left everything in blurry shadow. Hiroshi often wanted to take hold of his
ojiichan’s
arm, afraid that he might stumble on an uneven path, or on the stone steps leading down to the Sumida River, but he once again refrained as his
ojiichan
moved briskly down the road, not missing a step.