The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (21 page)

His brother took his time answering, and when he did, Kenji thought he sounded older, more like a father than a brother.
“Ojiichan
sees the future in us. You and I. If anything were to happen to us, there would be no future.”

Kenji was glad it was too dark for Hiroshi to see he was straining against tears. “Isn’t that why we’re being sent to the countryside? To be safe.”

“Hai, but I need to know that they will be safe here, too,” Hiroshi said. “Kenji, try to understand that this is for the best.”

Kenji was embarrassed by his selfishness. How could he not understand that Hiroshi would always be the
Ayakashi
, the warrior protecting his family?

“Hai,”
he answered, his voice strong and clear.

Train schedules were erratic. On the warm, August morning he was to leave, Kenji watched his
obaachan
light the thin, fragrant stick of incense in front of his parents’ photo, praying softly for him to have a safe journey. At fifteen, he’d never been farther from Yanaka than central Tokyo, and even then, never alone. He anticipated leaving with fear and excitement, a bittersweet edge that coated his stomach. He had assumed, like his grandparents, that Hiroshi would be going to Nagano with him. Instead, he would be going alone.

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.

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.

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.