The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (30 page)

Kenji hurried past old Sakahara-san’s tobacco store, another tragedy of the war. When tobacco became scarce, Sakahara closed the store, boarded it up, and told his friends he was going to live with his daughter. Weeks later, when a foul odor began to seep from the building, authorities broke in, only to find Sakahara’s decaying body. He’d chosen to stay and die of starvation rather than leave his store and impose a burden on his child.

Kenji turned the corner and stopped walking at the sudden sound of a familiar voice. Like a bad memory it returned, brash and boisterous and cruel, the same voice that had coerced their neighborhood out of prized personal possessions for the good of the nation. For Okata’s own good, Kenji knew. He paused outside Fujiwa’s store and listened. Just inside, he saw Okata, the bastard puppet for the
kempeitai
, trying to trade something for a bottle of sake. Kenji waited for Okata to emerge, and saw that he looked old and disheveled as he moved unsteadily down the alleyway carrying a bottle of sake. Kenji followed him, uncertain of what he was doing. Okata shuffled down a quiet street and then another that came to a dead end as he turned abruptly to face him.

“You, boy! Why are you following me?”

Kenji was taken by such surprise he could hardly get words out. He mumbled something about his
obaachan’s
wedding ring, about wanting it back. Okata laughed, said it was freely donated for the good of the nation. It was long gone. He spat a glob of phlegm near Kenji’s foot.

“There, you can have that!”

For the first time in his life, Kenji lunged without thinking. His fist connected with Okata’s cheekbone, snapping his head sideways,
and his ragged body followed as he hit the ground hard. The bottle shattered. Kenji turned and walked away, his hand throbbing. He didn’t look back.

All year, Fumiko had written letters to the address Ayako left with her, hoping for news. She appealed to both the Japanese and American authorities for information every month, but to no avail.

On the first anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, she woke up with heaviness in her chest and remained quiet and sullen all morning. Everything irritated her, from Yoshio’s humming to Kenji’s reading aloud to his grandfather. “Take your voices outside,” she snapped, throwing her dish towel on the table.

When she had returned home angry and frustrated, after standing in the long food lines, Yoshio quietly said to her, “Fumi-chan, you have to let Ayako-san go now.”

Fumiko began to cry. They sat at the kitchen table and suddenly she couldn’t stop. The last time Fumiko had cried so hard was at the deaths of her daughter and son-in-law, Misako and Kazuo. She looked up. Yoshio was looking directly at her, even if he couldn’t see her.

“What if she isn’t dead?” she mumbled through tears.

“Then she will find you,” he answered.

“What if she can’t?” Fumiko asked. She was being childish, but she couldn’t let Ayako go without a fight.

Yoshio remained silent for a moment. The warm August afternoon was thick and still. Then in a voice gentle and measured, he answered, “If Ayako is gone, perhaps it’s part of your
unmei
, the fate you’ve always trusted in, and now you must obey it. I have no doubts you’ll see each other again in the other world.”

Fumiko paused. She was the one who believed in the randomness of destiny, who believed it was something no one could control or change. She’d stood by this belief for a good part of her adult life and imparted it to her grandsons. When Yoshio teased her about it, saying Fumiko could control her own fate if she wanted, she shook her head
and pretended not to hear him. How could she tell him that she feared the unpredictability of life; that after Misako’s death, there was no such thing as control? From that moment on, Fumiko couldn’t help but wonder what lurked around the corner. And now Yoshio, who always sought to balance her vision, was acquiescing to her.

Yoshio remained silent as she cried. When she finally stopped and took a deep breath, her entire body shuddered. She sat very still for a moment until she realized that the current that had pulsated through her body for the past year had ceased. Though tired, she felt strangely at peace. She wiped away her tears and blew her nose. How frightful she must look. For once, Fumiko was grateful Yoshio couldn’t see her. She leaned closer to where he sat by the window. He liked to feel the wind against his face, as if it somehow freed him from the darkness. His was the face she had loved for forty years, now so thin and tired. She reached for his warm, wrinkled hand and kissed it, and then held it against her beating heart.

During the week of Obon, Fumiko wrote her friend one last letter.
“Dear Ayako,”
she began,
“if you were here…”
But she didn’t mail it.

In the waning light of October, with the war over for more than a year, Akira Yoshiwara chopped the last of the wood and stacked it by the barn, then slipped a slim package of pencils into a space between two of the lower logs. He picked up a log and weighed it in his hands. Too heavy and coarse for a mask. The Japanese cypress he needed was light and smooth; the masks he made from it fitted each actor like another layer of skin. It seemed a lifetime since he’d shaped one, and he missed the masks as he might miss a lover, his fingers defining the slowly emerging features.

Akira dropped the log on the pile, rubbed his calloused hands together, and walked back up toward the house. He knocked lightly on the door and stepped out of his sandals. It had become a ritual each evening, after he finished chopping wood or patching the roof,
to savor a cup of green tea by Emiko’s fire before returning to his room in the village. Grateful for her welcome, Akira would sip from his cup and feel the ache of the day’s work in his shoulders. Each night Kiyo would rattle on happily as he and Emiko sat by the fire, listening to a trapped cricket as darkness fell, the anxious scraping of its thread-thin legs somewhere in the house. He watched the dancing shadows of the fire against the walls and when he looked up at the soaring roof, he no longer saw praying hands but empty ones. Still, for the first time in his life, he felt something close to peace.

Now, he heard Kiyo sliding the door open and bounding out of the back room.

“Can I look now?” she asked. Her face glowed pale white in the deepening dusk.

Akira smiled and nodded. “Somewhere over there.” He pointed toward the woodpile he’d just stacked.

She bolted past him down toward the barn. Akira stepped into the house and Emiko greeted him with a bow.

“You’ll spoil her,” she said, not with anger but gratitude.

“Pencils for her schoolwork,” he said.

They’d begun this game of hide-and-seek with small gifts during the summer. He hid a box of rice candy in the hollow of a tree and it took her all morning to find it. The following weeks, she found a small lacquer box, a hair clip, a pair of chopsticks, and a cat charm he’d bought down in Oyama. Kiyo lit up at each small present, and he wondered just how many gifts she’d received during her childhood.

“The tea is ready,” Emiko said.

He followed her into the open room and they sat by the hearth sipping their tea in silent comfort until they heard Kiyo’s high squeal of delight, which brought a smile to both their lips.

Since moving to the Katsuyama-beya, nineteen-year-old Hiroshi had learned how to live his life all over again. Every morning before the sun rose, Hiroshi was shaken awake by the young wrestler
Fukuda. He pushed his friend’s hand away. “Don’t bother me,” he growled, and turned over on his futon.

“It’s time to get up, Matsumoto-san. If you want to reach the rank of
yokozuna
, you must sacrifice all, including sleep!” Fukuda whispered, repeating the words Tanaka-oyakata drilled into them every morning during practice.

As a lower-ranked wrestler in the Jonokuchi Division, Hiroshi rose at four-thirty every morning in the makeshift dormitory-style room, careful not to wake the others. The outside world seemed very far away as he heeded the rules and training schedule of Tanaka-oyakata. Due to their low rankings, he and Fukuda were assigned the most menial jobs. It was up to them to turn on the lights, get the towels, put the salt and the power water in place, and check the
dohyo
before the other
sumotori
entered the practice area each morning.

Hiroshi groaned and turned back to face his friend. “A moment longer.” He closed his eyes again and felt more tired than ever in his life. If he were at home, he’d still be asleep next to his brother, awakening hours later to the soft murmurs of his
ojiichan’s
and
obaachan’s
voices floating up from the kitchen. They were more reliable than any clock. Sharing a room with Kenji alone seemed a luxury now, and moments of quiet to think about his family were few and fleeting.

“Now!” Fukuda pulled at him. Fukuda was only sixteen, but already big for his age, weighing close to two hundred pounds. He was the only
rikishi
at the stable who was lower ranked than Hiroshi.

As they hurriedly dressed in the chilly morning air, Hiroshi helped Fukuda tighten his heavy black
mawashi
belt. Weighing ten pounds and measuring thirty feet long, it required a complicated process of winding and tightening the two-foot-wide canvas strip around his waist and between his legs. Hiroshi directed him step by step, and, as usual, Fukuda expressed gratitude for his guidance. At the stable, there seemed no place for sentiment or any other comfort.

It had taken Hiroshi several weeks not to feel self-conscious training among the other
rikishi
, huge men in their
mawashi
belts who pushed their bodies to the limit. Now, he moved through the daily routine without thinking. By five every morning the practice area was crowded with movement. “Faster, faster!” He heard the bamboo
switch smack against the palm of the upper-ranked wrestler in charge. Hiroshi’s heart pounded as he began the day with routine exercises, performing hundreds of
shiko
, alternately lifting his legs as high as possible and stomping on the ground. The leg lifts were followed by the
suriashi
, starting from a crouched position and jumping with both feet together, pushing out his arms while staying low to the ground. Next were the
matawari
, or thigh splits, and the
teppo
, a striking exercise for the arms and shoulders against a tall wooden pole, in which he slapped it with the open palms of his hands. Grunts and dull thuds filled the breathless, humid air. He watched Fukuda struggle through each set.

The first few weeks Hiroshi’s feet were blistered and every muscle in his body ached as he silently endured the daily regimen. Some evenings he could barely lift his arms, yet he pushed through the pain the next morning. After their morning exercises came hours of wrestling without a break. It was followed by more leg-strengthening exercises. As the months passed, Hiroshi’s sore muscles hardened and became accustomed to the strenuous regimen, while each move felt increasingly natural and vital.

After hours of morning exercises and practice, there were challenge matches among all the
sumotori
—the only time a lower-ranked wrestler like Hiroshi or Fukuda could fight a higher-ranked one. There was only one
sekitori
, an upper-ranked wrestler who had reached the
sekiwake
level, the third-highest rank in the top Professional Division. Daishima had trained with Tanaka before the war. He was the
heyagashira
, the highest-ranked wrestler in the stable. He was a big man, heavy in the stomach, with thighs larger than Hiroshi had ever seen. He obviously enjoyed his authority, speaking only to those he liked and ignoring all the rest.

Still, Hiroshi felt unprepared when Tanaka-oyakata called out his name to step onto the
dohyo
in a practice round against Sekiwake Daishima. He didn’t think he was ready. Fukuda pushed him forward. Hiroshi felt his empty stomach burning as the entire stable
gathered around the
dohyo
, along with Tanaka, who watched intently as Hiroshi was knocked flat during the first charge. It happened so quickly, he felt as if he’d been run over by a steam engine; a half-gasp of air caught in his throat as he hit the
dohyo
hard. By the time he picked himself up off the ground, streaks of dirt across his back where he’d fallen, Tanaka had already turned away. Hiroshi bowed and stumbled out of the ring. Brushing himself off, he noted the bored look on Daishima’s face as yet another young wrestler took his place.