The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (72 page)

Haru breathed in the cool, sweet air. She loved the approaching spring for all its possibilities. “Over here, over here!” she heard Takara call out. Haru pushed away her complicated thoughts. For today, she fully intended to live her life as it was given. She watched Takara examine the emerging blossoms, the newly unfurled leaves with a gentle, knowing hand. She stroked and held, never pinched or pulled. There was certainly something of Haru in Takara that would live on, and the thought brought her such happiness.

At the February
hanazumo
, Fumiko shifted in the seat of the tatami-lined box, which provided a small shelter from the crowds who had come to see Hiroshi’s retirement ceremony. It was hot and stuffy, and for a moment she was reminded of sitting in the cramped, airless bomb shelter her grandsons had dug during the war. Only it was too bright and she closed her eyes for just a moment, the noise and glare of the lights in the stadium forcing her to retreat within. Next to her, she felt Kenji’s body lean closer to her, the fall of his silk kimono sleeve against her hand. He was making sure she was all right. Across from her, Haru quieted Takara. “Come and sit down,” she said. The warm air stirred against her cheek when her great-granddaughter was pulled back into her seat. As always, they thought she had dozed off, and Fumiko understood now what Yoshio meant by seeing without seeing. Even with her eyes closed, she saw Takara’s smiling face and heard the low purr of Haru’s voice whispering for her to keep still. She resisted the urge to smile.

Ever since her grandsons were babies, Fumiko had endlessly worried that something might happen to them. They were so young and fragile when they came to her, and the ghost of Misako had lingered in every corner of her life. But Hiroshi and Kenji had survived, and she had lived to see their successes as well as their sorrows. How could she have ever known it was Mika’s and Aki’s deaths that would bring such grief? As Yoshio had always known, there was no way for her to protect them from life’s misfortunes. But maybe now, after so much
tragedy in both of their lives, her grandsons would find joy again. She smiled at the thought. Hiroshi might finally realize that his happiness sat right across from her, in his daughter and Haru-san, while Kenji would find his way in time, she was certain of it.

“Are you awake,
sosobo?”
Takara’s voice rang out.

Fumiko opened her eyes slowly to the glare of the white lights, as she gradually focused on the face of her great-granddaughter watching her. She nodded and smiled, reached out to pull the child closer.

Hiroshi waited in the locker room to walk down the flower path to the
dohyo
for the last time. There, in the middle of the sumo ring, he would sit for his official
danpatsu-shiki
, the public haircutting ceremony that would signify his retirement at the age of thirty-seven. Hiroshi picked up the book of poetry by Basho that Kenji had given him and simply held it in his hands. His good-luck charm. He had memorized all the poems through the years to calm his nerves. But as he paced the length of the room, the weight of his white ceremonial belt tight around his waist, it was an old fable he remembered, and suddenly, he was a boy again listening to his grandmother. “…
A very long time ago, a famous samurai, who came from a very poor family, had fought his way to the top, defending one of the richest landowners in Japan. But he still wasn’t happy. While he was fighting and protecting his master all those years, a young woman from his village whom he’d always loved had married someone else. When he returned home a wealthy warrior, it was to find that life had passed him by.”

As a boy, Hiroshi couldn’t understand why the samurai hadn’t found perfect harmony. How could life have passed him by if he was a samurai? A warrior. Hiroshi took a deep breath and stopped pacing. What he hadn’t understood as a boy, he now understood as a man. He struggled to remember the words his
ojiichan
told them so long ago. “Every day of your lives, you must always be sure what you’re fighting for.” While he had sustained a nation in his quest to be champion, he couldn’t save Aki.

Hiroshi walked down the flower aisle, the stadium filled to capacity, the roar of voices like a wave crashing. His retirement was being televised; everyone from city officials to sponsors and fans had come to see the great Yokozuna Takanoyama perform his final
dohyo-ri
. He marveled that most could see it at home in black-and-white. Tanaka-oyakata, Tokohashi, Sadao, the rest of his stable’s wrestlers sat at ringside. His family watched from box seats.

The audience quieted as he stepped up to the
dohyo
to perform his last ring-entering ceremony, attended by Kobayashi and Wakahara, the only other yokozuna-ranked wrestlers. Dressed in their white ceremonial belts, he imagined the three of them were quite a spectacle framed within each small television. Hiroshi glanced up at the audience to let his grandmother know he was thinking of her. Then he moved through each step of the dance—the leg lifts and squats, his arms outstretched, each move bringing him closer to the finality of it—already memorizing the feel of the smooth, cool clay underfoot.

Afterward, Hiroshi changed into his formal
haori
jacket and a pair of pleated pants before he returned to sit in the middle of the
dohyo
. An attendant stood at his side with a pair of long, gold scissors on a tray. Assisted by the referee, Sadao and other selected
sekitori
-ranked wrestlers, sponsors, coaches, and Kenji each took their turns snipping off a few strands of his
chonmage
. Hiroshi sat stone-still under the hot lights of the stadium, his oiled hair glistening, his shirt wet against his back. Eventually, Tanaka-oyakata made the final cut of Hiroshi’s topknot and severed the last threads that tied him to sumo, the sport he had loved since boyhood. Hiroshi was stunned by the thunderous clapping, an entire life ended with the cutting of his topknot. He could barely swallow. As he stood, his emotions lodged at the back of his throat.

Finally, both he and Tanaka-oyakata bowed respectfully to the audience, turning to each of the four sides of the arena. His unkempt hair fell across his forehead and covered his eyes so no one could see he was fighting back tears. He turned to his right and
bowed again. Everything he had worked for came down to this final moment in time. Hanging from the ceiling, his large portrait had a place among all the other past champions and grand champions. He felt strangely distant from the
sumotori
who stared back at him, his nonsmiling gaze already a part of history.

Hiroshi turned and bowed again. He looked past the glare of lights to see the box seats where Kenji sat next to his smiling
obaachan
, to see little Takara leaning forward and waving to him, to see Haru, always Haru, her hands no longer hidden, poised to grab his daughter if she should fall, if he should fall. And in the warm, thick air, he felt his
ojiichan’s
and Aki’s spirits also there, watching.

Then at last Hiroshi faced the audience for the final time. He saw now that all the strength and control he commanded on the
dohyo
had little to do with the rest of the world. But unlike the samurai in his grandmother’s tale, life wouldn’t pass him by. It wasn’t too late. Just outside the gates of the stadium, a new Japan prospered and grew; the ghosts of the past were put to rest as new generations moved forward into the world. And one step at a time, so would he.

About the Author

A Conversation with Gail Tsukiyama

What inspired you to write
The Street of a Thousand Blossoms?

It came mainly from my desire to learn more about the Japanese culture. I’ve also always been fascinated by social groups who live and work outside the mainstream. So the world of sumo wrestling within the Japanese culture had been an ongoing interest, something I’ve always wanted to write about. It covered such enticing material and I’ve always had so many questions I wanted answered: What was the process of becoming sumotori? How were they selected? What was their training like? Those were the seeds that began the story, which soon grew into an exploration of culture, family, the inhumanity of war, and the perseverance of the human spirit.

Your novel spans three decades of Japanese history. What type of research did you do when writing the story? How did you decide what to include and what to leave out?

It’s always difficult to know up front how much information you need because so much of the writing process is discovering as you write. I was originally going to begin the book after the war, when Hiroshi enters the sumo stable, but then I began to ask myself the same questions a reader might ask: Did he always want to be a sumotori? Was he always a strong boy? Who determines that you’re sumotori material? In order to answer the questions linearly, I pushed the story back a decade. That of course led me through the war in Japan and its devastating outcome. And because all the families in the book lived in Tokyo, I concentrated on the firebombing, which was also horrific, though we Westerners know more about the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As the story progressed, according to time and place, I
began to instinctively know what to include and what to exclude to keep the storyline moving forward. The hardest part was keeping the story in the forefront and the research in the background.

When describing Hiroshi’s grandparents, you write: “It was a marriage that hadn’t faltered in forty years, despite the heartache of losing Misako and the raising of their grandsons. They had lived two separate lifetimes together, nurtured two families, and even with the hardships of war and rationing, she never felt their family strength waver.” Why do you think they were able to cultivate such a solid connection, despite everything—the loss of their daughter, his blindness, the war? What can be learned from their attitude toward life?