The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (9 page)

Kenji wet his lips, pushed his hair away from his eyes. “The four categories of male masks are the
Okina
, human, ghost, and spirit and demon masks. The two categories of the female masks are the human and the ghost and spirit masks.”

Yoshiwara nodded and smiled. “Good, you pass for today.”

Then he was silent again.

And what if Kenji didn’t know the answers to Yoshiwara’s questions tomorrow? He took a deep breath, picked up the broom, and began to sweep away the wood shavings. Nazo suddenly jumped out in front of him, his body arching as he rubbed up against his legs, reassuring him that he would.

When Hiroshi arrived at practice on a chilly December morning, he found another man standing next to his coach, dressed in an expensive dark blue silk brocade kimono, rather than a cotton
yukata
. He was a big man, even taller than Masuda-san, though he was thinner and carried himself well. He watched Hiroshi at practice while casually chatting with Masuda-san. Ignoring the audience, Hiroshi concentrated on his match as he twisted his body to the right and moved quickly out of the way as his opponent charged at him, missing the tackle and stepping out of bounds.

For the past year his coach had taken a real interest in Hiroshi’s skill and speed as a wrestler. Every day at practice, Masuda-san watched him intently and seemed to encourage him more than any other student. “Ah, you see,” he told the other boys gathered around
during physical education. “Hiroshi understands how to use his body—the power of it must be controlled, channeled seamlessly into the movements. Did you see how he used his opponent’s weight and force against him?” The boys bowed their heads, stifling their laughter. Many of them thought Masuda-san strange; he was a large man and it was rumored he once hoped to be a
rikishi
, but hadn’t skill enough to succeed and remain within a stable. His past was evident in his small office, crowded with his wrestling trophies and certificates, but most intriguing to Hiroshi were the photos of
sumotori
that lined the wall—their bulky, imposing bodies filling the space around them.

As Hiroshi continued to train, he began to see sumo as more than just a sport—it was deeply rooted in the Japanese culture, and he loved the dance of it all: the small expressions of tradition and ritual, the power water and cleansing salt Masuda-san always had at practice. Hiroshi had taken to it as if the holds that brought his opponent to the ground were as natural as walking. In his spare time Hiroshi studied moves and techniques, read sumo magazines with a gradual yearning to become a
sumotori
. The growing ambition was as subtle as swallowing. One day it was just a part of who he was.

Before Masuda-san, it was his
ojiichan
who introduced him to sumo. “It’s not about fighting,” he stressed to Hiroshi from the time he was a boy. “It’s about using your strength.” His grandfather was an ardent fan who followed the histories and rankings of wrestlers as if they were family relations. He sucked on his pipe and embellished his stories with obscure sumo statistics and fragments of information—the one hundred bottles of beer a sumo supposedly drank at a sitting, the sumo who won despite having only four fingers on one hand and three on the other, and the
sumotori
who stretched his body from head to toe for months, so he could make the minimum height requirement of five feet six inches. Though the boys laughed at the last piece of information, Hiroshi was also thankful he was already two inches over the height requirement. But always in his
ojiichan’s
mind, the greatest
rikishi
of all time was Yokozuna Futabayama from Tatsunami-beya. In 1936, at the age of twenty-four, he began a three-year winning
streak of sixty-nine consecutive sumo match wins, more than any other wrestler.

Amid the ongoing war news, the rationing of rice and miso, and the formation of
tonarigumi
, or neighborhood associations, comprised of five to ten households established to watch over each other, it was Futabayama’s continuous presence in sumo that kept the nation enthralled. Hiroshi marveled when the announcer described Futabayama’s strength as having the force of a train when he slammed into his opponent, ramming him completely out of the ring before he could regain his balance. He remembered his grandfather’s story about two wrestlers fighting in place of the hundreds of thousands who might fall for their country.

“Hiroshi!” Masuda-san called out to him after practice.

“Hai
, sensei.
”
He bowed, and hurried across the room to his coach and the other man, who had eyed him all during practice.

Hiroshi bowed low to his coach.

“This is Tanaka-san. He is the esteemed
oyakata
from the Katsuyama-beya and he would like to meet with you and your grandparents.”

Hiroshi bowed low to Tanaka-san and felt his heart racing. The
oyakata
had a reputation as a skilled stable master, and not just of any sumo stable. If he remembered correctly, the Katsuyama-beya in northeastern Tokyo had produced another champion, Kitoyama, and a host of other wrestlers in the top ranks of the Makuuchi Division, which included the five upper ranks of sumo. Tanaka recruited boys and trained them to become champion sumo wrestlers, guiding them up through each stage—
maegashira, komusubi, sekiwake, ozeki
, to the top rank of
yokozuna
. Even in all Hiroshi’s nervousness, he couldn’t help but ask, “The Katsuyama-beya of Yokozuna Kitoyama?”

Tanaka-san laughed loudly. “Yes, that Katsuyama-beya, but don’t expect to see much of Kitoyama-sama as an apprentice. You’ll only wish for sleep the first few years.”

“More than a few years.” Masuda-san laughed.

Hiroshi could hardly believe what he was hearing. The Katsuyama-beya, one of the most prestigious sumo stables, wanted him to join as an apprentice. It meant years of hardship and training, but it was the first step in becoming a
sumotori
. He glanced up at the faces of the two men, waiting for them to tell him that it was all a joke.

“Go home, Hiroshi, and tell your grandparents Tanaka-san and I wish to speak with them about your future, tomorrow after practice.”

He bowed low to both men, but his mouth was so dry he could make no reply.

As Hiroshi hurried home from practice, the morning air felt terribly thin and cold; the December sky was blue and cloudless. The fog that had hovered for the past few days had lifted, leaving Yanaka sharp and focused, the icicles like ghostly branches hanging from the edges of roofs. For a moment, Hiroshi felt like a little boy again, his breath like smoke rising, as he stole down the alleyways of Yanaka. The sharp wind that glazed his cheeks only made him feel more alive. He wondered if this was what his
obaachan
meant by
unmei
, following his destiny.

Sudden shouting brought him out of his reverie, and he saw people spilling out of doors into the streets and alleyways, talking among themselves with slightly stunned, confused looks on their faces. He heard excited cries of “Victory, victory!” and snatches of conversations and foreign words that puzzled him more. He guessed it to be another war rally. Hiroshi rubbed his hands together for warmth and breathed in the cold air as he pushed forward through a group of people headed toward the
ginza
. He rounded the corner and hurried home.

When Hiroshi rushed inside, anxious to tell his grandparents about Tanaka-oyakata and the Katsuyama-beya, he found them huddled around the radio in the kitchen. The “Battleship March” blared through the room, followed by a high-pitched, static-punctuated voice on the radio repeating that the emperor’s Imperial Air Force
had bombed a place called Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands. A stern, worried look clouded his
ojiichan’s
face. The joy that had borne Hiroshi home disappeared as he realized that war had begun between Japan and America. Suddenly, his news of the Katsuyama-beya seemed small and unimportant.

The war changed everything. Hiroshi couldn’t understand why they had less and less at home, despite the Japanese imperial forces claiming one victory after another. By early 1942, Yanaka’s alleyways were crowded with women and children who lined up and waited hours for meager rations of rice and salted fish. Each day more shops were closed and boarded up for lack of merchandise, while the streets were patrolled by the
kempeitai
. Everything familiar to Hiroshi diminished—the crowds of people who pushed along the narrow streets wore looks of bleak desperation; the fragrant smells of food, once so pervasive, were now only a thin memory as the war dragged on. But the most frightening thing to Hiroshi was the gradual disappearance of all the capable men from the neighborhood—husbands and sons, teachers and doctors. Even his coach was called to serve by the army.

At their last school assembly, Masuda-san, along with three other male teachers, stood on the stage and bowed low to the students, each wearing a white sash with a red sun on it draped across his chest. After each man spoke of the great honor in serving his nation, Masuda-san added, “And when I return from our nation’s victory, I will expect to see similar victories from all of you on the
dohyo.”
His coach glanced in Hiroshi’s direction before looking away again.

A month after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hiroshi finally told his grandparents about Tanaka-oyakata and the Katsuyama-beya.
His dreams of becoming a
rikishi
had evaporated overnight, supplanted by the immediate needs of survival. Nevertheless, sumo matches with top-level champions were still being broadcast on the radio every week.

His
ojiichan
shook his head and grasped his shoulder. “I’m proud of you, Hiro-chan. We can’t control our fate but I have no doubt you will be a champion when all this is over.”

Hiroshi looked away, swallowed the lump in his throat. At fourteen, he stood in that awkward space between the very young and very old men left in Yanaka. The loss of sumo practice felt like yet another defeat. Each day that his energy went unspent, he was left more agitated. Occasionally, Hiroshi still practiced his wrestling moves with his classmates Takeo and Mako at a nearby park after school, savoring the moments of pleasure, when the war felt far away and he concentrated all his energies in the corporal heat of the moment.

Classes were still in session, most now taught by women. The only man left teaching at his school was Hirano-sensei, whose withered right leg had kept him from being drafted, and who taught Hiroshi’s class. He was thin and pale, serious and soft-spoken, in his mid-thirties and fiercely loyal to the emperor. One morning, just six months after the Pacific War began, Hirano-sensei pointed to an enormous map of what had become the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, littered with small Japanese flags marking the recent Japanese victories in Guam, Hong Kong, Wake, Manila, Singapore, Bataan, and Rangoon. He lifted his pointer and explained where soldiers had landed in Malaysia, the Philippines, and Burma. “Our imperial forces have driven away all Western dominance, allowing for a stronger, greater East Asia.” He droned on excitedly about Japan’s successes for the rest of the morning.