Tokyo Ueno Station

by Yu Miri

  Truth be told, the majority of people living in the park no longer needed to work for the sake of anyone else. Freed from the shackles of doing anything for our wives, children, mothers, fathers, brothers or sisters, we only had to work enough to be able to eat and drink, which was easier than putting up blinds.

  Before, we had families. We had houses. Nobody starts off life in a hovel made of cardboard and tarps, and nobody becomes homeless because they want to be. One thing happens, then another. Some borrow at a high interest rate against their salary and then run off, disappearing in the night; some steal money or hurt others and get banged up in prison, and if they ever get back on the streets, they can’t return to their families. There were many homeless men in their forties and fifties who got fired, who were divorced by their wife who took the kids and the house, or who turned to booze or gambling out of desperation and lost all their money, and no matter how many times they went to the employment office, couldn’t find the kind of work they wanted.

  They were like husks, still wearing suits.

  If you fall into a pit you can climb out, but once you slip from a sheer cliff, you cannot step firmly into a new life again. The only thing that can stop you from falling is the moment of your death. But nonetheless, one has to keep living until they die, so there was nothing to do but continue working diligently for your reward.

  In the autumn, you could gather the fallen gingko nuts from under the trees in the park, wash them, dry them on a rush mat and sell them.

  If you took manga and weekly magazines from the recycling bins at the station and took them to a secondhand bookshop, you could get a few dozen yen for each. You’d get a better price for magazines with a picture of a young girl in a swimsuit or underwear on the cover than for more serious magazines. There were some who laid their magazines out on a tarp like their own little bookshop, but they sometimes got taken for protection payments by local yakuza, and I’d also heard stories about scuffles between homeless people over magazines, people getting pushed onto the train tracks, then getting hit by a train and dying. We were always on edge, dogged by danger and the anxiety that if we had something even for a moment it could be taken away.

  In that regard, collecting aluminum cans was much better, because what you collected could be converted into cash the same day. I would take a large plastic bag and walk around, picking up discarded cans from the roadside, the bushes in the park, or in bins. The recycler would pay 2 yen per can, 200 yen per hundred, 1,000 yen per five hundred, 2,000 yen per thousand, and so on.

  I don’t know how many times I looked at the statue of Saigō Takamori since I started living in the park at the age of sixty-seven. His body is turned toward Ameyoko Market, gazing out in the direction of the Marui department store. In his right hand is his dog’s lead and with his left, he grips the hilt of his sword, though it appears to me that there is far more force in his right hand.

  Next to Saigō stood a cockspur coral tree, a South American tree with red petals which is the symbol of Kagoshima Prefecture. Like the bush clover, its flowers grow at the tips of branches, but unlike the bush clover with its ephemeral white and fuchsia petals that blow away at the slightest rain or wind, the coral tree’s fallen petals made the ground look like a bloodstained straw mat.

  On the other side of the coral tree was the monument to the Shōgitai.

  Shige told me all about it.

  “This statue of Saigō Takamori, you know, was originally meant to be placed on the plaza of the Imperial Palace, but the idea of putting the statue of a man who had led the Satsuma Rebellion and turned his arrows against the Imperial army so close to the Imperial Palace seemed indecent to some, so they settled for putting it here, in Ueno Park. And he’s not in uniform, either, another compromise.

  “The monument to the soldiers of the Shōgitai is behind him, and the Shimizu Kannon temple, less than five minutes away, holds the shells fired by soldiers from the Nabeshima clan fighting on the Imperial side during the Battle of Ueno. This park’s a rather strange place.

  “The Shōgitai was a group of supporters of the Tokugawa shogunate. There were just seventeen men at the first assembly, but three months later there were over two thousand members, and they established their headquarters here, on this hill in Ueno.

  “The people of Edo favored the Shōgitai; even the girls in the Yoshiwara mocked the Satsuma warriors who were allied with the Imperial Army, calling them country bumpkins and telling them they should join the Shōgitai if they had any courage.

  “Edo Castle had been taken without a drop of blood being shed, and the Shōgitai knew that if Tokugawa Yoshinobu had left Edo then the cause was lost. That’s when the Imperial Army, mainly composed of warriors from the Satsuma and Chōshū clans led by Saigō, attacked.

  “The confrontation, now seen as the beginning of the Battle of Ueno, took various turns but the decisive factor is said to be the Nabeshima clan’s Armstrong cannons, fired from what is now Tokyo University’s Hongo campus. The shells flew over Shinobazu Pond and hit the Shimizu Kannon Temple where the Shōgitai were encamped, which is why there are two shells and a print depicting the battle on display there. But in fact, none of the shells exploded. Some anecdotes even recount Shōgitai warriors seeing the shells fall and telling everyone to run and take shelter.

  “The print on display at the Shimizu Kannon Temple shows the hill of Ueno surrounded by flames from the battle, but this is also slightly misleading. See, the imperial troops brought barrels of oil to set fire to, in order to annihilate the hill of Ueno which was too closely associated with the Tokugawas—however, the flames happened to reach the buildings of the Kan’ei Temple, which had nothing to do with the conflict.

  “The bodies of the Shōgitai fighters who died in the battle laid exposed to the rain on the hill of Ueno for days, even after the flames were extinguished, until a monk from the Entsu Temple in Minami-Senju, who could not bear the piteous sight, and a courageous man named Mikawaya Kozaburo dug a hole there and buried the two hundred and sixty-six corpses. They did so knowing that they were putting their lives at risk.

  “Later that year, the Battle of Aizu was fought, in which the Byakkotai, a group of young samurai, famously killed themselves. They were fighting on the side of the Northern Alliance, opposing the restoration of the Emperor, but the imperial forces vastly outnumbered them. Aizu Castle fell after a month’s siege.

  “In less than a decade’s time, the rebellion that Saigō launched against the government in his home of Kagoshima had failed and he committed suicide in a mountain cave in Shiroyama.

  “What a coincidence or rather a twist of fate it is that this statue of him is located here, in Ueno Park, so close to the memorial to the Shōgitai.

  “Kazu, you’re from Fukushima, right? You know that, originally, back in the Edo period, all of Ueno Park was the grounds of the Kan’ei-ji Temple, right?” he continued. “It was founded by Tenkai, you know, who was from Aizu-Takada in Fukushima. On the other side of the Shimizu Kannon Temple there’s a column containing some of his hair. Tenkai planted Yoshino cherry trees here in Ueno, but that species only dates to the end of the shogunate. So the head of Kan’ei-ji, wanting to recreate the landscape of the past, asked temples from all over to send branches from their best cherry trees for grafting. The ones along the main paths are Yoshino cherries, but the ones at the entrance to the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum are weeping cherries from Miharu, in Fukushima. And I’m sure you know about the statue next to the National Museum of Nature and Science, the one of the famous bacteriologist, Noguchi Hideyo? He was from Fukushima, too, wasn’t he?”

  Here, by the statue of Saigō Takamori, is where one most clearly hears sounds from outside the park. When I pushed my bike loaded down with plastic bags full of cans or discarded magazines, I often stopped here and closed my eyes.

  The sound of the cars… their engines… brakes… the sound of tires crunching the as
phalt… the whirring of helicopters…

  With my eyes shut, the noise of the city lost its place of origin and redirected itself, until I no longer knew if the sounds were coming in at me or if I was moving toward the sounds. I felt as if I were at one with them, sucked up into the air, disappearing without a trace.

  The sounds…

  I felt the rush of air from an oncoming train cut past my ear, then the sound of people getting off and people getting on, even if I couldn’t see them… a barrage of metal hammerings in my head… my eardrums felt like they were going to burst, I curled my body in on itself… the panic took my breath away, dried my mouth out…

  I stuck my hand in the pocket of my jacket and pulled out a few coins. My hands trembling, I bought a fizzy drink from the vending machine on the platform. With one gulp my panic subsided and I saw the daily activity of the train station around me.

  People were waiting along the platform edge for the next train to arrive. I took one more drink, threw the can away, and approached the yellow line.

  “Platform two: the train now approaching is for Ikebukuro and Shinjuku. For your safety, please stand behind the yellow line.”

  I took one step, then another. My hat was pulled down, so I don’t think anyone could see that my eyes were closed. I stood on the yellow line, feeling the ridged paving blocks for the blind through the soles of my shoes, and in the darkness, I felt the fear grow and expand. I distinctly heard all the noises around me: people walking in heels, sandals, and boots, people talking on phones as they walked down the platform, impatient murmurs of people waiting for the train, and the clatter from the tracks…

  “So I looked on the back of the packaging, right, and saw that the best-before date was that same day. I was like, oh no, but nobody else seemed to notice so I didn’t say anything either.”

  “Right, yeah.”

  “Then the next day, I got to work and got this email…”

  “About how the food had gone off?”

  “Exactly…”

  Two men in mourning suits stood chatting between the statue of Saigō and the grave of the Shōgitai. They looked like salarymen. The older one, with salt-and-pepper hair and a surgical mask over his mouth, squinted in the sun, while the younger held his briefcase behind him, appearing slightly tense.

  “But it’s better to be honest, right? I mean, it’s better if someone just tells you, like they should, instead of staying silent.”

  “He said he hadn’t put the bentō in the fridge, and the next day when he went to eat the food he’d left out overnight, the smell was kind of awful. I had to laugh.”

  “I mean, it’s a best-before date, not an expiration date, right? If it’d been kept cool there’d have been no problem. I mean, it’d be just as gross if he’d put it in the microwave, forgotten to take it out and found it the next day.”

  The Shōgitai was in rebellion against the shogunate, and as such, its name does not appear on the memorial itself, but the metal gates of the fencing around the memorial do bear the character “gi,” in rounded relief.

  The information board says that the members of the Shōgitai who survived the Battle of Ueno erected this monument at the site where their comrades were cremated, and that their descendants tended the monument for over two centuries; at present, the city of Tokyo holds responsibility for its care as the memorial is designated a historical monument. The artificial flowers left here have lost their color, and their stems are bent and twisted. Someone has left the lid for a tin of mosquito-repelling incense in the incense holder, and a two-liter plastic bottle, cut in half, lays fallen over on its side.

  “And lately, she’s obsessed with baby yams. I’ll make a salad or something, and she whines: where are the baby yams, why aren’t there baby yams in this?”

  “She does like the old-fashioned stuff, doesn’t she. I mean, I have to admit, boiled baby yams are a nice snack with some sake, and they’re really pretty good mixed in with rice.”

  “The other day, she took me to this eel place.”

  “Oh, no, no, eels are out, they’re going extinct, you know, you can’t eat them very often. They’re endangered, and the catch of the young ones is getting smaller every year, so if we don’t let some of the grown eels live, the whole species will die out. I’m not joking.”

  “We both got rice with one grilled eel fillet on top. And without even asking she sticks her chopsticks in my bowl and takes half my eel. She said one fillet just wasn’t enough for her. Meanwhile I’m left with all this rice and nothing to eat it with, so what else can I do? So there I am, eating rice seasoned with Sichuan pepper. In an eel place.”

  “How much is rice with grilled eel these days—about 2,000 yen?”

  “At the place she picked, it was 3,000.”

  “You must be joking.”

  “So I told her I’m not going anywhere like that again—oh, no, we’re going to the cheapest places, where 3,000 yen goes a lot further. So I guess we’re going to Gusto, then.”

  “Gusto?”

  “When we go places like that, she always asks for a large serving of rice and then asks for seconds.”

  “Huh. How old is she?”

  “Thirty-two.”

  “Hardly a growing girl, then.”

  The two men in funeral wear started off slowly, walking across the expanse toward the Shimizu Kannon Temple.

  Standing almost right in the middle of the space, a young woman bent over to tuck the hems of her slim-cut jeans into her brown boots. Her shoulder-length hair swung over her face, obscuring it; her shadow, stretching out from the soles of her boots, looked like a crane in flight.

  “When I go to her place, chances are she’ll make burgers.”

  “Really?”

  “Anyway, she’s always snacking on something—chocolates or sweets.”

  “They say you really shouldn’t overdo it with chocolate.”

  “Everything in moderation. I mean, I eat sweets, you know. Six sticks of strawberry Pocky is my limit, though. But I don’t worry too much about chocolate bars, like the Meiji brand ones—I mean, they say a little bit is actually good for you, as long as you don’t overdo it.”

  “It’s gotta have almonds, otherwise I’m just not interested.”

  The wind began to blow, and a girl, about four or five years old, emerged from the lacework of light and dark on her pink bike with training wheels. She rode with assurance, tracing circles in the sun. The basket of her bike and her helmet were also pink.

  “I think you should eat something sweet every day. A lump of sugar will do, and it’s probably the cheapest option.”

  “Marshmallows.”

  “What?”

  “She’s crazy about marshmallows.”

  “I can’t eat marshmallows, they stick to my teeth. Honestly, these days, I’m turning into an old man. Just give me some dried sardines, you know, the kind some bartenders put out. I eat them like crazy, like they’re candy.”

  “Oh, yeah, those are great. I don’t see how that makes you an old man. You have to have a good set of teeth to get through those.”

  An old homeless man passed by the Shimizu Kannon Temple. He had a towel tied around his head like a kerchief, and a winter overcoat was attached to his backpack with safety pins.

  “When they don’t have them in my local supermarket, I keep looking until I find somewhere that does.”

  “You don’t see them around much anymore, do you?”

  “Yeah, but if you keep looking you’ll find them eventually. Seek, and ye shall find.”

  A chainsaw buzzed. A worker, standing in the basket of a crane on the back of a blue truck, was inside the tunnel formed by the intertwining branches of a zelkova and a gingko, cutting according to the instructions of his colleague on the ground below. Another worker gathered the fallen branches and raked up the debris.

>   “Dried sardines don’t have a lot of calories, right? It’s a pretty healthy snack, I imagine.”

  “They’re very high in salt, though. I have high blood pressure, so my doctor told me I shouldn’t have more than six grams of salt a day, but I like salty food. And dried sardines are the best, especially with sake.”

  “Smelt, too.”

  “Oh, yeah, smelt’s good too…”

  The two men in black picked up their pace slightly once they got to the signs in front of Suribachiyama and headed off toward the park entrance of Ueno Station.

  There are two signs in front of Suribachiyama. The white one has a message from the Ueno Police, in eye-catching red type: “Entrance forbidden at night.” The stainless-steel sign is from the Taito District Educators Association, explaining the mound’s name.

  Erected about fifteen-hundred years ago, the Suribachi Mound is thought to be a funeral mound. It contains pottery from the Yayoi era, as well as fragments of Haniwa funeral cylinders. The name Suribachi (literally ‘Mortar’) comes from the shape of the mound, which resembles an overturned mortar.

  At the top of Suribachi Mound there is a circular open space, surrounded by tall, bare-branched gingkos and zelkovas, which have such dense leaves from spring to autumn that the view beyond is obscured.

  If you do look through the branches, however, you can see the green enclosure around the Masaoka Shiki Memorial Baseball Field, named after the poet who played baseball here when he was a student. And on days when kids’ or adults’ teams are playing, you can hear them call out to each other, the noise of balls hitting bats and gloves, and the cheers and shouts of spectators and family members; but today, there is nothing to listen to.

  Listen.

  To speak is to stumble, to hesitate, to detour and hit dead ends. To listen is straightforward. You can always just listen.

  I hear a listless sort of screeching.

  Possibly the first cicadas of the year.

  Could be a Kaempfer cicada…

  Or maybe it’s not a cicada, maybe it’s a katydid or something else…