by Yu Miri
All tents near Saigō’s statue must be moved to the side nearest the station and all belongings must be put where tents previously were.
All belongings in the nursery near Seiyoken must be moved to the area designated with cones near the ‘ghost lantern’.
After clearing up your tent, please do not leave behind dangerous items (batteries, crowbars, metal pipes, knives, etc.) or wood, etc. —Ueno Park Management”
That particular day was the day the officials were going to carry out what they called a “special cleanup” and what we called “chasing out the quarry.” We were to pack up our huts and get out of the park before members of the Imperial family came to view the museums and art galleries.
And the rain continued to fall—
—
Sticking my arm out of my duvet, I brought my watch to my face and saw that it was a little past five. It was a Seiko wristwatch that Setsuko and Yoko had bought me for my sixtieth birthday.
“Well, I’m not working anymore, and the most I’ll be doing is going to the fields. What do I need a watch for anyway? We got a clock in the house,” I’d said, unused to receiving gifts and not knowing how to accept one.
“I wanted to give you something you could wear, so Yoko and I went up to Sendai together and chose a watch, one we thought looked most like you. I know you don’t need to worry about time anymore, but I thought, you don’t have anything of your own…”
She’d been wearing something bright, orange or red, maybe. The color reflected well against her bushy white hair. I don’t remember what exactly she was wearing, a heavy winter jumper or a light button-down shirt or what. But her clothes were as bright as a paper lantern.
Before I took the watch from its box and put it on, I looked at the grandfather clock. It was five minutes faster than the watch, and it chimed to let us know it was five.
“Well, that’s the dinner bell,” Setsuko said and stood up. I heard her walking off toward the kitchen. In the six months since I’d been home, we’d spent every day together from morning till night, and I’d started to be able to tell by sound what she was doing and where in the house, even if I couldn’t see her.
I stared at the black hands of the watch. This watch was a gift from Setsuko, but I thought of it as a memento of her. And if I was going to die on the streets like this, if anything might serve as a means of identifying my body, it would be this watch. They had gone to Sendai together, mother and daughter, to buy it, so Yoko would likely remember it. Had she filed a missing persons report? And the house in Yazawa… my granddaughter Mari… was that sausage dog Kotaro still alive?
Tossing and turning, thinking I should get up now, I fell back asleep and dreamt that I was standing on the bathtub in the house in Yazawa, in my sandals, trying to get out the window. The moment I got both feet up on the window frame one of my sandals fell into the bathwater. I was unsteady where I stood so I could not turn back to look at her, but I sensed Setsuko standing below, naked, ready to get in the bath. I yelled to her, “Oh, look at that! The bathwater’s all mucked up, now how are Kōichi and Yoko supposed to get in that?” I awoke at the sound of my own voice. Suddenly, the dense clouds of moisture hanging in the bathroom dissipated and I was struck by the reality that this was not my house in Yazawa, and that Setsuko and Kōichi were dead. Returning home in a dream isn’t the same as returning home in real life. Imagine walking into my home in filthy shoes, and then trying to run out the bathroom window… could I really still resent Setsuko when I lost her so suddenly… I looked at the watch, as I listened to the sound of rain drumming against the tarp. 5:30… fine, time to get started.
It was the 12th of November, the fifth eviction in a month. There were lots of museums in and around Ueno Park, and members of the Imperial family often paid visits to exhibitions and events there. The path of their vehicles took them past the Masaoka Shiki Memorial Field, but the reason that we were forced to remove our huts from areas not even visible from the road was likely a scheme dreamed up by the Tokyo city government. The intent was to force out the five hundred homeless living in Ueno Park in order to win their bid for the Olympics. This was obvious since we were unable to put our huts back up until a good few hours after the Imperial family were back in their palaces; and when we returned to our original spots after night had fallen, we would find signs and fences and flower beds designed to keep the homeless out, forcing us to wander the streets. All of this I knew, but whenever there was an Imperial visit, rain or snow or typhoon, I still had to pack my things up and leave the park.
Shige had explained it to me. “There are three kinds of Imperial visits: one is when the emperor visits, another is when one of the crown princes visit. And then, there’s the third kind, a combination of the two. Emile, I’m writing a letter of appeal, so when that black Imperial car comes, you can jump out just like Tanaka Shōzō and say, ‘I have a request for your Majesty!’ Not even a police officer would try to arrest a cat,” he said, scratching Emile under the chin. Emile stretched toward the sky, rubbing his mouth against Shige’s fingertips.
They wouldn’t tell us what type of visit it was or who was visiting ahead of time. The earliest notice was a week in advance, although sometimes they gave us as little as two days’ notice.
I could take down and pack my hut up in two hours if I didn’t stop for a break, but it took nearly half a day to reassemble. More difficult than the time and effort involved was removing the blue tarps and disassembling the cardboard and pieces of wood that served as walls and a roof, only to see in an instant that all of my belongings looked like nothing but a pile of rubbish. The materials that made up my hut—the tarp, the cardboard—were all things that someone else had once thrown away.
That day, I started dismantling everything at six in the morning, and by the time I had loaded everything up on a handcart, with a blue tarp over it to keep the rain off, and attached the number tag to it, it was past eight.
I watched the rain fall on the white patch of ground where my hut had been, turning it darker and darker until I could no longer tell the difference between it and the rest of the ground. Then I opened my umbrella and set off in the rain.
I hadn’t yet decided where to go. Those with the means could, on these rainy winter days of exile, go to a manga café or a capsule hotel and have a shower and sleep, or spend the day in a sauna like it was a day off. Some people put the heaviest of their things in a coin locker at the station or one of the free lockers in a pachinko parlor and just rode around the Yamanote Line all day. When the trains weren’t busy they could sleep in the warmth of the cars, and go around gathering up magazines left on the train or in the bins on the platforms…
But on that day, I’d been feeling bad for a few days already, enough to make me wonder if I’d come down with something serious without realizing it. My stomach and back hurt very much. I didn’t want to go out in the rain. I wanted to stay cocooned in my futon, if I could have.
Even with my umbrella up, the rain blowing sideways against my face and shoulders hit me like I was being stoned. Raindrops ran down my eyelids, and I could not see much in front of me. Breathing through my mouth like a dog, I wiped the rain from my face with my arm, but the sleeves of my coat were already soaked. The rain seeped through my clothes down from my collar to my back, and a chill rose from the back of my neck, creeping its way into a headache. The need to pee was exceeding the limits of my endurance. I put all my energy into every muscle in my body so as not to stumble and fall, gripping my umbrella, step after step, headed to the public toilet.
There, I took a piss and although I hadn’t meant to look, I saw my face reflected in the mirror over the sink. My damp hair was stuck down to my scalp, but I could see that I was going bald in the front and on top, and the few hairs I had left were mostly white. That wasn’t all that age had touched. The corners of my body too were aging. Before, I wouldn’t have been shaky in this sort of cold. Whe
n I left home aged twelve to work in the fishing port and slept on the boat, or when I worked on construction sites for the Tokyo Olympics, however cold I was, I’d never been so cold that I couldn’t hold my fishing net or pickaxe.
I began to tremble slightly in my wet coat. I put up the collar and arranged the front, but the trembling didn’t stop. To distract myself from the cold I stamped my feet, and as I did I heard a sloshing in my boots, and I knew then that the rain had gotten all the way through them. I hadn’t fallen in a ditch, so there must be a hole in the soles.
When I left the public toilet, the rain had not changed, but the sky seemed just a little bit brighter.
A homeless man wearing a clear plastic raincoat from a convenience store was pushing a fully loaded cart with both hands, heading from the park management office to the designated safekeeping area.
A man in a green cleaning uniform picked up some bit of rubbish from a puddle and put it in a bag.
From the direction of JR Ueno Station Park Exit came some young people with backpacks and instrument cases on their shoulders. Headphones on under their umbrellas listening to music, sharing an umbrella and chatting—they were most likely students at Tokyo University of the Arts, located down the main path through the park right past the Metropolitan Art Museum.
A man on a bicycle riding through the park, umbrella in one hand; a woman out walking her dog in the rain. The dog, clad in a red raincoat and hat to match its owner, toddling through puddles was the same type of dog as Kotaro, the dog my granddaughter owned. We usually called him Kota, only calling him by his full name when he was in trouble. “Kota, sit, give me your paw, good boy! Kota, this minced meat cutlet is good isn’t it? Konno in Haramachi makes great cutlets…” “Granddad, don’t give him fried food! Dachshunds have short legs—when they get fat, they get intervertebral hernias, so we have to keep an eye on his weight. Kota, you can’t sit next to granddad at dinner anymore.” Oh, that’s right, Kota was a dachshund wasn’t he…
As I walked down the central path, one of the park’s rubbish collection trucks drove past, splashing me with muddy water and soaking my trousers.
A ten-ton Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra truck was parked by the Tokyo Cultural Hall, and under the building’s overhang there was a rusted blue bicycle parked on its stand. An old homeless man sat on a folding stool holding an umbrella. A big white cat was curled up on his lap. Its face was dirty with eye discharge and mucus; its tongue lolled from its mouth. It didn’t seem like it had much longer to live. On the ground next to the bicycle was another umbrella laid open, with bread crusts scattered underneath and a number of sparrows picking at them.
Down Chuo-dōri from the direction of Ueno-hirokōji came a phalanx of about ten riot police vehicles, a transport van at the head, followed by the bomb squad’s equipment and the explosives disposal vehicle, and an evidence collection vehicle, which would film any trouble and save the footage.
I looked at my watch. It was 8:57. The riot police vans stopped in front of the big fountain at the plaza; the police got out of their transport vehicles and opened their umbrellas one by one. Officers from the forensics department’s canine unit, clad in dark green uniforms and hats with tall rubber boots, started walking their bomb-sniffing German shepherds around the undergrowth of the park to make sure that it did smell only of undergrowth.
9:32—one hour after the deadline to leave the park, I walked down the slope by Hanazono Shrine and stood at the foot of Tenryu Bridge by Shinobazu Pond. The surface of the pond rippled with each raindrop that fell, the ripples spreading out then disappearing, rippling then disappearing—where do they go, I wondered, but then, as if my very core had been pulled out of me, I could not stop shaking, as if I were trembling at every single drop of rain that dampened my shoulders.
Suddenly, the countless streams of rain interrupting my vision as I stared at a withered lotus flower that appeared like a big, black curtain—clearly showcasing my life, closed off with nowhere left to go. Even though the curtain’s come down… why wasn’t I getting up from my seat… what more did I think there was to see…
I was now, I realized, walking around the path around Shinobazu Pond, used in the Meiji era as a horse-racing track, the Meiji Emperor himself a spectator. The path was wide, the umbrellas of people passing well apart as they walked on. I couldn’t hear the beating, breaths, voices, just people, people, people, rain, rain, people…
I remembered a rainy New Year’s Eve, and how much I loved the sight of the people of my hometown passing on the stone steps at Hiyoshi Shrine, tilting or half-closing their umbrellas as they wished each other a happy new year. Time had passed, things had moved on, yet events I should have forgotten soon after they happened stayed with me, trailing behind me…
I saw some bright red coin lockers, and my eye caught the sign for Ueno Star Movie, known among the homeless as the little porno theatre. In one building there were three theatres: Star Movie, which showed double bills of old movies; Japan Masterpiece Theatre, which specialized in your average pornos; and World Masterpiece Theatre, which specialized in gay porn.
For 500 yen, you could sleep in a soft seat in a warm theatre until the last screening ended at around 5am, so more than a few made use of the little porno theatre during rainy, mid-winter days when we could not stay in the park.
I went in. Four or five seats at the back were filled. All were homeless, but none lived in Suribachi like me. Each residential area in the park had its own territory, and though we didn’t really stand around and chat or drink together or have any kind of neighborly relationship, we’d keep an eye over each other, keeping watch to make sure no intruders came close. We had a loose sense of comradery.
I sank down in the middle of the very front row and looked ahead. The title of the film was “Hubby Swap: Lusty Busty Wives.” Although all I usually had to do to go to sleep was simply close my eyes, that day it was impossible. Something inside me was pushing away the need for sleep.
Behind me I heard loud snoring and—was someone drinking—the smell of sake drifted toward me. Someone was beating his head left and right against the back of his seat, occasionally heckling, “You bastard,” “Idiots,” ‘Fuck you!” Nobody was watching, but the projector rolled on.
A husband who works for an adult toy company wants to know what his products are like to use, so he gives his wife one of their vibrators. She uses it then demands her husband make love to her, but he’s so tied up with work that he cannot satisfy her desires. The husband’s immediate superior’s wife is also in endless agony. The two women wait until their husbands have gone to work, then open up to each other about the slumps in their respective marriages. They hit upon the idea of swapping husbands—
Watching the projected images of naked men and women intertwined on screen, I no longer had any idea what I was seeing. There was a throbbing pain behind my eyes, and I was hit by the soured smell of my own sweat, which I had paid little attention to outside or in my hut. A chill came over me, sweat began to seep from my every pore, and acidic bile began to rise up into my mouth. One belch could bring it all up, so I stood up, stooped over and ran out of the theatre.
The rain now fell as if it were whispering softly to each of the passersby hiding their heads under their umbrellas; it was not cold enough to turn to snow, yet the cold was strangely intense.
I walked. The cold and my headache were tied up with each other, and seemed like something I could push away on my own, but only my feet moved forward, forward. I hadn’t made a clear decision to do so, but I felt as if I were heading toward the library that Shige had mentioned to me.
When I started to cross the road, the crossing light turned red. I looked at my watch. It was 12:29—the “special clean-up” notice had said we were forbidden from the park between 8:30am and 1pm. I had never returned to the park before the restrictions had ended. But if I went back, would I be doing any wrong? What woul
d be the violation? What harm would it do, what would I encroach upon? Someone might be bothered, someone might be angry? I was doing nothing wrong. The only thing I was guilty of was being unable to adjust. I could adapt to any kind of work; it was life itself that I could not adjust to. The pain of life, the sadness… and the joy…
Going up the escalator I saw the newest entrance to Ueno Station, built in 2000 when the Panda Bridge was unveiled. Next to the Panda Bridge ticket gates, there was a three-meter tall panda doll in a clear acrylic case. The flow of people over the bridge was sporadic. The fact that I could only see the hips of people passing me and the rain puddles made me realize that I was walking hunched over, looking at the ground, like a prisoner being marched off for committing a crime—
A pigeon stopped on the railings a meter ahead and craned its neck at me. Seemingly used to being the subject of people’s gaze, the pigeon alighted at my feet, then, when I was nearly close enough to tread on it, it just took a few hops off to the side and did not try to fly away. Maybe one of the homeless had been feeding it on bread crusts or something—on sunny days, homeless people would sit against the metal fencing on the overpass and eat or sleep, but today there was no one.
I saw a single black BB fall in a rain puddle. Was there a child somewhere with an air-gun hunting homeless people sleeping in the open? Taking aim at the people waiting on the platform for the next train?
Under the overpass were the platforms for the Utsunomiya Line, the Takasaki Line, the Jōban Line, the Jōetsu Line, the Keihin Tōhoku Line, and the inner and outer loops of the Yamanote Line.
A homeless man had jumped from Panda Bridge onto a train and killed himself, or so the police had said when they came to the tent village to ask questions. The guy had lived in the group of tents across from the National Science Museum, but nobody knew his name, birthplace, or anything by which his body could be identified, nor was there anyone who would speak. They hadn’t found any trace of the life he had lived outside of Ueno Park.
