The Izu Dancer and Other Stories: The Counterfeiter, Obasute, The Full Moon

by Inoue Yasushi

  Standing in the middle of this doma, where disorder was really carried to extremes, I surveyed this dingy corner that she had called a fireworks factory. I couldn't imagine what sort of appearance or mien the strange dead Hosen Hara had possessed, but the image that first drifted into my mind at that moment was one of some sort of shriveling, sluggish animal crouching in that dark spot. Could it have been because he used to sit on that tree stump in front of that wooden bench, fingering black or red or yellow powders in that measuring device? The sunbeams would be floating in, creating bands of light behind him, but the atmosphere surrounding those sun-rays would be stagnant, dark, and cold. Certainly, that was the picture I had of Hosen Hara in this dark and wretched house, forever beyond redemption—a much more miserable picture than I ever had of Hosen Hara, the counterfeiter.

  "There's something about this I don't like," I thought. And the moment I thought this, I recalled the marvelous spirit that had pervaded the sumie painting by Hosen that Takuhiko Onuki and I had chanced upon at the inn in Himeji. I had the feeling that something closely resembling what was latent in that sumie painting filled this eerie, deserted house, but this time in a much more foul and filthy form.

  As we were leaving, we went around to the back of the house. It was then that the old woman showed me Hara's grave. Behind the house was a small vacant lot which ended in a six-foot drop. Near the edge of the drop, a nondescript, ordinary stone—Hosen's tombstone—was set half-buried in the weeds. Out beyond that small tombstone loomed the prospect. In the distance you could see the numerous ridges of the mountain range, one upon the other, rolling in gentle slopes, and closer, as you dropped your eyes, the separate village houses studded the flats, looking in their smallness like toys, luxuriant with the many surrounding trees. It was April, but this was not a spring landscape. The whole landscape seemed submerged as though it were an underwater scene—and cold.

  That night, I heard from the usually extremely poor conversationalist, Senzo Onoe, a somewhat detailed story about Hosen Hara's declining years in this hamlet.

  According to that story, Hosen Hara and his wife Asa came back to this hamlet the year the Manchurian Incident broke out, in a condition that could almost literally be called "with only the clothes they had on their backs." They hadn't brought a single piece of baggage that could really be called baggage, but on the other hand, they apparently had a certain amount of money. They had bought the House on the Heights, as it was called in the village, which had become vacant when the preceding occupants had all died of consumption one after another. They had gotten the house for a song—but that was the asking price—had immediately paid cash for it, and moved in.

  It was soon after moving to this village that Hosen began to palm off those works that the village headman, Onoe, and one or two other families in the village claimed were Keigaku scrolls. Before he was twenty, when he had left the village, Hosen had said he would become an artist, but since he had really only returned once or twice until his later years, there was almost no one in the village who knew anything in detail about his character. At one point, a long time ago, there had been rumors in circulation in the village that Hosen had become a successful painter in the Kyoto-Osaka area. Because of this, whenever the villagers mentioned him in their conversations, there was something in their stories that indicated that they casually regarded Hosen as a person who had left the village and succeeded in the city. Accordingly, the villagers were a bit surprised at the wretched condition he was in when he came back home in his later years. Hosen told them then that he had come back to the country because in recent years his right shoulder had been so wracked with pain from rheumatism that he could not wield his paintbrushes and delicate work was impossible and that, in addition, his savings had run out.

  When he had settled down in the village, he didn't do any kind of work in particular, but from time to time he could be seen taking his scrolls and curios to Yonago, Okayama, Tottori, and other places and bringing different things back. At any rate, he seemed to be eking out a living carrying on some sort of art business in the countryside.

  Hosen had left a fairly good impression on the villagers, and there wasn't any particular single instance of his doing anything to cause trouble for other people. People would call him "Hosen-san, Hosen-san," with more or less mixed feelings of respect and affection. But after a while, as time went on, he started to go to other places less and less frequently; rumors began to circulate to the effect that he was tinkering with gunpowder—actually he was making firecrackers and fireworks and selling them to the toy stores in Yonago—and at some point he gradually came to be called simply "Uncle Hosen" by the villagers.

  Of course, even though he was engaged in making fireworks, it was illegal. It would seem that even when he first moved into the village he had already been working with gunpowder. Once, late at night, Onoe said, balls of fire were flying directly over Uncle Hosen's house, and the villagers became greatly agitated. Later, when they learned that these things were sky rockets that he had shot off, they were very shocked.

  In the third year after Hosen moved to this village, he exploded some gunpowder and lost three fingers from his right hand. After that accident occurred, a resentment developed among the villagers toward the repugnant things that he had been tinkering with, and Hosen rather abruptly lost his popularity with them. Curiously though, after he had had the accident, Hosen turned cocky, and from then on he produced half-publicly the fireworks that he had been turning out furtively until then.

  The villagers did not go near Hosen's house very often, but on the rare occasions when they did try poking around his house, they would find him in the workshop he had converted from a barn or see him sitting there constantly making all sorts of toy fireworks, apparently on order for Yonago.

  It was just half a year after Hosen lost his fingers that he and his wife Asa separated. At that time, even though she had deserted him, Senzo Onoe acted as a go-between and went to Asa's family home at Shoyama to appeal to her to come back to Hosen. But Asa simply and persistently just kept saying, "I won't do it!" Neighbors one after another also went up to Shoyama two or three times, but it was useless. At length, Hosen said that if he was such a despicable person, he, for his part, would abandon the idea of reconciliation with Asa—and that would be that. The villagers furthermore did not particularly condemn Asa for leaving the husband to whom she had been married for such a long time. Minus the three fingers, Hosen's right hand was quite unsightly, and as he tinkered with gunpowder in his dismal workshop, he had a gloominess that would cause anyone to despise him, even a wife.

  He could not produce the fireworks publicly because it was of course against the law. He nevertheless continued to turn them out and apparently became fairly well off. It seems that he regularly donated money for the construction of the town roads and made sizeable monetary contributions to the neighborhood functions with donations that appreciably exceeded what was expected. Once—Onoe didn't know when it was—a policeman came around and hauled Hosen off to the police station in a neighboring town, but somehow he was acquitted and did not have to pay a fine. Even after that, Hosen continued to make his living the same way as before, still in his dark and gloomy workshop.

  At any rate, the fact is that before he died in 1940, Hosen spent almost ten years of his lonely life in this hamlet. For about the last three years, however, because he had made a small fortune, the villagers rarely saw him produce fireworks. Usually, he was just on the porch, sometimes just sitting there, sometimes sleeping, mostly just doing nothing but gazing abstractedly ahead. Still, in the summer, when he was asked to do so by the neighborhood youths, he would make a few fireworks and accept the small gratuities they offered him. Moreover, if he was badgered into it, he would wrap up some of the fireworks he had made and go himself to shoot them off in the neighboring villages at the summer festivals. As a result, it appears that he was regarded more affectionately as "Uncle Hosen" by the people in other villages than by those
in this one.

  Hosen's death came suddenly. Early one morning when the autumn rain had been pouring down continuously, his next door neighbor, who actually lived a full block away, became curious about the fact that "Uncle Hosen" had not shown up for two or three days, so he went over to visit him. Hosen was lying on his face in the doma, dead. When the neighbor tried touching him, it was obvious from the rigidity and coldness of the dead body that many hours had passed since his death. The cause of Hosen Hara's death was apoplexy.

  An interesting thing in connection with Hosen's passing away was that just prior to his death he apparently had been intending to work with his paintbrushes. This could be deduced from the fact that in the storeroom there was a blanket, folded in two, on top of which a number of dishes for mixing paint had been arranged in order. Beside them, five paintbrushes had been placed with their necks neatly lined up on the cover of an inkstone case. Right in the middle of the blanket, a sheet of brand new white paper on which nothing had been painted was spread out just as neatly. It was thought that he had been just intending to take up his brush when he remembered something he had to attend to, had stepped down into the doma, and had passed away there just like that.

  "Was Hosen-san painting pictures in his later years?" I asked Senzo Onoe.

  "I don't think he was painting any more. But he was a painter at heart, so I guess it must have been on his mind, even when he had a hunch that he was going to die. Some people might say that he was going to paint, but he was missing three fingers, so it wouldn't have been easy to paint anything worth mentioning," he replied.

  That was the last of the counterfeiter, but there was something in that story that struck me. Onoe had said that drawing paper without a single brush stroke on it had been spread out and ready, but I had the feeling that he really had no intention of painting a picture at that time. I felt rather that he only wanted to surround himself with his painting gear.

  I listened to this tale of Hosen Hara to the end, and when I got up to leave, Senzo Onoe said, as though he had suddenly remembered something, "By the way, inside a cabinet in the storeroom of your house there are some things Uncle Hosen wrote. I think there's something he wrote about fireworks. Those things were found at the time of his funeral, and some of the young boys must have thought they might be of use some day and stored them in the Assembly Hall."

  There was one cabinet in the storeroom of the house I had rented which we had not touched and had left alone as promised when I had leased the house. I didn't know what was in it but had guessed that it must contain things that were owned jointly by the young people of the village.

  On returning home, I opened that cabinet. An account book of festival receipts, minutes of a youth conference, drafts of speeches—trash of that sort was crammed into it. In among these things, I discovered a notebook of bound Japanese rice-paper with the words Outline of Procedures Governing the Manufacture of Pyrotechnics skillfully written, by brush of course, on the cover. The title was pretentious, but these things appeared to be something like memoranda which Hosen Hara had written himself on the making of fireworks. When I opened up the notebook and looked at a page, there was a heading, "Fog Blooms; Red Fog; Snowfall," with this formula underneath:

  "In order to make stars, prepare a saffron core and set it aside to dry; then add clay to chrysanthemum powder,* mix with water, add 1 1/2% magnesium, and stir in a mortar; wrap the resulting paste around the core in layers; after the core is well covered with the paste, sprinkle with a mixture made from 15 OZ. of chrysanthemum and oz. of seed.** Roll the ball well and repeat this process several times. When it gets to be four or five inches, add a booster. Be sure to dry the ball in the sun after each application. Cores of 5 3/4 inches and 7 1/2 inches can be used."

  Very unclear passages like this covered three pages. Then followed paragraphs on combinations of saffron and combinations of chrysanthemum. Proportions for each kind of explosive were written by brush in red. Then followed sections on the manufacture of "Roman Candles," "Floral Cores," "Firetails," etc. Of course these were Hosen's memoranda to himself, but to me, who had absolutely no knowledge of fireworks, they were completely incomprehensible. There was a sheet of Japanese rice-paper stuffed between one set of interleaves. I opened it and looked at it. It was Hosen's own curriculum vitae, a personal statement of interest to me for very special reasons.

  "Born: October 3, 1874; Senjiro (pen-name: Hosen) Hara," was written at the beginning, so there was no question that this was Hosen's own curriculum vitae. However, his record of employment, which can only be regarded as fictitious, was listed simply in this sketchy fashion:

  "1916, Arareya Fireworks Store, Tokyo

  1918, Suzuki Fireworks Store, Yokosuka

  1921, In Charge of the Oriental Pyrotechnical Factory

  1922, Sakai Fireworks Display Store, Osaka

  1924, In Charge of the Marudama Pyrotechnics Factory, Osaka"

  At the end, there was an ostentatious subscript: "The foregoing is certified as factual."

  It is not clear where, when, or to whom he intended to submit this. This much, however, is clear: the period from 1912 to 1926 was precisely the time he was dispensing Keigaku forgeries as he moved around in the small cities and towns of Hyogo and Okayama Prefectures. It is therefore also clear that this was a wholly fabricated statement of his personal history. The possibility exists that when Hosen reached an impasse trying to earn a living as a counterfeiter or as a village artist, he might have been a technician in charge of a fireworks factory at one or another country town—on the side. If you want to stretch your imagination even further, you could even say that when he was ordered to appear at the police station, he was possibly able to settle the matter very quickly by just producing this false document and wrapping the police up in smoke. In any case, there is no doubt that this document clearly reveals a characteristic part of the nature of the person that was Hosen Hara.

  IV

  "I DON'T know whether you know it or not, but making fireworks in the winter can be very unpleasant. Chilean nitrate can be awfully cold when it's cold." As she said this, Hosen Hara's widow looked at the palm of her right hand as if she were recalling the chapped hands she had in those days. Then she dropped her gaze.

  My talk with her took place at the end of November, the year the war ended.

  Although the war had ended, life in the city was still shrouded in great post-war confusion and anxiety, and almost every day newspaper articles were reporting on the gangs of robbers, so I kept my family at their evacuation site where they were. I had intended in any case to have them spend the rest of the year there. The seasons changed in that mountain village as much as a month earlier than in other places, and toward the end of September, piercing blasts from the bleak and dismal autumn winds came whistling incessantly up the slopes of the mountain range, producing terrific drafts which blew all the way from Mimasaku to Hoki. At the beginning of October, the continual late-autumnal rains that are characteristic of the highlands arrived as the first harbingers of winter.

  As that time approached, my wife seemed to develop a feeling of panic over spending the winter snowbound in an unfamiliar place. When I went to visit her there at the beginning of October, she suddenly broke the news to me that she wanted to move out of this place of refuge, and the sooner the better. After I returned to Osaka, my wife urged me persistently in letter after letter to move them out of their evacuation place. She lacked the self-confidence, she wrote, to spend the winter here . . . surrounded by an old woman and two infants . . . and without heating equipment . . . and if the children caught pneumonia, there wasn't a doctor, and . . .!

  About the middle of November, I took a fairly long leave of absence from my company and left for that hamlet in the highlands of Tottori Prefecture in order to move my family. There I encountered a whole series of various and sundry impediments to getting things like transportation and shipment of effects taken care of. By the time I had taken the last step and managed to ar
range some means for shipping our effects and transporting the family, November was almost over.

  On the last afternoon, in order to arrange for the shipment of our baggage via the San-in Line, I set out for the station at Shoyama, a place whose name I had so often heard but which I had never visited. If I could have sent our things from the neighboring mountain-top station, which I always used and where I knew the station master, I would have had no problem. But those two steep ridges on the mountain road leading to our house were a formidable obstacle.

  Negotiations over the baggage at Shoyama station were settled much more simply than I had expected. According to the conversation I had with the station personnel, if I waited until evening, a truck could be sent from there to the hamlet where I lived. So, since I thought that I might just as well save myself the trouble of walking that five-mile mountain road again, I decided to go back with the truck when they sent it.

  As I was wondering how I might best kill the two hours until the truck left, I suddenly remembered hearing that Hosen Hara's widow was living here supported by her elder brother. I tried to think of some particular reason why I had to visit Hosen Hara's widow, but I couldn't come up with one. I did eventually come up with an idea. Rather than approach her to talk about Hosen or anything connected with him, I would ask her instead about anecdotes or anything else I might not yet have heard concerning Keigaku Onuki, whose biography I had to write. With this excuse in mind, I got up the courage to go and visit her.