by Rokuro Inui
“So you’re Tentoku, eh? My boss wants to see you. He’s taken a room at the Thirteen Floors. And when he does that, everything needs replacing—plates, cups, tatami mats, even the doors—so they charge him triple. He must be expecting to make a lot of money off of you.”
So saying, Seijuro slid the cover of the window closed.
“If this view’s the best you can offer, I’ll stick to Kainsai’s prints,” he said.
Tentoku and Seijuro set out for the Thirteen Floors, leaving Senroku at the bathhouse.
Tentoku had not been back to the pleasure quarters once in the decade since leaving. And even when he had lived there, he had never gone higher than the second floor.
Ringed by a wide canal, the building was lit up in every color of the rainbow. From a distance, you could see shadowy figures moving to and fro beyond the red lacquered railings around each floor. When he’d been young and foolish, Tentoku had sometimes wondered what the courtesan said to live alone on the top floor must be like.
Seijuro led the way, and Tentoku followed behind. The path to the Thirteen Floors was long and straight, without even any houses along the road. If you met someone you knew en route, it was customary to pretend not to know them. But more than one person they passed said “Hey, that’s Tentoku” or something like it to themselves. Even if it was just because of Kainsai’s pictures, Tentoku was far more widely known than he himself had realized.
Finally he was in the room with Chokichi Yaguruma.
“I don’t like beating around the bush, so let’s get the important business settled first,” Chokichi said, his smile kind. He was the picture of a beatific old man, a tiny little fellow as skinny as chicken bones. He did not seem to care much about his image, because he wore a ragged old kimono as if for outdoor work, and it was cinched around his waist with a rope.
Tentoku didn’t know all the details, but he gathered that Chokichi’s family ran the sumo at Renkon Inari.
Chokichi had been drinking with a few of his underlings in the room. Far from running wild, they were drinking with relative refinement as the women poured for them.
“You’re the talk of the town, Geiemon Tentoku,” Chokichi said. “If you’re in the tournament, betting will be three times what it usually is. No, five times.”
Gambling on sumo tournaments was not particularly rare. If anything, more people went for the gambling than for the sport. Once the bracket had been decided, the betting chits went on sale. Even on the day of the tournament, vendors mingled with the crowds standing behind the expensive seats, chits for sale dangling from their waists. This sideline, of course, was run by the same people who ran the tournament itself.
Once the wrestling was over, those same vendors bought the chits back. Whether the prices had gone up or down, of course, depended on whether they represented a winner or a loser.
The total number of betting chits was limited, and those for the highest-profile competitors were in high demand immediately, which drove up prices.
“Now, in the tournament, you’ll be up against Onikage,” said Chokichi.
Then I’m going to win, Tentoku thought.
Onikage was small in stature, but until a decade or so earlier he had competed in the grand sumo tournaments at the highest levels. His rank had fallen since then, but even so, if Tentoku won it would be a real upset. In the sumo world they called that a kinboshi—a gold star victory.
“Right now, a lot of people think you have a chance, and your betting chits are hot property,” said Chokichi. He took a sip of sake. “Onikage, though … He’s small but quick as a monkey. If you were to use your patented rear toe pick on him, it wouldn’t be so strange if he managed to switch places with you and push you out of the ring instead.”
Tentoku had his doubts about where this was going but remained silent and let Chokichi talk.
“Right now, your chits are at eight to two,” Chokichi said. “If we work the crowds right on the day, we might get up to nine to one. Been a long time since we saw sales as unbalanced as that, and it’s all thanks to you, Tentoku.”
For a man who claimed not to like beating around the bush, Chokichi was taking a long time to get to the point.
Finally, Seijuro, sitting in a corner of the room with his back to the wall and his katana in his lap, made an irritated sound. “Read between the lines, Tentoku,” he said, and Tentoku finally understood.
They wanted him to throw his bout. They were trying to fix the tournament.
“Keep your mouth shut, Seijuro,” said Chokichi. He spoke quietly, but the chill in his voice could have frozen the entire room.
Seijuro hurriedly sat up straighter.
Chokichi’s jolly expression had not changed, but Tentoku thought he saw an angry white flash from under his eyelids.
“I’m just telling Tentoku here what could happen. We don’t need to say anything that could be misinterpreted.”
Despite the softness of his tone, the room hummed with tension.
“Oh no, look at that,” Chokichi said. “I’ve gone and ruined the mood. Just forget what he said, Tentoku, and have a drink.”
He offered Tentoku a sake bottle. Tentoku got the sense that it was an offer he couldn’t refuse.
III
The voice of the announcer calling Tentoku to his bout echoed across the grounds of Renkon Inari.
Dedicated to the god of rice, fertility, and industry, Renkon Inari was one of the larger shrines in the city. The approach from Tengen Street was a tunnel comprising thousands of red lacquered torii gates. From the crossbar of each torii there hung a talisman of lotus root—the renkon for which the shrine was named.
The sumo ring was square, with four-sided pillars pounded into the ground at each corner and a rope that ran around the perimeter. When Tentoku stepped onto the packed earth, the overflowing crowd of spectators roared with approval.
Tentoku rotated his shoulders lightly. The fin whale on his back rippled with life. The crowd roared again.
Onikage was already in the ring, which was unusual given that the announcer usually called the higher-ranked wrestler second. Perhaps that was why Onikage was glaring at him so balefully. There was a full head between them in height. The name Onikage literally meant “deer-haired ogre,” and his hair was indeed a rich chestnut brown. On his head his hair was tied up in the standard sumo hairstyle, but it also grew from his neck to the small of his back, like the mane of a wild beast.
Chokichi was lurking around below the ring like an errand boy.
A man in workman’s clothes shouted “Get out of the way! I can’t see!” and threw the bamboo skewer from his roasted mochi at him. Chokichi jerked his chin, and a mean-looking group of what looked like henchmen rose from their spot at the side of the ring, grabbed the heckler under his armpits, and dragged him away.
When the referee indicated that Onikage and Tentoku should begin their preparations, Onikage dropped into a stance so low he was practically crawling. This was called hiragumo—“the low spider.”
He’s not going to make this easy, thought Tentoku.
Onikage’s signature move was to remain in the low spider stance longer than expected and then spring into his opponent’s space from below.
If Tentoku misjudged their initial clash at the beginning of the bout, Onikage could force him back against one of the pillars. That would be a severe disadvantage.
The main difference between the square rings they preferred in Tempu and the round ones they still used in Kamigata was the need to attack and defend the corners. In a round ring, it didn’t matter what your back was against, but in a square ring, when your back was to a pillar you had no way out but forward. The disadvantage was overwhelming.
In the Age of Myth, Nomi no Sukune had knocked Taima no Kehaya to the ground and been on the verge of stomping him—only to have his leg seized by Kehaya, who brought him dow
n and sat down on his back as if riding a horse, securing his victory.
As a nod to this legend, if a wrestler fell within the ring itself, this did not mean the bout was lost. The victor was decided only when one of the two either conceded or was forced, tripped, or thrown out of the ring.
If the two wrestlers fell to the ground together, rolling over and over, getting covered in dirt but deciding nothing, the bout could easily last an hour or more. For this reason, Tempu had started to adopt round rings too, as well as so-called Sukune Sumo in which even falling within the ring meant a loss.
But sumo was meant to be a rough sport played in a square ring. If you hoped to call yourself a wrestler, you had to prove yourself in Kehaya Sumo.
As a precaution against unexpected strategies from his opponent, Tentoku decided to keep his distance. Just one step back would put him too far away from Onikage for the latter to leap at him from the low spider.
Seeing Tentoku’s palms meet the earth, the referee raised his wooden fan.
The bout had begun.
Tentoku had expected Onikage to begin with a feint, but instead his opponent jumped in at him right away, headbutting him in the chin.
But they were still too close.
Tentoku slapped with his left hand to stop Onikage’s leg, then drove his right elbow into his opponent’s shoulder to force him to straighten up.
The dry sound of flesh striking flesh reverberated around Renkon Inari. The lotus root talismans hanging from the thousand torii seemed to sway as one all the way to Tengen Street.
Onikage collapsed to his knees, and then the ground—perhaps Tentoku’s elbow had connected with his neck or chin.
Tentoku reached for the mawashi around Onikage’s waist to drag him out of the ring.
And then Onikage seized Tentoku’s leg.
His collapse had been a feint—a strategy to put Tentoku off his guard. He must have then decided that, as the size difference made him unlikely to gain much from a direct drive up into Tentoku’s chest, he would be better off dragging his opponent down like deadwood.
But Tentoku held his ground, pulling back with his leg. If he fell, Onikage’s experience in the ring would give him the advantage as they grappled on the ground. The only way the young challenger could defeat his wily, practiced opponent was to force him bodily out of the ring.
“Hey!” whispered Onikage, still clinging to Tentoku’s leg. “You know how this works, right?”
The referee beside them must have heard it too, but his face showed nothing. He was in on it too, then.
Tentoku himself had forgotten Chokichi’s proposal entirely.
Now he wavered.
“Gei! Gei!”
It was Chitose, cheering him on ringside at the top of her lungs.
With his mind distracted, Tentoku’s instincts took over.
He peeled the iron grip of Onikage’s hands off his thigh, picked up the wrestler from above, and hurled him toward the edge of the ring.
Onikage kept his balance for a moment, then fell forward, one leg rising into the air.
At that moment, Tentoku had the illusion that time was passing very slowly around him.
He grabbed his opponent’s ankle out of the air where it floated before him. Executing a perfect rear toe pick, he let the energy of the move flow into his side, then stepped forward and released it in the same powerful one-armed thrust he practiced at the pillar every morning.
He felt the snap of Onikage’s ankle through his hand. The smaller man flew into the air, landing in the audience and toppling spectators like dominoes.
The referee raised his fan and bellowed Tentoku’s name.
His heightened awareness fading, Tentoku looked down from the raised earthen ring. A crowd had formed around the prone Onikage below, with Chokichi Yaguruma standing a short distance away.
He turned his narrowed eyes to Tentoku, his face betraying no expression whatsoever.
IV
“You’ve had an offer from the Akesaka domain.”
It was just after the evening bell had rung five. Tentoku had taken down the bathhouse’s sign and was cleaning the washing area when Senroku made a rare appearance to report the news.
“Ready to hear the details?” Senroku asked, leaning on his cane. “It’s a thirty-koku salary with an eight-person stipend and fifteen ryo in gold as well.”
Even one koku was a year’s supply of rice. The offer was more than generous.
“Isn’t that great, Tentoku?” said Chitose, standing beside her husband.
Senroku turned a washing bucket over to use as a stool.
“Can I accept the offer?” asked Tentoku.
“Can you accept it? What else would you do?”
“But who’s going to light the boilers and wash people’s backs?”
“What are you talking about? You don’t have to worry about that anymore!” Chitose said, almost giddily. “You’re moving up in the world!” Senroku nodded with satisfaction.
Tentoku, kneeling respectfully in the washing area, somehow felt very apologetic. He tried to make his enormous form smaller somehow.
Akesaka was a small domain in the province of the same name, but their stables had raised more than a few grand sumo tournament champions over the years. They took the sport seriously, and their compound in Tempu had a fine wrestling ring and training hall.
If Tentoku joined the Akesaka stable, he would have opportunities to compete in the biggest tournaments in both Tempu and Kamigata. Winning would mean a higher salary and special gifts, which would allow him to repay his adoptive parents for raising him.
He nodded, not needing to think twice.
“In that case, we’d better visit the Akesaka compound soon to make our introductions,” said Senroku with a laugh.
The next day, Tentoku made the trek to the Aoiya. As he had half expected, there was a new Kainsai print on display outside showing his bout with Onikage at the Renkon Inari tournament.
Inside the store, almost all of the prints for sale were by Kainsai. Other than the pictures of Tentoku, all of the prints were of women—or men and women together.
Many artists produced work like this. It might be erotic or even beautiful, but with little else to offer it all tended to look alike. Kainsai’s women were far more diverse.
From the undeveloped forms of girls in the first bloom of youth to the sagging bellies of the elderly, Kainsai captured the individual sensualities that other artists overlooked. These depictions all had the same calm and composed style, like scenes taken directly from life, and presumably this was another part of the reason they were popular among women as well as men.
Kainsai’s pictures of Tentoku, on the other hand, were highly stylized, although even an amateur like Tentoku himself could tell that they were by the same artist. The depictions of actual bouts had the same calm fidelity as Kainsai’s other prints, but the pictures of Tentoku driving ogres out or using a go board as a fan seemed more imbued with the artist’s personal emotions—they felt slightly excessive.
Pondering these matters as he looked around the store, Tentoku was finally noticed by a clerk who hurried to fetch the owner for him.
“I want to meet Kainsai,” Tentoku said.
A troubled look came over the owner’s face. Uncertain what exactly Tentoku meant by this, he invited him into the back room for tea, apparently concerned that he might fly into a rage and damage the merchandise.
“I’m very sorry,” the owner said in the back room, “but that is one thing I cannot help you with.” He was attempting a stern, resolute tone, but his terror was apparent.
Tentoku picked up his cup of tea between thumb and forefinger like a sake cup. He slurped it dry in one breath. The clerk standing behind the owner cringed at the sound.
“I’m not here to complain or shake you down,” Tentoku
said.
“Then why … ?”
“I just want to say thank you. I can’t even do that?”
The owner frowned again.
“Kainsai’s prints made me a household name, which got me invited to the tournament at Renkon Inari. When I won that, I got invited to join a domain stable. Whoever Kainsai is, I owe them. I want to thank them in person.”
“Yes, but you see …”
The owner trailed off. Seeing him struggle for words, the clerk took over.
“The thing is, we don’t know where Kainsai is either. Or even who Kainsai is.”
Tentoku looked at the clerk, who waved his arms rapidly in the air before him. “We’re not trying to hide anything. We get Kainsai’s originals through a go-between.”
“Then introduce me to your go-between.”
“I’m terribly sorry, but …”
Clearly they had no intention of telling him anything. Of course, a print shop wouldn’t stay in business very long if it made a habit of introducing its most popular artists to anyone who asked.
It was hopeless. Tentoku rose to his feet.
Outside the Aoiya, the sky was already darkening.
It was fifty or sixty blocks to the bathhouse, a good half hour on foot. The streets were far from deserted, but he wanted to be back at the bathhouse before the sun set completely.
He decided to take the path along Ganjin Canal, one he usually avoided. It was a dangerous place by night, said to have a mugger or cutpurse every ten feet, but if he got back to the main streets before the sun went down he should be all right. And there weren’t many street toughs foolish enough to try their luck on someone as big as him.
Or so he thought.
The canal reeked of stagnation and raw garbage, but it was still crowded with tiny boats. Most of them had a single woman aboard, selling her affections. Some were unfortunate souls who had become scabrous from syphilis and been ejected from the lowest of the Thirteen Floors; others were older women, approaching sixty or even seventy; still others were just brutally ugly. All offered similar services at startlingly low prices.
