The Street of a Thousand Blossoms

by Gail Tsukiyama

  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.

  4

  Victories

  1942

  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 excit
edly about Japan’s successes for the rest of the morning.

  “I don’t think he likes women,” Mako leaned over and whispered to Hiroshi.

  “How would you know?” Hiroshi stifled a laugh.

  “Look at the way he moves, dragging that foot behind him, swinging his hips from side to side.”

  Hiroshi waited until Hirano-sensei turned around again. “You don’t need two good feet to like women,” he whispered back.

  “Just as long as something else down there works,” Mako said, laughing.

  Hiroshi shook his head at Mako and smiled. He hadn’t paid much attention in the classroom since the war began. After a morning assembly, their days were filled with fire drills and marching in formation. His sensei’s fervor for the war was carried over to their assignments of writing new slogans for each campaign. Their classroom walls were lined with phrases such as “Until victory is achieved, deny one’s self” or “The invincible imperial forces will walk the path of victory.” Most of the students made fun of Hirano-sensei behind his back, but Hiroshi understood how ashamed he must feel, teaching among women, unable to fight for his country. No wonder Hirano-sensei couldn’t stop talking about the war; living his nation’s victories made them his, if only through words.

  Family

  As was his habit, forty-year-old Sho Tanaka rose early, careful not to wake his wife, Noriko, as he slipped quietly through the house. Down the hall, his daughters, five-year-old Aki and eight-year-old Haru, still slept. Not until he slid shut the door to their living quarters and walked across the courtyard did he resume his regular stride. His tight muscles awakened as he quickened his step, and he remembered how it felt to work his body beyond endurance. He breathed in the mildness of the early June morning.

  Sometimes, in the thirty feet from his house to the sumo stable, he could almost make himself believe that the war hadn’t changed anything. But when he entered the stable through the side door, he found the building eerily quiet. Six months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, most sumo stables had closed. The fifteen- and sixteen-year-old boys were sent to work in munitions and aircraft factories, and most of the low-level rikishi over eighteen were drafted to fight for their emperor. But Yokozuna Futabayama was still the reigning champion, and with only a handful of top-ranked wrestlers left, including Kitoyama, the Katsuyama-beya hadn’t been completely shut down. And with Kitoyama’s continual victories came the assurance that he wouldn’t be called to fight.

  Now, Sho Tanaka’s main concern was Noriko and the girls, and keeping their lives as close to normal as he could. He had always dreamed of one day telling his own sons of the honor and greatness that came from sumo. Instead, Noriko had borne him two daughters, Haru and Aki, whose names meant “spring” and “fall”; and far from being discontent, he loved his daughters for their beauty and the lightness of their movements, so different from the sturdy rowdiness of the boys he worked with every day. It was true that at first they hadn’t been the sons he had wished for, but he came to treasure them more.

  Tanaka slid open the door to the now silent keikoba and stepped onto the dirt floor of the training area. It was already six in the morning, late by training standards. Ordinarily, it would have been a flurry of activity. The youngest and lowest-ranked wrestlers, wearing their dark-colored canvas mawashi belts, would already have been exercising for an hour and a half. Each boy came to the stable as young as thirteen with the unrealistic dream of becoming a yokozuna, but only a minuscule percentage of sumotori ever reached the status of grand champion. Most would never even reach the halfway mark, that of the Juryo Division, which meant they would finally graduate from the apprentice stage and be considered sekitori, or professional wrestlers, who received a monthly salary from the sumo association. Still, Tanaka hoped to provide the inspiration to make them work harder. By eight o’clock in the morning, the higher-ranked wrestlers in their white mawashi belts would enter the keikoba for practice.

  Tanaka was careful not to disturb the dohyo, outlined in white. Many of the rikishi were just boys when they arrived at the stable, their first time away from home, just as he had been so many years ago. If he closed his eyes, he could conjure up the activity that once flourished every morning in the now quiet room—the smack of flesh against flesh, the low grunts of the rikishi at their morning stretches, and the sound of his irritated voice when a boy moved without thinking. “Not just your body. All your senses must be alert to your opponent. No move should ever be wasted!” Tanaka remembered the stinging blows of his own coach’s bamboo stick across his back and legs when he was a young rikishi. No mistake went unrewarded, leaving a raised welt for days. As oyakata, he refused to beat his rikishi, hoping their pride and desire to win would be enough, knowing that sometimes it wasn’t. Tanaka shook his head, remembering. It was a shame about the Matsumoto boy. Hiroshi—Matsuda-san’s protégé—whom he was finally persuaded to visit at the school, never had the chance to enter the stable because of the war. His talent and speed were evident, and there was something about the lightness with which the boy moved that reminded Tanaka of all the best wrestlers. It didn’t happen often; not once in the past few years had he felt in his bones that a boy’s raw talent could be shaped into a champion.

  “Otosan,” a small voice rang out.

  Tanaka turned to see his younger daughter, Aki, standing in the doorway. “What are you doing up so early, Aki-chan?”

  “I heard you get up,” she said.

  He smiled and bent to pick her up. His older daughter, Haru, always more independent, was past the age of wanting to be carried. He was amazed at how light and fragile Aki felt in his arms, how soft and delicate her pale skin was against his fingers. She was the child they almost lost, sickly and small as a baby; twice she had soaring temperatures that made her skin turn a rosy pink, burning up from within. She was still so tiny. They held vigil at the hospital, and he and Noriko lit incense and prayed to the gods at a small temple down the street. Day and night, the murmuring chants had filled him with a heavy grief. Then days later, her fever broke and Aki had been healthy ever since, though always frail in his eyes. Even now, he couldn’t smell the pungent, sweet incense or hear the low rumble of chanting without a shiver passing through his body.

  “Where are the big boys?” she whispered into his ear, then pulled away and cupped her small palms against the scratchy black stubble on his cheeks.

  “They’ve gone for a little while.”

  “Will they be back?” she asked.

  The rikishi treated his family with the greatest respect, and Noriko had made a special effort to get to know each boy when he entered the stable. To Tanaka, sumo was more than sport and years of hard training. Sumo was family. Sumo was history. Sumo was community. That was what Tanaka missed most now.

  “Hai,” he whispered back in her ear. “They’ll be back.”

  Refuge

  Since the Pacific War began, Kenji’s world had grown frenzied. At school, he studied ethics and composition, listened to the increasing fervor of his teachers’ lectures on militarism and nationalism, marched in step to martial music during physical education, and then hurried after school down the alleyways, his heart racing for fear of reaching the mask shop and finding it deserted. What if Akira Yoshiwara were no longer there? What if he’d been called up to fight, as so many of the younger men had already been?

  The once quiet streets of Yanaka were now filled with tumult, from the kempeitai-organized rallies, to the slogans of national devotion plastered on walls—Kenji’s favorite being “Luxury is the enemy.” He thought America was. Women cheered at train stations as men left for the front, only to turn to tears once the train was out of sight. Newspapers and magazines were filled with victory reports. The capture of Singapore and Bali by the invincible imperial forces blared constantly from radios. A manic feeling seemed to speed the very pulse of the town.

  Kenji stopped at the door of the sembei rice cracker store. Even Fukushima-san, the owner, who appeared much too old
to fight, had been drafted. Women from the neighborhood associations were visiting his shop this afternoon, congratulating him on being able to serve his nation, and leaving him small sums of farewell money. Kenji watched as Fukushima bowed low, saying to them, “I am truly the fortunate one, to serve our emperor and country.”

  The only place Kenji heard any conflicting views about the war was at the corner bar with his ojiichan and his friends. As the men huddled around the battered wooden table where they had met for thirty years, there was little room for secrets. His grandfather’s brother had been killed years ago at Mukden, and Kenji could see that his ojiichan disapproved of what his old friend Tokuda-san was saying.

  “So, Yoshio, you don’t agree this war will make Japan a world power?” Tokuda-san ran his hand through his gray hair and sat back on the wooden stool.

  His grandfather smiled and looked right at his old friend, his cloudy eyes revealing nothing. “It saddens me to think that war must be the means to power,” he answered.

  “Would you rather we sit back and allow America and all the other Western nations to strangle our culture, and that of our neighbors, just as they’ve done for centuries?”

  Kenji listened as their talk turned hard and serious, watched his ojiichan’s face grow stern, as it did when he and Hiroshi were bad. The set stare reminded him of one of Akira Yoshiwara’s masks.