The Street of a Thousand Blossoms

by Gail Tsukiyama

  Kenji bowed. “Of course, I’d be honored.”

  “One day very soon,” Mika said, smiling. She bowed and turned into the restaurant.

  It wasn’t until Kenji was halfway back to Yanaka that he realized he hadn’t given her directions to his shop.

  16

  History

  1951

  Sadao scooped more coals onto the fire. The ofuro was almost hot enough for Takanoyama’s soak, the steam rising like smoke. Every day the sekitori asked him more questions about his life before the Katsuyama-beya. It was just a matter of time before Takanoyama learned the truth about him. Sadao had lied to Tanaka-oyakata. He was only twelve when he came to the stable, though he could easily have passed for fifteen. He was already tall for his age and broad shouldered, the son of a butcher, his father a large man with the strength of a bull and nicknamed buru by everyone who knew him in their Tokyo neighborhood. Sadao, who had helped his father at the shop since he was a little boy, was called young buru. Those days seemed far away now, days when he was still very small and his father’s shop was filled with the bloody carcasses of chickens and pigs, and an entire side of beef whose sheer size fascinated him. And once, someone had kept a dead ox in his father’s meat locker until he could arrange for its burial. As the war progressed, the cement-walled meat locker was stripped bare by the kempeitai, and the only signs left of his father’s once successful butcher shop were the remnants of dark bloodstains on the floor.

  Sadao’s parents had died in the firestorm when he was six years old. His father refused to leave his shop when the incendiary bombs were dropped, telling them not to worry, the Americans had never bombed so close to the city center before. Sadao and his mother had found protection in the meat locker, listening to the low drone of the approaching planes, waiting for his father to come. Instead, they heard his father’s screams, and his mother hugged Sadao tight and told him to stay there, and not to leave until she returned. “Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go,” he’d begged. His mother touched his cheek, said she’d be right back. She never returned.

  Sadao waited in the dark. He sat stone-still on the cement floor and used the matches and candles sparingly, as his mother had taught him. Outside, the roar of the angry wind was deafening and seemed to suck the air right out of the room. Sadao remembered crying until his stomach hurt from fear and hunger. He lay down then, covered his ears and closed his eyes. The heat wrapped itself around him like a blanket. When Sadao awoke, it was to silence. Rising from the floor on wobbly legs, he disobeyed his mother and opened the door of the meat locker, only to see that the world he once knew had been reduced to smoldering ashes.

  After the death of his parents, there was nowhere for him to go, and no living relatives close by. Sadao walked down the devastated streets crying when a group of kids found him. They were all orphans, they said, and they stayed together in order to survive. They took little Sadao in, taught him how to live on the streets, and he remembered being afraid and biting his lip rather than asking them what the word “orphan” meant.

  Later, it was just as easy to say he was fifteen rather than twelve when the man who had seen him fighting in the streets wanted to know how old he was. He could be any age they wanted him to be, if they paid. Hadn’t he survived for half his life knowing how to read people? And where were his parents? the man had asked. He didn’t have any, he answered. There was nothing for him to worry about. He saw the man’s brow wrinkle, his hand running across his smooth, shaved head. Sadao wondered if it meant the deal would slip through his fingers. He was afraid that if he told him his real age the man might not be interested. He looked like a man who might like his boys older.

  Instead, the man named Tanaka-san had taken him to a place called the Katsuyama-beya, where he was the stable master and trained boys to be sumo wrestlers. It wasn’t at all what Sadao expected when he arrived almost a year ago. It was a place where he could start over again, be someone he had always wanted to be.

  After living on the streets for so many years, everything at the stable felt too big and too small at the same time. He wasn’t used to sleeping in a warm room on a futon whose softness made him feel as if he were being held. It frightened him, a reminder of his parents and his lost childhood. He remembered his mother’s voice, high and singsong, and his father’s thick, strong hands, which could wrestle the animals he butchered to the ground by himself. But Sadao’s biggest fear was that his parents’ faces were slowly disappearing in a fog, slipping from his memory, while he tried without success to forget his life on the streets. Why couldn’t he forget those faces instead? He recalled how he had prayed to an unknown god, the deity his mother worshipped, lighting incense and chanting, or the Buddha his father had perched in the back room of his butcher shop. But nobody had come to save him when they touched his body, when they did unspeakable things to him, laughing, leaving yen coins, leaving cigarette butts, leaving chocolate bars … leaving.

  Sadao gathered the towels and returned to wash Takanoyama’s hair. It took at least three washes to get the bintsuke wax completely out. Sadao liked Takanoyama and thought he was fortunate to be his personal attendant. He had heard stories from other sumotori apprentices, whose sekitori took advantage of their positions, making life miserable for them. Sekitori Daishima was said to have ill-treated his attendants, including a young sumo who was a close friend of Takanoyama’s when he was starting out. Perhaps that was why he was so fair and patient, and treated him like his younger brother. He began teaching Sadao to be a sumotori from the start. “Watch everyone and everything around you to understand the stable life,” Takanoyama advised. Sadao soon learned the principles of honor and hierarchy that had governed the sumo world for hundreds of years. Takanoyama tried to draw him out, but Sadao kept to himself, something he’d learned on the streets; the less you made yourself visible, the better. After all, weren’t all the rules of survival the same?

  He liked it at the stable. Before long, he knew that most of the wrestlers maintained their own private rituals. Sadao sat in the locker room and watched some sumotori chant and meditate before a tournament, while others held talismans—a coin, an omamori bag with a special prayer in it, or beads—and still others played cards or read magazines and told endless jokes to relax. Sadao felt as if he could reach out and grab the energy, thick with the fear, excitement, and restlessness of pent-up animals.

  Sadao had a few rituals of his own. Every morning when he awoke, he touched the futon he slept on and then he knocked softly on the floor three times, just to be sure he was really there. When he rose, it was still dark outside, and he heard the snores and grunts of all the sleeping wrestlers, and felt strangely at peace.

  The steam from the bath rose around them, sweet and hot, as he lifted another bucket of water and rinsed Takanoyama’s hair.

  “What will you do with your free time this afternoon?” Takanoyama asked.

  Sadao hadn’t even thought about it. Most days he had no free time. He moved from one chore to the other, and his day usually ended with washing the dishes after their evening meal. He ran his hands over the sekitori’s hair to see if all the wax was washed out. “I’ll sleep,” he answered.

  Takanoyama laughed. “It was all I wanted to do, too.”

  Sadao had finished washing his hair for the third time when Takanoyama turned around and asked, “How old are you, Sadao?”

  Sadao stopped for a moment, weighing the question. Takanoyama watched him and waited. Not the way other men had watched him, but as if he were trying to figure out a puzzle and couldn’t. The words rose to his lips. In that split second he’d made the decision to trust the sekitori, even if it meant having to leave the stable. “I’m almost thirteen.”

  Takanoyama sat still and didn’t turn to face him. “Why did you tell Tanaka-oyakata you were older?”

  Sadao shrugged. “At first, I thought that’s what he wanted to hear. After I came to the stable, I was afraid he would make me leave if he knew I was so young.”
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br />   Takanoyama grunted. He could almost hear the sekitori calculating his age. If he were twelve when he entered the stable, and his parents had died during the firestorm, then he was only a little boy of six when he was left alone to survive on the streets. He didn’t want Takanoyama’s pity. He hesitated before asking, “Will you tell Tanaka-oyakata how old I really am?”

  Hiroshi shook his head. “The decision is yours to make.”

  As much as Sadao wanted to forget his years on the street, old fears returned to haunt him. What if Sekitori Takanoyama told Tanaka-oyakata how old he was? Would he have to leave the stable? On the streets, stealing had been as natural as breathing for Sadao. The wrestlers at the stable had so much, and he knew they wouldn’t miss a small item or two, untraceable things that could be misplaced. It would be his insurance, just in case he found himself out in the cold again.

  While Sekitori Takanoyama soaked in the ofuro, Sadao sneaked back into his room to rifle through the green lacquered trunk with Takanoyama’s name hand painted in red along the border. Surely, there must be something of worth in it, something small he could hold on to and sell if he needed to. He quietly lifted the top and rummaged through the trunk to find a yukata robe, a pair of setta tatami slippers, towels, a tatami mat, his cushion, a mawashi belt, his expensive silk ceremonial apron, and a few personal items. There was also a photograph of a young couple, another of an older couple, and his book of poetry. Sadao stroked the gold trim along the apron, his fingers following the pattern of the white crane on the front. It would bring a fair amount of money on the streets. He shook the thought away. As he carefully put down the lid, something else caught his eye. He reached down and picked up a silver hairpin, which he held for a moment before slipping it into his pocket. He doubted Takanoyama would miss it anyway; it was probably given to him by some geisha at one the teahouses he frequented.

  Sadao knew stealing from Takanoyama-sama was wrong, but he couldn’t stop himself, especially now that the sekitori knew the truth about his age. He closed the lid quietly and hurried back to the soaking room.

  The Ginkgo Leaf

  After a long, hot soak, Hiroshi waited for Tokohashi to arrive. As an upper-ranked wrestler, he now wore his hair in a more elaborate oichomage, a topknot that resembled a ginkgo leaf, to all the major tournaments and on special occasions. The fan-shaped ginkgo leaf came from a species of tree that was more than a thousand years old. While Hiroshi’s wrestling name, Noble Mountain, gave him a sense of dignity, his oichomage gave him history.

  Tokohashi was one of only a handful of hairdressers who had trained for ten years to execute a perfect oichomage, styled with numerous combs and picks. Hiroshi looked up when the door slid open, happy to see the diminutive, good-natured Tokohashi enter. At sixty, the hairdresser was five years from retirement, and Hiroshi hoped to make grand champion before then so that Tokohashi would be the one to dress his hair. Over the years, the hairdresser had become just as trusted in his life and career as Tanaka-oyakata was. While Tanaka honed the fighting skills of each wrestler, Tokohashi spent hours getting to know his character.

  “Hiroshi, if you think the women were crazy about you before, they won’t be able to resist you with an oichomage,” Tokohashi teased, just as he had five years ago when he first styled his chomage.

  “I should be married within the week,” Hiroshi quipped.

  Tokohashi carefully laid out his combs and bintsuke wax. When he opened the tin of wax, the sweet, flowery scent filled the air. “Now that you’re sekitori, it might not be a bad idea; a strong young man should have more than one way to expend his energy.”

  Hiroshi felt the heat rise to his face and was happy Tokohashi stood behind him working. “In good time,” he answered, keeping his voice light and noncommittal.

  His rise in rank to sekitori did free him to marry, a thought that had flickered through his mind in the past few weeks. Until now, he’d lived a life of endless routine, one filled with rigorous training and continuous responsibilities. Just to lie down and sleep at the end of the day was comfort enough. Now Hiroshi saw an entirely different world opening up to him. He sat with this knowledge and tried to imagine the touch of a woman’s soft skin beneath his fingers. He thought of the geisha Momiko, how her skin must feel like a flower’s petal, smooth and cool, silky and fragrant.

  Another World

  It was the noise that bothered Akira Yoshiwara most since he’d returned to Tokyo five months ago. When he first stepped down from the train at the Shinjuku Station in Tokyo, it took all his willpower to keep from getting back on the next train to Oyama. The noise was like a wild wind pushing him back, a nervous, frantic chorus filled with shrieks and cries that shook through his body. He missed the silence of Aio, the quiet whistle of the wind sweeping through the trees, the quick snap of a branch breaking, or the trickling water that ran down the river. Emiko had once pointed out to him that it was simply nature whispering secrets to them. Akira pushed his thoughts of her and Kiyo out of his mind.

  The noise was unbearable, but so was the crush of the crowds that surged toward him as he gripped his bag tighter and walked toward the nearest exit. And what then? Akira no longer had any place to go. After almost seven years away, Tokyo was now a stranger. Or perhaps he was the stranger. He sidestepped the bodies rushing to get to their trains when someone knocked hard against his left shoulder. He looked directly into the face of a beggar standing in front of him, reeking, still wearing the tattered jacket of an army uniform, his hair and beard long and matted. “Dozo,” he said, holding out his filthy hand for money.

  Instinctively, Akira raised his left arm as if to wave the man away. His arm was suspended in the air between them and his sleeve fell back to expose the angry scar where his hand once was. The beggar stepped back and mumbled, “Ah, my brother, you’ve already given enough because of the war.” Then he quickly turned away from Akira.

  Outside the train station, it was like another world. People were scattered everywhere but it was quieter. He squinted against the sunlight, then kept his head down and didn’t dare look the patrolling American soldiers in the face. Akira walked for hours that first day, trying to acclimate himself to this new, brash Tokyo. The streets he once knew had vanished, along with the buildings that stood among them. Empty lots were everywhere. In some parts of the city, he saw the skeletal frames of new buildings going up. As darkness fell and the air grew cool, Akira found a small hotel on the outskirts of the downtown area where he could stay while he learned to navigate this suddenly alien city all over again.

  It was weeks before Akira finally took a train back to Yanaka, walking from the station through the downtown area. He didn’t want to face the devastation, the remnants of his past. But unlike downtown Tokyo, Yanaka remained remarkably untouched; many of the alleyways were exactly the same as when he left, new shops peppered among the old. There were fewer American soldiers patrolling the Yanaka area. Akira relaxed and followed the familiar route he had walked every day for fifteen years. It wasn’t until he turned the corner just before his old mask shop that he felt suddenly nervous again, his heart racing. Part of Akira still hoped the shop stood empty, waiting for him to return and pick up the pieces of his former life. But just across the narrow alleyway was his shop, now filled with blooming flowers in the window. He thought of Kenji and wondered if he’d ever stood in the very same spot, contemplating what had happened to him. Akira cleared his throat and smiled. Life had gone on in Yanaka without him or his masks.

  Escape

  More than a year after Haru left for Nara, Aki still felt empty and lethargic. It wasn’t just because her sister was away at school; it was the growing realization that people would always be leaving her, first her mother, and now Haru. One day, her father would die and leave her, too. If Aki thought too much about it, she’d fall into a deep, dark cavern she couldn’t climb out of. So she pushed the bleak thoughts out of her mind and tried to concentrate on other things. Seiko-san came to mind. She was certainly som
eone Aki wished would leave her life, but every day she returned to torment her.

  Of all the housekeepers her father had hired, Aki hated Seiko-san the most. Not only did she wear the same dark green kimono every day, she kept a vigilant eye over her, kneeling outside her room after school, rapping on her shoji door and trying to coax her to come out, reporting everything back to her father. Aki thought her old and creepy the way she hovered, her eyes always watching, telling her to do things when she had no authority. At fifteen, Aki didn’t need anyone looking after her.

  Like clockwork, Seiko-san knocked three times and Aki pictured her kneeling at the other side of her door.

  “Wouldn’t you like something to eat?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “To drink?”

  “No.”

  “Why don’t you come out of your room for a while? It’s not healthy to be by yourself so much.”

  She remained silent.

  “Perhaps later, then.”

  Aki knew she was being difficult, but Seiko-san was getting more and more insistent, and her first impulse was to snap back at her. She listened until she heard Seiko-san mumble something under her breath, heard her knees creak as she stood up slowly and padded back down the hall.

  Haru always knew how to handle these housekeepers, while Aki invariably became too stubborn and ran into trouble with them and their rules. Her sister had quietly obeyed them, only to escape as quickly as she could. Now she was in Nara, having gotten away, leaving Aki with a series of housekeepers who disliked her as much as she disliked them.

  Aki stood up from her desk and moved quietly to the window to open it, letting in a mild April wind. Just below was the flagstone courtyard, and a plot of dirt where her father wanted to plant a cherry blossom tree. She leaned out to check if anyone was around. If she were careful, she could lower herself down onto the tile roof of the genkan and slide down the support beam to the courtyard. She dropped her sandals first, which clattered as they hit the pavement below. Aki turned back, hoping Seiko-san hadn’t heard. Then she lifted her kimono and swung her legs over the window ledge, lowering herself slowly onto the roof of the genkan, careful to make sure it could support her weight. From there, she just needed to slide down the beam to be free of Seiko-san. Carefully, she inched her way to the edge of the roof and held on as she wrapped her legs around the beam. She was halfway down when a splinter jabbed into her palm and she lost her grip, falling the last few feet onto her back, her head thumping against the patch of dirt.