“Fumi! That’s too horrible to imagine!” Hinohara-san cried on the opposite end.
“...out of jealousy.” Why hadn’t they seen it before? History was repeating itself.
“By her...could Makiko have meant your mother?”
Numbly, Fumi lowered the phone from her ear. The hospital called an hour later to say that her sister had died of causes they didn’t understand. “How can a healthy six year old suffocate under the watch of nurses?” They asked the media. Fumi listened halfheartedly, running from place to place, searching to avert the final tragedy. Her search took her to Tokyo proper on the eve of the Hina Matsuri. She passed out flyers with her mother’s face on the most populated of street corners. When she could do no more with empty arms, her aimless steps carried her over the red bridge overlooking the Sumidagawa river as the afternoon sun dappled the churning dark gray water below.
Far off, she could hear the sound of children’s laughter. Children aboard one of many tourist boats traversing the river for the Nagashibina ritual. Large pink slides descended from the sides of the white ferries. She stopped to watch as one drew nearer, preparing to pass beneath the apex of the bridge. Something in the breeze triggered a faint memory...a memory of a similar day when her parents had watched pleasure boats in Spring. Suddenly, filled with misgiving, Fumi spun around and saw her clad in a long skirt and eggshell long-sleeved blouse. Her mother’s ragged black hair lifted unkempt from her shoulders in the wind, she stretched her arms out, grasping the high rail of the bridge. Frozen in place, Fumi could do nothing but stare helpless in the face of her own guilt.
Asao...,
Was this how you felt?
For one second, the woman turned back with a peaceful smile on her face and then she pitched herself over. Far below, the cascade of Nagashibina effigies met the water in chorus to the sound of a dull, deadening thud and the happiness of children became blood-curdling screams of terror. Fumi snapped from her lethargy and ran around the T-section, throwing her hip against the rail. The sound had drawn other curious onlookers. One, a fashionable young woman gasped and covered her mouth.
“...oh, how terrible. That woman just killed herself -!”
But, Fumi was the only one who saw the painted white clay face resurface for just an instant, in the arms of a sobbing pink-yukata clad girl;... the ever present triumphant smile worn by Ichinose Makiko.
***
“Ichinose killed his sister?” I asked horrified surrounded by Barbie dolls and other shoppers who had moved around us in the long aisle. “Jealousy is a terrible emotion, one that consumed the young boy’s heart. When the Nagashibina was completed, the child’s fever broke. Ichinose smothered her with pillows, in the ensuing struggle, the doll’s head shattered. His parents sent him away with another relative that lived in the village.” Fumi-san replied, her gaze distant.
She knew because she lived through it, I reflected with some sadness.
“Sometimes a child does things, or says things because they’re angry or want to get back at another.” Fumi-san said, looking after the corner where her daughter had disappeared to. “Makiko was trapped in a time when she wanted revenge against her brother, striking out at any other who took his place. The people who loved her became the victims.”
I knew she was talking about her parents and the parents of others.
For the Sato family, history had replayed itself and in the end no one had been able to stop it.
Curious, I watched Fumi-san smile faintly and dip her head excusing herself. She’d picked up a rather fanciful depiction of a Doll of the World Japanese Barbie.
“You’re not...,” I felt silly asking, somehow the words wouldn’t come.
She laughed reservedly, “there is nothing malevolent about Barbie.”
Sato-san continued on her way.
- Owari
AN: Thanks for reading :)
Bibliography
https://etd.ohiolink.edu/rws_etd/document/get/bgsu1182390653/inline
https://www.gotokyo.org/en/kanko/taito/event/nagasibina.html
https://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0001194313
https://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/jshoaf/jdolls/hina.htm
https://www.lasieexotique.com/mag_hina/mag_hina.html
(Wikipedia pages, too many)
Ningyō: The Art of the Japanese Doll, by Alan Scott Pate
Nagashibina Page 5
