Chapter 2 Part1 (1/2)
Not a word on the Nidaime or tengu in this whole chapter… but lots of tanuki and shogi.
The Eccentric Family: The Nidaime’s Homecoming (Uchouten Kazoku: Nidaime no Kichou) by Morimi Tomihiko
Chapter 2 (part ¼)
Gyokuran of Nanzenji Temple
When a male and a female tanuki fall in love, it’s said that they’re tied with the red fur of fate.
There was no end to tanuki whose hearts were set aflutter by that fishy myth prompting them to search every nook and cranny of the body in an attempt to pick out the precious single red hair. While they were busy with that, in the shade of trees in Yos.h.i.+damayama, on the premises of Koujin-sama[*1], and in the greenhouses of the Kyoto Prefectural Botanical Gardens, a discreet furry friends.h.i.+p between tanuki gentlemen and tanuki ladies was steadily deepening. ‘There is only one tanuki like you in the whole world,’ he says. 'No other tanuki is like you in the whole world,’ she says. Lovey-dovey on display!
On that note, there was one particular deep and furry love story.
Once upon a time, in the Tanukidani-Fudou forest, located in the Ichijouji district of Sakyou-ku ward, there lived a certain tanuki girl named Tousen, as juicy and fresh as a peach and as agile as an enlightened mountain sage [*2]. From morning to night, she played on the stairway that counted 250 steps leading to the shrine. A single shout of 'Drop dead’ was enough for her to repel any halfwit that dared make light of her. The little tanuki in the neighborhood called her 'Tousen the Stairs-wanderer’ out of respect and reverence.
One day, a group of unfamiliar tanuki kids appeared in Tanukidani-Fudou. Inspired by the tsuchinoko boom of the time that was taking the tanuki world by the storm, they were the self-proclaimed Tsuchinoko Expedition Team, a bunch of mischievous boys who wrought havoc on many nearby mountains. The brats started climbing the stairs, singing as they did, and met Tousen on the way; unaware of her fame and courage, they took the high-and-mighty att.i.tude with her.
“Hey, you shortie over there.”
“What did you say, you jerk?!”
Tousen flew into fury and beat the mischievous invaders to within an inch of their life. “Drop dead!”
That was the start of a battle between the little tanuki of Tanukidani-Fudou and the Tsuchinoko Expedition Team with the long stairs to the temple on the line. Tousen fought bravely and protected their turf.
Time pa.s.sed, and Tousen descended down the long stairs counting 250 steps that she’d defended in the past in a white kimono. Leaving Tanukidani-Fudou behind after her marriage, she set out to her new home in the Tadasu forest.
What she was remembering with fondness at the time were the mischievous boys of the Tsuchinoko Expedition Team, singing at the top of their lungs as they climbed the stairs, and herself as she stood in their way. The leader of the Tsuchinoko Expedition Team that called her shortie on that day was s.h.i.+mogamo Souichirou, that is, our father. Needless to say, the tomboy who responded with a 'what did you say, you jerk’ was none other than our mother. Were it not for furry love in this world, not a single tuft of fur would have existed of the s.h.i.+mogamo brothers.
What preceded the birth of the round, little furb.a.l.l.s was a furry love story.
〇
In the beginning of June when the rainy season had started, I sat in a cage in Kyoto City Zoo.
Kyoto zoo was located near Heian-jingu shrine in Okazaki, and the premises surrounded by a brick wall were lively with cries of birds and wild animals. Between the cages with such dignified creatures as elephans, lions, giraffes and hippopotami, there was a cage with tanuki, too.
That said, for tanuki being put in a cage was their greatest fear. And that was because our specialty, that is, shapes.h.i.+fting, had a close connection with the idea of freedom; if thrown into a cage and robbed of their freedom, tanuki wouldn’t be able to shapes.h.i.+ft. You won’t find a tanuki who would like to be confined and rendered unable to shapes.h.i.+ft.
For that reason, from long ago, it was customary for the role of captive tanuki in the zoo to be played in s.h.i.+fts by the Okazaki tanuki who were professionals at that. When they needed to go out on an incentive trip, there was no choice but for other tanuki to stand in for them, but it went without saying that this job was not popular. The reason why I had accepted it was because the pay was high.
When I signed up for it, first of all, I was given a thorough crash course by the chief of the Okazaki tanuki on the correct way to conduct myself as a proper zoo tanuki. The Okazaki tanuki took pride in the activities of enlightening ladies and gentlemen of Kyoto on the subject of what a proper tanuki was.
“What’s most important is charm. However, do not b.u.t.ter up to anyone.” The Okazaki tanuki chief narrated their philosophy. “We play tanuki with pride. That’s the trick to it. You can’t just spring the raw realism on visitors. If you do that, all our efforts will be for naught. You’ve got to catch the moment when you become more tanuki-like than a tanuki without exposing the truth. This const.i.tutes one of shapes.h.i.+fting techniques, too.”
naturally, being locked up in a cage felt very eerie, so I spent my first day in restlessness. To a tanuki not accustomed to having your shapes.h.i.+fting powers sealed, denied the very possibility to go out to play mindlessly with someone staring at you around the clock, it was an extremely exhausting ordeal.
Worried about how I was doing in a cage all alone, my mother dropped by in the evening to see how I was faring. As was in her habit, mother a.s.sumed the form of a handsome young man, Takarazuka Revue-style, which was already conspicuous, and an emerald frog riding on her shoulder didn’t help to alleviate that at all. Said frog crawled into my cage through a crack.
“You won’t feel lonely if you’re with Yajirou,” mother said.
And so, from my second day on, I had the company of my second elder brother, which made me feel at lot better. When I paced to and fro in my cage with a frog on my furry head, children that gathered in front of it were flabbergasted, “A frog is driving a tanuki!”
“You sure have your finger in many pies, huh. I’m so impressed,” my brother confessed.
“I just have nothing better to do.”
“Speaking of which, have you caught tsuchinoko, after all?”
“Oh, come on, nii-san, as if I’d be idling in a place like this if I’d caught it. I’d be busy with press conferences and celebration parties and stuff right about now.”
Later that night, my brother sat motionlessly in a corner of the cage, apparently thinking about something deep and hard.
“What are you up to?” When I peered closer, I found that he was solving shogi problems.
The tanuki shogi tournament, sponsored by Nanzenji temple, was scheduled to take place in the middle of June, and apparently, my brother was going to partic.i.p.ate in the preliminaries.
“A bad bush is better than the open field,” my brother said. “Not many tanuki like shogi, and I would feel bad for the Nanzenji family if it ended up being an empty tournament.”
“What a strange event our father came up with, I gotta say.”
Our father, s.h.i.+mogamo Souichirou, was an ardent shogi fan. As his love for shogi grew in intensity, he collaborated with the previous head of Nanzenji family to start the Tanuki Shogi Tournament, but tanuki were reluctant to even memorize the shogi pieces, and having to sit still before the shogi board made the fur on their b.u.t.ts itch. Our father’s wish for shogi to stick in the tanuki worlds was fruitless, and then he fell into a tanuki hot pot, so the tournament had to be discontinued for the time being. It occurred to me that our eldest brother must be very proud of himself since it was him who brought it back to life.
That reminded me of something else, and I asked, “Come to think of it, father had a shogi room, didn’t he?”
“Ah, yes, yes, he did. Father’s secret base, a fun room, indeed.”
“What became of it?”
“It has to be somewhere in the Tadasu forest, but I don’t know where.”
Hiding away in the shogi room whenever there was a break in his bustling activity as the head of the tanuki world was father’s cherished relaxation time. The room in question was a four and a half tatami mat chamber, filled with a collection of old shogi boards and shogi instruction books, and sometimes he taught shogi to us siblings there.
I recalled what that nostalgic room was like.
Surrounded by ma.s.sive shogi pieces, almost as big as one whole tatami mat, that I had no idea what could be used for and shogi boards of curious shape, father looked happy, sitting there cross-legs on a zabuton. The room had a large skylight. Beyond it, the blue sky, clear and high, stretched, and overhanging branches bearing ripe persimmon fruit were visible. I remembered father’s unease when I said I wanted those persimmons.
Oddly enough, father always made us wear blindfolds whenever he brought us to that room.
What I remembered with clarity was the sensation of jumping off to the bottom of a hole where wind whistled.
“Our eldest doesn’t know where that chamber is, either?”
“No, apparently not,” my brother replied. “It appears he searched the forest high and low but found no hole resembling it. Father hid it really well.” And then my brother added in a murmur, “I’d like to go back there some day.”
〇
An unusual guest appeared on my last day of zoo life.
On that day, it was somewhat cloudy since the morning and from time to time it rained, so the zoo was mostly deserted. The choo-choo train with a red chimney running with clangity-clang and the small Ferris wheel both looked dreary drenched in the ashen rain. On such days, no matter how great my acting performance of playing a tanuki-like tanuki might be, very few people paused in front of my cage. As such, it wasn’t worth it to try hard.
I was yawning, bored out of my mind, when a little girl came. Her stature was small, like a kindergartner’s, and the red of her umbrella and rubber boots was vibrant. Not showing the slightest bit of interest in the choo-choo train or the Ferris wheel, she headed toward the tanuki cage in a straight line while spinning her red umbrella and stopped in front of it. She must have loved tanuki a lot. Her red umbrella pressed against the cage, she watched me pace exultantly to and fro in my cage with big eyes. Soon, though, she started giggling.
“You give a marvelous tanuki performance, Yasaburou-chan.”
Startled, I stopped dead in my tracks.
My brother, sitting on my head, said, “Oh, it’s you, Gyokuran. What brings you here?”
“I heard Yasaburou-chan was standing in here, so I thought I’d show my support.”