The Street of a Thousand Blossoms Read online

  Something shiny on the tatami caught his eye. Hiroshi stooped to see a yen coin wedged between the mats. As he dug for it, the coin slipped farther down. He wedged his fingers into the crack and pried up the corner of the mat to discover not only the yen coin, but also a red brocade omamori bukuro—a small, rectangular bag, no bigger than the palm of his hand, with a white-knotted cord. Embroidered on the bag in gold thread were the characters “great” and “to protect.” His obaachan had once bought such a bag from a temple they visited, explaining to Hiroshi that tucked inside each one was a prayer or blessing written on paper or a thin tablet of wood, sanctified by a priest from one of the temples. It warded off many evils, kept you safe, and protected from outside forces. He also remembered his grandmother saying that to open an omamori bag would undo the blessing. It was considered a lucky charm by most, just another superstition by others.

  Hiroshi’s first thought was that Kenji must have hidden the omamori beneath the two-inch-thick tatami. But when he lifted the mat higher, he found an old school writing tablet that had his mother’s name, Misako Wada, written on it—the characters inside neatly lined up in precise columns. Could the omamori also have belonged to his mother? His grandmother often swept the mats but never lifted the tightly fitted tatami. Hiroshi pried up the other mats but lowered them back in place when he found nothing more. His heart raced as he held the brocade bag in the palm of his hand, fingering the gold thread. Mesmerized by the thought that it had once belonged to his mother, he didn’t move until he heard his grandmother’s voice rise up the stairs, quick and excited.

  Kenji had returned.

  Hiroshi tucked the omamori safely into his pocket and hurried downstairs to see what had kept his brother out so late. He heard his obaachan’s voice rising with anxiety and understood her concern when he was halfway down the stairs. Kenji stood just inside the front door with his head bowed. He looked up when he heard Hiroshi, his lips thin and serious, his misery apparent as he held his brother’s gaze for a moment, before turning away. His jacket was bloodied and torn. A bruise under his right eye was darkening into the curve of a half-moon. Hiroshi paused for a moment, surprised to see that his brother had been fighting.

  “What happened? Come, come sit down,” his obaachan urged, tugging Kenji’s jacket sleeve and trying to lead him toward the reception room. “Your ojiichan will be home any moment now.”

  “I’m fine,” Kenji said softly. He tried to smile and shrug off their obaachan’s concern by putting his hands reassuringly on her shoulders and holding her at arm’s length. “It was an accident,” he heard Kenji whisper.

  “Are you all right?” Hiroshi asked. He hadn’t realized Kenji was now taller than their obaachan. In the past year, he had grown up and was entering that nebulous place between boy and man. Yet he could see hints of Kenji’s trauma that gave him away—a thin smudge of dried blood right below his nose, the slight quiver in his voice, the way he winced as he lifted his arms, slow and deliberate.

  Kenji looked up and nodded.

  Hiroshi’s mind raced, jumped from thought to maddening thought. He would get the names of the boys who had done this to Kenji and teach them all a lesson. He had no doubt that he alone could take care of all his brother’s tormentors. At thirteen, Hiroshi’s passion was still sumo wrestling. Wasn’t he the school champion, two years in a row? Wrestling had been part of Hiroshi’s life since elementary school physical education classes, and though he wasn’t unusually big and tall, he had always been strong and solid.

  Hiroshi tried and tried to teach Kenji to defend himself but his brother always shied away from fighting. On the rare occasions they wrestled together, he and Kenji took turns being Takemikazuchi-no-kami when they practiced. They imagined the earth shaking as the bodies of the two gods made impact, earthquakes originating from their great battle. Hiroshi often let Kenji win, happy to see the smile that spread across his younger brother’s face. At other times, what began in fun turned quickly into something more, an uneven match, with Hiroshi the victor, leading to anger and tears. “Fight back,” he yelled, pushing against his brother, wanting nothing more than for his brother to respond with added force. But it wasn’t something Kenji did; he turned around and walked away, or closed his eyes when things became rough. “Fight back,” he said again and again, irritated by his brother’s passivity. He wanted Kenji to be able to take care of himself, but his brother resisted as if Hiroshi were making him take some bitter medicine.

  After a while, they had stopped wrestling altogether and each pursued his own interests. In his everyday life, as in wrestling, Hiroshi was outgoing and expressive and filled each room with his presence, while Kenji kept to himself, shy and reserved, moving through each day as quietly as possible. Now, Hiroshi couldn’t help but feel that he was responsible for Kenji’s beating.

  When their ojiichan returned, he put down his pipe and leaned in closely to examine Kenji, not saying a word at first. He lifted Kenji’s shirt and lightly touched the bruise on his side, tilted his chin to get a better look at his eye. Then he finally said lightly, “I’d hate to see the other boys,” and went about his business as if nothing had happened. Hiroshi could see the look of relief on Kenji’s face.

  After their obaachan had attended to his brother’s wounds, she patted Kenji’s cheek and left the brothers alone in the reception room. Hiroshi stood in the doorway and watched Kenji, the dark bruise beneath his eye giving him the look of a young, helpless animal.

  “What happened?” Hiroshi asked, his voice dry and tight.

  Kenji stood up, filled with a sudden energy that Hiroshi had seen in other boys, just before a match, the split second before a wrestler was ready to bolt toward his opponent. “They were making fun of me at school.”

  “Who?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Kenji whispered. “All of them, all of the time.”

  “But what made you fight today?” Hiroshi asked. “Why now, after all this time?”

  Kenji carefully touched his cheek and said, “I finally got tired of it all.”

  “So you started the fight?”

  Kenji first shrugged, then nodded. “I deserved what I got.”

  Hiroshi heard the distress in Kenji’s voice, and saw his eyes tearing. He moved closer and pulled from his pocket the omamori bag. “Does this belong to you?” he asked.

  Kenji shook his head.

  “I found it under the tatami in our room. I think it may have belonged to okasan.” He swallowed. “Here, keep it.”

  Kenji looked up at him, his eye swollen shut. “Are you sure?”

  Hiroshi put it in his brother’s hand and smiled. “I think she would be happy to know it was protecting you.”

  Kenji barely looked up, whispered a thank-you. He glanced from Hiroshi to the photo of their parents, unable to meet their gaze for long, either. “They’re dead. Obaachan’s stories won’t bring them back.” Kenji’s low voice sounded strangely distant and adult.

  Hiroshi peered again at his younger brother, his spindly arms and thin legs. “No one ever said they would.”

  Kenji didn’t reply, but rather than let the silence grow between them, Hiroshi reached out and gave his shoulder a warm squeeze, the way he did when Kenji was little and frightened. But this time Hiroshi held on until his brother relaxed and looked up at him.

  “I didn’t fight,” Kenji whispered. “After I threw the first punch, I didn’t fight like you taught me.”

  Hiroshi breathed in his brother’s scent of stale sweat and something more sour and earthy—what he imagined fear must smell like. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, and made a silent vow to protect Kenji always. “Just don’t ever think you deserve to be beaten.”

  3

  The Book of Masks

  1941

  Kenji hurried past Fukushima-san’s sembei rice cracker store on the way to the mask shop, where he found Akira Yoshiwara intently working on a mask as if the world stood still around him. It had been almost a year since the after
noon of Kenji’s fight, the first time he had set foot in the mask shop, hurt and miserable, only to find a soothing balm within the small rooms. Since then, he’d returned many times, shy and hesitant at first, yet always welcomed by Akira Yoshiwara, and even the cat, Nazo, who soon grew used to his presence.

  It wasn’t long before a visit every afternoon became part of Kenji’s routine. His obaachan agreed to let him go as long as he didn’t bother the famous artisan. She smiled when he told her how he loved the dusty rooms that smelled of sweet wood and paint, where, isolated from life’s disturbances, he watched each mask materialize before his eyes.

  After Kenji swept the floors, he and Nazo sat aside and watched Yoshiwara at work. When the cat became bored and stole away, chasing after some shadow, Kenji remained motionless, intrigued by the rough, grinding bursts of the saw that shaped the mask from a block of Japanese cypress. With a set of chisels, Yoshiwara sculpted out the eyes, nose, and mouth, the hairline and the high brow of what he said would be a Ko-omote mask. Kenji knew ko meant “youth,” and that omote meant “face,” and as Yoshiwara sanded with steady concentration, he saw the smooth, rounded features of a young girl emerge. He imagined it was like a face underwater slowly coming to the surface, the features becoming more defined. Yoshiwara then whitewashed the mask with a coat of gofun, or powdered seashell, and when it was dry, applied the first of six layers of paint to obtain the fleshy skin color. By the end of the week, Yoshiwara had brought the mask fully to life, painting in the finer details of the young girl’s dark eyes, her eyebrows and black hair.

  Week after week, Kenji watched as each different mask slowly took shape with the sure strokes of Yoshiwara’s chisels against the wood. When he worked, he disappeared into his own world, oblivious, his dark hair covered in fine sawdust that gave him the appearance of an old man, just as when Kenji had first seen him through the window. The rhythmic scraping sound was hypnotic. Kenji loved the demon or spirit masks best, which were elaborately fitted with brass eyes or teeth, their horns dusted with gold. Simple masks took as little as a week or two, but the more elaborate ones required several months or more to bring to life.

  In the beginning when Kenji was allowed to watch, he always grabbed a handful of the fragrant wood shavings from the floor and put them into his pocket. It made him feel close to the mask shop even when he wasn’t there. When his obaachan complained about the wood shavings still in his pocket on washing day, Kenji transferred them to his mother’s omamori bag, which he always carried with him, careful not to look at the blessing inside.

  One afternoon, Akira Yoshiwara suddenly broke his usual silence. “Gently,” he said, his chisel never stopping. He didn’t look up, and it was as if he were talking to himself, though Kenji knew that the words were directed at him. “Never force the chisel, let it glide against the wood.”

  After the features were sufficiently carved out, Yoshiwara took down a stack of sandpaper and taught Kenji how to sand the mask smooth without injuring the wood. He watched Yoshiwara, whom he suddenly saw as his sensei, the teacher who would show him how to create the masks he so loved.

  “Here, now you try,” Yoshiwara said. “Go gently or you’ll leave scratches on the surface. Think of the wood as skin, as a living thing, smooth to the touch,” he said, stroking the rough cheek of the mask. Then he handed the mask and sandpaper to Kenji.

  The smoothness of skin. Like a living thing, Kenji repeated to himself. They worked side by side in a comfortable rhythm. He copied his sensei’s every move until the sanded wood felt smooth against his fingertips. Finished, he waited, as his heart raced, while Yoshiwara examined the mask and nodded his approval.

  With the exception of the week during Obon in August, Kenji spent most of his summer afternoons at the mask shop. When he arrived back at the shop the first morning after Obon, Kenji immediately felt something different, a stirring in the air that wasn’t there the week before. Akira Yoshiwara was at his workbench, a slight smile on his lips as he looked up and waved Kenji in. “For Otomo Matsui,” he said, looking down at the mask he was working on. Kenji knew that Yoshiwara was commissioned by individual actors to make their masks, including the great actor Otomo Matsui. He’d seen many actors come to the shop for their masks, but fewer now, Yoshiwara told him, as the war in China progressed. “Before all this foolishness,” his sensei added, “they flocked to my shop like birds to their nest.”

  “Have they gone to fight in China?” Kenji had asked.

  “Fight and die,” Yoshiwara answered. “Did you know that hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers have already died in China?”

  Kenji shook his head, anxious and confused. Weren’t they winning the war in China?

  “A real tragedy,” his sensei muttered.

  Then Yoshiwara lightened again. He stopped working long enough to explain that word had come that Otomo Matsui needed a new Ayakashi, a ghost-warrior mask, in only a few weeks’ time. Otomo Matsui came from four generations of Noh actors, his sensei went on, and his father was the great actor Toshiko Matsui, who had performed for the emperor himself. Descendants of aristocracy, they had always performed the most difficult shite role, the principal character that remained onstage for almost the duration of a Noh play. Yoshiwara carefully chiseled and sanded the Ayakashi mask from start to finish by himself, while Kenji noted the extra care he took with every step.

  Finally, just past Shubun no hi, Autumn Equinox Day in September, Matsui was scheduled to pick up the Ayakashi mask. Yoshiwara dusted himself off, changed to a fresh brown raw silk kimono with a gourd pattern on it, and tied his hair back. Kenji felt his nervousness as he glanced at the clock, picked up a block of cypress, and set it back down again, his usual calm demeanor rattled as he turned to speak.

  “Otomo Matsui is coming himself to pick up the Ayakashi mask,” Akira said. “Usually, he sends an assistant.” He began to pace the floor. “Do you realize what honor he shows me?”

  Kenji nodded. There was something frenzied about the way Akira was acting that made Kenji want to calm him.

  “Maybe his assistant has been called to fight in the China war like so many others,” he stammered. He hadn’t thought to bring up the war just then, but it slipped from his lips.

  Akira Yoshiwara stopped his pacing and looked at him. “Perhaps,” he said, but no more.

  Usually, Kenji stayed in the back room and out of sight whenever someone came into the shop. And it was no different when Otomo Matsui arrived that afternoon to pick up his mask. Instead of bringing a large entourage, he came alone, and Kenji stole quick glances between the curtains at the elegant figure that strode in wearing a formal black silk kimono, embroidered with four white diamond crests. Matsui carried a beautifully wrapped box in gold and black washi paper. The air seemed to shimmer with his presence, though he wasn’t much taller than Yoshiwara. The actor studied the Ayakashi mask, his long fingers holding it up against his face, checking to see that all the dimensions were correct before he lowered the mask and praised Akira Yoshiwara’s care and artistry.

  “Yoshiwara-san, there is no finer artisan of the mask than you. I will wear it proudly.”

  Yoshiwara bowed low. “Matsui-sama, you honor me by wearing my masks,” he answered.

  When Otomo Matsui turned around, Kenji saw his dark, deep-set eyes, the high forehead and strong chin. He appeared to be in his early forties, a bit older than Yoshiwara-sensei. His face would have been truly perfect if it hadn’t been for his slightly crooked nose. His voice was deep and resonant and Kenji imagined he was a wonderful shite onstage.

  Still, it was not so much the appearance of Otomo Matsui that intrigued Kenji; rather, it was the first time he’d seen Akira Yoshiwara show such awe and respect toward anyone who came to his shop. This time his sensei was the one who bowed low to Matsui when he entered. He spoke in a soft, comforting tone, served him tea, and bowed again when Matsui handed him the gift he had brought. Kenji thought he was watching a different man. Yoshiwara’s face appeared flushed
as the actor left, carrying the carefully wrapped ghost-warrior mask in his hands.

  The day after Otomo Matsui’s visit, Yoshiwara was in an unusually talkative mood. His sensei always stopped working in the afternoon to serve tea accompanied by sembei crackers or English biscuits, which Kenji guiltily wished he could share with Hiroshi and his grandparents. Rice rationing of one cup a day had begun during the past year and he knew how his obaachan worried. He longed to ask the artisan where he was able to get so much food when everyone else had so little. But then, he was one man, not an entire family, and from what Kenji observed of his furious work habits, the artisan rarely stopped to eat much at all. So when Yoshiwara turned around for some rags on the shelf, Kenji didn’t hesitate to slip three biscuits into his pocket.

  “I believe it’s time for you to see a real Noh performance,” Yoshiwara said, turning back again.

  At first, Kenji thought he was teasing him. “When?” he asked.

  Akira Yoshiwara laughed and fingered the small ivory cat Otomo Matsui had given him. “First you must go home and ask your grandparents. And tell them it is by invitation of the great actor Otomo Matsui.”

  Kenji stood awkwardly. “Yes, sensei.”

  “In order to be an artisan,” Yoshiwara said, glancing up from his table as he mixed some gofun powder into the first layer of whitewash, “it’s important to experience the masks in performance, then to start at the beginning, just as I did when I was young.”