Kiku's Prayer Part 1

Kiku's Prayer.

Endo Shusaku.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

The translator would like to express his sincere grat.i.tude to the College of Humanities at Brigham Young University and Dean John R. Rosenberg for granting a sabbatical to complete this work; to the author's widow and son, End Junko and End Rynosuke, for permission to do the translation; to the pair of very careful anonymous readers for Columbia University Press who helped me improve the accuracy of the translation; to Marcia Robertson Hippen for being an astute, invaluable reader and critic; to my superb editor, Margaret B. Yamas.h.i.ta; and to Jennifer Crewe at Columbia University Press for unstinting support over the years.

MITSU AND KIKU.

AT THE OUTSET, I must introduce two girls who are characters in this novel.

Their names are Mitsu and Kiku. They are cousins only one year apart in age.

They have no last names, having been born toward the end of the Tokugawa period into farming families in the Magome District of Urakami Village, which borders Nagasaki.

Consequently, the government officials in Nagasaki and the Buddhist prelates at Shtokuji Temple recorded in their registries: "Mitsu, daughter of Mohei of Magome District, and Kiku, daughter of Shinkichi from same district." Shtokuji was the ancestral temple for this region.

Were you to drive in Nagasaki toward the epicenter where the A-bomb was dropped, on the right side of the highway you would see a temple with a sign reading "Shtokuji Preschool." That area used to be known as Magome District.

These days there is nothing to see there but a drab national highway with cars and trucks weaving in and out, but around the time Mitsu and Kiku were born, this area was right next to the ocean.1 The Shtokuji was perched on a hill at the edge of the water.

Mountains pressed up against the sh.o.r.e, leaving little land that could be cultivated. So the farmers in Magome, just like the peasants in the neighboring Satog, Nakano, Motohara, and Ieno Districts, used the slopes of the hills and made their living by planting rice crops in the valleys between. The population of all these villages combined could not have exceeded nine hundred households.

Nothing remains of those days, with Magome now buried under modern housing developments. But each time I visit Nagasaki, I always pause there and close my eyes, imagining what it must have looked like when Mitsu and Kiku were still alive.

Mountains covered with groves of camphor and alder trees. Farmhouses dotting the slopes. From the tops of the hills one can look straight down into Nagasaki harbor with its new rice lands reclaimed from the sea.

Several years after the two girls were born-in 1885, to be exact-the French writer Pierre Loti, author of the famed Madame Chrysantheme, sang the praises of the verdant trees hovering over Nagasaki harbor. It was this same inlet, glimmering in the sun and lush with greenery, that Mitsu and Kiku saw every day.

The little community of Magome, too, was blessed with sunlight and greenery and yet was so astonishingly quiet. Little birds chirped in the camphor trees. At midday, as those voices tapered off, somewhere a rooster crowed.

The adults all are out working in the fields, and the children are at play. So many ways to amuse themselves. I can almost make out the small figures of Mitsu and Kiku among the children racing up and down the slopes.

It was the grandmother of Mitsu and Kiku who said it: "Mitsu is a spoiled little girl, and Kiku is a tomboy!"

Her Granny may have called her "a spoiled little girl," but Mitsu wasn't the sort to cling like a puppy dog to her mother or her older brother.

What was unique about Mitsu's personality is that she would accept unquestioningly anything said by an older person. She believed everything she heard so implicitly that some people were left to wonder whether she was mentally deficient.

For instance, when Mitsu was five, her older brother Ichijir gave her some flower seeds.

"Hey, see these? They're morning glory seeds!" Ichijir dropped the gray seeds-one, two, three-into Mitsu's tiny hand. "Now, Mitsu, if you plant these and water them every single day, some cute little sprouts'll come up!"

"OK." With a nod, Mitsu set out running. Across the way, her cousin Kiku was playing jump rope with some other children. Mitsu gleefully showed her morning glory seeds to Kiku, and then with a refined gesture, like a high-cla.s.s lady dropping her valuable jewels one by one into a box, she planted the gray seeds in the ground.

Seated by the hearth that evening, Ichijir, who was ten years older than Mitsu, asked her, "Mitsu, did you plant your seeds?"

"Yup," Mitsu nodded.

"Great. Now remember-you have to water them every day. Every single day!"

"OK." It was in these moments that the look in Mitsu's eyes suggested that she had total trust in everything an older person said to her. She never lost that guileless look, even after she grew up.

Seeing his innocent little sister crouching down and staring tirelessly at the ground each day thereafter, Ichijir laughed, "The sprouts'll come up when they're ready, there's no point trying to rush them!"

Eventually the pretty morning glory sprouts broke through and peeked up out of the ground. They looked just like a baby's hand. Mitsu never failed to water them, just as her brother had told her to do.

One rainy day, Mitsu held an umbrella over her own little morning glory garden as she sprinkled water on them. Ichijir, headed out to work in the fields, realized with a start what she was doing.

"Mitsu, what in the world-?!"

"I'm watering my morning glories."

"Moron! You don't have to water them when it rains. Rain's the same as water!"

Mitsu stared wordlessly into her brother's face, and several seconds pa.s.sed before she cried out, "I get it! They don't need water on days when it rains!"

Right then, Ichijir seriously began to worry that his sister might be a little slow in the head.

Compared with simple Mitsu, who throughout her childhood was considered a bit learning disabled, her cousin Kiku, who was separated in age from Mitsu by only a year, appeared to be a lively, loquacious, clever girl, and it was no accident that she was labeled a tomboy by her grandmother.

The differences in personality between the two girls were immediately evident when they played together. Partly because she was older, it was invariably Kiku who gave commands to Mitsu, no matter what they were doing. If they were going to sing a song, Kiku would first hum it and then order Mitsu, "Now you try to sing it." Mitsu would cheerfully comply.

Sooo cold, it's sooo very cold!

They've set fires on Mount Atago Hurry and come!

If you come, you'll be cold!

If you don't come, you'll be hot!

In her childhood, Mitsu always walked behind her cousin Kiku, played the way Kiku played, and did everything Kiku told her to do. For her part, Kiku took on the role of Mitsu's protector and always shielded her younger cousin from rough hooligans and wild dogs.

Speaking of hooligans, there was a boy who lived not far from Kiku and Mitsu who always had two rivulets of green snot coursing down from his nose.

Since it was a bother to blow his nose on leaves, he always wiped it with the sleeve of his kimono. As a result, his sleeves always glistened, as though slugs had left slithering trails on them. Every time Kiku and Mitsu played jump rope with some other girls in the neighborhood, he would stare at them from a distance and then eventually race over to pester them.

This hooligan had an accomplice whom everyone called Crybaby. He was a weakling who would burst into tears if he were alone when Kiku scolded him, but he'd start to swagger when Snotnose was with him.

Snotnose and Crybaby-these two were the enemies of all the girls in the neighborhood. Even when she was up against one of the boys, though, Kiku would tear into him and never back off.

"You're a good-for-nothing!" she'd taunt him, and Snotnose would respond, "You're an idiot, and Mitsu's a moron!" Then Crybaby would repeat exactly what he had said.

"Thug! Clown!" Kiku would snap right back at them.

This exchange of insults would continue for a while, with Snotnose jeering, "Mitsu's a bed wetter! I'll bet you peed in your bed last night!"

"And you're a wet noodle!"

"Wet noodle? What does that mean?!"

"You don't even know what a wet noodle is? It's long, but it's not good for anything. That's you-a wet noodle!"

"You t.u.r.d!"

"Snotty pug-nose!!"

Kiku's string of machine gunlike insults left both Snotnose and Crybaby speechless.

One day that spring- Kiku and Mitsu and some of their girlfriends were picking the lotus flowers that covered the paths between the rice paddies.

The large evening sun, orange as an apricot, had begun to set, and Kiku propped a crown of lotus blossoms on her head and asked Mitsu, "What do you think? Aren't I beautiful?" Though still a child, Kiku very much wanted to be a beautiful woman. "Well!?"

"Yeah. You're beautiful." As always, Mitsu said whatever Kiku wanted to hear. Or perhaps she just innocently believed anything Kiku said.

Kiku haughtily spun her body in a circle and gazed around her. She hoped that some adult working in the fields would notice how smart she looked.

Just then she spotted two boys next to a shed, brandishing a pole as they seemed to be beating something. It was Snotnose and Crybaby.

No doubt they were torturing some poor creature. Probably a kitten or puppy they'd stumbled across.

"What are you guys doing?" Kiku shouted as she raced toward them. Mitsu and the other girls scurried along behind her.

Just as Kiku had imagined, the boys were jabbing at the haunches of a mud-spattered kitten and beating it with the pole.

"Why are you being mean to that cat?" Kiku, ever the champion of the oppressed, could not bear to see any weak creature abused. She was always on the spot to protect a younger girl who was being hara.s.sed by a boy.

"Stop it! Give the cat to me."

"Why would we give it to you?" Snotnose staggered back a step and glared at Kiku.

"Why would we give it to you?!" True to form, Crybaby mimicked Snotnose's words.

Snotnose remembered losing a recent squabble, and stung by his defeat he retorted, "I found it. It's my cat!"

"Well then, how about if you give it to me, and I'll let you have these flowers."

"Flowers?!" Snotnose sneered. "There's more lotus flowers over there than there is dog s.h.i.t."

"So you're not gonna let me have it no matter what?" Kiku took a step forward.

Snotnose, under the glare of her narrowed eyes, retreated a bit and spat out, "If you climb to the top of that tree, I'll give you the cat."

The tree was a large camphor laurel, and though it was impossible to guess its age, it stood straight and tall, like a giant reaching both its arms into the sky. Camphor laurel trees of this size were by no means rare in Magome. Many varieties of birds sang from these enormous trees early each morning, and their branches provided the villagers with shade through the hot summers.

"You can't do it, can you?" Snotnose peered at Kiku, who had hesitated for a moment, and he snorted up a green rivulet of snot.

"There's nothing to it," Kiku replied, placing her hands on the trunk. But when she wavered, Snotnose taunted her: "There's no way you can climb a tree that tall!" Crybaby, of course, echoed the identical words. An indignant Kiku grabbed a branch. The hem of her kimono was turned up, and her white legs peeked out.

"Kiku!" A girl cried out almost in tears. "Don't do it! You could get hurt! Let's go back home!" But Kiku had already wrapped her pale legs around the branch.

"Wow!" Crybaby exclaimed in admiration, dazzled by the sight of Kiku's bare legs.

Kiku was not the sort of girl who could scamper up a tree like a monkey. Clinging frantically to one branch, she clutched desperately at the next, stretching her leg up onto that branch and making her way inch by inch up the tree, her face flushing a bright red. With each upward move she made, some object or another-a clump of dried leaves, or the debris from an abandoned bird's nest-dropped down onto the heads of the children who were watching her. Meanwhile, the kitten responsible for this display staggered over to a puddle of water, thrust in its head, and began noisily lapping away.

One girl began to weep. She was terrified, certain that Kiku was going to injure herself.

"Kiku's gonna fall!" The girls pointed their fingers at Snotnose. "If she falls, it's all your fault!"

Startled by the accusation, Snotnose stammered, "It's not my fault! She's the one who decided to climb it!"

"You told her to!"

Snotnose glanced around him. Then with no warning, he spun around and sprinted away, shouting "Not my fault!!" Seeing that, Crybaby also took his heels.

"Kiku-hurry and come down!" The girls cried out in one voice as they gazed upward.

Just then, the branch Kiku was standing on broke with a dull snap. Kiku dangled in midair like a tangled kite.

Suspended from the branch that she clutched with both hands, as though she were doing a chin-up, Kiku frantically struggled to find a foothold. With each twist of her body, her white thighs and abdomen were on full display, but she had no time to worry about such things.