This Scheming World Page 3

  Well, anyway, the matter now being settled, she receives the three hundred copper mon and the three sho of rice. But unhulled rice, she complains, will be useless on the morrow. “Oh, fortunately, Ma’am,” replies the pawnbroker, “ I happen to have a mortar right here. You are welcome to use it to hull the rice.” Could this incident be cited as a good illustration of the saying, ‘’A touch will cost you three hundred mon”?

  Next door to the ronin lives a woman of thirty-seven or thirty-eight years, all alone, for she has no relatives, not even a son to depend on. Her husband, she says, died several years ago; so she had her hair cut short and has worn plain clothes ever since. Yet she still cares for her personal appearance as much as ever, and she retains a definite though unostentatious air of elegance about her. She usually spends her days spinning hempen thread,just to pass the time away. Already by early December she has completed her preparations for the New Year: her stock of firewood will last until February or March ; on the fish hanger hang a medium-sized yellowtail, five small porgies, and two codfish; and everything-from lacquered chopsticks and Kii lacquerware down to the very lids of the pots-all is brand new. She makes a year-end present of a salt mackerel to her landlord, a pair of silk strapped geta to his daughter, and a pair of tabi to his wife; while to each of her fellow tenants she presents a rice cake and a bundle of burdock. Thus she passes the year end by discharging every social obligation. How she makes a living is her own well-guarded secret.

  Next door to her live a couple of women, the younger one of whom has ears, eyes, and a nose that are not in the least bit different from those of other girls. Yet to her great sorrow she is yet unmarried. Whenever she views herself in her mirror, however, she is compelled to realize anew why no one ever takes a second look at her. The other woman, who is older, once served as a maid in an inn on the Tokaido highway, near the town of Seki. While working there she mistreated the young men making secret pilgrimages to the shrine at Ise, and would pilfer their scanty supply of rice. Divine retribution overtook her while yet in this world, however, and she is now a poor mendicant nun. Pretending to be pious, she chants sutras devoid of devotion. A nun in form, she is but an ogre in spirit, a veritable wolf in sheep’s clothing. So impious is she that it never even occurs to her that she oughto abstain from eating meat. Yet for the past fourteen or fifteen years she has, by the mercy of the Buddha, managed to eke out a living, only because of her black clerical robe made of hemp. For as the saying goes, “Even a sardine’s head will shine if believed in.” Each morning as she walks about the streets begging rice she receives alms from an average of two houses per street, which means that to gather even a single go of rice she must visit as many as twenty houses. She cannot hope to garner five go of rice until she has walked through at least fifty streets. It surely takes a healthy person to be a mendicant nun!

  Unfortunately, during the previous summer, she suffered a sunstroke, which necessitated her pawning the clerical robe for one momme and eight. Since then, as she has been unable to redeem the robe by any means, she has lost her means of livelihood. Of course we should not jump to the conclusion that people have become any less generous in almsgiving for the sake of their soul
  Surely no one is in a better position to understand the misery in this world than is the cheap pawnbroker who keeps shop among the poverty-stricken in the slums. Indeed, even to the eyes of the casual bystander it is obvious that the year end is replete with things both sad and pitiable.

  WHEN ISE LOBSTERS WERE AS SCARCE AS CRIMSON LEAVES IN SPRINGTIME

  DURING the New Year season it is customary to set out Horai decorations. But without Ise lobsters to top them, the celebration of the New Year seems incomplete. It occasionally happens, however, that the price of the lobsters rise so high that a poor man or a penny pincher has to celebrate the New Year without any.

  A few years ago, when the supply of bitter oranges was so short that a single orange cost four or five bu, many people substituted bergamot oranges, which were all right because they closely resemble bitter oranges in shape and color. But in the case of Ise lobsters, to use a prawn as a substitute would be no more fitting than to wear borrowed clothes.

  The man who lives in a lofty mansion and has a reputation to uphold often finds that the winds of the world blow against his house so much harder that ordinary straw matting cannot protect his walls from the rain. It is only natural for him to cover them with wainscoting painted with persimmon tannin mixed with lamp black. For him this is no luxury, but a necessity. It’s really no pleasure at all unless you eat, and dress, and live in a house in a style that accords with your means.

  I might add, incidentally, that very few men have ever succeeded, whatever their business, when they altered the inherited way of managing it and ventured on some new enterprise. It is better to take the advice of the old veterans. No matter how talented a young man may be, it often happens that in the end his advance calculations are completely frustrated.

  Now in Osaka the year-end scene resembles nothing so much as a treasure mart. People there are always complaining aloud that business has been bad. Actually, however, for the past sixty years they have never had to throw anything away because it hasn’t been sold. Even millstones, which last a lifetime and can even be passed on down to posterity, are sold so regularly every day, year in and year out, that there’s danger the very hills from which they are quarried will eventually disappear.

  If this be true of millstones, it seems only natural that such seasonal things as the offerings for the Obon Festival in July, the toy helmets used in the Boys’ Festival in .

  May, and the things used in celebration of the New Year-all of which last but a few days-should be prepared anew each year when the proper season rolls around. Gift fans presented by temples to their parishioners are thrown away without ever having been unwrapped. No one seems even to be conscious of such a wasteful way of living. Indeed, as free spenders the citizens of Osaka are second only to the people of Edo.

  Now this particular year of which I write it happened that everyone in the City, vowing that his New Year decorations would be incomplete without an Ise lobster, determined to buy one even if it cost a thousand kan. The result was that by December 27th or 28th the supply of Ise lobsters was so exhausted that in every fishmonger’s shop in Osaka they were as scarce as imported articles. And by New Year’s Eve not even a whiff of one was to be detected, high or low; all along the shore and in every fisherman’s hut you could hear the plaintive voices of buyers asking if there were any Ise lobsters for sale.

  At a fishmonger’s shop called the Era, located in the middle of Bingo Street in Osaka, there happened to be just one Ise lobster left. The bidding for it began at one and a half momme and finally rose to four momme and eight. Even at that exhorbitant price, however, the fish monger refused to part with it, claiming that its like could not be found anywhere else.

  Since it was far beyond the authority of a mere servant to buy it at such an inflated price on his own responsibility, he returned home hastily to his master and explained the situation. Whereupon the master frowned and said: “Never in my life have I bought anything that was too expensive. I make it a rule to buy firewood in June, cotton in August, rice before the sake-brewing season starts, and hemp just after the Bon season. In brief, my principle is to buy for cash when the price is cheapest. The only exception (and one which I have ever since remembered with regret) was made when my father died: I bought an expensive coffin at
the price quoted by the cooper. There is no reason in the world why, willy-nilly, we should have to greet the New Year with an Ise lobster installed in our house. I’ll make up for Its absence this year by buying two of them next year when the price comes down to only three mon apiece. I don’t mind in the least if due to the absence of an Ise lobster the New Year god is reluctant to visit my house. No, not in the least! I wouldn’t buy one if the price were reduced to four momme-no, not even if it were only four bu!”

  Despite the master’s wry face, his wife and son both thought it just wouldn’t do at all to be without an Ise lobster. They could bear up under the thought of losing face publicly, but when the daughter’s husband would make his first New Year’s call on his wife’s parents and see no Ise lobster crowning the New Year decorations that scene was simply unthinkable. They must have one at any cost. Back went the servant posthaste, but he was too late, for another servant of a wholesaler from Imabashi had already bought the Ise lobster. The price quoted had been five momme and eight, but since it was appropriate to usher in the New Year with round figures, an even five hundred mon had been paid for it. The last lobster having been sold, then, all further forays of the servant to hunt lobsters were fruitless; so he had to return home, empty-handed, a sadder but wiser man, more conscious than ever of the great size of Osaka, and confess all to his master and mistress.

  The mistress looked sorrowful, but the master laughed and said: “I feel uneasy about any wholesaler who would buy a lobster at so fancy a price. He’s bound to go bankrupt before long. His financial backer, unaware of his real circumstances, is sure to have a nightmare over the holiday season. If a lobster is indispensable for the decoration, I have an idea for making one that will keep much longer than a live one.” So saying, he commissioned an artisan to fashion a lobster of crimson silk, which cost him only two and a half momme. “Look,” he pointed out, “it will be useful as a toy for the baby even after the season is all over. That’s the way a wise man does things. A thing that would have cost you four momme and eight has been provided for two and a half momme. And what’s more, it can be used over and over again.”

  Since there was no gainsaying the master’s proud boast, everyone was forced to listen to him and acknowledge the rare wisdom of one who could attain to such wealth as he possessed.

  While all this was going on, the master’s old mother, who was ninety-two years of age, but was still able to see well and to walk as well as ever, entered the room from her quarters in the annex. “I hear that you’re making a lot of fuss over the price of a lobster,” she remarked.

  “It was foolish of you not to have bought one ahead of time. With such negligence how in the world can you expect to keep this shop? You should remember that always just before the New Year season lobsters are expensive, not only because the Grand Shrine at Ise and all its subordinate shrines, including the temporary offices where the underling priests are sent, need lobsters, but also because at this Season there are millions of them in demand by every household in every town and countryside that holds a festival to the gods-and truly this is a land of the gods! The lobsters brought into Kyoto and Osaka each year are those left.over, after the gods have had their fill. Now it just happens that I took all this into consideration and about the middle of the month I bought two lobsters as fresh and natural as they came out of the sea. Perfect specimens: even their feelers have never been joined together. And the price I paid for them? Just four mon apiece, you see.”

  Admiring applause greeted the old mother’s announcement, but some ventured to criticize her extravagance in buying two lobsters when really one would have done. “I don’t spend my money to no purpose,, she retorted. “There’s a man who every year presents me with five bundles of burdock-three, if the burdock is thick and I must give him in return something of like value. My plan was to give him a lobster that cost me four mon in return for the burdock which ought to be worth about one momme. It’s pretty lucky for you that he hasn’t come yet with his usual year-end present. I tell you what I’ll do: I’ll let you have one of my lobsters, but remember that business is business even between mother and son. If you really want the lobster, then you’ll have to send somebody to me with five bundles of burdock. I don’t care who gets the lobster,just so long as I get my burdock in exchange for it. And anyway, you can’t celebrate the New Year without it. Not that I’m speaking from any selfish motive, understand. It’s just that in giving and receiving presents on the five annual festival days you have to make rather careful calculations of what you receive. In return, you have to give things which, while seeming to be equal in value, actually allow you a slight margin of profit.

  “For example, every year the Ise priests present our family with a good-luck charm, a set of dried bonito, a box of face powder, a folding calendar, and five bundles of green laver. If you make a close calculation of their value it comes to about two momme and eight. Now from our house we always used to offer three momme, which meant that the difference of two odd bu represented a profit for the Grand Shrine of Ise. For thirty years this was our practice, but since you’ve become master of this house, each year you have offered one piece of silver. That’s unconscionably too much !-even if it is an act of devotion. Why, even the shrine gods themselves would frown with disapproval upon anyone who spent money without due consideration. Take for ex ample that offertory coin called a Pigeon’s Eye. Contrary to what most people think, one kan of these round lead coins with a hole in the middle is actually worth only six hundred mon. From this it is quite apparent that the gods themselves are concerned that pilgrimages be made with due economy.”

  No matter how we look at it, this whole world is filled with greed. Of all the hundred and twenty subordinate shrines of Ise, the two which enjoy the richest offerings are those of Ebisu and Daikoku. Taga is the god of long life, Sumiyoshi the guardian of boatmen, and lzumo the deity of go-betweens. Kagami, of course, makes girls look pretty; while Sanno is the chief of twenty-one minor deities. Inari is the god who sees to it that property does not pass out of the family. Or at least so claim the shrine “sparrows,” those mercantile henchmen of the various gods, who chirp their praises to visitors to their shrines.

  But never mind. Because they are all gods who possess some pleasing attribute, people make offerings to them. But all about the shrines of the other gods there hangs a pall of solemn loneliness. In view of the fact that we are living in an age when even the gods cannot earn money without exerting themselves, it follows as a matter of course that human beings ought never to be caught off guard.

  It is a custom of the priests at the Grand Shrine at Ise to send out New Year’s greetings to their devoted patrons all over the land. Since this calls for the writing of a large number of letters, skilled calligraphers who are paid one mon per letter are employed to write them. From one New Year’s Day to the next they are busy writing the same letters over and over again, but they never earn more than about two hundred mon a day. Why do they engage in such an occupation? For the sake of the everlasting prosperity which springs from the divine virtue, for the peace of the people, for the sake of devotion, and last but not least, to earn a livelihood.

  THE MOUSE MESSENGER

  THERE once lived a man whose invariable practice it was to clean house every thirteenth of December. From the family temple he would receive twelve bushed bamboo poles. He preferred the number twelve because it was a lucky one, symbolizing the months of the year. Anything connected with such an auspicious occasion as the year end has to be related to a lucky number. After using them to clean up around the house, he would use the stocks of the poles to reinforce his thatched roof. As for the twigs, he would affix them to a broom head, thus making certain that no part of the lucky bamboo should be disposed of as useless. Such was the unvarying habit of this parsimonious fellow.

  But it happened one year that he was so busy on the thirteenth of December that he postponed his house cleaning until New Yea
r’s Eve, at which time he also prepared a hot bath, for the first and the last time of the year. It was in connection with this that he customarily utilized the waste leaves of the May chimaki, the lotus leaves left from the Bon season, and other miscellaneous odds and ends that he’d saved up to use as fuel to heat the bath. In his opinion there was no need to be particular about the type of fuel consumed, just so long as it heated the bath water. Not wishing to be wasteful in the least, he was extremely careful about even the minutest matters. His aged mother lived in the cottage annex, built to the rear of his house, and as might well be expected of the woman who had given birth to such a skinflint as he, she was as stingy as stingy could be. As she, too, was about to add fuel to the bath firebox by throwing in one odd lacquered geta she was reminded of her past. “The pair of geta of which this was the fellow,” she sighed audibly, “were first brought to this house in my bridal chest when I was married at the age of eighteen. Ever since then I have worn them every day, in rain or snow. Though the undersupports have worn out several times, they’ve stayed in good condition all these fifty-three years. I had hoped they would last me until I died, but to my great regret one of them was carried off by a stray dog the other day. This single one isn’t much good by itself, so I’ve got to burn it for fuel.”