Something Strange Across the River

Something Strange Across the River

Copyright © One Peace Books, Inc.

ISBN 13: 978-1-935548-37-9

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First published paperback edition by One Peace Books, Inc. in 2013

Author Kafu Nagai

Translated by Glenn Anderson

Cover Design Shimpachi Inoue

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Printed in Canada

Chapter One

I had essentially never been to see a motion picture.

It’s a vague memory now, but it must have been sometime around 1897. There was a theater in the back of a department store in Kanda. They had filmed the streets and scenes of San Francisco. I think it was around that time that the term “motion picture” first came into use. It’s been forty years or so since then, and apparently they don’t say “motion picture” anymore, but it’s what I grew up with and it rolls off the tongue, so I’ll keep on calling them “motion pictures.”

After the earthquake a young author came to visit me at my home and quickly picked up on my antiquated speech habits, at which point he told me the world would leave me behind if I didn’t make an effort to catch up. He brought me, against my will mind you, to a small theater in Asakusa. It had apparently received excellent reviews at the time. When we sat down to watch it I discovered that it was an adaptation of a Maupassant short story, at which point I lost all interest in the film. Why not simply read the original? It was sure to be superior anyway, I thought, and I made a point of expressing my opinion at the time.

However, I realize that nowadays young and old alike watch motion pictures and apparently enjoy them enough to turn them into an everyday topic of conversation, and if I wanted to have the slightest grasp of their bantering it would not be unwise of me to cultivate the most basic of knowledge regarding them—a disposition of mine which manifests itself the moment I pass a theater on the street. I make a point to stop and read the names of the motion pictures they are exhibiting. A glance at the posters and one can easily imagine the contents and mood of the thing without actually viewing the picture, and it is typically enough to get an idea of what others enjoy about them should they become a topic of conversation.

There is perhaps no better place to steal glances at theater posters than Asakusa Park. A walk around the park and one may glimpse advertisements for all manner of motion pictures, which is an opportunity to decide for oneself the quality of their workmanship. Without fail, whenever I leave the park for Asakusa, I drag the tip of a stick across the surface of the lake and recall the names of the pictures from the posters.

It happened one day, around the time when the evening breezes had begun to grow ever cooler. I’d seen my share of the motion picture posters that sat at the entrances of the excess of shops, and satisfied, left from the far end of the park, heading for Senzoku. Kototoi Bridge was on my right and Iriya sprawled out to the left. I had paused for a moment in consideration of the land and what path I might wish to take through it, when a man of approximately forty appeared at my elbow. He was dressed in a tattered western-styled suit.

“Good sir, feeling lonely? Allow me to introduce you to someone?”

“No, thank you.” I hurried my pace to put distance between us.

He matched my pace and kept at my side. “This is a rare chance, man. Sir. She’s wild.”

“I’m just fine. I’m on my way to Yoshiwara.”

I couldn’t tell if he was a pimp or if he just worked for a geisha house, but he appeared untrustworthy to say the least, and as I do not enjoy being wrangled by suspicious strangers I had quickly—and without much thought— declared that I was headed for Yoshiwara. It was an attempt to shake him off, but it served to decide the destination of my previously aimless wandering, and in the course of traveling there I recalled a little secondhand bookshop I liked to patronize. It was hidden in an alleyway off the banks of the river.

There is a large gate that sits where the Iriya River meets up with the underground culverts, and it conceals a darkened backstreet, tucked in its shadows. Buildings lined one side of the street, while on the other side of the embankment the backside of walls, delineating private property, continued in rows visible just over the lip of the embankment. Houses lined the near side, interspersed with the wider storefronts of dealers of pipes and bricks and wood and clays and so forth. The houses grew smaller to fit alongside the narrowing canal. The street was lit only by lanterns dangling from nearby bridges. Once I’d left the canal and bridges behind I discovered that pedestrian traffic had all but disappeared. By that time of night, the only lights to be seen were from the tobacco shop and the secondhand bookshop.

I couldn’t recall the name of the store, though the shop distinguished itself by the products they had put up for display. They had copies of
Literary Club
from the time of its founding up with old
Yamato
newspapers (interview supplements attached). Not to say that their interesting finds were not sequestered in heaps of junk. However, I did not go so far out of my way, I didn’t make a special trip there, for the
books
, no—I made the trip for the overwhelming sense of humanity effused by both the owner and the little town surrounding the shop.

The owner was an older man with perfectly cropped hair capping his small frame. He was well over sixty from what I could tell. Everything from his face, his demeanor, his language, his kimono, even the way he wore his clothes contained a quintessential element of small-town Tokyo— persisting despite the times, persisting without fear of alteration or degradation—and appeared, to my eyes, more nostalgic and respectable than even the most rare tomes that adorned his shelves. Before the earthquake I would meet one or two of these smart older Edo types anytime I would go to the theater or visit a hall. I’d often see
Tame
or
Kikugoro
or
Ichizo
, who worked for
Sandanji
. I’m sure they have all passed on by now.

When I slid open the glass door of the shop, the owner was sitting, as he always was, near the edge of a paper screen with his rounded back slanting slightly to the outside, his glasses perched at the end of his nose, head buried in reading material. Granted, I was always sure to visit around seven or eight in the evening, but he was always sure to be seated in precisely the same manner: At the sound of the sliding door, without altering the stoop of his back, he would roll his neck slightly in the direction of the entrance and drawl, “Come on in now,” before slipping his glasses off, lurching slowly to his feet, patting the dust from his cushion, and smoothing himself down, finally turning and giving a proper greeting. Neither his greeting nor his demeanor varied from the conventional.

“As you can see, not much has changed. Not much that you can see anyway. Well, we did get some old
Hotan
magazines in—not that we have the whole collection though.”

“The
Tamenagashi Shunko
magazine?”

“Sure, well, we have the first printing. Care to see it?” Now muttering to himself, “Where did I put that thing?”, he pulled five or six books from a stack that was leaning against the wall, brushing the dust from them and politely passing one of them in my direction.

“Says 1879. God, these old things make me feel like a kid again. If you had a full set of the
Roh Literature Report
, I’d love to take it off your hands.”

“We get them in here sometimes, but never a full set. They’re all over the place.” “You don’t happen to have any
Gekka
magazines, do you?”

“Of course.”

The glass door rattled open and the owner and I turned to look—another one well over sixty ducked in. He was bald, and his cheeks were sunken deep. He gave off a hint of destitution; perhaps it was the dirty, striped bathrobe he flung onto a stack of old books by the door.

“I hate those automobiles. Those things almost killed me today.”

“Well, they’re cheap and convenient—or that’s what they say anyway. But—hey now, you didn’t get hurt or nothing?”

“My amulet broke—I think that’s what saved me. There was a big crash, with a bus and a taxi. Get goose bumps just remembering it. Anyway, I went out to the Hatogaya market today and bought the strangest thing—I love these old things, and they don’t make ’em like they used to. I don’t really know who would buy it, but when I saw it I just couldn’t keep myself from picking it up.

Baldy quickly began to undo his package of cloth, and produced from it a simple woman’s kimono and a singlet, its sleeves of a different fabric than its body. The kimono was gray and printed with a simple, delicate pattern. The sleeves of the singlet were a bit odd as well. Neither of them appeared very old, I would have dated them near the Restoration. I was struck by the singlet, and realized it would work well for mounting woodblock prints or lining book slipcases, or even covering up Edo picture serials. I asked the bookseller to wrap it up with the old magazines.

I wanted to catch a ride up the riverside so I spent a little while waiting by the large gate. The incessant shouting of the taxis quickly grew tiresome however, so I soon ducked back into the small, dark alleyway where the trains and taxis didn’t run. Skulking off down the street it wasn’t long before I caught sight of the lights from Kototoi Bridge in between the towering trees. I had heard the park at the end of the river was boisterous and loud, so instead of heading out to the mouth of the river I followed a little street lined with electric lights to an area where a heavy chain was suspended between posts, and I took a seat on it.

Actually on the way I had stopped to purchase some bread and a can of food, which I had wrapped in a handkerchief. I undid the bundle and tried to wrap the old magazine inside as well but the combination of soft objects and hard objects, as well as their size, proved to complicate the task. Realizing that it would be easiest if I moved the can into my overcoat pocket I spread the handkerchief out on the lawn and was fully invested in shuffling the arrangement of the objects when, without warning, someone stepped from the shadow of a tree behind me and barked, “You there, what do you think you’re doing?” I heard the sound of a saber scraping from its sheath. The policeman stepped into view and grabbed me roughly by the shoulder.