Yasushi Inoue - The Izu Dancer and Other Stories

INOTHING in the career or Miyuki Kagebayashi was as significant and as memorable as the harvest-moon night of 1950. Whenever a Stockholders' General Meeting took place in the company's V.I.P. room, it was always the practice to have the company officers join in the social reception which was held afterwards at one of the best southside Japanese restaurants. Even in the case of that day's Emergency General Meeting, there was to be no exception to this policy. There were as many as thirty-eight persons arranged in a U-shape in the banquet hall of the new building of the southside restaurant, where these receptions had been held once or twice before.Company President Yunoshin Otaka was up front with his back to the tokonoma. Seated flanking him were the two big stockholders, the President of the S-Securities Company and the Managing Director of the A-Bank. Kagebayashi sat next to the Managing Director of the Bank. The remaining places up front were occupied by the Directors, and the whole array of Division Chiefs and Section Chiefs was arranged along both arms of the U. Kagebayashi, whose place until now had always been at one end of the Directors' seats, had been moved up closer to the center. With that one exception, the order was the same as before.The place had a slightly different atmosphere than usual. There were almost the same number of geisha scattered among the guests; but although the banquet had already been underway for almost an hour, there was just a little burst of commotion in one corner, and elsewhere nothing much was going on. Occasionally a shrill cackling and chattering arose from one or another section where the junior officers were, but it seemed entirely out of harmony with the rest of the atmosphere, as though a little firecracker had inadvertently gone off, and afterwards only the cold sound of dishes banging together echoed through the room.No one knew why the group of Division Chiefs and Section Chiefs, who were lined up on both sides of the U, weren't as boisterous as they usually were. While they were eating and drinking, they would occasionally joke with each other, but mostly they just shot glances sideways down the table toward the abstaining big-shots up front. A strangely uneasy mood pervaded the place.For some unknown reason the geisha knew right from the beginning that something not so funny was going on at that banquet. From the time they had first entered the banquet hall, shuffling along in two rows like a procession of Peking ducks, and had gone to take their places opposite their guests, the women quickly and perceptively sized up the situation and recognized that there was a tenseness in the atmosphere of that room.When the sliding doors opened, revealing the dancing stage which seemed unpleasantly and overly white under the fluorescent lights, President Otaka suddenly left his place. The old man, who wore a double-breasted suit in the finest taste and who was famous for always being well-dressed and irascible, bowed ever-so-slightly and, passing behind the group up front, went out of the banquet room into the hallway. He had a competely expressionless look on his face as he walked off toward the entrance.When he saw the President leaving, Kagebayashi assumed that Otaka was undoubtedly going home. For Otaka this had certainly not been a very pleasant banquet, and he must have realized more than anyone else that this banquet could not liven up so long as he stayed there. Kagebayashi paid his compliments to the short Bank Manager beside him, who had great signatory powers in the company, and said, "I probably ought to go along with Otaka-san tonight. I think I'll go with him."The Bank Manager in his naturally husky voice told him that would be fine and to go ahead. Kagebayashi made a slight bow of respect toward the President of the Securities Company and then left unobtrusively so that the others would pay no attention to him. There had been a good reason for his saying "Otaka-san" instead of calling Otaka " shacho" There was no longer any reason for using the term shacho, or president. To come right out with it — just three hours earlier Otaka had ceased to be the shacho, and Kagebayashi himself had taken his place as the company president. Thus Kagebayashi confirmed that he was by nature the kind of person who would call his superior "Otaka-san" the moment he had ceased to be the shacho. Kagebayashi followed Otaka to the entrance. When he got there, Otaka was sitting on a step at the threshold having his shoestrings tied by Teruko, the younger sister of the woman who owned this restaurant. Two or three of the Division and Section Chiefs had happened to discover that Otaka was leaving, appeared at the door of the dining room, and came out to the threshold.Kagebayashi also put his shoes on and went out of the vestibule as though he too were leaving, but he did not get into the car with Otaka. Instead, he ordered Teruko to dispatch Otaka's car and to send for his own."Oh? Are you leaving?" the astonished Teruko asked. It was all so strange to see Kagebayashi, who under most circumstances had been like Otaka's shadow and never left his side, usher Otaka more or less brusquely into a car and send him home in the car alone. Even beyond that, it surpassed all comprehension to have Kagebayashi himself leave a banquet early, and alone.Kagebayashi waited in front of the entrance for two or three minutes until his car came. On leaving the banquet hall he had stated that he was going to accompany Otaka, so he felt somewhat embarrassed about staying behind after sending the erstwhile company president home. But much more intense than his embarrassment was the compulsion to be alone as soon as possible, to pinch himself with his own fingers to verify whether this tremendous good fortune which he had seized for himself was true or not.His car came gliding up from beyond the grove. As Kagebayashi was about to get in the car, he noticed Toyama, Chief of the Secretariat, coming up to the driveway."Let me see you home," said Toyama, who had seen him about to get into the car. Toyama was a young man whom Otaka had spotted and had promoted successively in an unprecedented way to the position of Chief of the Secretariat at the young age of between thirty and forty. He was said to have the looks and personality of a movie star — the kind of man who got all the girls in the company excited.Kagebayashi felt rather ticklish about Toyama's escorting him instead of Otaka home. A shrewd fellow, he thought. On the other hand, Kagebayashi could not find fault with Toyama for wanting to go home with him instead of seeing Otaka home. After all, the fact that Otaka had ceased to be the president of the company and he, Kagebayashi, had become the shacho could not be known to anyone except the several Directors. This was something that had just been decided three hours earlier, and the Members of the Board had pledged to keep this fact secret until its formal announcement some three days later. The upcoming reshuffle of personnel could not possibly have reached Toyama's ears. Therefore, if Toyama did know about it, it could only mean that he had independently sensed it through his own intuition.Actually, that's what had happened in Toyama's case. With the opening of this Emergency General Meeting, it was generally anticipated that there would be some large-scale shifts in personnel, particularly at the upper levels of the company, but no one expected the retirement of Otaka who had come to be known as "the one man for the job." When Otaka was in charge of S-Industries, it was he who made the company as great as it is today. Here, in a year or two, he had founded three new subsidiaries, and it was he in particular who had to take the responsibility for anything that went wrong. However, a thing like Otaka's retirement was something that couldn't happen, not even in a dream. Only to Toyama, however, did the thought occur that this could possibly be the case. Toyama had his own personal way of looking at people, and that was that anything at all can happen. That was what he thought of people. Toyama's character had been molded in that direction during his unfortunate childhood. There was the fact that his father had lost his business and committed suicide; there was the fact that his mother had a lover on the side and left home; and there was also the fact that he was taken and supported by a foreigner during his university education — all of these things belonged in his category of anything at all can happen. Seeing Otaka leave his place and Kagebayashi going after him, Toyama had gotten up and left the banquet hall to go along too. He had been unable to sense anything from Otaka's manner. The sullenness that Otaka had manifested seemed no more than his usual unpleasantness, so even though he was in the lowest depths of chagrin, it was impossible to tell that Otaka was unusually sullen.Kagebayashi also had a similarly sullen expression on his face, but he seemed to be sullen under the pressure of some good fortune of his own. Up until now, Kagebayashi had trained himself in such a way that he could turn on a degree of conviviality in his face even under the most adverse circumstances. So, in Toyama's eyes, Kagebayashi's sullenness connoted something really extraordinary. And it impressed Toyama that Kagebayashi's sullenness was nothing more than powerful sweetness and light — all done up in brown wrapping paper. Toyama knew that he had gained his present position on account of Otaka, but noticing that Kagebayashi was leaving to see Otaka off, he somehow suddenly realized that from now on it behooved him to cut himself off from Otaka and to start getting close to the other fellow. There's no time like the present to make this switch. There was one other person who came to get into the car. It was the younger sister of the proprietress of the restaurant, Teruko. She was a widow and thirty years old this year. There were people who had tried to act as go-betweens in her behalf and had asked around for her, but she was very fastidious, and one by one she had pigeon-holed all discussions of remarriage. On seeing Toyama and Kagebayashi get into the same car, she suddenly took it into her head to tell them that since they were surely both going now to a tea house on the northside, she might as well go along with them."Is it all right if I come along too?" asked Teruko, quickly wedging her body, which she always boasted was as resilient as a ball, in next to Kagebayashi."Hey! What the hell!" exclaimed Toyama, somewhat flustered. Since he always so excited women, he was in the habit of thinking that the actions and behavior of all women revolved around him as the epicenter of their attention. Even in this instance, there was little doubt in his mind that Teruko had come to get into this car because he was there. And that made him feel awkward in front of Kagebayashi."It's all right! Toyama-san, be still." Teruko whispered."No. It's just impossible today.""All right then, let's just go and have a drink and talk," said Teruko. Then after a while she turned on a sweetish voice and said, "How about it, Shacho-san?" Toyama gasped. Kagebayashi also gasped, and instantly and unconsciously his body twitched. To Kagebayashi there was an ominous feeling in hearing the young woman distinctly call him Shacho-san. "Tonight is harvest moon. Let's go moon-viewing. What do you say, Shacho-san?" Kagebayashi did not correct her when she referred to him as the company president. Instead, naming a northside tea house, he said, "Toyama, shall we go to Wakimoto's?" It was harvest moon, but it was cloudy and the moon did not show its face. At Teruko's words, both Kagebayashi and Toyama were peeking out of the car window, and only the driver was impervious to the moon. He was demonstrating his indifference — because there wasn't the slightest tremor in his body. IIGOING to Wakimoto's had the character of going on to another party. Up until now, Teruko used to call Kagebayashi Mr. Managing Director or Kage-sama, but in the car and from then on she used the term shacho-san liberally and without exception. The probability of a personnel shakeup at S -Industries had reached her ears some time back, but when she watched Kagebayashi's manner as he saw Otaka off, Teruko knew that the shakeup had definitely occurred today. Then, on sensing through a well-calculated guess that Kagebayashi might have become president of the company, she had taken a stab at calling him shacho-san . Since it was apparent that she had not missed completely, she continued to employ this new appellative even after they arrived at Wakimoto's. Toyama, however, had been more discreet and had not called him shacho. Nevertheless, as Teruko persisted in saying " Shacho-san, Shacho-san Toyama was finding it impossible to continue calling him "Mr. Managing Director."After getting to Wakimoto's, Kagebayashi, possibly because he felt relieved and relaxed, drank excessively— more than usual. Among his colleagues, he had the reputation of being someone who never became intoxicated, but tonight he got a little drunk, and he himself became aware of this by the wobbling of his legs when he got up to go to the toilet.When Kagebayashi emerged from the toilet, he thought about the man who had exerted the greatest effort in getting him named to the office of company president and who had been happiest about the final result. This was a Director named Kitazaka. Kagebayashi felt that he just had to invite Kitazaka to this joyous place — today, right now. He had the rather sentimental feeling that he wanted to shake this man's hand and drink a toast with him.Kagebayashi lifted the receiver of the telephone in the hall and called the southside restaurant. It was the proprietress of the restaurant who answered."The party is all over and everybody's just leaving," she said. Kagebayashi, heedless of all the other people there, had her call Kitazaka to the phone and told him where he was."Celebrating already?" Pretty fast! said Kitazaka. Then he lowered his voice to a near-whisper and added, "I'm coming right over."A half hour later there was the sound of a car pulling up, and Kitazaka's flushed face appeared at the door of the room. He looked as serious as usual. On seeing Toyama there, Kitazaka looked at him as though he thought Toyama was out of place there, but otherwise ignoring him, he said, "Pretty fast, huh? Celebrating your presidency, I mean."Toyama now knew definitely from what Kitazaka had said that Kagebayashi had really been made president of the company. You see, anything at all can happen . From then on Toyama also, without compunction, called Kagebayashi shacho. At about that time, the moon appeared for the first time. When the moon came out, a maid opened the sliding doors of the veranda. Various forms of Japanese pampas grass were ornately arranged in a flower vase. Although the other people did not move from their places on the tatami, Teruko went out onto the veranda and sat down there to gaze at the moon. At this moment Teruko became clearly aware that she was really in love with Toyama and that she had slipped away from the southside restaurant just to be alone beside him.The party was getting lively. Four or five young geisha appeared and surrounded the new company president. The woman who owned the tea house also went over and sat beside him. Kagebayashi was being called shacho by everybody. At some point along the line he began to get used to it, and it even began to seem natural for him to be called shacho. "When a man makes money, he starts to want power and rank; after that, women; and when he finds no pleasure even in women, then it's prestige and decorations and honors, huh? What makes me think so is that even a man like President Otaka went blindly after decorations," said Kitazaka.Kitazaka had joined the company five or six years after Kagebayashi, and in actual age he was in his mid-forties, ten years younger than Kagebayashi, but he looked older than the new shacho . He was of a sincere and outspoken nature and never frivolous.Kagebayashi chimed in with, "Man is a very curious beast," but deep down in his heart, he realized that he — Kagebayashi — actually had always played a role in getting Otaka what he wanted — money, power, women, and decorations. How I suffered in secret because I tried to protect that man! It was no common ordinary task to be Otaka''s wet nurse! The weight of all those long years of working like a horse under Otaka was suddenly bending the body of the reeling, drunken Kagebayashi."Um-h!" Kagebayashi unwittingly let out a little grunt as though he were groaning."What are you groaning about?" the proprietress laughed. But Kagebayashi found nothing to laugh about in what had caused him to let out a grunt.Kitazaka was talking. Kagebayashi's attention was caught when he heard Kitazaka's words vaguely drifting toward him: "So, it ends up that this year's moon-viewing party at Kagiya's has been canceled."It had been the custom every year for some twenty-odd officers of the company to get together with Otaka and hold a moon-viewing party on the evening of the full moon either in September or October. Kagebayashi would not entrust the management of these banquets to any of the young Division Chiefs or Section Chiefs but always undertook the responsibility himself. There was a reason for not simply fixing the date in either September or October. If it happened to rain on that day, they would certainly incite the displeasure of Otaka. As he did every year when September rolled around, Kagebayashi sent someone to the Weather Bureau to investigate the probable weather conditions; if he found out that it would definitely be clear around that time, they would go ahead with the preparations, but if there was the slightest danger of rain, he would postpone the moon-viewing till October.This year too, the same as every year, Kagebayashi had turned his attention to the moon-viewing party. When inquiries were made at the Weather Bureau ten days before, they were told that it probably would rain in September around full-moon time, so they had given up and had decided to postpone until October. As it turned out however, instead of raining, it was a beautifully clear day. But it was on that very day that it was unexpectedly decided that Kagebayashi was to become the President of the Company.Kagebayashi left his place and went out onto the veranda. To Kagebayashi's eyes, the hair at the nape of Teruko's neck, illuminated by the white moonbeams, was mysteriously tantalizing. This was a curious thing for Kagebayashi who had never before permitted his heart to be captured by women.Then suddenly he heard Toyama's voice. Toyama, who had been talking with Kitazaka, called over to him. " Shacho, from now on, to commemorate this night, let's go moon-viewing every year. It would be a pity if the parties came to an end with the end of the Otaka era. So we ought to make a special point of seeing that they continue. What do you say?" At that instant there suddenly flashed into Kage-bayashi's mind a vision of Otaka at Kagiya's in the big hall with its doors removed, majestically holding court at the head of the table at a moon-viewing banquet."All right, Toyama. You take over the management of the parties," said Kagebayashi looking up at the September harvest moon which was floating across the clear black sky. The moon is a beautiful thing indeed. That evening there was still another guest at that tea house. He was Jiro Kaibara, a man whose name was known in some quarters because he was a sports commentator and because he contributed columns to the newspapers. He happened to have come to that tea house with a group of newspapermen, but as he was about to leave, he heard that Miyuki Kagebayashi was there, so he decided to poke his head into their room. Kaibara had graduated from a junior high school in a country village at the neck of the A-Peninsula in Aichi Prefecture. Ever since his junior high school days he had been very good at baseball. The fact that he won the championship in the All-Japan Interscholastic Baseball Match when he was a junior in high school ultimately made it difficult for him to divorce himself from baseball for the rest of his life. From the time Kaibara was at Β-University, a private college, he had become famous as an incomparable pitcher, and when he started working for the newspaper, he also acquired renown as a baseball reporter. For a while after the war he had brilliant prospects as the manager of a professional baseball team, but saké was his curse, and it currently appeared that he was out of the running as a top-notch figure and wasn't doing much of anything.Kaibara had often thought that he would like to meet the industrialist Miyuki Kagebayashi once, if the opportunity ever presented itself. This was because he knew that Kagebayashi had graduated from the same junior high school as he but eight years earlier and that he had been registered as a member of the same baseball team. He had absolutely no idea how much Kagebayashi had played, but he had decided that it would be a good idea to meet the industrialist who had attended his alma mater before him.Kaibara had gotten this message across in advance to the proprietress, and in no time at all, this five-foot-ten hulk of a man was sluggishly making his way into Kage-bayashi's room.Kagebayashi also already knew that Kaibara had been a student at his alma mater. When they got to talking about their home town and about their junior high school back home, Kaibara said, "I once played catch-ball with you, Shacho. Don't you remember?" Kagebayashi was surprised. As a university student, when he went home for summer and other vacations he used to go over to the junior high school back home, and there was no denying that he used to play catch-ball with his juniors there; however he had absolutely no recollection of this big fellow's being one of them."You had an amazingly fast ball. You were a tough customer to deal with," said Kaibara."Really?""I'll bet that no one at your company knows about their shacho's varsity days. I don't know too much about them myself — but you sure had a fast ball — really!" Both Toyama and Kitazaka were amazed by what Kaibara had said. They had never before even thought in terms of a fast speed-ball hurled by the arm of their slender-framed new president. There were also half-credulous, half-sceptical looks on the faces of the proprietress and her geisha.Kagebayashi thought that Kaibara must have mistaken him for somebody else. However, if there was no reason to correct him, there was also no basis for refuting him.The night was getting cold, so they closed the sliding doors. From then on, everybody there really began to down the saké in earnest. Teruko, who had been urged to drink indiscriminately by Kaibara, got drunk. She kept calling to Toyama—"Toyama-san, Toyama-san, Toyama-san" — but the fact that he always kept his reserve and did not crumble became terribly exasperating, so with a flaunting air of showing off in front of him, Teruko several times threw herself into the lap of Miyuki Kagebayashi. IIIFROM the year after Kagebayashi replaced Otaka and took over the reins of the presidency of S-Industries, moon-viewing parties were held annually. During Otaka's regime, the place had been fixed in the southside at Kagiya's, but when Toyama began managing them, places where they would have to stay overnight were always chosen for the moon-viewing parties which were now built around Kagebayashi.In 1951, they went to Waka-no-ura; in 1952, to Katada on the shore of Lake Biwa. Then from 1953 on, because a large number of officers moved up to Tokyo when the main office was moved there in the spring of that year, places around the Tokyo area were constantly selected for the moon-viewing banquets.In 1953 they went to Choshi; in 1954, to Mito; in 1955, to Shimoda; and in 1956, to Hakone-Sengokubara. In most cases, acting on the advice of Toyama that he would be tired if he went on the night of the banquet, Kagebayashi left the day before. Normally Kagebayashi was being worked to death just by the pressure of business, and he never took trips except to Osaka or Fukuoka, and for these he traveled only by plane both ways. But once a year he seemed to be able to manage his work so that he could get away just for these annual moon-viewing parties. They continued having these parties ever since Otaka's regime, without ever missing a single year. Kagebayashi was exceedingly reluctant to disrupt these moon-viewing parties. He reacted toward them as though they were commemorating the fact that there happened to be a harvest moon the day that he assumed the rank of shacho in place of Otaka.Besides that, there was something else. It had been a by-product of these moon-viewing parties and only Toyama and two or three others in the company knew about it, but it provided Kagebayashi with a unique excuse for being able to spend the night with Teruko.On the night that Kagebayashi became president of the company, Teruko had gotten very drunk and had slept with Kagebayashi, who had been equally as drunk, but this had been completely unanticipated by Teruko. If it had been Toyama with whom she had gone to bed, she could have understood that, but sleeping with Kagebayashi seemed completely incredible to her. And having sexual relations with Kagebayashi instead of Toyama, whom she loved, radically changed her entire way of thinking with regard to sex. At any rate, the time when a woman is young is very short. Toyama has a wife and children, and even if I have relations with him, I can't marry him, so maybe it makes sense, after all, to choose President Kagebayashi instead of Mr. Toyama. Every month Teruko extracted large sums of money from Kagebayashi. She made herself rationalize that her whole relationship with Kagebayashi was actually for money, but despite that there was also some feeling of attachment and even jealousy over him. When Kage-bayashi moved his residence to Tokyo, Teruko also moved — to Kamakura, where she bought about an eighth of an acre of land and built a small house in which she lived with a maid. If Kagebayashi was busy and didn't show up for some days, Teruko became furiously angry. At those times: PU just have to pump some more money out of him. . From Kagebayashi's point of view, thanks to these moon-viewing parties, he could get away on these two-day trips and travel to some unfamiliar place with this young sweetheart of his whom he never could see enough of because of his work, and on these nights of the mid-autumn full moon and the night just preceding, Teruko dragged Kagebayashi from his work and from his family and possessed him exclusively. Generally, on the first night there was a fight and a great tumult over separating or not separating, and on occasion they even had to have Toyama intervene. But by moon-viewing time the next day they were back in a good mood. Kagebayashi would go to the restaurant where the banquet was all set up, and it was late before he returned. Teruko would be by herself on the veranda of the inn, facing the moon. At first Teruko had been bitter and angry over being left to view the moon alone, but at some point she got used to it as though she had been born to do so. There she would be, counting her paper money or manicuring her fingernails, on the veranda where the moonbeams fell. And that was the way she viewed the moon wherever they went; the moon at Waka-no-ura, the moon at Katada, then Choshi, Mito, Shimoda, and Hakone. And all that she knew of all these places was the mid-autumn full moon.After moving to Tokyo, Kagebayashi attended all of these moon-viewing parties in Japanese-style clothes, just like former president Otaka. Wearing Japanese clothes on these occasions was not the only way in which Kagebayashi was like his predecessor. He had also gradually gotten to be like him in his reticence and in his moodiness which would alter the color of his face if anything at all displeased him. Fortunately, they did not encounter rain on any of these occasions, but for two successive years, when they were at Choshi and Mito, it was cloudy and the moon showed its face only slightly. And at such times Kagebayashi was frightfully unpleasant.Generally, through the good offices of Toyama, the proprietress of Wakimoto's was invited up from Osaka to attend these annual banquets. In addition to inviting the proprietress, he also expressly invited and assembled several of the Osaka geisha who were at the banquet the night that Kagebayashi became the shacho . The number of geisha decreased year by year. Some of the women had retired as geisha and others had built homes and did not go out as freely as before. And because Kagebayashi even became upset over this, Toyama's problems as the manager of the banquets were multiplied. For Toyama, in addition to his anguish over capricious natural phenomena — such as whether or not the sky would be clear on these days — and his worry over the naturally phenomenal capriciousness with which geisha ran their lives, there was yet another thing connected with these banquets that caused him concern. Ever since the Mito moon-viewing party, the outspoken Kitazaka, fed up with Kagebayashi's "one-man-show" tactics, became reluctant to participate."I beg you, please come along, just this one evening," pleaded Toyama.To this Kitazaka merely replied, "Thanks to Emperor Kagebayashi, you have become a Director so you have to play your role, but I, I'm exempt, huh?" Toyama had become a Director. As Kitazaka said, his becoming a Director, albeit the lowest ranking one, was solely on Kagebayashi's recommendation. For working for Kagebayashi like a horse and exhausting himself; for going into the kitchen at Kagebayashi's home and fawning over and flattering Kagebayashi's wife; for acting as a buffer between the wife and Teruko; and for being involved in that whole miserable mess — this had been the reward.One thing that invariably caused the group to get fed up with these moon-viewing parties was the long-winded-ness of Jiro Kaibara, who had been placed under contract with the company after he became acquainted with Kagebayashi. Every year he retold the same stories about Kagebayashi as an old-timer on his baseball team and the same stories about how nobody, no matter what he did, could get the fast-ball hurled by Kagebayashi when he came to coach the school team.With his flair for oratory, Kaibara embellished the details of the story every year. Newly-inducted company personnel used to wonder what he was doing in the company, but they listened with interest to the stories by this big man who was known to them as a popular baseball commentator. But after the second year, they thought it would be a nice thing if he just stopped. Kaibara's stories year by year became more and more exaggerated, but they really sounded true. The stories were tinged with a sort of strange excitement as though Kaibara was really reliving those days himself.Kagebayashi, for his part, never grew weary of hearing Kaibara's stories. By the time Kaibara sat down, Kagebayashi was vividly recalling the glorious days of his youth when he was selected for the baseball team. Before his eyes there even floated visions of Kaibara in baseball uniform unable to manage the speed of his ball.At the time of the Shimoda party of 1955 a small incident occurred. When Kaibara was telling his stories about baseball, Kitazaka, who was reluctantly attending at Toyama's request, finally got fed up. "Hey! That's enough. Quit your spoofing!" he shouted.Kaibara scratched his head, started to act like a clown, brought his story to an abrupt end, and returned to his seat. Some of the people studied the face of Kagebayashi, who at that time simply gave the impression that he had not been paying any attention to 'this. He had silently turned his face toward the veranda, where the gleaming sea could be seen reflecting the moonbeams.As might have been expected, what Kitazaka had yelled out had cut Kagebayashi to the core. While everyone who had witnessed all this had come to their own conclusions watching him— oh well, ignorance is bliss —he was recalling an intolerable situation some years back during President Otaka's era when Kitazaka had revealed a similar lack of self-control and had shouted at one of Otaka's cohorts. Otaka at the time had said nothing but had lifted up a saké cup and, with a gesture as if he were brushing something aside, threw it in the direction of Kitazaka. The cup took a slow curve, went sailing over the heads of several people, caught Kitazaka on the right eyebrow, and fell on the veranda behind him, smashed.Kagebayashi, still facing the veranda, felt welling up in him a similar impulse to throw a cup now, but he squelched it. He did not understand why he wanted to take revenge on him by throwing a cup as Otaka had done. But Kagebayashi waited for a while until that impulse abated and did not throw the cup. Instead of that, he decided to make Kitazaka a consultant and on that basis ease him out of the company.Two months after that incident, Kitazaka became a consultant and the following spring he resigned.Soon after that Kagebayashi noticed that a hostile attitude was developing toward Toyama among the members of the Board of Directors. It appeared that for some time they had been treating Toyama harshly because there was a general concern over the increases in personnel and the over-expansion of business, and they found it impossible to talk with Kagebayashi.Kagebayashi was expanding the organization at the Kyushu Branch Office, and he thought that he would make Toyama the President of the Branch Office there. This was for Toyama's sake, as well as for Kagebayashi's.Toyama was extremely dissatisfied with this transfer. He was beginning to hate Kagebayashi who was just using him and was becoming estranged from him. But as ordered, Toyama went to Kyushu as President of the Branch Office. About six months after Toyama assumed this post, however, a charge of breach of faith was raised against Kagebayashi by the labor union at the Kyushu subsidiary. Union Members came up to Tokyo and distributed pamphlets around inside the company. While it could not be charged that Toyama had instigated this, everyone at the Tokyo Main Office felt that Toyama had for some reason condoned it, and he seemed to be watching further developments with great interest.This being the case, Toyama for the first time did not put in an appearnce at the 1956 moon-viewing banquet in Hakone. Toyama was not there; Kitazaka was not there; the proprietress of Wakimoto's caught a cold and did not come up from Osaka. So in the eyes of everyone, the Sengokubara banquet was a desolate affair.When the banquet ended, Kagebayashi, accompanied by Kaibara, returned to the inn where Teruko was spending the night. The three of them went out of the inn together and walked for about thirty minutes along the gleaming white moon-lit roads between the residences which were scattered here and there. Because the night air was cold for Kagebayashi, he left Kaibara with Teruko and returned to the inn ahead of them.On returning to the inn, he caught a glimpse of Teruko's handbag inadvertently lying half-open on the made-up bed. Two match boxes were in evidence, one from Japan Air Lines and the other from an inn in Fukuoka, Kyushu. As Kagebayashi had not been overseeing Teruko's daily life completely, he was then struck with the feeling that for the first time he did not know what on earth she was usually doing.About thirty minutes later, Teruko returned to the inn."When did you go to Fukuoka by plane?" asked Kagebayashi. Teruko was startled and turned pale. On receiving a postcard from Toyama saying that he was not going to the moon-viewing party this year, Teruko knew that she would not be able to go by car with him to wherever the party was to be held as she had done every year until now. She had suddenly realized that she was still as much in love with him as she had been all these years. And she wondered if, after all, it wasn't just to have this drive with Toyama once a year that she even had this sort of relationship with Kagebayashi and had kept it going. Thus reasoning, she had been struck by the feeling that she didn't know what she should do, but she had bought a ticket to Fukuoka and had left Haneda Airport by JAL on the afternoon of the day that she received the postcard.Toyama had gone to meet her at Fukuoka airport. From there they went together by car to Hakozaki and spent the night at an inn there. And the next day, Toyama went to the Kyushu Branch Office while Teruko headed back to the airport in a separate car. Since her car had traveled along the seacoast, she must gone through Fukuoka, but she had no specific recollection of any place in that city.For a while, Kagebayashi and Teruko looked daggers at each other, but Teruko quickly regained her composure. She did not believe that Kagebayashi could possibly know of her surreptitious rendezvous with Toyama which had been carried out with such careful precautions. At worse, somebody may have seen me getting on that plane. "I heard there was a good diamond there, and I went to see it. What's the matter? Why are you looking like that? If you think that's strange and if you don't believe it, then you just think about this for a while. All month long I stay at home alone like somebody on a shelf. What if I did go to buy a diamond?" Then Teruko lavishly displayed her knowledge of diamonds. For the moment, the greater problem directly involving Kagebayashi was the high price of diamonds that he was hearing bandied about. . although that did not mean that his doubts about Teruko had been dispelled. But, without further ado, they stopped this fencing and broke off their conversation. IVIT WAS in the fall of 1957 that for reasons of a slump in business Kagebayashi was forced to resign from the President's chair at a Big Stockholders' General Meeting. Clearly, people inside and outside the company had gotten together and hatched a plot, but there were no measures he could take to avert this. Finally, the dust went flying. This was inevitable for Kagebayashi who was surrounded by a pack of fawning flatterers among whom was also Toyama. And so it came about that Kagebayashi had to follow the same path as Otaka had before him. Kagebayashi must have had many supporters besides people like the President of the Bank, the President of thsersonnel, but those who would have lent their support to Kagebayashi for some reason did not appear. Seeing that this was the case, there was nothing for him to do but to admit that he had behaved with complete imcompetence. Kagebayashi thought that while the basic cause of all this lay half with himself, the other half lay with Toyama's stratagems. They had not decided who would become the new shacho, but they did set a time for his selection, and it looked as though the name of Toyama was appearing on the horizon. There just could not be anyone but Toyama!It was a week after the Stockholders' General Meeting that Kagebayashi, looking like a samurai with his sword broken and his arrows spent, at a Directors' Meeting announced his resolution to resign. When he left the Directors' meeting room and returned to the President's office, he realized the terrible fatigue that was coursing through his body and mind, lowered himself into a chair, and sat there immobile. It appeared that rumors of the shacho's resignation were already spreading through all the departments of the company, and there was a different feeling toward Kagebayashi all the way down to the office boys and the girl secretaries.At seven o'clock, when Kagebayashi ordered the Secretariat to send his car around to take him home, Jiro Kaibara's hulk appeared at the President's office. "Tomorrow is Harvest Moon, so what do we do this year? No notices have gone out," said the stupid baseball commentator. This was also the first time that Kagebayashi had thought about it. The days had flown by without anyone's choosing a place for the moon-viewing party that fall. The business situation was that serious.The two men left the President's office and got into the automobile in front of the company lobby. Night was falling. The member of the Secretariat who had come down to see him off handled the old shacho even more courteously than he usually did and bowed politely. For some unknown reason he seemed to have a strong feeling of respect for the President who would soon be leaving the company."Drive to Kamakura," Kagebayashi instructed the driver. He was in no mood to go home. He seemed beguiled by a feeling that only by being beside Teruko could he ease his miserable depression.The car ran along the Tokyo-Yokohama National Highway. One after another, cars from behind caught up with and passed the car Kagebayashi was in. Because Kagebayashi always disliked going fast, the driver went slowly and hung cautiously onto the steering wheel. When they were crossing Rokugo Bridge, a small bang under the chassis shook the old man's body. The driver stopped the car."I'm sorry, but we've got a flat. Please give me about five minutes and wait till I fix it. I really apologize," he said with embarrassment. Kagebayashi knew that his driver had not yet lost his feeling of awe and respect toward him, and for that reason he found it possible to pardon the driver's ineptitude.The automobile crossed the bridge with the tire flat, and after going on a little further, turned off the highway onto a rice-paddy field. Kagebayashi and Jiro Kaibara both remained silently sitting in the parked car. Kaibara thought that by the time they arrived at Kagebayashi's second home in Kamakura he should be able to consolidate his arguments for setting up an employees' baseball team at the company. This was something that he had been proposing for the past year, at least whenever he met Kagebayashi, but he was never able to get a definite reply. The baseball commentator figured that by having them set up an employees' baseball team at S-Industries, he could solidify his own very insecure standing at the company, where he was just receiving a retaining allowance.However, Kaibara was born superstitious, and an ill-omened flat tire was not the occasion for broaching this subject, so the better part of wisdom was to forget this talk for today. But if I keep all this to myself, what's the purpose in my riding in the President's car when he's going to his second home in Kamakura? When it turned out that he was unable to answer his own question, Kaibara's actions became strikingly peculiar. I have to talk to him about something! But nothing intelligent or relevant came into Kaibara's head, as always.Kagebayashi was also exasperated by the flat. My car, which did not have a flat even once during my presidency, has to have a flat now that Ρ ve stopped being president! Just as he was thinking this, he for some reason or other became filled by an uneasiness about going to Teruko's house in Kamakura. Whenever he was going down to Teruko's, he always put in a telephone call a few days in advance, but this time his visit was without notice. Mightn't she not be there? Didn't she go to Fukuoka to buy a diamond? (Kagebayashi had by now convinced himself that this had been true.) And once this uneasiness reared its head, he began quickly to accept it as established irrefutable truth that Teruko would not be home. "Shacho, your fast-ball was sure hard to get — you know, I don't know anyone with such a fast-ball."Little by little, the words he had been holding back were coming forward in Kaibara and he was saying them. Kaibara had never said things like this when he was alone with Kagebayashi. This was the first time. This did not mean that what he was now blurting out was just lip service on this occasion. But just because he had so often repeated this same thing over and over again, it had become a reality in his mind now. Kagebayashi was startled by his words. And as if he had discovered something priceless inside a desk drawer, the fast-ball of his student days was now being recalled to him as the only glory that was left to him. That arm of his had pitched fast-balls that were hard for even Kaibara to get — Kaibara, with his big name in baseball.Kagebayashi opened the door and called out to the driver, "Not yet?""It'll be another five minutes." The driver had finished removing the flat tire and was standing holding it. Pushing his hair out of his eyes and back on top of his head while standing holding the tire, he had the appearance of something out of the comics. The driver's shadow was as dark as spilled ink, and the ground was an exceedingly clear, pale blue-white in the moonlight.Kagebayashi got out of the car and stood on the ground. Then suddenly, in order to whisk away the cold emptiness of the moonbeams which were closing in on him, he swung his right arm forward and up in a large arc. After several decades, Kagebayashi was now again posing in his pitcher's motion. Of course, as a reserve player, he had never had any experience stepping up to the pitcher's mound. But in his current frame of mind, Kagebayashi had forgotten details like that. He arched his body forward, and as though he were actually pitching a ball, he mightily brought down the right arm that he had just swung upward. Because once again he was throwing a fast-ball that even Kaibara would miss.Inside the car, Jiro Kaibara raised his eyes toward the window and saw something in the shape of a funny old man flinging his emaciated arm around in circles. He sucked in his breath. This figure was ghastly like a phantom devil dancing and bathing in the white rays of the moon which tomorrow would be called the Full Moon.