Yasushi Inoue - Counterfeiter and Other Stories

Everywhere the mountains and fields before my eyes were an autumnal red. As we were descending the fairly rapid slope ahead of us, the driver looked back over his shoulder as though he had just remembered something which he had forgotten until then.

"That's Mount Kamuriki" he informed me. There, looking as though it had been piled up beyond the hill, halfway up whose slope that station stood, was a part of the form of Mount Kamuriki, its summit enveloped in clouds. I did not know whether or not this was the obasute-yama of the Legend of Obasute, but in any case this Mount Kamuriki was much too high and distant a mountain for people to be able to climb easily. Mama too, if she saw this mountain, probably would not say even jokingly that she wanted to be left on that mountain, I thought.

However, I immediately changed my mind. In my mind, thought I, I had arbitrarily envisioned my own obasute-yama and had pictured myself wandering around there carrying Mama on my back. But Mama — being Mama and being completely different from me — might very well have imagined her obasute-yama as a big steep mountain like Mount Kamuriki.

In the first place, an obasute-yama ought to be a mountain like this one. Come to think of it, even the obasute-yama into which Kiyoko had flung herself, and Shoji's too, must certainly have been much closer to the percipitous Mount Kamuriki than they were to the gently rolling hillocks adorned with autumnal colors over which I had just now been strolling.

As we went down the slanting road, I noticed that the slope of the hillock was swarming with stone monuments on which poems had been engraved. Since the letters on the faces of these stones were eroded, I couldn't tell how old or new they were. But the tonka and haiku and Chinese-style poems which were inscribed on the stones must have been written in appreciation of the bright moon as seen from here. I proceeded down the road and again found that a number of poem-inscribed stones had been erected here and there all over the slope. When I envisioned these stones illuminated by moonbeams, for some reason they gave an uncanny feeling completely irrelevant to their elegance and taste.

Fairly soon the road ended in a gigantic boulder which, by its nature, in itself constituted a precipice. This rock is called Ubaishi — The Old Woman Rock. They say that this is an old woman turned to stone. This rock too was uncanny. But the prospect of Zenjoji Plain, which I could see by standing on this rock, was beautiful with the Chikuma River flowing through the center of the flatlands, the hamlets here and there dotting the solid yellow plain, and the mountains on the opposite side of the Chikuma aflame with the colors of fall.

The steep stone steps alongside the Ubaishi were covered with little maple leaves red as blood, and the narrow precincts of Choraku Temple at the foot of the steps were covered with the yellow leaves of gingko trees. Even when we called out, there wasn't a single sound of anyone emerging from the interior of the priests' living quarters, though there were several children playing in front of them.

We entered a small building, a moon-viewing hall, and rested there. The faces of the votive tablets and votive pictures were all worn away because of the long passage of years. These things were now nothing more than musty old white plates.

"The fall colors seem better than the moon, don't you think?" said my driver. Right then, I had had exactly the same thought.

A corner of the plain was quickly becoming obscured, and just as I was thinking that I heard the sounds of an approaching shower, raindrops began to fall right where we were. We left the place.

That night, I stayed over at the Togura inn. And I wrote a letter to Kiyoko suggesting that she at least seriously consider working in Tokyo. At midnight the shower turned into a downpour. Footnote

* The near resemblance in sound of these two names is coincidental; obase, which means something like "little valley" has no connection with the meaning of obasute.

I

NOTHING 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."