Yasushi Inoue - Counterfeiter and Other Stories

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; forgoing 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-windedness 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 appearance 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.