Yasushi Inoue - Bullfight

Coming from Tashiro, that “quite a man” didn’t bode well. But Tsugami decided that if Tashiro wanted him to go meet this man, he would do him that favor — today, at any rate, he could do that. The relief he felt now that they had made it this far, now that the notice was about to go in the paper, had left him feeling buoyant and willing to oblige.

“He’s from my hometown. I really look up to him, though he’s a bit younger than me. He’s one impressive guy, really. President of Hanshin Industries, though he owns three or four other companies, too. No one else from Iyo has made it as big as him.”

No sooner had Tashiro said his piece than he leaned his broad, screen-like body forward and started walking on again, striding forward with big steps.

*

Tashiro Sutematsu had first presented himself at Tsugami’s house in Nishinomiya about a month ago, proffering an extra-large business card that described him rather dubiously as “President of Umewaka Entertainment.” As a rule Tsugami never received work visitors at home, but Sakiko had come over the previous evening and they had started quarreling, as they always did, about whether or not to break up; this morning, Tsugami was more than happy to have an excuse to escape the icy glitter in her eyes, the stubborn silence that could be read as expressing either love or hatred.

Tsugami’s first meeting with Tashiro left him with the impression that he was precisely what his business card said he was: a country showman. His lively, ruddy face and his booming voice gave him a relatively young air, but he was clearly well past fifty. His double-breasted, brown homespun jacket and his wide-striped shirt were flashy enough for a man in his twenties, and he wore two silver rings on his coarse, stubby fingers; oddly, even after he came inside he kept his thin black muffler, which was the only part of his outfit that looked cheap, wrapped around his neck.

Tashiro was trying to sell a bullfighting tournament. After outlining the origins and the history of “bull sumo,” which existed only in the town of W., in Iyo, and nowhere else in Japan, he went on to explain in a cadence that verged at times on the incantatory, as though he were addressing an audience, that the one thing he most wanted in life was to be able to introduce this traditional local sport to the rest of the country.

“I myself, it is true, am just a nameless showman, no different from any other, but bullfighting is special — my efforts to promote it are unrelated to my business. I’m fortunate enough to have various other sources of income. As a matter of fact, you could say I’ve been touring the island of Shikoku with local theater troupes and naniwa-bushi performers these past thirty years, none of the troupes particularly good, solely on account of this dream I’ve cherished that one day I would have a chance to take Iyo bull sumo up to Tokyo or Osaka, to bring the sport into the limelight.”

Despite his protestation that this was not a business venture, Tashiro emphasized more than once that it would be very hard indeed to find a project more certain to yield a profit.

Tsugami sat with his pipe in his mouth, allowing himself to be swept up in the overdramatic flood of words Tashiro directed at him; he gazed out at the trunk of the sasanqua in the corner of the small garden, his eyes cold and unmoved. He met with characters like this every day at work. His practice was to listen noncommittally with half of his mind, while he allowed the other half to lose itself in utterly unrelated, often deeply lonely musings. From the speaker’s perspective it was like sticking a lance into something again and again with no result, although when Tsugami did offer the odd brief comment it would be so precisely attuned to the moment, for all its rote conversationality, that the visitor would succumb to the peculiar illusion that Tsugami was actually listening in rapt attention.

Tsugami grew ever more impassive; Tashiro waxed increasingly eloquent.

“Now, when someone mentions bullfighting, people who don’t know much about it will assume it must be a very rowdy, boorish sport, but I assure you this could not be further from the truth. The thing is, you see, from time immemorial the locals have always bet on which of the—”

“They bet?” Tsugami exclaimed.

According to Tashiro, tournaments were held three times each year in W., and even now almost everyone who attended gambled on the matches. Until then Tashiro’s words had passed Tsugami by without having any effect, but somehow, in an odd and warped way, this bit of information managed to penetrate his mind. All at once, in the most natural manner, Tashiro had caused the scene to rise up before Tsugami like a frame from a movie: the vast modern bleachers at Hanshin Stadium or Kōroen Stadium; the contest between two living creatures playing itself out within a bamboo enclosure at the center; the riveted spectators; the loudspeakers; the bundles of bills; the rocking, cheering waves of people… It was a slow-moving, cold, but distinctly palpable picture, executed in lead. After that, Tsugami hardly paid any attention to what Tashiro was saying. Betting, he was thinking, yes, this could work. Everyone would put money on the bulls — it would be no different here in the urban Hanshin region than it was in W. In these postwar days, perhaps this was just the sort of thing the Japanese needed if they were going to keep struggling through their lives. Set up some random event for people to bet on, and everything would take care of itself: they would come and place their bets. Just imagine it — tens of thousands of spectators betting on a bullfight in a stadium hemmed in on every side by the ruined city. It could work. Baseball and rugby were finally getting started again, but it would be two or three years still until they could regain their former popularity. In times like these, bull sumo was as much as people could manage. The first bullfighting tournament in Hanshin, ever — not a bad project for a newspaper to sponsor, not bad at all. In the short term, at least, the Osaka New Evening Post was unlikely to find anything better.

Tsugami’s eyes, as he sat thinking these thoughts, had the same moist, untamed look in them, cold and yet somehow viscous, burning, that made it impossible for Sakiko to leave him, try as she might. He sat up and said, in a sharp, conclusive tone completely different from the one he had used before, “I’ll think it over. You know, this might just be the thing.”

Half an hour or so later Tashiro left, and in the sudden stillness of the room Tsugami realized that he was mildly excited. As was his habit when he began planning a new project, he sat for a long time in a chair out on the verandah, saying little and moving not at all. At such times, he wanted more than anything to be alone.

Suddenly, Sakiko’s voice broke the silence. “You’d love a project like that.”

She was sitting in a corner of the room in the same posture she had been in before Tsugami went outside, her head down, knitting needles glinting white and cold in her hands.

“Why do you say that?”

“Oh, I don’t know, just seems that way. You’d get totally wrapped up in it, I can tell. You’ve got that side to you.” Then, raising her eyes and casting a quick, cold glance his way, she said in a tone that could have been either reproachful or resigned, “The unsavory side.”

She was right. The word described a certain facet of his personality.

Tsugami had been one of the best reporters in the city news section at B. News , and as such he had made his way largely unscathed through three years as deputy managing editor of that ever troublesome section — a job at which everyone else had failed. The creases in his pants were invariably crisp; he was nimble both in his interactions with visitors and in the manner in which he disposed of his work, and sharp to the extent that he sometimes came across as unfeeling. No matter how odious the incident, he could always find some clever way to soften it in print. Naturally, he had made his share of enemies in a world populated by demanding journalists. They said he was loose with money, or smug, or an egoist, or a stylist, or a literature boy, and to an extent the criticisms they leveled at him hit the mark; but these very faults lent him an intellectual air that set him apart from most city news reporters.