Fish of the Seto Inland Sea

Haruko was surprised to see how Shobei had changed within a few weeks. His face was ashen and gaunt.

‘I am scared,’ Takeko whispered when they came out of the room. Shobei’s wife, Ayako, and a nurse took turns to sit by him.

Tei-ichi had just gone and Rinji arrived.

‘How is he?’ he asked, moving his lips without making a sound.

‘Just the same, but he had a small amount of rice gruel,’ his mother replied in a low voice. ‘Come and have supper with us.’

Shobei lay in his study and away from the main house, but everybody tiptoed and tried not to make a sound. During the meal, however, there was some conversation and an exchange of outside news.

‘I will go and sit by oji-isama,’ Haruko offered, ‘so that the nurse can come and eat. I am not hungry. I will eat later.’

‘Thank you, Haruko san.’

She went into the room quietly. Her grandfather looked asleep but when the nurse closed the sliding screen, he gestured to her by a slight movement of his hand to come near him. He spoke to her in a hoarse faltering whisper.

‘Your speech ... was well-written.’ He stopped and Haruko waited. ‘General Akashi ... was very ... impressed, so was I ... and the headmaster.’

There was a smile on his face.

Shobei was referring to a general who had been invited by Haruko’s school to give a talk to the pupils and, as was often the case with a distinguished visitor to the area, Shobei had invited him after the talk to his house for dinner.

General Akashi was an unusual hero of the Russo-Japanese war, Haruko was told. His achievements were reputed to have made a significant contribution to Japan’s victory, but he had never met the enemy in the battlefield. As a colonel, he had spent the entire war in the capitals of Europe, meeting the leaders of anti-Tsarist underground groups, helping them with funds which had been entrusted to him by the Japanese government.

When it became known that the school was going to invite General Akashi and had selected Shuichi to make a speech of thanks, Shobei called Haruko to give her some advice. Everybody, including the teachers, counted on Haruko to write Shuichi’s speech.

At the school, General Akashi’s talk had been about the courage of other people who were passionate about saving the Russian people from destitution, and the surrounding countries from Russian tyranny.

Shobei impressed on his fourteen-year-old granddaughter that courage was needed to pursue a career with little public recognition.

‘You ... should have been a ... boy,’ Haruko’s grandfather repeated from his bed in a voice which was barely audible. Haruko nearly replied, ‘So that I could be a spy, oji-isama?’, but she noticed that his breathing had become more laboured. His windpipe began to make a whistling noise.

‘Are you all right? I will call someone.’ As she was going to stand up, his eyes gleamed for a second. He was clearly impatient and agitated. He seemed to try to draw Haruko’s attention to the shelf above his head on which she could see a wooden box.

‘The box, oji-isama?’

He looked satisfied and relieved. He breathed, ‘Your Shi’ ... oji-isama ... okahsan.’ His eyes were closed. His head rolled a little sideways.

‘Someone, come quick.’ Haruko ran out of the room, shouting. The first person who came running out was her uncle Rinji. He collided with Haruko and nearly knocked her off her feet. As she reached the main house, she looked back and saw her uncle coming out of the room. He was carrying the wooden box under one arm. As he ran, he looked like a picture of a devil with wide open eyes and flowing hair. His free arm was moving from front to back as though he was swimming in the air, staggering with the size and the weight of the box.

On a clear autumn day, a long cortege went through the village. Shuichi was again the chief mourner and walked behind the coffin, but this time he was no longer an infant, and was wearing a black kimono and hakama. Haruko in a white kimono walked behind with Ayako and her sisters.

From Shobei’s village and also from the surrounding villages, a lot of people came to see the last of their landowner.

They whispered and shed tears as Shuichi walked by. ‘Poor child! He was born into such an excellent family, but he has had to attend two funerals and he is only ten years old.’

After the funeral, the Miwas’ big house was in turmoil with a crowd of relatives and friends milling about losing each other and finding unexpected acquaintances. Everybody had thought that Shobei would live for a long time.

Tei-ichi followed the priest to the entrance and thanked him. As he was walking back to the living room, he saw Haruko waiting for him in a corridor.

Oji-isama,’ she said. ‘Have you found out what happened to the box Rinji ojisan took with him?’

‘What box?’ Tei-ichi had totally forgotten about it, although Haruko had told him everything that had happened.

‘Oji-isama, I have told you already. The wooden box that Miwa oji-isama always kept in his study. He had it by his bed after he had been taken ill. He has told me many times that it has important documents.’

‘Why, isn’t it in his study?’ The question was just a reflex. He did not mean it. He knew very well that the box was not in the study. He reflected on his carelessness and as the implications dawned on him, he was belatedly alarmed. He had not fully realised the importance of the contents of the box. He saw impatience and concern in his granddaughter’s face, even a little reproach.

‘Oh, I know. I am sorry. I have been so busy. I’ll talk to Rinji ojisan. He must be keeping it in a safe place. Don’t worry. Leave it to me.’

Having told Haruko to leave the matter with him, he wondered what he could do. Shuichi was Shobei’s heir and no one could dispute his legal position, but his material inheritance was a different matter. Tei-ichi needed documentation to act on his grandson’s legal status. He would approach Rinji but if Rinji’s intention was to seize the family fortune by force, recovering it in any civilised way did not seem possible.

Soon after the funeral, Rinji moved back into the main house. Rumour had it that he began vigorously collecting repayment of the loans that Shobei had made.

‘There is no one more dangerous than a fool,’ Tei-ichi muttered. He was worried.

Shobei’s brother intervened and suggested that they should take the financial situation and the issue of the missing will to court. Tei-ichi opposed this strongly on the grounds that a family dispute right after Shobei’s funeral would disgrace the honourable man and his family.

‘If the worst comes, I am able to look after my daughter and her children,’ he insisted in front of the relatives.

Eventually Rinji agreed that some property and the rent from it should be given over to Shuichi for his education on condition that Rinji would manage the money till Shuichi was twenty-five. That was all that Shuichi was to receive out of everything that Shobei, one of the largest landowners and the richest man in the area, had carefully guarded to pass on to his grandson and his future descendants. As for Ayako and the three granddaughters, there was a piece of land already notified under their names with Tei-ichi as their guardian.

8 (#ulink_047f971a-2bb1-50fa-a422-7e4566521ab1)

Takeko is Seventeen (#ulink_047f971a-2bb1-50fa-a422-7e4566521ab1)

A year after Shobei’s death, Takeko finished school, and by that time there had been a few marriage proposals for her. When a family friend came to talk about the prospect of a match for her daughter for the first time, Ayako could not help feeling a slight shock, although she had been conscious of the possibility for some time. She herself had married at an even younger age. Takeko was certainly not too young to marry.

‘It is eighteen years since I married,’ Ayako was thinking while she watched the visitor’s mouth which moved incessantly, telling her and Kei about a family that she thought suitable for a daughter of the Miwas. Living with her own parents as though she had never left them, Ayako had pushed away the idea that one day her pleasant family life had to be broken up and that, one after another, her daughters would leave her.

In a few years, Haruko would leave home and then Sachiko, too. When Shuichi left for Tokyo to go to university, which Ayako hoped he would, then what? Yasuharu would marry. Masakazu would marry. Even Hideto would marry. Everybody was kind and considerate to her in the family, but eventually she would have to leave and live with Shuichi and his wife. Where would that be?

‘I thought it would be really a very advantageous match for you,’ the woman was saying. ‘I’m sorry to say it, but your family is not exactly as it was a year ago, is it? They are saying a lot of things about Rinji san, and although I told them that it is all foolish nonsense, you know how they are, those village folks, if you listen to them. I told them, after all the Miwas are a distinguished family. But I must tell you that in a few years time, they will forget about Shobei san. Rinji san seems to be wasting a lot of money on some sort of investment that the son of that stonemason is involved in. They are crooks, those people. As I was saying, you don’t have to take what they are saying seriously. This is a great match and honestly you cannot expect a better one ...’

Ayako excused herself and went to the kitchen where Kiyo was arranging a fine tea-set on the table.

‘Where is o’Shige san?’ Ayako asked, as it was usually Shige who made tea for guests.

‘She is out in the back somewhere. She says she doesn’t like that lady.’

‘Oh.’ Ayako feigned surprise and took the tea tray. As she went back into the room, the woman turned to Ayako.

‘I was just telling your okahasama. The Matsudo family are even bigger landowners than your father-in-law used to be. But they say they do not mind having a daughter-in-law from a poor family so long as she is pretty and good. To tell you the truth, they don’t need any more money.’

In a flat voice, Kei cut in. ‘Thank you. We know who the Matsudos are. But we don’t know anything about their son who, I assume, is the one who might marry our Takeko. How old is he and what sort of person is he?’

‘Oh, a very nice man. Very nice, indeed. He is, I think, about twenty-three or thereabouts. He is at home. He went to school, but school was not interesting enough for him.’ She laughed, making a short ‘ho ho ho’ noise through a puckered mouth.