drunk with a limitless thirst for alcohol. The local people had grown tired of Mitsugu Azamui long ago because of the way he came to their houses and drank their liquor without paying a penny for it. That’s why he was now drinking at an outsider’s house, Dad’s house.
He never looked happy when he was drinking. I watched him from the far end of the room. The drunker he got, the more rigid and expressionless his face became. It lost its connection with time—an ageless profile, like a face stamped on a coin, unearthed among the remnants of a minor kingdom that no longer existed. The king had been deposed and the country gone to ruin, but the faces on the coins knew nothing of that. Gradually, the features of the faces faded, their outlines were lost, and they disappeared one by one into a smooth oblivion.
Mitsugu Azamui seemed an odd name. I asked Mr. Yoshida if he knew why people called him that. Mr. Yoshida, besides being the social studies teacher, also taught physical education and was our volleyball coach. He was twenty-four and had been brought up in the village. He told me they’d always used the name when he was a boy, just as they did now.
Apparently, it had originated a long time ago. After the war, soldiers from the occupation forces came to the village. Somebody told the children that Americans had tails, so the children chased after them, trying to see. “Typical!” laughed the local men. “Only women and children could be interested in them hairy bastards!” But their smiles disappeared when they realized just how interested the women really were. The incidence of domestic quarrels suddenly shot up.
One day, the children sneaked up to the inn where the soldiers were staying and tried to peak into the bathroom. Of course, the soldiers didn’t like that and one of them got out of the water, walked straight over to the door, and flung it open. The children scattered as fast as they could, but one little boy didn’t get away. He was so surprised he just fell on his butt. As he sat there almost in tears, with “America-san” looking down at him, he remembered some English phrases that he’d been taught:
“Sank you, sank you. My name is Mitsugu Azamui.”
The American burst out laughing. The little boy watched as the waves of laughter made America-san’s tail jolt and swing above his head.
“It were a tail, a tail!” he shouted when his friends came back. “A real long tail! And it had balls!”
After that the boy, whose name was really Azamui Mitsugu, was always called Mitsugu Azamui, in the English order, as though his given name were his surname.
About a year after we moved to the village, there was an election for the district assembly. Normally, the only sounds we heard were those of the wind over the bay and vehicles on the prefectural road that had been carved into the mountain to the west. But even here things got noisy during a campaign. Wherever you went, it was like listening to an overused cassette tape being played backward at maximum volume.
There were three candidates from the village, and to make matters worse, two of them were brothers-in-law. The resulting mayhem led to Dad getting a huge dent in his new car. Mom was mad at him about that, and Dad was miserable.
The battle between the brothers-in-law was the main focus of the campaign. Nobody paid much attention to the third candidate, which was hardly surprising since he ran in every election and always lost. He was like a drop of ink that falls from a calligraphy brush when you’re writing large characters—a little spot on the paper that nobody even notices.
The candidate, Kawano Itaru, didn’t seem to care what people thought of him. It was hard to tell if he wanted to be elected at all. He had no election vehicle to go around in, and no microphone either.
“It’s grassroots,” was how he described his campaign.
Kawano Itaru was a retired junior high school teacher. He’d never been a principal or held any other senior position; he’d just been an ordinary teacher throughout his career. Even in his retirement everyone always called him “Mr. Kawano,” as though he were still a teacher.
There were certain things about Mr. Kawano’s physical appearance that you couldn’t help noticing. He had no nails on the fingers of his left hand; the joints of the third and fourth fingers didn’t bend—the fingers stuck straight out, always facing the same direction, like two like-minded siblings. His left ear was missing—he never tried to conceal this, always keeping his white hair in a neat close crop that reminded me of a sports field on the morning after snow. People gestured at his ear when he kept putting himself forward as a candidate. “He can’t hear the people’s voice!” they laughed.
Mr. Kawano said it was his communism that had prevented him being promoted at school. Nobody knew if this was true.
In his campaign speeches he always emphasized the importance of education. Then he said that children must be told not to avoid Toshiko-bā, and to stop firing bottle rockets at her house. “That’s the most important thing for the village,” he said, “because children are the future.” Was there a connection between that and communism? Nobody in the village knew enough about “communism” to be able to judge. But anyway, every one of his speeches ended with the issue of Toshiko-bā.
Mom once asked Dad about Mr. Kawano’s political views.
“Well,” he said. “Basically, not to, um, fire, you know, bottle rockets at Toshiko-bā’s house.”
Really, that’s what everybody thought—that Mr. Kawano’s platform was to stop fireworks being aimed at Toshiko-bā’s house. You’d have to be pretty eccentric to vote for a candidate like that. And very few people did. The number of votes he got never came close to the number of hits that Toshiko-bā’s house took over the course of the campaign. If he’d ever gotten that number, he’d have won easily.
The battling brothers-in-law were Todaka Yoshikazu, head of a major fishery and chairman of the local fishing co-operative, and Abe Hachiro, head of a construction company. Everyone called them Yoshi-nī (big brother Yoshi) and Hachi-nī (big brother Hachi). Hachi-nī was married to Yoshi-nī’s sister, Hatsue.
Yoshi-nī had been on the district assembly for twelve years and was a prominent figure throughout the region. His company’s dried horse-mackerel had been the most successful item in a campaign to promote regional products. It had even reached the food courts of department stores in Tokyo and Osaka. It was now the company’s most profitable product, outstripping their farmed yellowtail.
The Marugi Fisheries processing plant was halfway along the promontory on the eastern side of the village. It was similar in size to the elementary school, which stood at the base of the promontory. I’ve been to the plant—Mr. Yoshida took me in his car. There were no houses beyond the school, so the paved road was just for the plant. It was better than the one that ran through the village—wide enough for the large refrigerated trucks that were always coming and going.
In front of the plant there’s a wide open space paved with concrete. Gutted sardines and mackerel glint in the sunshine. Mr. Yoshida drives past the fish into the shade of the building. He parks the car beside a small forklift, next to a huge pile of empty wooden crates. I worry that they might topple over. When I get out of the car there’s a dry smell, like manure. Flies buzz around my head, their abdomens and wings bright in the sunshine—rough, black beads of light.
On Sundays there’s nobody at the plant. All I can hear is the hum of a huge refrigeration unit—a sound like numbness itself. My mind goes blank as I listen. Inside the building is an office, with a very large, black-leather sofa for visitors. That’s our favorite place. As I squeeze the edge of the sofa, I open my eyes and look up at the wall. There are two photos hanging near the top. I see them upside
