armband, Tachibana knew all was over.
"Oho! You've been living quite a life here, I see!" said the officer, barging straight into the room, casting a lecherous look at Taki in her shrine-maiden's costume. "Well, you can't make fools of the army like that." He glanced back at the NCO behind him, then turned toward Tachibana and shouted, "Get up!"
Tachibana stood up slowly, pulling his robe closed across his chest, Taki cowering at his feet. With no warning, the officer slammed Tachibana with his fist, knocking him back against the wall. With difficulty, Tachibana regained his footing.
"Handcuff him!" ordered the officer.
The NCO yanked Tachibana's hands behind him and put handcuffs on so tight they dug into his skin. Then the officer hit him again, this time full in the face, knocking him flat. His head hit the wall as he fell, and he began to lose consciousness. Though aware his nose was bleeding, strangely enough, he felt no pain at all. He heard Taki scream.
"Hey, get those funny clothes off the girl," said the officer with a leer.
"Huh?" said the NCO, hesitating.
"Hop to it!" shouted the officer.
The NCO put his hands on Taki. Tachibana tried to cry out, but his voice wouldn't work. The crimson pantaloons and white tunic were ripped off.
"All of them!" rasped the officer.
"Yes, sir!" said the NCO, his eyes getting bloodshot like the officer's. He slapped Taki's cheeks as she tried desperately to resist, distracted with fear, her eyes vacant and moving aimlessly, her whole body twitching. Dimly seeing her exposed breasts, Tachibana finally managed to raise himself, open his mouth, and shout, whereupon the officer shoved the muzzle of his gun into it. With the excruciating pain of broken front teeth, he sprawled backwards.
"You do it first," said the officer with a lewd laugh. "I don't mind."
"No, no, after you, Lieutenant."
"Don't be silly! Go ahead!"
"No, I'll go last."
Totally limp against the wall, Tachibana heard the misplaced courtesies from far away. The last thing he heard was the officer saying, "Now take this, you son of a bitch," as he kicked him in the pit of the stomach with his military boot. Tachibana's already foggy vision went blank.
* * *
On August 20, 1945, the Hoko Shrine village suffered the most disastrous fire in its history.
Seeing the flames lick upward, Haru Kusumoto knew immediately that it was going to be a big one. The summer's drought had been endless. Not only had there not been any rain for the past month, there hadn't even been any clouds worthy of the name. The dry south wind coming across the Zenkoji Plain had been blowing up the slope all day every day, until it had taken every last drop of moisture out of the soil.
Situated on an incline at the southern edge of the Togakushi Plateau, the village centered on ten-odd households of Shinto priests who tended the Hoko Shrine, one of the three main shrines of Togakushi. The approach to the peak where the shrine stood was a straight road up a long steep slope lined on both sides with the magnificent thatched-roof houses of the priests, around which were scattered the houses and shops of the villagers. At the top of the slope, the road made a wide detour to the right around the base of the peak and continued on toward the village around the Middle Shrine.
Standing on the very summit of the peak, the Hoko Shrine was reached by a precipitous stone staircase from the top of the slope. Togakushi had once been a mecca for ascetics practicing their religious austerities, and this staircase was one of the remnants of that past. Standing at the bottom and looking far up the stairs between the giant cedars, most people dreaded the thought of climbing them.
Even some of the local people, not to mention many unaccustomed worshippers from afar, avoided the main approach up the stairs in favor of the gentler "Women's Slope" to the left.
But it was not until she became pregnant with her first child, her daughter Natsue, that Haru Kusumoto had begun to use the Women's Slope. Until then, ever since she was old enough, she had always used the long staircase in both directions. Even now, she was still in the habit of breezing down it.
Leaving the shrine office, Haru looked back from the top of the stairs to see Natsue still watching her from the passageway that ran from the office to the shrine stage like the gallery used in Noh drama. Leaning against the railing, Natsue spread out her arms and gave the long sleeves of her shrine-maiden's dancing costume a big shake. It was the cute mannerism of a child, but looking at her from this distance, Haru realized that her daughter was growing up. Give her just six months or a year.
In addition to the regular rituals, for a suitable donation the dancers and musicians of the Hoko Shrine could be employed at any time, as they were this day, to make special offerings for individual parishioners or groups. Until shortly before, warlike prayers for victory and good fortune in battle had been in the overwhelming majority, but with the official surrender, these had given way completely to prayers for the safe return of soldiers from foreign campaigns, and routine peacetime prayers for a good harvest and family safety.
Only Shinto priests and their families could be shrine dancers. It was the obligation of every little girl born into a Shinto priest's family, as soon as she reached school age, to serve several shifts a week dancing on the stage as a shrine maiden. She was relieved of the obligation only when she reached puberty, a menstruating woman being the greatest taboo in a Shinto ritual.
Looking back, most women had fond memories of the days they had spent dancing on the shrine stage, but for some little girls, it could be a very trying experience. A shy child like Natsue, for instance, would never get used to the stage no matter how long she spent on it. On a day when it was her turn to serve, she was always in a bad mood, from the time she got up. It was Haru's job to coax her into her costume and get her to the shrine office, from which point her husband Nagaharu, a Shinto priest, took over.
Waving back at Natsue, Haru turned to go down the steps, and it was then that she saw the flames. The lines of cedars, said to be hundreds of years old, rose toward the sky on either side of the staircase. In the green of the branches which hung over the stairs from left and right, there remained a thin strip of open space directly above, and through that space, from the vicinity of the farmers' houses at the bottom of the slope far off in the distance, she saw a column of smoke and flame shooting up almost like a signal flare.
It was later determined that the fire had started in a barn, the result of three little children accidentally setting fire to the hemp-stalk wall while playing with matches. Of the principal products of Togakushi, the best known by far was buckwheat, but next came hemp, which flourished because the soil was conducive to the growth of long fibers of high quality. The stalks were a by-product that remained after the outer skin was peeled off for fiber, and when dried they burned very well and could be used for such things as fuel for the big fires built as a send-off for the spirits at the end of the celebration of their annual visit. Unfortunately, the local farmers also used the stalks to make the inner thatching for the walls and roofs of their barns, because they provided the needed ventilation and were the cheapest thing available. But in the event of a fire, there was no material worse.
Consuming the hemp-stalk wall in an instant, the fire leaped quickly to some brushwood piled up in the barn and then to the thatched roof, from which it soared skyward with an appalling shower of sparks. Except for the post office and the school, almost every building had a thatched roof, every one dry as a withered shepherd's purse. The fire jumped first to the house of the barn owner,
