Fish of the Seto Inland Sea. Ruri Pilgrim

8

       Takeko is Seventeen

      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.

      â€˜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?

      â€˜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.

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

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

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

      â€˜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?’

      â€˜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.

      â€˜I see,’ Kei said. ‘It was so very kind of you to think of us. As you said yourself, more or less, a girl without a father does not exactly have good prospects for marriage. We know our place and we would like to find our Takeko a match which is suitable for us. Thank you for coming.’

      â€˜Okahsan,’ Ayako said, after the visitor had gone, ‘is it wise to make an enemy of her? She will spread some kind of fabricated story.’

      â€˜I will not let anyone insult us in our own house. In any case, who wants a man who could not finish even basic schooling? You can tell he is a good-for-nothing, lazy lad.’

      The name Matsudo did not reach Tei-ichi, as mother and daughter did not bother to repeat the conversation to him, but the following proposal was brought to him directly. An acquaintance came to sound out a match with a family running a large draper and haberdasher shop called Tagawa-ya. It had an extensive frontage opening on to the busiest street in a big town which was the political as well as the commercial centre of the prefecture.

      Tei-ichi would have said that it was not a convincingly good match, but he found himself less particular than before.

      â€˜A merchant?’ Kei raised her cleanly-arched eyebrows. Tei-ichi had felt the same mental reaction when he was told about the match.

      Nearly half a century had passed since the collapse of the Tokugawa feudal regime. Tei-ichi reflected, ‘What a lot of social and technical changes and progress we have experienced.’ Yet, he had to admit that he was not entirely against the old rigid class system. After all, when he was born, feudal lords were still travelling up and down the main roads to and from the capital which was called Edo and not Tokyo, in palanquins surrounded by samurais each bearing two swords and wearing a topknot.

      Samurais were at the top of the class system in those days. They had the right to kill anyone, anywhere. The rice-growing farming class was the next in rank. Rice was important. The economic power of each feudal domain was determined by the amount of rice it produced. The samurais’ stipend was calculated in rice. Then came the artisan class. The merchant class occupied the bottom position. They were not allowed to wear silk, and their houses were inspected lest they should be too luxurious. Dealing with money was despised and the profession whose ultimate purpose was the accumulation of wealth had to be at the bottom.

      When Tei-ichi was little, his father told him a story about a castle which was besieged, and how the defending samurais had to eat the mud walls to survive. Even then, those who accompanied their lord to the peace negotiations in the enemy camp did not touch the food offered to them. They were so proud, and could withstand material temptation.

      If he told such stories to his sons they would listen, but Tei-ichi knew that to his sons these were only epic tales. Times had changed.

      â€˜Well, we are living in a new age,’ Tei-ichi said to Kei and Ayako. ‘We cannot be prejudiced against new ways of thinking in the modern world. Our feudal period ended because the samurais could not maintain themselves economically and had to rely on merchants. You see, the standard of life was going up and up, yet the amount of rice produced could not be increased beyond a certain limit. It was the economy ...’

      Tei-ichi showed his scholarship and would have gone on lecturing them with his interpretation of the arrival of the Meiji era, but the women did not seem to be impressed. They listened respectfully, but as soon as they were left alone, Ayako said, ‘It’s sad to think that the status of the Miwas has fallen, okahsan. In the olden times, no one considered it proper to think of such a match, however prosperous their business was.’

      â€˜Oh, it is good to have a lot of proposals. To accept or refuse is our prerogative. We would worry about our fallen status if nobody thought of match-making with us,’ Kei said, trying to cheer up Ayako and herself, and added with conviction,