Mistress Oriku. Matsutaro Kawaguchi
an actor had a son the event was celebrated with red rice, but there was no joy for a daughter, since she could not become his heir. In other lines of business, the young man who joined the family by marrying a daughter could be officially as a son, to assure succession, but in the world of kabuki this was not possible. Sometimes an actor could perpetuate his name by adopting a fellow actor’s son, and this worked well enough if he actually knew a suitable boy; but if he did not, that was that. Monnosuke and Ohisa had both been praying that it would be a boy, so they were very happy indeed. As for Mr. Matsushima, he gave them a formally wrapped present of a hundred yen—the equivalent of a million yen these days. For an actor’s family a son was a golden egg, while a daughter made just another mouth to feed and was treated as a nuisance.
So Monnosuke was delighted, and when the boy was a month old Monnosuke brought him in his arms to Mukōjima, to show Oriku. He was a pretty, pale-skinned baby, with a distinct resemblance to Matsushima.
“You’ll have to take proper care of your wife, now that she’s laid you a golden egg,” Oriku reminded him. That had been her greatest concern. Ohisa had already been pregnant with Matsushima’s child when Monnosuke married her, and Monnosuke might sometimes say cruel things to her. The thought made Oriku feel sorry for Ohisa.
“Oh no,” Monnosuke assured her, “I’m very happy, really. She looks after everything so beautifully I feel like telling her she should be a restaurant maid, and she’s a marvelous cook too. That’s not surprising, I suppose, since she spent all that time in a restaurant, but even so, she misses nothing, and on top of that she’s brought me this lovely little boy! I can only thank both you and Mr. Matsushima.” His joy was unrestrained.
“Mr. Matsushima will be so relieved to hear you say all this! Ohisa will be wanting to do her very best for you, considering the condition she was in when you accepted her, so make sure you’re always good to her, since you are so pleased with her.”
In short, it was a fine case of “all’s well that ends well.” Still, the whole thing made Oriku want to laugh. Monnosuke and Matsushima, both men with whom she had no trivial bond, had apparently been destined to become entangled with each other in this way.
“It couldn’t have worked out better, and let’s hope that it keeps going well from here,” she would say to herself with a wry smile. “My little flings turned out to mean something after all!”
Thereafter, Matsushima and Monnosuke continued their visits to Mukōjima, making the long trip out there whenever they tired of fancy food and felt like some clam chazuke instead. From spring through autumn the place was full, but the stream of customers dried up when the cold set in. The menu on offer was hardly dazzling enough to bring people all the way from Azuma Bridge through the freezing river wind, and the sleepy faces of patrons crossing on the Hashiba ferry, homeward-bound from the Yoshiwara, disappeared when winter came. Silence settled over the place during the winter months. Nonetheless, mornings when it snowed were special. Quite a few fanciers of fine scenery would come out to view the snow at Mukōjima.
Oriku had this to say on the subject. “Nowadays the snow doesn’t stay even when it falls, so there’s nothing to talk about. The cars keep driving by and messing it up, so there’s no time for it to accumulate. You can’t enjoy a snowy scene if the road isn’t thickly covered with snow. Maybe there are just too many people now, or the sun’s hotter, or something, but anyway, what snow does fall melts right away, and it just doesn’t feel like the old days. And it isn’t just snow either. The way the view changes with the seasons is losing its charm too. Speaking of how pretty the snow was—people would come from far and wide to enjoy it, and of course, there’s still that haiku of Bashō’s, engraved on a standing stone at Chōmeiji Temple:
Come on, everyone,
snow-viewing, slip and slide,
till we all fall down!
That just shows how beautiful the snow at Mukōjima used to be. I admit, though, it was quite a job, keeping the path that led down from the embankment clear. Snow would cover the whole expanse of dead reeds, till from the veranda it looked as though the houses on the other side would soon be buried. Not a single ferry crossed the river, and everything was so quiet that you felt you had been washed clean through and through. It was pretty lonely by yourself, so you’d invite someone to join you, and you’d have a drink together. Young people these days have no idea how delicious saké can be, when you drink it like that with a friend, gazing out at the snow. You’d make it good and hot, and with it of course you’d have a hot stew. Monkfish is especially good when it’s snowing. Saké drunk like that with a man you like, over monkfish stew—why, it used to be heaven on earth! People in the old days enjoyed good food even more when the setting was a pleasure too. ‘Food just tastes better there, the rooms are so pretty,’ people used to say, but no one talks like that anymore. Everything’s crude and obvious now. The tonkatsu breaded pork is thick, tender, and cheap everywhere, and everyone’s happy with deep-fried pork, so it’s no wonder they don’t really understand food at all. Obviously, I have nothing against tonkatsu itself. Young working people are welcome to eat it instead of a bentō box lunch, but I wish they’d make some distinction between bentō meals and real food. The kind of bars where you just sit down and grab a bite are fine if you live in town, but don’t people ever feel like drinking somewhere with a really nice garden? Even at my place—I built it in the Meiji period, after all, so there’s plenty of land around it—you can enjoy clam chazuke in a handsome, elegant room. These days you could never make a profit from setting up a place like this, and once I’m gone, there’ll be no one to carry it on. The days of pleasure in saké and snow will never come again.”
Whenever she got talking like this, Oriku would lose herself in memories of how beautiful Mukōjima had been back in earlier years, and how many fine sights it had offered. And as she talked, she would become intoxicated with the sound of her own voice, until she no longer even saw the person with her and would begin to resemble some mad old woman chasing ghosts from the past. Like the mother of Umewakamaru, who wandered the banks of the Sumida River in search of her son, Oriku would talk on and on as she called to mind visions of the good old days.
She talked well too, and she had a fine voice. Back when she was a kept woman, living at Hashiba, she had worked hard to learn itchūbushi samisen and voice under Miyako Itchū himself; so that her voice still swept her listener along with her, when she got going on old times. From age nineteen to twenty-five she had been someone’s mistress, then till forty a brothel madam. Thereafter, for all her hard work, she had had not a care in the world, and it showed: despite her years she had nothing about her of the old woman. She had just turned sixty when Shinkichi first met her, but her face was as fresh as ever, her back was unbent, and although she never used makeup, she cut a very presentable figure.
Monnosuke’s son grew up strong and healthy. He first appeared onstage at age six, and at sixteen he took the name Monjirō. His real father, Matsushima, soon passed away, and another of his sons—Monjirō’s half-brother—took over the business. The restaurant continued to do well, and Monjirō, as much in favor with the son as he had been with the father, went there often.
There had been no talk when Ohisa became Monnosuke’s wife, but word that Matsushima was Monjirō’s real father got out in the end and became something of an open secret.
Whenever the offering changed at the theater, Monjirō brought the new program out to Mukōjima and spent a leisurely day there. An actor’s son matures fast, drinks, and amuses himself with women; his is not the strict upbringing imposed on the son of a townsman. Still, Monjirō was relatively sober in his behavior. Even at the Shigure Teahouse he drank no more than a glass of beer, and he always addressed Oriku with boyish affection as “auntie.” This naturally endeared him to her. She would take him to her own room, where they would eat their chazuke together. Then they might go out and fish from the dock, stroll off to Chōmeiji Temple for some delicately flavored sweets, and wander on to Hagi no Sono, the Bush Clover Garden, or Hyakkaen, the Garden of a Hundred Flowers. For Oriku, Monjirō was a handy amusement, and when he got back she would give him a bit of pocket money. The more she did for him, the more he played up to her, and he would keep her engaged in conversation until late in the evening. Sometimes