At Kinosaki: Morimi Tomihiko (Part 2)

The three onsen novelists left the hotel and followed the Ōtani River towards the heart of the onsen district.

“Where did he go?”

“He didn’t jump into the river, did he?”

Grabbing the stone handrail, Arima scanned the river. The reflections of the lanterns which lined the handrail glimmered on the black surface, and green willow boughs stretched down toward the water. This was the same river into which the skewered rat had desperately leapt in order to escape the mob in Shiga Naoya’s At Kinosaki, but it was quite peaceful now: not a drowning rat in sight.

Fuwaku claimed that Kamibayashi had gone strange. While Arima and Aonimaru were talking in the smoking room, Fuwaku was browsing the souvenir corner in the lobby. As he examined a box of ebi-senbei, he heard the elevator doors open behind him, revealing the tanzen-clad Kamibayashi.

“Kamibayashi! Is your stomach feeling better already?”

Kamibayashi made straight for the hotel doors without replying. Fuwaku hurried over and caught hold of his tanzen.

“Where are you going?” he asked. But with a piercing stare Kamibayashi shook his hand off irritably.

“Layabouts, one and all!” he gritted out between clenched teeth. Then he swept through the doors into the darkness.

“That wasn’t very nice,” Fuwaku said in an injured tone. “What’s he blowing his top at me for? I’m a busy man, I wouldn’t have made time to be here for just anyone.”

“Must be the stomachache,” frowned Aonimaru.

“It must be a real doozy,” agreed Arima.

The streets got brighter as they approached the center of the onsen district. On their right they passed the wisteria-purple noren of the majestic Ichinoyu and entered a row of gift shops and amusement centers, where yukata-clad families carrying onsen baskets and young couples strolled to and fro.

“Hey, isn’t that him?” Aonimaru pointed to the center of the Tama Bridge at a stationary Kamibayashi Hankotsu-like silhouette.

“Kamibayashi!” called Arima, approaching the silhouette. But when it turned to him beneath the streetlights he recoiled in shock. For the pale face was one he did not recognize. He looked again: yes, that was Kamibayashi’s face, and yet there was something not quite right. Had he ever had such a look on his face before?

“What’s going on?” Arima asked.

Kamibayashi scowled at the writers. His eyes were curiously limpid. It was like he was staring deep into their souls. At length he snorted impatiently and shouldered his way through them. As they watched him go in amazement, he stopped and turned around.

“Stop dawdling!” he barked. “We’ve no time to waste!”

Fuwaku shrugged in resignation. “He’s lost the plot.”

“It’s like he’s a completely different person.”

“Let’s just play along for now, see where it goes.”

Kamibayashi led them to an arcade. As they slid open the door and stepped inside, they were surrounded by a cacophony of electronic blooping and blipping. Every available inch of the deep room was occupied by arcade machines. Along the right wall were three machines that resembled pachinko or perhaps pinball machines.

“These are smartball machines,” stated Kamibayashi, inserting hundred-yen coins into the devices. A hole at the top of each machine spat out a number of large marbles, which rattled down to rest at the bottom of the cabinets. The object of the game was to launch the balls and have them fall into the holes in the board.

Kamibayashi folded his arms and surveyed the group.

“Now, take your seats,” he said, in a tone which brooked no discussion.

Still unsure of what was transpiring, Arima sat on the round stool. As the writers hunched over their cabinets, Kamibayashi paced back and forth behind them, sternly surveying each board. Fuwaku was the first to run out of balls, followed by Arima. Aonimaru put up more of a fight, having spent no little time practicing at arcades in Tennōji, but before much longer he too was defeated.

“Pathetic,” sneered Kamibayashi, “No wonder you can’t write worth a damn!”

Those cutting words took Arima aback. Fed up, Fuwaku stood up and rounded on Kamibayashi. But with nary a glance at him Kamibayashi instead took his seat and rolled up his sleeves. “Watch and learn!”

And he did not disappoint.

His hand deftly feathered the handle, and with a breezy rhythm the balls went shooting up the pipe, clacking off each other in intricate trajectories before disappearing into the holes as if by magic. The hole at the top of the cabinet disgorged a steady stream, and in no time at all the board was completely full of balls. Even Fuwaku was entranced by that sheer mastery.

“Not one of you understands,” he lectured them. “It is rhythm that is key.”

Arima was suddenly reminded of a passage by Shiga Naoya:

If this rhythm is lacking, then no matter how skillfully something is written, or how noble its subject, it is false and therefore of little worth. One feels it unmistakably when one has finished reading a piece of fiction. The strength of this rhythm as the writer writes―that is what matters.

“Are you Shiga Naoya?” Arima asked.

“Indeed,” said Kamibayashi, rising from the stool. “It is time for a bath. Come along.”

　　　　　　　◯

Goshonoyu is one of the seven public bathhouses of Kinosaki Onsen.

After scrubbing himself clean, Arima exited the washing area and walked towards the outdoor hot spring. Dense clouds of steam rose towards the ample expanse of stars overhead. Trees tented a canopy of crimson on the other side of the bath, which was enclosed all around by boulders, and the air was filled with the rushing of a waterfall. Goshonoyu is a grand building, and wandering into it was like stumbling upon a hot spring hidden within a venerable temple.

Squinting his eyes, Arima could just make out Kamibayashi beyond the billowing steam.

“A Dark Night’s Passing…A Dark Night’s Passing…A Dark Night’s Passing…” he was muttering to himself, steeped in the role of Shiga Naoya.

The Shiga Naoya imitator claimed that he had started writing the novel A Dark Night’s Passing seventeen years earlier, but had put it on a long hiatus after becoming stuck partway through the second half. Now he was determined to finish it, but after such a long time placing himself in the mindset of the protagonist Tokitō Kensaku was proving to be a difficult task, compounded by the fact that it was a full-length novel. It was in order to regain his mettle and revitalize his creative drive that he had come to Kinosaki Onsen.

Fuwaku waded towards Arima.

“What do you think he’s playing at?”

“He’s playing Shiga Naoya, apparently.”

“Well, I get that…”

“Kamibayashi must have been more stressed than we imagined,” sighed Arima. “Put yourself in his shoes. He puts in all that work to fulfill his dream and publish The Complete Onsen Literature Anthology with nothing to show for it, and now the onsen genre is dying out. He sends out a rallying cry, hoping to bring back the glory of yesteryear, and look who shows up: just three measly writers. His standing is as low as it’s ever been. Convincing himself that he’s Shiga Naoya is his escape from that cruel reality. Kinosaki Onsen being so closely tied to Shiga, and the way he’s always going on about Shiga being ‘the father of onsen fiction’, and all that.”

“I feel for him, but being dragged around for some escapism isn’t exactly a lot of fun.”

“What was the deal with those smartball machines?” asked Aonimaru. “He said something about rhythm being key.”

“Shiga Naoya wrote an essay called ‘Rhythm.’”

Arima explained the passage that he had been reminded of at the arcade, in which Shiga explained the essence of writing fiction. Perhaps smartball had been the false-Shiga-cum-Kamibayashi’s oblique way of conveying that essence to these pathetic onsen novelists.

“That’s stupid! Who does he think he is, Mr. Miyagi?”

“It was kind of a stretch.”

“I agree with both of you,” chimed in Aonimaru.

“Well, in theory there’s no harm in listening to what Shiga Naoya says,” said Fuwaku. “The problem is, he’s not Shiga Naoya.”

“Are we sure about that?” Aonimaru said in a whisper. “What if he’s really possessed by Shiga’s ghost?”

Arima thought back to the game of kokkuri-san they’d played in their hotel room. When they asked whether it was Shiga Naoya the spirit had responded yes. Then Kamibayashi had been stricken by that stomachache, and when they tried to end the game the coin had begun to move erratically. That was hardly proof of a spiritual phenomenon, but it was quite plausible that it might have been the catalyst for an already stressed Kamibayashi to come unglued. They should have never played that silly game…

“What are you mumbling about over there?” came Kamibayashi’s voice. “Worthless cretins, I can hardly stand to look at you!”

His nude frame rose out of the water, his piercing eyes fixed upon them. How debauched, diminished, insignificant they felt beneath that boyishly pure gaze! The writers shrank and looked away.

“Arima Otohiko!”

Arima was so overwhelmed by the gravitas of that summons that he couldn’t help but sit up straight and answer, “Present!”

“You benefited greatly from the onsen revival, and lapped greedily at its sweet nectar,” said Kamibayashi. “Yet look at your present predicament. You can hardly be persuaded to go to an onsen; your prolific output is but a mishmash of commercial travel guides and Internet hearsay and rehashes of your older works; and once in a while you will half-heartedly dabble in erotica. And you call yourself an onsen novelist? For shame!”

Arima was speechless.

Now Kamibayashi turned his ire upon Fuwaku.

“Fuwaku Yonjūrō! What with your drawing comics and designing games your hands are never idle. Yet so enamoured of glittering gold have you become that you have forgotten who you truly are. Why have you not etched your name into history with a masterpiece of onsen fiction? Have you not the courage to take up the mantle of the tradition of onsen fiction? But I suppose I should not be surprised, what with your infatuation with silly gimmicks!”

Fuwaku looked away sulkily.

“And you, Aonimaru Satoshi,” said Kamibayashi, “You regard onsen fiction as a stepping stone in order to make your name known, nothing more. That, and no other, is the reason you come fawning and flattering to Arima and Fuwaku. And once your aim is achieved you will cast it aside. But I am afraid that the world is not so simple. Once you have immersed yourself in this accursed water, never will you cannot climb out again. The heavens may allow it, but I will not!”

The onsen novelists were cowed. It was an exhaustive castigation which was as thunderous as any from the literary greats. Yet it was not Shiga Naoya that delivered it: for there was only one person who was so intimately familiar with their pathetic state of affairs, and that was their publisher: Kamibayashi Hankotsu.

Fuwaku was the first to regain his composure.

“I’ve had enough of this!” he snapped, rising to his feet and approaching Kamibayashi. “I suspected something was up when you proposed to play kokkuri-san out of nowhere. Ghost of Shiga Naoya, my foot! You’ve been acting this entire time!”

He put his hands on Kamibayashi’s shoulders and shook him.

“Enough, Kamibayashi! I get it: you don’t like the state of onsen fiction, and you don’t like the way we’ve been working. I’m sure you’ve got plenty more to say. But why not say it straight up to our faces? Why do you have to pull out Shiga Naoya?”

Kamibayashi’s face contorted in rage.

“Is that how you speak to the father of onsen fiction?”

Before anyone could react, Kamibayashi had Fuwaku in a headlock. Fuwaku squawked and scrabbled, but those arms were like a vise, and soon his face was the same shade of red as a watermelon.

“This isn’t good!”

In astonishment Arima and Aonimaru rushed forward to separate the two. What happened next was a blur. Arima poked his fingers in Kamibayashi’s mouth and nostrils and tugged, while Aonimaru attempted to pry his arms from around Fuwaku’s neck. When at last he was freed Fuwaku gasped mightily for air. The group was making such a commotion that the other bathers were staring from a healthy distance. Spluttering and coughing, Fuwaku pulled himself out of the bath and staggered towards the changing room.

Arima looked dumbfounded at the figure in the steam. Was this really Kamibayashi Hankotsu? He stood with his hands on his hips, not even labouring for breath. The Kamibayashi whom Arima knew was thin, pasty; by contrast this man radiated energy from his slick, bronzed skin. As if the baths of Kinosaki were giving him life.

“Onsen fiction is dying,” said Kamibayashi, his voice cutting through the thundering of the waterfall. “Will you stand by and do nothing?”

　　　　　　　◯

Fuwaku Yonjūrō was absolutely incensed.

By the time that Arima made it outside, Fuwaku was already stalking down the street. Arima ran up to stop him, but the only thing he would say was, “I’m out of here!” He was heading straight back to the hotel to pack his things and depart Kinosaki. His ill humour was apparent in the light of the red lanterns which dangled from the eaves of the souvenir shops.

“I was this close from having my neck wrung!” he snapped. “I’ll never talk to Kamibayashi again. What the hell is his problem? Onsen fiction is dying because times have changed. But he makes it sound like it’s all our fault…doesn’t that make you mad, Arima?”

“Well, actually I think he’s got a point,” said Arima morosely. “We’ve dropped the ball.”

Kamibayashi’s rebuke had worked its way into Arima’s mind like a splinter. For twenty years he had secluded himself in the insular world of onsen fiction; whatever ambition he might once have held to write a magnum opus had long since faded. He had become quite adept at bamboozling his readers with a wall of words as impenetrable as a rising column of steam, but didn’t that just make him a swindler? Was that what he really wanted? For many years he had piled up a wall of excuses between himself and these intractable difficulties, but now that Kamibayashi had obliterated it he could ignore them no longer.

“I don’t think you’ve dropped anything.”

“You don’t?”

“We have our own lives to lead,” said Fuwaku. “If he wants to follow his own dream he can do it himself.”

Aonimaru joined them.

“Kamibayashi’s come out. What do we do?”

Turning around, Arima caught sight of Kamibayashi standing in front of Goshonoyu. He glared at them, his arms tucked inside his robe like a rōnin, but after a little while he turned on his heel and strode off in the opposite direction of their inn. Where was he headed? His path led him past a number of old ryokan towards the ropeway to Onsenji.

“Are we just going to let him go?” pondered Aonimaru. “I think we should go after him.”

The three onsen novelists gazed after Kamibayashi’s lone figure.

“What’s he to you anyways?” asked Fuwaku. “I always assumed you were just using onsen fiction to get to bigger and better things.”

“You’re not wrong,” Aonimaru admitted, “I’m trying to catch the big wave, just like both of you did. That’s exactly why I’m hoping for an onsen fiction revival, and Kamibayashi’s the only one who can make it happen. If not him, then who?”

Kamibayashi Hankotsu was a man possessed by onsen fiction.

“We can’t just abandon him,” said Arima to Fuwaku. “Whether he’s really possessed or just acting, he’s clearly not himself. If he needs help, we should help him. Right, Fuwaku? Whatever else we think about it, we wouldn’t be where we are today without him. The Complete Onsen Literature Anthology wasn’t just his dream: at one point, it was ours too.”

For a moment Fuwaku was silent. Then at last, with an annoyed sigh he groused, “Ah hell, all right. I must be getting soft!”

　　　　　　　◯

They followed Kamibayashi through the onsen district, passing the many onsen inns. The path bent to the right and brought them to the Kinosaki Moto-yu. Opaque clouds of steam wound up through the air, through the glare of the streetlights. At the back of a dark deserted parking lot could be seen the sign for the ropeway station.

The bustle of the onsen district was far behind them; here there was only the stillness of the mountains which pressed in close on the left, and the impenetrable forest exhaled a cold breath which bristled on the back of the neck.

But then they noticed that Kamibayashi had disappeared.

“Hey! Where’d he go?” fretted Arima, jogging up to where he had last been seen. There he found a magnificent wooden gate, beside which was a small sign that said Harimaya. Arima had never heard of it before, but the name had a noble ring to it. Beyond the gate was a paved stone path which led into the depths. Kamibayashi must have disappeared within.

“What do we do?” Aonimaru asked.

“He can’t have made an appointment. They’ll chase him out pretty soon,” declared Fuwaku, rubbing his hands on his pasty arms as if to stave off the cold.

But the longer they waited the more apparent it became that Kamibayashi wouldn’t be coming out anytime soon. The lingering warmth of the baths of Goshonoyu was stolen away by the chill of the mountains. And yet, thought Arima to himself, the shiver running down his back wasn’t just from the post-bath chill. He’d felt an ominous foreboding ever since Kamibayashi had disappeared down those steps.

As he stared down the path he sucked in his breath.

“Someone’s coming!”

It was a waitress in a iris-coloured kimono. Soundlessly she trod along the flagstones, stopping at the gate and bowing to them. Her complexion was pale; there was something about her that reminded them of a kitsune.

“Master Shiga Naoya awaits. Please, this way.” She beckoned them inside the gate.

Something’s not right, thought Arima. This was too involved for Kamibayashi to have planned out. But he swallowed his suspicion and walked inside, letting himself be swallowed into the tunnel. Fuwaku and Aonimaru went with him.

Already they had fallen underneath the spell.

At the urging of the mysterious waitress they walked into the inn and along a long wooden-floored corridor. Harimaya was an old, traditional wooden building, and the corridor twisted and turned interminably as it went along; it seemed as if it went on forever. The dampened sound and the chill which pervaded the air made it feel as though they were walking deeper and deeper into the forest.

They were brought into a huge room, perhaps dozens of tatami in size. The shōji doors leading to the veranda were slid open; outside was a garden with artificial hillocks and stone lanterns, and beyond it was the darkness of the forest.Yet the room itself was almost sultry, for inside there was a large cauldron, so large you could hardly wrap your arms around it, emitting a gentle burbling as it simmered over a fire. And sitting cross-legged staring at it, with his back to the tokonoma, was Kamibayashi.

In the tokonoma hung a scroll with the inscription: The virtuous will not long remain lonely.

“There you are! Sit down!” commanded Kamibayashi, casting a sidelong glance at them.

The three writers did as they were told, walking onto the tatami and sitting down uneasily around the cauldron across from him. It must have been the heat from the vessel which made his face glow such a crimson red. He was not wearing his trademark spectacles, and there was a crafty gleam in his eye. Yet most unnerving of all was that the massive cauldron contained only boiling water.

Kamibayashi leaned towards them, and when he spoke, it was as though the king of the beasts addressed them.

To write, or not to write―that is the question!

I vow to finish A Dark Night’s Passing!

I am fighting, fighting with all my strength to produce a masterpiece.

Behold me! Behold my lonely struggle!

From me all was born.

I am the progenitor!

And what of you?

The heat of the cauldron engulfed them as though it were the very breath of hell. And as they withered beneath his seething onslaught, Kamibayashi began to transform before their eyes. Fur sprouted from his bare chest beneath his kimono, and muscle rippled through his frame until his arms were thick as tree trunks. His slick, ruddy skin shone like polished bronze, and his eyes blazed beneath loose, unkempt hair. He was a constable of the underworld come to life.

In his terror Arima forgot to breathe.

“YOU WILL SHIRK YOUR DUTY NO LONGER!” roared Kamibayashi, reaching out a giant hand.

The writers could not even try to run, for they had been transformed into crabs. Kamibayashi easily snatched them up and tossed them into the roiling water.

Needless to say, it was far hotter than an onsen.

“Wah! We’ll be boiled alive!” Arima desperately tried to scuttle out, but immediately he was shoved back in.

Through the rising steam he could see a wide grin on Kamibayashi’s face―a face as red and glistening as a boiled crab, here and there a spike protruding from it.

“Did you really think I was the God of Fiction?” called Kamibayashi mockingly.

And then―

At last Arima realized who he really was.

He was not Kamibayashi Hankotsu. Nor was he the great Shiga Naoya.

Boiled snow crab, crab sashimi, crab sukiyaki, crab tōbanyaki, crab tempura, crab porridge: the dishes from their earlier feast whirled through his mind. We thought it was just a game, without realizing that we’d summoned the vengeful ghost of a crab! The spirit never left. The game of kokkuri-san never ended. We’re still sitting in our hotel room!

“Kokkuri-san! Kokkuri-san! We beseech you, return whence you came!” he called, writhing at the bottom of the pot. Beside him Fuwaku and Aonimaru did the same.

“Kokkuri-san! Kokkuri-san! We beseech you, return whence you came!”

The false Shiga Naoya gave a shriek of laughter, that mouth of close white teeth splitting his face until it stretched from ear to ear.

A harvest! A fine harvest!

His roaring laughter split the heavens, and the cauldron lurched and shook.

When Arima came too, he found himself in the room at the Kawaguchiya Kinosaki Riverside Hotel. The sheet with the syllabary and the numbers was lying on the table, and the hands on the clock had barely moved. The laughter of the false Shiga Naoya still rang in his ears, but when he exchanged glances with the other two writers it became clear that it had not all been in his mind.

The ten-yen coin had returned to the torii.

　　　　　　　◯

In the morning a light rain was falling over Kinosaki Onsen.

After checking out from the hotel, the three writers walked through the onsen district and took the ropeway up the mountain. Stopping to pray at Onsen-ji, they took the car the rest of the way to the summit. From the observation platform they looked down at the rain-misted town.

After a little while, Arima took the stairs down and walked over to the park on the right.There he came across something rather peculiar: a mound of dark boulders, topped with a grey stone plaque which bore an etching of two crabs, and the word Kanizuka. The mound was flanked by two little stone lanternposts. It appeared to be some kind of tomb dedicated to crabs.

“Look at this!” Arima called to the rest.

Unprompted, the four knelt and prostrated themselves to the ground.

After they had left the writers never again played kokkuri-san. But the incident had changed something. Arima, Fuwaku, and Aonimaru formed an onsen writers’ group called the Hotpot Club, dedicated to fulfilling Kamibayashi Hankotsu’s grand dream. The name, of course, came from their shared experience in that cauldron.

During that game of kokkuri-san, Aonimaru had written down each of the characters that the coin had indicated on the sheet. They spelled out the following:

Kushiki

Naka

Tohautsu

Kana

Yokiko

At a glance, it appears to be a string of gibberish, but they can be arranged in this way:

Nakayokikotohautsukushikikana

What a beautiful thing is friendship

Oh, do not be so crass as to point out that those are in fact the words of Mushanokōji Saneatsu.