Chapter 4 — The Battle of the Daimonji Pleasure Barges (Part 1)

Once upon a time, great tengu wars roiled the land.

I first heard of them at Hyakumanben Chionji, from the High Elder.

People said that due to some underworld administrative mix-up he’d never gotten his death notice in the post. He looked just like a great dust bunny rolling around behind the Amida Hall; however, he was just bursting with zeal for education, and whenever some lost little tanuki wandered into the temple he would seize them and force them to read Heritage of Fur, reciting a litany of tanuki-centric history facts. He probably saw this as his contribution to tanuki society, but as far as we tanuki pups were concerned it was all a great bore.

“During the war—”

Whenever he said this, we knew that he was referring to neither the Pacific War, nor to the Onin War, but the Tengu Wars.

I’ve forgotten most everything that he talked about in those outdoor lectures, but I do remember how biased his view of history was. The way he told it, the whole of the history of Japan was driven by the furry little paws of tanuki. What a load of horse hockey! I used to think as a pup. Even back then I already knew that the world was driven by the trio of humans and tengu and tanuki.

Once the High Elder proclaimed, “That tengu should interfere in the affairs of tanuki: this is not right. That tanuki should interfere in the affairs of tengu: this is also not right.”

I didn’t like that at all. For one, this was just after Father had pulled off the False Nyoigadake Caper, and I was in awe of my father for having stood up to those Kurama tengu in order to preserve the honor of Master Akadama. What did he mean, we shouldn’t get involved in tengu affairs? The Yakushibō of Nyoigadake had come all the way to the Tadasu Forest to express his gratitude to Father, bringing a fancy box of sweets. So I kept chirping away impudently at the poor old High Elder. This was of course, the age when I had attempted to smoke out the Navel Stone at Rokkakudō with pine needles, the age when I was the biggest fool that I have ever been.

Time flows on. Both Father and the High Elder behind the Amida Hall have long since passed on to the afterlife. And whenever the Gozan no Okuribi draws near, I am reminded of these things.

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Mother was going out to Tanukidani Fudō to visit Grandmother, so I decided to go along with her.

We got off the Eizan Line at Ichijōji Station and walked east down Manshuin Road.

The streets were baking beneath the midsummer sunshine, and the damp towel I’d brought with me from the Tadasu Forest was already as parched as a sheet of dried kelp.

Crossing Shirakawa Street, we passed by Ichijoji Sagarimatsu, where the swordsman Miyamoto Musashi once fought a famous duel. It was still a long way to Grandmother’s secluded forest. The way to Tanukidani Fudō went through still residential neighborhoods and dried-up fields, and along a neverending shrine road cutting its way up through shady cedar trees. In her customary form as a dashing fop from the Takarazuka, Mother at first glance appeared to be cool and unfazed, but it was she who let out the first complaint.

“It’s burning!” she moaned. “What I wouldn’t give for a drop of rain!”

“Rain is all well and good, but what happens if it thunders?”

“Then your mother would lose her transformation, of course. What would you expect?”

“So I’d have to carry you all the way home, you mean…”

“Oh, I wouldn’t like that at all. Just the thought of that makes me feel sweaty!”

I hadn’t seen my grandmother in Tanukidani Fudō for quite some time. Like the High Elder, Grandmother had long since transcended the usual tanuki lifespan, and had turned into a beautiful pure white furball. Grandmother’s secret to longevity was spending her days in Tanukidani Fudō fluffing herself and pushing the boundaries of softness. The tanuki of Tanukidani Fudō had a long tradition of New Age health practices and Eastern medicine, and Grandmother was revered by a great many disciples, who called her the Matriarch.

“Grandmother will know just the right medicine to help Yajirō.”

“He says it’s a case of autonomic neuropathy.”

“Your mother may not understand difficult words like that, but all he needs is to get his chutzpah back, right? You can’t transform without chutzpah.”

“Do you think he’ll drink the medicine, though? He can be pretty stubborn when it comes to this stuff.”

My frog brother was not terribly fond of Grandmother.

As the longest lived tanuki in the world, over the course of her many years Grandmother had somewhat cold-bloodedly divided the world into a) things that contributed to longevity, and b) things that did not. She was constantly updating these lists, and eventually even we, her own flesh-and-blood grandsons, came under her magnifying glass. In order to allot her remaining lifespan most efficiently, Grandmother put away her feelings of love for us. In her eyes, Yaichirō, the eldest, was her only grandson, and the rest of us were beneath her notice. Yajirō had it worst of all; at first she had adored him, but little by little she ceased to pay any attention to him whatsoever, and the pain he felt from this caused him to become quiet and withdrawn. Since we’d never held such expectations of her, Yashirō and I were spared the worst of it.

At last Mother and I finally reached the entrance of the shrine road. Around the moss-covered stone plaque engraved with the words Tanukidani Fudō-in, Shigaraki-ware tanuki statues were gathered like seashells on the rocks. Weathered by the elements, they looked into the sky as if laughing good-humoredly.

Past them was a stairway leading up through the cedars, with a total of 250 steps in all. At this hour Grandmother would be leading her adherents in morning calisthenics, covering the temple grounds like a hairy carpet in their quest for health.

These were the very same steps where Mother, then known as the Stairmaster, had had her legendary face off against Father and his Tsuchinoko Expeditionary Brigade.

“See how this step is a touch worn away? That’s because your mother used to jump off it.”

“Don’t try to pull that rubbish with me.”

“Rubbish? Do you know how many thousands of times I jumped off these steps? Of course it would be worn away. I was jumping around as I always did when Sō came marching up here, with his, er, Takenoko Expeditionary Brigade, was it?”

“_Tsuchi-_noko, not _take-_noko.”

“Right, right, tsuchinoko. Whatever is so amusing about chasing after a chubby little snake?”

“Father was trying to catch a tsuchinoko, but instead he ended up catching you, Mother.”

“How insulting, comparing your mother to a tsuchinoko! For one, I would certainly be much tastier!” Mother pouted, before letting out a little shriek of frustration. “Oh! How much longer are these stairs? I’m sure they must go all the way up to heaven!”

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At long last we reached the square at the top of the stairs. On the left a scaffold rose up against the backdrop of the emerald forest, like the platform at Kiyomizu-dera, and sitting at the top of it was the main building of Tanukidani Fudō-in.

Few pilgrims had climbed all the way up here in the broiling August midday heat, and only the singing of the cicadas echoed across the deserted temple grounds.

Mother approached a small shrine on the right. Jostling around it were more tanuki statues—some covered in moss, some chipped, some brand new, and some hardly even recognizable as tanuki.

“Hello!” Mother called softly, crouching down and coming around to the rear of the shrine. There the trees drew close, and the air was dark and gloomy.

“Oh!” A voice suddenly cried out from beneath the shrine. I peered inside to see a small ornament of Daikoku, the god of wealth, smiling and waving his mallet. “I certainly wasn’t expecting a visit from my little sister!”

This was my Uncle Tōichirō, who currently served as the director of the organization to which Grandmother’s many disciples belonged. There was a neverending stream of tanuki coming to seek advice on their health, and without my uncle there to keep things moving along it never would have been managed.

Seeing me there my uncle smiled. “And Yasaburō, I haven’t seen you in a while there.”

“It’s good to see you again, Tōichirō. I’m here to request something of Mother.”

“You are, are you? Let’s be on our way, then.”

The Daikoku ornament sprouted fur and turned into a tanuki, then began to scurry along the grounds, while Mother and I followed behind him. Along a stairway by the temple and under a red torii, and we came to a hiking trail that led up Mount Uryū. My uncle went up the path a ways before turning aside into a gloomy copse of cedar trees. It wouldn’t do to startle Grandmother, so Mother and I reverted to our tanuki forms.

We arrived at a large cedar where a crowd of tanuki was gathered. Red lanterns bearing the words Everlasting Life hung from the branches of the tree, beneath which many tanuki were jostling playing a children’s game. Elsewhere, other tanuki were rotating prayer beads the size of apples; while others still were flipping through all 600 volumes of the Mahayana Sutras with each page joined end-to-end like an accordion, generating a great amount of wind.

My illustrious grandmother was curled up on a soft scarlet cushion, enjoying the breeze from the sutras ruffling her white fur. She was about the size of an orange, and her face was hidden in her fur so it was impossible to tell whether she was awake or asleep.

We made our way through the disciples and arrived before her.

“Mother, it’s me. It’s Tōsen,” whispered Mother.

The white furball puffed out like a disc of mochi, and exclaimed in a voice like a bell, “My dear, Tōsen?” As she grew older, her voice and demeanor on the contrary grew younger, and now she sounded almost like a young girl.

“Yes, your daughter, Tōsen. I’m sorry to wake you.”

“You don’t need to apologize for anything. I wasn’t sleeping, you see.”

“Oh, good. You weren’t sleeping.”

“Yes, that’s right. I was thinking of something wonderful.”

“What’s that?”

“A pretty pond, and the reflection of the green leaves. A sunbeam, shining through the translucent leaves. And a cool breeze rustling by.”

“What a lovely thing to think about, Mother.”

“Isn’t it? Yes, I am Mother,” laughed Grandmother. “Oh, I thought you’d gone off to be married.”

“I did get married.”

“I knew it! I was so sure of it. And are you living a happy life?”

“I am living very happily.”

“You smell lovely.” Grandmother suddenly dropped her voice to a low, concerned tone. “...Say, would you mind sniffing me?”

Mother brought her damp nose over to Grandmother’s white fur and sniffed.

“Do I smell...strange?” Grandmother fretted.

“Not at all. You smell very nice.”

Grandmother relaxed. “I knew it!” she said. “I didn’t think I smelled strange. But sometimes I do worry.”

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Mother recounted Yaichirō’s latest doings as Grandmother listened happily.

“I wanted your advice.” Mother finally came to the point, explaining the story of a tanuki who had gotten too comfortable in his frog skin and become unable to change his shape.

“Hum,” Grandmother pondered in that adorable voice. “He can’t transform because the water in his belly is drying up.”

“But he lives at the bottom of a well. There should be plenty of water.”

“The water in a well isn’t the same as the water in a belly.”

“What should he do?”

“I’ll give you some good medicine. He should drink it while practicing transforming,” Grandmother declared, instructing Uncle Tōichirō to prepare some pills.

According to Grandmother, water was the source of everything. From sauntering tanuki swagger to the tengu power to move mountains, everything flowed from water. At the moment that we come into this world our bodies are positively overflowing with pure water, but the winds of the world are withering, and the older we get the more we dry up. That Grandmother’s mind and body were still so sprightly at her advanced age was supposedly due to her ability to retain that water.

While we waited for the medicine to be prepared, Grandmother asked, “Who is that there?”

“I’m just a passing tanuki. My name is Yasaburō,” I answered.

“Well hello there. Have we met before?”

“Several times, I think.”

“I knew it! I was so sure of it. Will you come a little closer?”

Mother looked unsure but nudged me forward. I approached Grandmother.

Grandmother sniffed my scent, and her fur ruffled with pleasure.

“My eyes can’t see anymore. I don’t know when that happened.” She didn’t sound terribly sad as she said this. “But I can see water flowing. This world is a great big river with everyone flowing along. And it looks like the flow of the river is starting to slow down.”

“Is that like constipation?”

“Just like that, just like that.”

“Hah, that doesn’t sound too good.”

“Don’t say that like it doesn’t concern you. This is where you ought to show your stuff. Open your eyes wide and keep that fur spick and span! Then you’ll be ready to cause a ruckus, a fine old ruckus!” Grandmother laughed gaily. “That’s all I wanted to say. The end!”

I stared at her in astonishment. She didn’t say anything after that, so I leaned in to listen and realized from her soft breathing that she was sleeping like a baby.

Yajirō’s medicine was finally finished, and with Uncle Tōichirō seeing us off Mother and I departed from Tanukidani Fudōin.

Though the cries of the cicadas reverberated through the sultry forest as we descended the long stone steps, Grandmother’s words still rang in my ears—this is where you ought to make it count! Now, what was my illustrious grandmother telling me I had to do? I had no idea what she was getting at, but in the voice of my grandmother, that soft white furball who straddled the boundary of life and death, I had perceived a gentle solemnity.

“Your grandmother certainly does say some strange things,” said Mother.

“It kind of went over my head, but I guess I’ll just have to try my hardest.”

“Oh!” murmured Mother suddenly, stopping in the middle of the steps.

A woman in a sundress was coming up the steps, holding a parasol. Hearing my mother, she looked up at us and smiled in the dappled sunlight.

“Good day. Quite a long stairway, isn’t this?” beamed Nanzenji Gyokuran.

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That evening, we took the medicine Grandmother had given us and visited Yajirō down in his well in Rokudō Chinnōji.

Yajirō lived on a craggy little island overgrown with ferns and moss at the bottom of the well. There was also a toy-sized shrine whose sacred lanterns read “God of Shogi”. In the light of those lanterns he was studying a shogi board covered with tiny pea-sized pieces.

It was cool here even during the summer, and for once Yajirō actually had a guest. A rust-coloured toad was squatting on the island, facing Yajirō across the board.

“Yasaburō?” it croaked, and to my surprise I realized it was Yaichirō.

I crawled onto the island in my own froggy form and slapped myself down next to the board. “What’re you doing here, Yaichirō?”

“What, why shouldn’t I be here?”

“The more, the merrier!” Yajirō piped up happily. “It’s really jumping down here tonight!”

“I thought you’d gone to Nara, though?”

“I did. Then I came back. That’s why I’m here,” scowled Yaichirō.

“You see,” interrupted Yajirō,” I’m actually teaching him shogi.”

According to Yajirō, Yaichirō had come humbly beseeching him for coaching, seeking to close the gulf that existed between himself and Gyokuran. Of late Yaichirō and Gyokuran had been visiting each other regularly, conducting examinations across the board for the red fur of fate. Against Gyokuran, the most fearsome shogi player in all of tanukidom, there was no hope of victory, but Yaichirō stated, “I at least wish to lose with dignity,” which was a very Yaichirō-like thing to say.

Here I also learned that my older brothers had been nosing around Father’s shogi room, dusting off the heaps of books that were piled high and studying shogi as they went. Nanzenji Gyokuran had joined them, and borrowed a shogi book published in the Edo period that contained some exceedingly difficult shogi problems.

“Look at you guys, off having all this fun. How come you never asked me to join?”

“Ask someone who has no interest in shogi whatsoever?”

“I might not care about shogi, but I care about Father’s belongings.”

“This is all about shogi, see. We bring you in, you’d just tease Yaichirō about Gyokuran. Our big brother’s a bashful lad,” chuckled Yajirō, causing Yaichirō to stare down at the board and turn the colour of lead.

Yaichirō and Gyokuran were two wallflowers spending day after plodding day quietly playing shogi and leaving when they were done. At this rate they’d still chastely be prodding at the board when they were old and grey. By now everyone just wanted to skip the courtship and get to “happily ever after”, thoroughly sick of watching these two gingerly edge toward each other across the board like they were afraid the next square might drop them into lava.

“Just checkmate her already!”

Yajirō agreed with me. “Yasaburō’s right. Dragging out the game is impolite. I’ll bet she’s just waiting to concede.”

“What a terribly irresponsible thing to say. How can you two possibly know that?”

“Two tanuki falling in each other’s arms is just the natural course of things, isn’t it?”

“Silence, you scandalous hairball!”

“C’mon, what’s scandalous about the natural course of things?”

“I have responsibility. I cannot be some rogue living on a wing and a prayer, or renounce the world and exile myself to the bottom of a well. I have my own way of doing things!”

“All right, all right,” said Yajirō soothingly. “Yasaburō was just trying to help out, Yaichirō.”

“Yeah, tell him!”

“Hmph, all the while hiding a smirk, no doubt. It’s quite obvious,” sniffed Yaichirō, before sullenly going quiet.

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“We got some pills at Tanukidani Fudō,” I announced, explaining what had happened there.

Yajirō’s look soured, and he didn’t say anything, probably reliving in his mind the many injustices he had received at the hands of Grandmother. Yajirō had a tendency to get snippy whenever the topic of Grandmother came around. For his part Yaichirō was in a difficult spot, for he had ended up shunting Yajirō aside and taking all of Grandmother’s love, and so he half-closed his eyelids like the Great Buddha in Nara and kept his mouth shut.

“Fine,” muttered Yajirō, after a long period of silence. “No point in being stubborn, I suppose.”

“So you’ll drink it? You’re going to love being able to transform again.”

“I’ll take the medicine. Once my powers are back, I’ll go and thank her.”

“The medicine of Tanukidani Fudō is highly esteemed,” Yaichirō declared, sounding relieved. “Gyokuran mentioned that she has gone there before, to fetch medicine for the former patriarch of the Nanzenji.”

“Right, right, we bumped into Gyokuran,” I interrupted. “Mother invited her to our pleasure cruise.”

Using the Okuribi as a pretext, Mother was intent on forcing Yaichirō and Gyokuran together. When it came to matchmaking her views tended to be airy yet unequivocal. In her own words: “Just put ‘em together in a tight space, and they’ll come together on their own. Fluffy is practically a tanuki’s middle name, after all!”

Flying through the night sky in a pleasure barge on the night of the Gozan no Okuribi and seeing off the spirits of our furry ancestors is a long-cherished tradition of the Shimogamo clan. The Manpuku Maru, the pleasure barge that we had used when Father was alive, had been lost in a fiery crash two years ago, so last year we had made do with Yakushibō’s Inner Parlor, a flying tearoom that we borrowed from Benten. But that had been smashed into splinters following a heated aerial battle with the Ebisugawas. Yaichirō’s aforementioned trip to Nara had been for the purpose of borrowing a pleasure barge with which to soar the skies on the Okuribi.

“I’m sure there’ll be sparks flying this year, with both you and Gyokuran on the pleasure barge.”

But Yaichirō and Yajirō looked at each other, their faces downcast.

“What, something wrong?”

“There isn’t going to be a pleasure barge, Yasaburō,” murmured Yajirō.

“But didn’t you say you were going to get one from the Nara tanuki?”

Yaichirō’s face was forlorn as he told me, “Those hopes are dashed.”

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It was late last night that Yaichirō had walked out of the darkened streets into the Nara Hotel.

Yaichirō, that paragon of caution, had gone there many times since the dawning of the year to secure the use of the SS Tang Envoy from the tanuki of the Nanto Alliance. But at the eleventh hour the winds changed for the unexpected, throwing Yaichirō into a tizzy.

Yaichirō’s interview with the representative of the alliance took place in a tearoom facing out into a garden. The representative’s breath stank of alcohol, and he tampered with his bolo tie constantly, dodging the question of when the ship would be handed over. “Sometime around September,” he said apologetically when Yaichirō pressed him. Even the most laidback of tanuki wouldn’t be so stupid as to plan to go up in a pleasure barge after the Gozan no Okuribi had passed. Naturally my brother was rather exasperated.

“As you know, the barge plunged into the Kizu River last year,” the representative prevaricated. “The repairs are yet to be completed.”

“But it’s been a year since then. Why is this the first I’m hearing of this?”

“Blaming the messenger won’t do you any good.”

As Yaichirō glared at the distressed representative, a lightbulb went on in his head.

This surely was the hand of another at work.

In his anger he was on the verge of transforming into a tiger, but it would not do to wreck the tearoom at the stately Nara Hotel. Swallowing his rage he ground his teeth and looked out at the dim reaches of the garden, but when he was calm enough to turn round again the representative had already fled.

Sure enough, my brother found this discourtesy more than he could bear.

The next day Yaichirō sent visitors and deer alike scattering at Nara Park, tracking down the elders of the Nanto Alliance in order to confront them directly.

But the leadership were all wasted, having just come from a banquet that had gone on for several days, and were in no condition to spill the beans. They could barely tell who they were talking to, let alone remember anything about the ship they had promised to the Shimogamo clan, but since he’d come all the way down to the Kasuga Forest why didn’t he have some Faux Denki Bran, courtesy of those nice Ebisugawas up in Kyoto?

So Yaichirō headed back to Kyoto empty-handed.

“Kinkaku and Ginkaku have snatched the ship from under our noses!” Yaichirō raged.

“Those Ebisugawas don’t pull their punches, do they?” observed Yajirō.

In my head, I imagined those idiot brothers chanting, “He who fails to prepare, prepares for failure!” No doubt they were toasting their success right about now.

But they’d messed with the buck, and now they were about to get the horns.

“We oughta find where they’re hiding it and take it back!” I declared.

But Yaichirō frowned and shook his head. “Even if we were to succeed, they would hardly take it lying down. We would end up in a tug-of-war with them all the way up to the Gozan no Okuribi.”

“Bring it on, then!”

“I have no intention of repeating last year’s quarrel with them, even less now that we have invited Gyokuran. We cannot afford to embroil the Nanzenji into our family quarrel.”

Stepping into my dismayed silence, Yajirō reflected softly, “Someone must’ve put those schmucks up to it. Those two would never have thought of buying off the Nanto Alliance on their own, and I doubt it was Kaisei that gave them the idea.”

“It must be Sōun pulling their strings!” The toad that was Yaichirō quivered in anger, beginning to sprout tiger-striped fur. “It’s been over six months since he disappeared. He must have tired of his hot springs tour and moved against us. Damn him, he shall not get away with this! We brothers will surely bring the iron hammer of justice down upon him! He shall kneel before Father’s grave before we pluck out the fur from his tail and scatter them into the river!”

“That’s all well and good, but what do we do about the Okuribi?” I interjected.

We all looked at each other, but none of us could come with a plan, and eventually night fell over the well. Yaichirō just sat there silently like a rock, while Yajirō pushed shogi pieces around with his tongue. Supposedly three heads are better than one, yet not a single eureka moment was to be had. This was looking like a problem better left for me to ponder over.

“I’ll think of something,” I assured them.