Chapter 4 — The Battle of the Daimonji Pleasure Barges (Part 2)

When you’re stuck on a problem it’s best to play around. That’s the tanuki way.

So with that in mind, the next day I took Yashirō down to Sanjō Karasuma.

Karasuma Street was bustling, even in the unreasonable midday heat. The rays of the midsummer sun penetrated into every nook and cranny; this must have been what it was like to be in a frying pan. Even the curmudgeonly statue of Shōki that scowled down upon us from the eaves of an old house looked burnt black. The heat made me long for the shady boughs of the forest.

“It’s so hot!”

“Sure is.”

“Yasaburō, the Heir’s mamemochi are gonna melt!”

“Well, we can’t have that. Let’s pick up the pace.”

The Heir of Yakushibō of Nyoigadake had regretfully left his residence at the hotel in Kawaramachi Oike last week. His new lodgings were in a seven-story building, down Shinmachi Street and on the left. Above the mugwort-green tiles at the entrance was the English name of a textiles company. Wrapping around the sides and the back of the building was a series of stairways and spiked iron fences whose oddly convoluted appearance resembled an optical illusion. It looked like a fortress of the Far East, and hardly anyone would ever expect that on its roof lay the residence of a tengu.

At the top of the long stairs lay the boundless blue sky. The space was wide enough to accommodate five Eizan railcars put end to end. “Auu!” gasped Yashirō as we were hit by a sudden blast of hot wind.

“Hold on.” I checked my brother here.

The Heir was standing In the middle of the vast roof, being one with himself. The sleeves of his white dress shirt were rolled up, and his back was perfectly erect. In front of him was an ironing board. Hanging from the drying racks around him were more dress shirts, nearly gleaming in their spotlessness. The Heir’s left hand was placed on the ironing board, and his expression was solemn, almost as if he bore the weight of the world on his shoulders. The only sound was the whistling of the wind; under the dizzying vastness of the cosmos, there was a crushing tension in the air.

Without warning the Heir opened his eyes, and began to iron his shirt.

His handling of that lump of metal was magnificent; he ironed shirt after shirt with exquisite skill. Each time the iron let out a hiss of steam, an evanescent rainbow would appear for a brief moment. Before we realized it Yashirō and I had come right up to the ironing board, transfixed by that display of artistry. There was not the slightest hesitation in the Heir’s handling of the iron, so smooth and masterful that it was almost soporific. Each time he took a piping hot shirt by the collar and gave it a brisk shake in the air, a wonderfully fresh scent tickled our noses.

Once he had brought order to the last shirt a small smile broke through his stern gaze, like a ray of sunshine peeping through the clouds.

He looked up and addressed us. “Good day, gentlemen. I apologize for the delay, for you see I was quite engrossed in my ironing.”

“I’m amazed you’re doing ironing on a sweltering day like today. Don’t you feel hot at all?”

“In truth I do, though I have excised such animalistic concepts as ‘hot’ from my consciousness. But the heat must be quite intolerable for a furry being such as you. Have you considered perhaps shaving the fur off?”

“That would kind of ruin our charm, and most importantly we wouldn’t be able to transform.”

“Ah. My condolences.” The Heir chuckled. “By the way, I don’t believe I have been introduced to your companion.”

I gave Yashirō a prod in the back, and he came up and offered the cloth bundle, bowing his head. “I am Shimogamo Yashirō, fourth son of Shimogamo Sōichirō. We present this humble offering to you, sir, in commemoration of your new abode.”

“How very kind of you,” said the Heir, and shook a flustered Yashirō’s hand. “Now, I don’t suppose you gentlemen have some time on your hands?”

“More than we could shake a stick at.”

“Splendid. I was just considering taking a brief rest after bringing a bit of order to my corner of the world. As a token of gratitude for your gift, might I invite you gentlemen to a spot of tea?”

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The Heir’s residence took up the eastern third of the roof.

It was a smart villa-esque building, a pale green triangular roof atop white walls. Trees grew lushly bounded by a white picket fence, and just by the garden gate was a gas lamp brought over from Europe. There was a spacious veranda with a deck chair, and through a French door an even more spacious drawing room which, even furnished with the Heir’s European collection, still had room to spare. It was quite pleasant there with the air conditioning running. A tengu-like elegance pervaded the space, along with the scents of antique furniture and old books and tobacco smoke.

We sat at a large table draped with a pure white tablecloth. The Heir brought out a gleaming, very fancy-looking tea set, and served us tea. Yashirō’s tail immediately sprouted out when he tasted the hot tea, but on the other hand the Heir found the sticky mochi difficult to manage.

“Is it not to your liking?”

“Nothing of the sort. It is quite delicious; however, I do prefer foods which allow me to avoid soiling my hands,” the Heir replied, taking a nibble of the mochi.

“This is a very nice house,” I commented.

“It was once the villa of a rather accomplished tanuki. It reeked quite strongly of tanuki when I first acquired it, but that has been remedied by an extensive remodeling.”

I had a bad feeling when I heard the words “accomplished tanuki”.

“If you don’t mind me asking, would this house happen to have been offered to you by Kinkaku and Ginkaku?”

“Just so. Their father has left Kyoto, and so the house lay empty.”

“Owing those two might be more of a headache than you were expecting.”

“Owe? I owe them nothing. They came away with a bowlful of golden Napoléons. It was a most transparent transaction, their avarice fully satisfied. Therefore I owe them nothing. You, on the other hand, stubbornly refuse to take my coins, and so I find rather that it is you who are a headache to me.”

I had known of Kinkaku and Ginkaku’s visits to the Heir, but if they were going to try to hedge their bets on which tengu would come out on top, I’d have to keep my eye on them. I was willing to bet that the coins that had rolled out of the Heir’s pockets had been the very same coins which those two had used to pay off the Nanto Alliance.

“I would advise against associating with those two.”

“They said the same of you. Shimogamo Yasaburō is a knave, a rogue, a constant thorn in the side of the Ebisugawa clan, and one who never passes up an opportunity to show up a tengu.”

“You mustn’t take what they say at face value. They’re complete and utter fools, the both of them.”

“Are not all tanuki fools?” smiled the Heir.

Unlike most tengu he led a very tranquil life, not once seeking to rock the boat, and hopes amongst the tanuki of Kyoto that a New Tengu Age would rise were dimming. They were all convinced, the fools, that the domineering likes of Master Akadama and Kurama tengu were “proper” tengu. Some even snidely predicted, “Benten’ll put the Heir in his place sooner or later!” If you don’t put the fear in tanuki, they start to get too big for their britches.

When the Heir wasn’t taking his daily stroll in his anachronistic getup, he was organizing his collection of journals from his European days, or rearranging his furniture, or reclining on his velvet sofa engrossed in some detective novel. It seemed to me that his tengu powers were being wasted, which was a mild concern.

“Letting loose every now and then wouldn’t be so bad, would it?”

“A regular rabble rouser, I see,” he sighed. “As I have told you, I am not a tengu.”

“I do wish you wouldn’t be so stiff-necked…”

“Furthermore, I am exceedingly busy. This room is still quite slovenly.”

But in my opinion the villa didn’t look slovenly at all. In terms of form and function everything looked right where it was supposed to be. Even the half-read books stacked on his desk were meticulously sorted with their spines all aligned. It was a far cry from the turmoil of Master Akadama’s apartment; the father was the avatar of chaos, the son the paragon of order.

I described to him the Master’s filthy apartment, down to the last lurid detail. Raising his eyebrows distastefully, the Heir coldly said, “I urge you to burn it to the ground. It would have a most cleansing effect on your soul, I am sure.”

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The Heir was quite pleased to learn that my brother was interested in magnetism. Apparently, in his younger days he had spent a great deal of time studying it himself.

“Take this, Yashirō; you will find it to be of great use in shielding your eyes from harm.” The Heir took from a large iron chest in the corner an old pair of flying goggles. It had once belonged to a boy in England whose heart had roamed the skies. Yashirō was over the moon, and immediately put them on pretending to be a boy pilot.

Each of the Heir’s belongings had a memory of Europe entwined with it. His favorite pipe was given to him by the owner of a used bookstore in Czechoslovakia; the velvet Chesterfield on which he reclined to read his books was a gift from a noblewoman in Vienna; his mountain of detective novels had been obtained from a philosopher at Cambridge, who plunged himself so deeply into his field that the only opportunities he had to come up for air were reading detective novels and going to the movies.

The Heir reminisced over his memories at length, but there were two things that he absolutely refused to discuss. One was the reason for his departing on his journey abroad, and the other was the reason for his return. Whenever the conversation veered too closely to either of those topics, the Heir would immediately change the subject.

Eventually he glanced up at the grandfather clock, which was striking two in the afternoon.

“My furry friends, I must ask your leave to retire.”

“Beg pardon, I hadn’t realized we’d been here for so long.”

“I always nap atop my sofa before setting out for my daily stroll.”

At this moment, a figure landed on the veranda. As the Heir glanced over frowning, the French door opened, and Benten came sweeping in wearing a cool white sundress, accompanied by a blast of hot air. At Yashirō and me she smiled sweetly, but for the Heir she did not spare a glance, sweeping her gaze over the room before proceeding directly to the velvet sofa and throwing herself upon it, lounging there as if she owned the place.

I whispered in the Master’s ear, “The Lady Benten.”

“So I see,” he said coolly.

Ever since her return in July, Benten had had her eye on the Heir. Benten, the Peerless and Unrivalled, expected everything and everyone in Kyoto to kiss her feet, and the festivities with which she was welcomed on her return by tengu and tanuki and human alike seemed to bear that attitude out. The Kurama tengu threw a huge welcome-home bash for her; the cream of tanuki society came bearing gifts for her; and the Friday Fellows convened a special session to celebrate her return. With respect to Master Akadama, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had gotten down on hands and knees and literally tried to kiss her feet.

The only person who disdained to get involved in all this hullabaloo was the Heir.

He silently rose from the table and walked over to the sofa where Benten was reclining, looking down on her with all the frigidness of a statue.

Benten returned his gaze, but did not move from her position. “Yes?” she smiled sweetly.

“I hate to intrude on your repose, madam, but I must ask you to return this sofa. I am due for my afternoon nap.”

“Oh, but I’m using it.”

“This is my favorite sofa, madam.”

“And I can see why. It’s wonderfully comfy. Why, I might just fall asleep here myself!”

Understanding that his gentlemanly parley had been rebuffed, the Heir silently turned on his heel and came back to the table where we had just had our tea. Taking the white tablecloth in both hands, he gave it a swift tug. The teaware atop the table did not so much as move a millimeter. The Heir turned round and, fluttering the tablecloth like a matador before a bull, approached Benten and laid the cloth down before the sofa, fastidiously pulling out the corners. Overcome by curiosity, Benten sat up ever so slightly.

“That’s quite all right, madam,” the Heir said kindly. “As you were, as you were.”

Going around to the back of the sofa, he leaned against the sofa, which tipped over. With a small shriek Benten was ejected onto the ground.

Brushing off his hands with a satisfied look, the Heir smiled down at Benten, who was flat on her backside. “Pray forgive the imposition, madam. But while it is delightful that you are comfortable, what is important here is the fact that I am not.”

The Heir lay himself down smoothly on the sofa. “Good day, then, and good night.”

Outwardly Benten affected a calm demeanor, but it was apparent that she was forcibly restraining her seething rage, which in turn was making her even angrier. I could almost hear the roiling sound of her fury. Standing up, she stared at the Heir with eyes of pure hatred.

“What a strange tengu, Yasaburō,” she breathed.

“Lady Benten, I beseech you to restrain your anger—”

“This is hardly enough to make me angry.”

She looked as if she would stalk directly out the door, but apparently she wasn’t quite able to tamp her feelings down completely, for she suddenly turned around and opened the Heir’s closet, yanking out every last one of the carefully ironed shirts and crumpling them up in her hands. Then, throwing them on the floor, she stamped all over them before leaving through the door.

All the while, the Heir lay unmoving on the sofa, quietly snoozing.

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After leaving the Heir’s villa, Benten lit north along the city’s rooftops like a skipping stone. She flew to city hall and to Kyoto Shimbun headquarters and to Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine and to other places besides, shattering windows, bending antennas, gashing water tanks.

After all this she visited Master Akadama’s apartment.

“Benten, Benten, how glad I am you have come.”

Benten sat down on the floor beside the beaming Master with a thump. “Oh, what a shock I’ve had!”

“Now what has gotten you flustered?”

“It was awful, just awful, Master! Look!” Playing the part of an injured maiden she put out her dainty elbow, showing him the faint bruise which was the proof of her tumble from the couch. Or perhaps she had come by it after imprudently elbowing a water tank. To Benten it was all the same: all of it had happened because the Heir would not give her the time of day. She complained about the Heir’s incivility, even nonchalantly hinting of certain monstrous threats made to her chastity.

His own lecherous ways notwithstanding, the Master thundered, “None may raise his hand to my disciple and live to tell the tale!”

Thus, the seeds of yet another tengu quarrel were sown.

The encounter between Benten and the Heir became the talk of the town in the tanuki world as well. Judging from the sheer scale of Benten’s tantrum, it was obvious to all just how acrimonious their meeting had been. A few tanuki were eager to finally witness a tengu war, but most assumed that Benten would expose him. While the Heir was unassailable where etiquette was concerned, his tengu credentials were somewhat lacking, at least in the unqualified opinion of the tanuki.

At night I went to the Scarlet Pane on Teramachi Street, where as always the owner was taking bets.

“Ah, Yasaburō there, which one d’ye reckon’ll come out on top?”

“Not this again. How about you stop worrying about this stuff and try to do something constructive with your noggin for once? Following tengu squabbles is for weirdos.”

“Oh, drop the high-and-mighty act. I know you’re enjoying this more than anyone else.”

“No question it’s top-rate entertainment, wondering how it’ll all play out...but this isn’t the time for my eyes to be glued to tengu drama. Got other fish to fry.”

“What, no luck with the pleasure barge then?”

“Nope. I’m at a dead end here.”

“That’s bloody disgraceful, mate. Your ancestors must be turning in their graves.”

A few days after that, a pleasure barge was transported over from Nara, arriving at the Faux Denki Bran distillery with great fanfare.

Yaichirō was so incensed when he heard the news from Yashirō that he nearly passed out. His plans were all dashed, and following this, whether awake or asleep he could often be heard grinding his teeth and muttering, “Damned Ebisugawas!” which made it very difficult for the rest of us to fall asleep at night.

“Yaichirō will grind his teeth to dust if he keeps this up,” Mother murmured wearily. “At this rate, we might have to retract our invitation to Gyokuran!”

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In the midst of all this I was summoned by Master Akadama, putting me in an even more dispirited mood.

I hesitantly edged into the apartment behind the Demachi shopping arcade to find that the Master had boarded up the windows in anticipation of an assault by the Heir. It was hot as a sauna in there as he puffed away on his pipe.

Hot sunlight pierced like laser beams through the gaps between the makeshift barricades constructed from piles of garbage. Violet smoke and motes of dust drifted in and out of the rays of light, and with no outlet through which to escape the eye-watering odor of aged tengu whirled up in eddies, making the room nigh unbearable. Not only that, the Master had scattered caltrops all over the floor, creating quite a hazard for my tender tanuki footpads.

“Shimogamo Yasaburō, at your service,” making sure to avoid stepping on any caltrops as I prostrated myself. “You seem to be down in the dumps, figuratively and literally.”

“I hear that the scoundrel has violated Benten.”

“Well, calling it violating is a little much.”

“And furthermore, you yourself were there. What were you doing there, skulking about that ruffian’s domicile? Explain yourself!”

“I was merely presenting a gift to commemorate his moving there. A modest one, of course.”

“How many times must I tell you!” the Master barked. A puff of purple smoke came out of his mouth and formed itself into a dragon, writhing through the room. “He is not my son, not a tengu, not my heir. He is a spineless cur who knows not the slightest thing about what it means to walk the tengu’s path. He could never be fit to walk in the footsteps of one such as I. It is Benten who shall succeed the great seat of Yakushibō of Nyoigadake. As I have declared, let it be so!”

“You really needn’t work yourself up like this, Master,” I assured my heated old master. “After all, you’re not retiring anytime soon.”

“Silence. I forbid you from calling him the Heir ever again.”

“Dear me. Then whatever shall I call him?”

“You may call him the Salacious Squire.” The tip of the tengu cigar smoldered in that unctuous, molasses-like darkness.

I suddenly realized to my great surprise that the Master was tapping off the ashes into the chagama engine which had once powered the now-lost Yakushibō’s Inner Parlor through the skies. This engine had seen a lot of action, not just during the Okuribi, but also at the fracas at the close of the previous year, enabling us to retaliate against the Ebisugawa plot. It was a wondrous device that with the help of a little Akadama port wine could make anything fly through the sky, and using it as an ashtray of all things was criminally negligent, even for a tengu down on his luck.

“Master, I must insist you stop putting your ash in there!”

I hastily ran to the kitchen and found a small chipped bowl, replacing it for the chagama engine next to the Master. I dumped out the ashes from the vessel and painstakingly wiped it out with a damp rag.

The most wonderful idea flew into my head then.

“Master, would it be possible to briefly borrow this chagama engine?”

“What would you use it for? All the damned thing can do is wobble through the air guzzling wine.”

“You are aware, of course, that we view the Gozan no Okuribi bonfires from the air?”

“Hmph, is it that season already?” he murmured, looking up at the sky for a moment before bringing a gaze full of majesty to bear on me. “Yasaburō. You intend to make some piffling thing fly, do you not?”

“This is a matter of honor for the Shimogamo clan. My lord, I humbly ask your favor.”

Master Akadama puffed away on his tengu cigar for some time, whiling the time away. This ceremonial interlude is indispensable to exhibiting tengu majesty. I couldn’t afford to say something chipper and incur his displeasure, so I remained silent and low to the floor.

At last he gave his reply. “Very well. I will allow it, subject to one condition.”

“As my lord requires.”

“You will not invite me to see the Okuribi. I will not allow it.”

“How grieved I am to hear such words!” I cried dramatically. “Our gathering simply cannot do with you, Master!”

“I have better things to do with my time than attend furball banquets. Fur spoils the wine, and furball _chirashizushi _sticks in my throat. No, take the engine and do with it as you will.”

Tengu are exceedingly difficult beings to manage. For starters, they were originally expelled from human society because humans found them so tiresome to deal with, and in fact, tengu find themselves difficult to manage as well. I knew from long years of experience that breezily saying, “All right then, toodles!” and sauntering out the door would hardly suffice here.

“I beg you to reconsider!” I pleaded over and over, while the Master stubbornly insisted, “Stop wasting my time!”

After many exhausting rounds of this, the Master was finally satisfied.

“I will go, if I find myself at liberty. Gracious, there is no pleasing you tanuki!”

I picked up the chagama engine and stepped out the door, pursued by one final reminder from the Master.

“There will be no need for any furball sushi! None whatsoever!”

I made a mental note not to forget the chirashizushi.

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It is an ancient tanuki tradition to sail out in pleasure barges on the night of the Gozan no Okuribi.

According to legend, it had been a young tanuki pup, an aviation aficionado who had long dreamed of soaring the skies, who first made an appeal to Tarōbō of Atagoyama.

The skies have always been the domain of the tengu, and they do not suffer tanuki to fly about willy-nilly. Hearing this adventurous tanuki’s appeal, the tengu gathered at Mount Atago and held an all-Kyoto tengu conference, and at the end of much heated discussion, they decreed that tanuki would be allowed to fly through the sky just one night a year. That night is the night of the Gozan no Okuribi.

The tanuki were overjoyed and eagerly set to work, each family pooling their efforts to construct their own pleasure barge. However, there was one problem: the flight system. Some gave tribute to the tengu in return for an engine, while others turned to sketchy backyard tinkerers for help. One by one the pleasure barges went up in a glorious display of tanuki ingenuity, and henceforth the skies over the Gozan no Okuribi became a much livelier place.

But in the long history of pleasure barges, no one had ever piloted a fake Eizan railcar through the sky. And that was exactly what I intended to do.

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The night of the Okuribi, Yajirō drove up the path towards Shimogamo Shrine in the guise of an Eizan railcar. Lights blazed through the windows and washed over the gravel, and the strong smell of Faux Denki Bran pervaded the air. Yajirō was already tipsy, having imbibed some liquid courage in order to shapeshift, and he nearly ran over Yaichirō, who was trying to guide him up the shrine road.

“A fake Eizan railcar, of all things,” grumbled Yaichirō.

“Pretty original, right?” I said proudly.

“I’m glad to play a part in keeping the Shimogamo tradition alive,” Yajirō confessed. “It is a shame that I won’t be able to raise a glass with you all though, seeing as it’s my first Okuribi in years.”

“Drink up while you can. I don’t want you falling out of the sky and wiping out our entire bloodline!”

“Relax, Yaichirō,” I assured him. “At least we’ll all be in the same boat—er, train!”

“I’ve already practiced tonight hundreds of times in my head down in the well.”

“Oh, how lucky I am to have such dependable brothers,” groaned Yaichirō.

In a little while Mother and Yashirō came scurrying out from the trees. The moment black-clad Mother laid eyes on Yajirō she threw her arms around the body of the train and cried, “Bravo, Yajirō! Well done, well done!”

As we waited for Nanzenji Gyokuran, the guest of honor, to arrive, we toiled away getting everything ready on our pleasure locomotive. Wearing the flying goggles, Yashirō carried the chagama engine into the train, installing and inspecting it with single-minded focus. Yaichirō brought in crates of Akadama port wine, while Mother delivered chirashizushi and lacquered wooden boxes full of stewed vegetables and other such comestibles. Outside I was busy attaching glittering streamers to Yajirō’s rear end.

“Think Yaichirō and Gyokuran’ll finally settle their engagement tonight?”

“Dunno,” I shrugged.

“Haven’t you been practicing with Yaichirō?”

“...Imagine how well it went for me.”

Mother was scheming to use tonight to finally bring Yaichirō and Gyokuran across the shogi board and into each other’s arms. And in order to accomplish that, she needed Yaichirō to get used to murmuring sweet nothings.

So that was why I had ended up transforming into Gyokuran and practicing with Yaichirō, but it had been tough going getting my square of a brother to say his sappy lines.

“Pull yourself together, man!”

“Just say it!”

“Take my hand! Do it!”

With the help of my drill sergeant encouragement, Yaichirō finally managed to squeak out a confession of love, but the toe-curling repulsiveness of two brothers professing love to each other made us feel sick, and both Yaichirō and I were bedridden for some time afterward.

As we were finishing up the preparations, Nanzenji Gyokuran came strolling up the shrine road. Yaichirō hastily lit down from the train to greet her, and the two stiffly bowed to one another.

“I thank you for extending such a gracious invitation on this solemn occasion.”

“The pleasure is mine. It is our honor to welcome you to the Tadasu Forest.”

“It’s good to see you again, Yajirō,” Gyokuran called. “You make a lovely train. And who else would have thought of using an Eizan railcar for your pleasure barge but Yasaburō?”

“You know me too well, Gyokuran,” I grinned. “We must look like a bunch of fools to you.”

“Yes, but a lovely bunch of fools!”

Now we had but to wait for the arrival of the Master.

At long last, Master Akadama came hobbling along on a walking stick up the long white path between the trees. He stopped, glaring at the blazing lights of the fake Eizan railcar in the cerulean evening.

“You there, furballs. What manner of merriment is this?”