Chapter 2 — Nanzenji Gyokuran (Part 1)

It is said that when a male tanuki and a female tanuki fall in love, the two are bound by the red fur of fate.

There is no shortage of tanuki who, led on by this utterly baseless fable, pick through their own fur searching for that precious crimson strand. Even as we speak, trysts between tanuki gentlemen and tanuki ladies are happening discreetly under the shade of the trees on Mount Yoshida, on the temple grounds of Gōjōin, inside the greenhouses at the Kyoto Botanical Garden. You’re the only tanuki in the world for me, my sweet! whispers the one. You’re the only tanuki in the world for me, my love! swoons the other. I think I’m gonna hurl, says I.

Here’s a furry little love story for you.

Once upon a time, in the forests of Tanukidani Fudō near Ichijōji in Sakyō Ward, there lived a tanuki girl by the name of Tōsen. Her name meant “peach sage”, for she was always just peachy keen, and nimble as an elusive mountain sage. From dawn till dusk she would frolic on the 250 steps leading up the temple path, driving away any foolish enough to make light of her with a brisk “Drop dead!” The other tanuki pups in the neighborhood referred to her with a sort of awe as the Stairmaster.

One day, an unfamiliar group of tanuki pups came swaggering into Tanukidani Fudō. A tsuchinoko craze was sweeping the city, and this gang of ne’er-do-wells was causing no end of trouble in the neighboring mountains, calling themselves the Tsuchinoko Expeditionary Brigade. They sang as they marched up the steps, and ignorant of Tōsen’s reputation they approached her with sneers on their faces.

“Outta the way, runt!”

‘What’d you call me, jagoff?” Flying into a rage, Tōsen launched herself into their midst. “Drop dead!”

This confrontation kicked off a furious battle over those stone steps, pitting the neighborhood kids of Tanukidani Fudō against the Tsuchinoko Expeditionary Brigade. Tōsen conducted herself particularly admirably in her defense of their turf.

Many moons later, Tōsen would descend once more the steps she had once fought so fiercely to defend, but this time dressed in bridal white. She was leaving behind Tanukidani Fudō and departing for her new home in the Tadasu Forest.

As her feet took the steps one by one, her thoughts drifted back to the boys who had sung so loudly as they had tramped up those steps, and the girl who had stood in their way. The leader of the Tsuchinoko Expeditionary Brigade, the jagoff who had shouted at her, “Outta the way, runt!” was named Shimogamo Sōichirō: yes, none other than our father. And the little tomboy who had answered him so defiantly was, as I am sure you have guessed, our very own mother. ‘Tis furry little love to which we brothers owe our very existence.

Every little furball that is born into this world has a furry little love story waiting for them.

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The beginning of June brought with it the rainy season. It also found me sitting in a cage in the Kyoto City Zoo.

The Kyoto City Zoo is in the Okazaki museum district next to Heian Jingū. Within its brick walls, all manner of birds and beasts bray, bellow, and sing out in a cacophony of cries. Alongside the enclosures for the usual elephants, lions, giraffes, and hippopotami, you will also find a cage for tanuki.

Tanuki are extremely afraid of cages. Our special ability of transformation is inextricably linked with our sense of freedom, and being tossed into a cage would take away that freedom. No freedom equals no transformation, and no tanuki is fond of that.

For many years the tanuki of Okazaki have served in the role of professional tanuki cage sitters, rotating in shifts. Whenever they go on R&R, tanuki from other regions must needs replace them; obviously it’s not a popular job, and I wouldn’t have taken it if the pay wasn’t so good.

In order to serve as a replacement cage sitter, I had to undergo Zoo Tanuki Behavior 101 with the head of the Okazaki tanuki. The Okazaki tanuki take very seriously the business of teaching other tanuki the proper way to behave.

“Charm is paramount. Yet you must not appear to be cajoling,” admonished the head of the Okazaki, who was instructing me on their philosophy. “You must play the role of a tanuki with pride. That is the key. You cannot display raw realism, otherwise all will be spoiled. You cannot merely play it naturalistically; you must wait for the moment when you are more tanuki than a tanuki, and seize it. This is also part of shapeshifting.”

Sure enough, going inside that cage gave me the creeps, and I spent the first day feeling completely discombobulated. Unable to transform, unable to leave for a spot of fun whenever I pleased; being unaccustomed to all this I found the sensation of being watched round the clock exhausting.

That evening Mother came to check on me, worrying about me being stuck alone in a cage all day long. As always she had taken on the form of a beautiful young man straight out of the Takarazuka Revue, and as if that wasn’t enough the green frog riding on her shoulder made her stand out all the more.

The frog wriggled between the bars into the cage.

“It won’t be so lonely with Yajirō to keep you company,” Mother reassured me.

So Yajirō kept me company from the second day on, which made the ordeal much more bearable. Yajirō rode around on my furry head as I waddled around the cage in front of crowds of children, who shrieked, “There’s a frog driving the tanuki!”

“You do keep yourself busy, huh. Color me impressed,” Yajirō commented.

“Eh, I didn’t have anything better to do.”

“That reminds me, did you ever get your hands on a tsuchinoko?”

“C’mon, Yajirō, do you really think I’d be sitting in here if I had? I’d have my hands full going to press conferences and galas!”

That night, Yajirō sat hunched over in the corner of the cage pondering something deeply.

“Whatcha up to?” I asked, peering over his shoulder to find him solving shogi puzzles.

The Tanuki Shogi Tournament, sponsored by the Nanzenji clan, was due to be held in June, and Yajirō was planning to enter.

“Any port in a storm,” he mumbled. “There aren’t a whole lot of tanuki who give a hoot about shogi in the first place, and I’d feel bad for the Nanzenjis if the tournament turned out a bust ‘cause nobody entered.”

“You ever wonder what Father was thinking when he decided to organize the tournament?”

Our Father, Shimogamo Sōichirō, was an avid shogi player, and for love of the game he joined forces with the previous head of the Nanzenji clan to set up the Tanuki Shogi Tournament. But tanuki in general don’t even have the patience to remember all the pieces, let alone sit still in front of a shogi board for an entire game. Father’s dream of bringing shogi into the tanuki mainstream was never realized, and after he was made into stew the tournament was halted. No doubt Yaichirō was extremely pleased with himself for bringing it back.

A thought occurred to me. “Hey Yajirō, do you remember the shogi room?”

“Sure I do, it was Father’s secret hideaway. Fun little room, wasn’t it?”

“Whatever happened to it?”

“It’s supposed to be somewhere in the Tadasu Forest, but I couldn’t say where.”

Whenever he could spare a moment in between his hectic duties as Trick Magister, Father always came to the shogi room to relax and decompress before rushing off to the next fire. It was a little 4½ tatami room, filled with a trove of accumulated shogi manuals and old shogi boards, and Father would sometimes take us there to instruct us in shogi.

I started to reminisce about the time I had spent in that room. Father would be sitting happily on a floor cushion surrounded by pointlessly massive tatami-sized shogi pieces and oddly-shaped boards. There was a large skylight in that room, and through it we could see the clear blue sky and branches hanging low with ripe persimmons. I used to drive Father crazy by clamoring for those persimmons.

The strange thing was, whenever Father took us to that room he always had us cover our eyes. All I could recall was jumping down into a hole in the earth with the wind whistling through my ears.

“You think Yaichirō would know where it is?”

“Doesn’t sound like it,” replied Yajirō. “He’s searched every nook and cranny in the forest, but apparently he never found any hole like that. Father must have hidden it pretty well.”

Here Yajirō gave a little sigh.

“I wonder if I’ll ever see that room again?”

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An unexpected visitor came to see us on our last day at the zoo.

It had been cloudy all day with the occasional drizzle coming down, and the zoo was deserted. The red smokestack of the meandering choo-choo train and the fun-sized Ferris wheel were both melancholy in the grey haze of the rain. No matter how I flaunted my tanuki charms, very few people were going to stop in front of my cage on a day like today, so with that in mind there really wasn’t any point in making any effort.

As I let out a wide yawn of boredom, a small girl came up to the cage. She was about the size of a kindergartener, and her red umbrella and red wellingtons stood out brilliantly. Showing no interest in either the choo-choo train or the Ferris wheel, she twirled her umbrella round and round as she made a beeline straight for the tanuki cage. She must really have liked tanuki. Poking the umbrella into the cage, she watched wide-eyed as I paraded around proudly. But before long she began to giggle.

“You make such a marvelous tanuki, Yas!”

Startled, I came to a halt.

“If it isn’t Gyokuran,” Yajirō said atop my head. “What brings you here?”

“I heard Yasaburō was filling in here, so I just had to come cheer him on.”

“Not a patch on the regulars, right, Miss Gyokuran?”

“Oh, stop it with the ‘miss’,” she chuckled, with a little wince.

Nanzenji Gyokuran was the younger sister of Shōjirō, the head of the Nanzenji clan. Her precocious intelligence had made her a favorite of Master Akadama’s, back when we were pups studying under the old tengu’s tutelage. Those pupils with the most outstanding grades served as assistants to the Master. Gyokuran and my brother Yaichirō fulfilled their duties admirably, herding around rowdy students in the classroom like sheepdogs. That was why I always called her Miss Gyokuran.

Gyokuran was positively bubbling with excitement for the shogi tournament. She told us she’d just come back from inspecting the tournament venue for the play-in round with her brother Shōjirō.

“You’ll come watch, won’t you, Yas?”

“Eh, we’ll see. I’m not much of a shogi fan,” I yawned.

“After all that work Yaichirō put into reviving it. Don’t be such a wet blanket, I’m sure it’ll be lots of fun!”

“Well of course you’d say that, wouldn’t you.”

Gyokuran had had an infamous reputation as a shogi fanatic ever since she was a kid. The whole Nanzenji clan was into shogi, but Gyokuran was far and away the most obsessed of them all. I’d heard all sorts of whispered rumors about her—how she’d fallen into one of canals leading to Lake Biwa once but just kept on solving her shogi puzzle, how she’d swallowed a piece because she just liked it so much, how she went to sleep every night hugging a shogi board—and I was half-inclined to believe them true. Gyokuran claimed it was all nonsense, but I knew for a fact that she used to force other innocent students to play shogi at school. How did I know that? Because I had been one of the kids running away while she chased us around waving a shogi board shouting, “It’s lots of fun, I promise!” Her overzealous obsession with shogi was precisely what made her an ineffective spokesperson for the game. Most likely it was the disgruntled tanuki she’d used to chase around the schoolyard who were responsible for spreading these rumors.

“I don’t suppose Yaichirō still refuses to play?” she suddenly murmured.

“Won’t go near a board,” said Yajirō gently. “You know that better than anyone.”

“Why won’t he let it go? He’s grown into a fine furball, and yet…”

“Have you said that to him?”

“I...I can’t. I don’t know why, but I just can’t.”

Father had left behind a shogi board in the Tadasu Forest which Yaichirō treasured just as much as he did his automaton rickshaw. It was stored in a paulownia box, and its surface was gouged with a ferocious bite mark. That mark had been left by Yaichirō, who in his rage had transformed into a tiger and savaged the board. In his youth he had been notoriously prone to allowing the blood rush to his head and transforming into a tiger when the game wasn’t going his way. He detested that side of him that would emerge, and that was what led to him quitting shogi. He had been playing against a girl his age when he had gotten so frustrated that he sunk his fangs into the board, and I’m sure the thought of it still stung his pride.

“I’ll see you at the shogi tournament then!” Gyokuran said as she parted from us, making her way through the hazy rain back to the forests of Nanzenji. She twirled her red umbrella as she walked, just like a real girl.

“‘Tis love, furry little love…” murmured Yajirō from atop my head.

“What was that?”

“...Nah, it’s nothing.”

“Being a tease, huh?”

“Even a frog living at the bottom of a well’s got secrets to keep.”

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One night in mid-June, we all went as a family to Nanzenji.

Dense clouds shrouded the sky so not a star could be seen, and a humid breeze was blowing.

Yashirō led the way proudly like a drum major at the head of a marching band, holding aloft a lantern bearing our family crest. We walked along the long walls that stretched around the mansions in the dark neighborhood, until we entered the grounds of Nanzenji, which was teeming with tanuki bearing their own lanterns from all over Kyoto.

Tonight was the night the Nanzenji clan were hosting the Tanuki Shogi Tournament.

Mother looked around the temple appreciatively. “Quite a nice turnout, isn’t it?”

“This tournament hasn’t been held in the many long years since Father’s death, after all,” Yaichirō proclaimed with pride. “But the effort has paid off. Father would be proud.”

“He’ll be even prouder if Yajirō manages to take the prize home,” I declared.

Yajirō squirmed on my shoulder. “I don’t know, I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you.”

“See here, Yajirō, that just won’t do. You must defend the honor of the Shimogamo clan!”

“C’mon, Yaichirō, I didn’t learn to play shogi so I could defend some honor or whatever.”

“You’ll make a fine opponent against Gyokuran!”

“I don’t know,” Yajirō repeated.

“I know you can win,” Mother encouraged him. “But in the end, the match comes down to luck.”

Most of the tanuki gathered at the temple were so hopeless at shogi that they couldn’t tell rooks apart from bishops, so they were really only here for betting and bacchanalia. Beneath the _sanmon _gate, which soared up into the darkness from amidst the pine trees, the owner of the Scarlet Pane on Teramachi Street was discussing betting odds with some companions. These blokes lived for placing bets whenever there was a competition to be had.

As I was walking along I hailed the Scarlet Pane’s owner. “Howdy. Wasn’t expecting a shogi noob like you to turn up here.”

“Ho there, Yasaburō, we’re expecting a good show from you off the board, if’n you catch my meaning,” he shot back cheekily. “That’s what you do, innit, steal the show?”

Just as I was about to make my retort, Yashirō waved his lantern and shouted, “Mr. Yasaka’s here!”

With a modest fanfare of trumpets, the tanuki of Yasaka entered Nanzenji. As always, the Trick Magister was wearing his trademark Hawaiian shirt. Seeing us there beneath the sanmon gate he veered towards us, slapping Yaichirō heartily on the shoulder.

“Yaichirō! You did great, bringing back tanuki shogi!”

All through the spring Yasaka Heitarō had been getting ready for his retirement, incrementally heaping his Trick Magister duties one by one on Yaichirō instead. “I hardly have time to close my eyes!” Yaichirō was always grumbling, yet in spite of his complaints he could always be seen downing some dodgy energy drink procured in Shinkyōgoku and zooming about the city like he’d been born to do this.

Yasaka Heitarō addressed Yajirō, who was squatting on my shoulder. “And look who made it through the play-ins! Who’da thunk it, eh, that you were so good at shogi!”

“Father did teach me well. And besides, it’s not like I had anything better to do down there in the well.”

“Ha, I’ll bet shogi wasn’t the only thing Sō taught you, eh? Me too. When we were kids, it was tsuchinoko hunting, and once we grew up it was all about shogi and booze and Hawaii. Sure, we were always dead broke back then, but I wouldn’t have traded it for nothing. Sō was always good at everything, ya know?”

Mother snickered. “And you, Heitarō, you were always such a klutz!”

“Now c’mon, isn’t that a little much?”

“Well, you may be a klutz, but I think it’s marvelous that you’re always enjoying yourself.”

“I just can’t win with you, can I?” chortled the Trick Magister, quivering with mirth.

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Nestled in the bosom of the mountains of Higashiyama, Nanzenji is an ancient temple of the Sōtō Zen school.

The Nanzenji clan claims as its turf the forests stretching from Nanzenji to Keage. About eighty years ago, Sakata Sankichi, a shogi player from Osaka, played a match in one of the halls at Nanzenji against another player who had traveled there from Tokyo. This game is popularly known as the Showdown at Nanzenji. Sakata, who had kept a low profile for some years, shocked the shogi world with the bold opening of pushing up his right-side pawn.¹ The story was famous enough that even I, a shogi greenhorn, had heard it before. The fearsome battle went on for seven days, as the tanuki of Nanzenji looked on from the sidelines in awe. The story about the three Nanzenji brothers having been taught shogi by Sakata Sankichi himself was farfetched at best, but it seemed apparent that the Showdown at Nanzenji had awakened the Nanzenji clan’s passion for shogi. From then on the clan had poured themselves into the game, spending a great deal of time and energy proselytizing amongst the rest of the tanuki community. It had been the previous of the Nanzenji who had taught the game to Father in his youth.

Following the directions of the tanuki of Nanzenji, the crowd moved off across the temple grounds, holding their lanterns high.

Passing beneath the Suirokaku aqueduct looming up in the darkness, and ascending a stone staircase, we could hear the sound of water rushing through the canals from Lake Biwa. Here in the shadow of Higashiyama the air was so doleful that it took your breath away. As the parade of lanterns passed through a dim copse of cedars it looked down upon the garden of Nanzen-in. I heard the chortling of Yasaka Heitarō coming from the head of the column as someone blared a trumpet.

Yaichirō’s eyes darted all around him as he walked. “I don’t see Kinkaku and Ginkaku anywhere.”

The turmoil that capped off the previous year had seen the downfall of Ebisugawa Sōun, who had for many years used his position as owner of the Faux Denki Bran distillery to line his own pockets. Ever since he had absconded with his ill-gotten wealth, his whereabouts had remained unknown, and rumor had it he was relaxing somewhere in a hot springs town.

Kinkaku and Ginkaku, idiot brothers extraordinaire and laughingstocks of the tanuki world, took over for their father. At this point everyone assumed that the long and noble history of Faux Denki Bran was about to gutter out like a candle, when who should come along but Sōun’s daughter Kaisei, who was quite a shrewd businesswoman. Kaisei put her older brothers on a tight leash, and ever since then the idiots could occasionally be spotted on the streets at night, blubbering after getting a scolding.

“I’d think those two are too stupid to be interested in something like shogi.”

“They’re probably still smarting from the drubbing they received in the play-ins. But they did say they were going to play on the main stage. Kaisei supplied the Faux Denki Bran, so we couldn’t just kick the Ebisugawas out of the rest of the tournament.”

“They’ve gotta be up to something. Well, if they want a fight, I’ll give ‘em one!”

“I warn you, Yasaburō, keep the fighting on the board!”

Eventually we came to a clearing in the midst of the forest.

Braziers burned solemnly, illuminating the trees as well as the giant shogi board that had been constructed in the middle of the clearing. This was where tonight’s battle would be fought. The board was surrounded on three sides by tiered spectator seating, in front of which were placed bubbling oden pots, a dizzying assortment of onigiri, and giant Faux Denki Bran bottles galore—a display which was guaranteed to get every tanuki in attendance drooling.

Nanzenji Shōjirō, head of the Nanzenji clan and older brother of Gyokuran, came to the front, dressed in traditional robes.

“Esteemed guests, thank you for coming tonight to the Nanzenji Tanuki Shogi Tournament. Since the death of Shimogamo Sōichirō, this tournament has regrettably lain dormant, and it was only with your generous support that tonight we have been able to hold it once more. It is my sincere hope that this tournament will continue to thrive for many years to come. I would also like to acknowledge and thank Kaisei of the Ebisugawa clan, for her generous contribution to tonight’s proceedings.”

“Hurrah for tanuki shogi! Hurrah for Faux Denki Bran!” shouted the tanuki, many of whom were already a glass in.

Almost as if they had been waiting for that burst of applause, a line of black-clad English gentlemen came parading in holding their lanterns high. Visible on the lanterns was the name “Ebisugawa”. Wearing a vulgar golden top hat, Kinkaku basked in the cheers of “Hurrah for Faux Denki Bran!” with a smug, self-satisfied expression on his face. Behind him was Ginkaku, wearing a silver top hat and looking just as pleased.

“Thank you, one and all, I’m Kinkaku!”

“Thank you, I’m Ginkaku!”

“Kinka-who?” I hooted, eliciting a general roar of laughter that rustled the leaves.

Kinkaku glared at me, pouting. He and Ginkaku both stuck out their tongues at me, so I promptly returned the favor.

Tanuki shogi, as played in Nanzenji, was the invention of the former head of the Nanzenji in collaboration with Father. It did follow the same rules as human shogi, but the difference was that the giant pieces were all played by shapeshifted tanuki. The opposing players sat atop their respective king pieces, and whenever they made a move on the normal-sized boards beside them, the tanuki-pieces on the giant board dutifully moved to follow. Was it a sight to behold? Sure. Was it also incredibly silly? You bet.

Nanzenji Shōjirō read out the names of the two players who had come through the preliminaries.

“Representing the West: Nanzenji Gyokuran.”

Gyokuran stepped forward, dressed in a resplendent kimono, and bowed to the audience.

“Representing the East: Shimogamo Yajirō.”

At Shōjirō’s cue, I cupped my hands and lifted Yajirō high into the air.

“Lookit, it’s Beauty and the Frog!” someone yelled, to another burst of laughter.

Mother and Yashirō heaped up their plates high with oden and went up to sit in the stands. Yaichirō and I placed Yajirō up on a cushion and carried him up to the top of the king.

“Just relax and take it slow,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.

“The honor of the clan is at stake. Don’t let us down!” insisted Yaichirō.

“Would you two make up your minds?” Yajirō rolled his eyes.

While we were arguing, Gyokuran came over from the other side of the board. “Good evening, Yaichirō.”

Yaichirō stood there unnaturally stiffly. “Good evening, Gyokuran.”

“I want to thank you for all the work you’ve put into this shogi tournament. This day wouldn’t have happened without you.”

“There’s no need to thank me. The relief is assuredly mutual.”

Gyokuran smiled down at Yajirō. “Don’t expect me to go easy on you, Yajirō.”

As he watched her return to her side, Yajirō said, “She’s awful disappointed that you’re not playing, Yaichirō.”

“I’m a novice, I wouldn’t have made it through the play-in round. I‘d hardly be worthy to play an opponent such as Gyokuran.”

In between keeping naughty students in line, Yaichirō and Gyokuran had often faced off across the shogi board when they were pupils of Master Akadama. Though they started off learning together, as they grew older the gap in their skills grew more and more apparent.

It was Gyokuran who had smashed Yaichirō’s pride into smithereens, provoking him to leave those tooth marks in Father’s shogi board.