Chapter 5 — Arima Hell (Part 1)

Since ancient times, tanuki and hot springs have gone hand in hand.

When I was a young furball, an Arima hot springs craze was sweeping the tanuki world, and hordes of tanuki descended upon the town. Located at the foot of Mount Rokkō, the Arima hot springs have been steaming since the time of the Nihon Shoki, and its fame is such that even Toyotomi Hideyoshi is said to have immersed himself in its waters.

On one occasion, Yasaka Heitarō had been so enamoured by the hot springs that he locked himself in his room at the inn and refused to return to Kyoto. Each of the tanuki sent to fetch him in turn became enraptured by the coiling steam, and for a time it seemed as if every tanuki in Kyoto would be sucked into Arima. It was Father who charged alone into Arima to bring them all back. Upon their return, the steam that they brought back with them engulfed the whole city, and thus the Arima hot springs became renowned within Kyoto.

When Father came back to the Tadasu Forest he was almost unpleasantly steamy. Under the noble pretense of bringing back Heitarō and all the other tanuki, he seemed to have enjoyed a leisurely soak at Arima himself.

Master Akadama stopped by the Tadasu Forest that day, and upon seeing Father’s glowing face, snorted, “You’ve been to a hot spring, Sōichirō.”

“Indeed. It was a most agreeable experience.”

“Impertinent rascal.”

“I take it you don’t hold with hot springs?”

“Soaking in such a thing would only turn me into a fool!”

Hot springs really are foolish things: floating atop the water like a great hairy bubble, feeling the rising steam meld into your tanuki being, lured towards a state of nirvana in those inexhaustible waters. We tanuki have nothing but reverence for this uncommonly splendid pastime.

Ah, if Paradise is real, it must be a hot spring.

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In mid-October, I headed to the Arima hot springs in search of the missing Professor Yodogawa.

At the end of August Professor Yodogawa had taken a leave of absence from his lab in Imadegawa and set up camp at a research station in the mountains of Hanase. This research station was in a simple prefabricated hut in the pristine forests, with neither electricity nor gas nor running water. For assistance the professor could only count on Suzuki, one of his grad students. Each time I visited them I found that they had cast off a little bit more of the trappings of civilization, until one day I found them sharpening bamboo spears in order to do battle with the wild boars. The two were like pioneers living off the land, setting up stakes on this untamed frontier.

Professor Yodogawa explained the situation while heating bamboo leaves over a gas range.

“The associate professor’s staged a coup, wouldn’t you know! And so I find myself banished from the lab.”

After returning in August from an expedition to Indonesia with a mountain of grotesque and exotic specimens in tow, the professor had been abruptly summoned before department HR to explain a sexual harassment claim of which he had no knowledge whatsoever. The accusation was a house of cards built on unproven facts and unfounded speculation, but for whatever reason he was denied a chance to defend himself, and almost immediately after the department chair and vice-chair came to visit the lab.

“We’d prefer to keep this all hush-hush. Why don’t you take your research off to Hanase, until the heat dies down?” mumbled the vice-chair, clearly avoiding the professor’s gaze.

It was then that the lightbulb switched on inside the professor’s head. “It’s a conspiracy!”

Suzuki, the grad student, testified to us that while Professor Yodogawa had been away in Indonesia, a shifty red-shirted man (“Like, shiftiness personified!”) who identified himself only as a representative from the Friday Fellows had paid a visit to the assistant professor, accompanied by the department chairs; their closed-door discussions had lasted nearly half the day. It was pretty obvious that the red-shirted man had been none other than Tenmaya, secretly dispatched by the Friday Fellows.

“Those Friday Fellows and their tricks. Ooh, it’s tough being a grown-up, I tell you!”

“So you’re just gonna put up the white flag?”

“Whatever do you mean? I’ll do whatever it takes to protect tanuki from the stewpot. The Thursday Fellows are here to stay!”

At a glance it was easy to see that Professor Yodogawa’s exile, far from being a punishment, had only fired him up even more; in September the professor crashed a gathering of the Friday Fellows at the Tsukiyama ryōtei in Maruyama Park, scattering flyers and shouting, “Tanuki meat is murder!” Not content with that, he even visited each of the Friday Fellows door to door, preaching his love for tanuki. The Friday Fellows’ scheme had fallen flat.

Then came that morning in October.

I hadn’t visited the forest in Hanase in some time, and when I arrived at the hut the professor wasn’t there. I was sipping a cup of bamboo leaf tea and waiting for his return, watching the autumn sunshine glimmer golden on the waving pampas grass, when Suzuki appeared from the depths of the forest carrying a bow and arrows, with a mountain pheasant swinging from his hand. According to him, the shifty red-shirted man had visited this morning and taken Professor Yodogawa away.

“The professor left a message for you, saying the Friday Fellows would be at Arima hot springs tonight.”

And so I set off for Arima hot springs to rescue the professor.

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I caught the Hankyu train at Kawaramachi and rode it down to Sannomiya, then transferred to the private Kobe Electric Railway the rest of the way to Arima.

After exiting the ticket barriers at Arima Station, I followed the Arima River where concrete hotels loomed above the dusky ravine like a row of battleships. Rising up majestically on the mountaintop to my left was the Arima Hyōe Kōyōkaku, where Yasaka Heitarō and his fellows had once shut themselves up.

The leaves were beginning to change their hue, and soon it would be the season to fully appreciate the wonders of the hot spring. In a corner of town near souvenir shops and a bus station was a building whose sign advertised a hot spring reservation agency, and on the ivy-entwined second floor of this building was an old-fashioned ice cream parlor. I sat by the window, sipping a milkshake looking through the strands of ivy over the town.

The Friday Fellows eat tanuki stew at the end of the year. It was already October, and by now their preparations must have been seriously under way. They’d attempted to beat Professor Yodogawa into submission to save themselves from having to look over their shoulders, but that had only made things worse. It wasn’t unthinkable that they would change tack and try a new sunshine policy to turn his rebellious bones into jelly: pickling him in a luxurious hot spring; feeding him to bursting with the rarest of epicurean delights; softening him into submission with the whispered seductions of a ravishing beauty. If that was their game, they’d definitely come to the right place.

I silently willed the professor to be strong.

At that precise moment, I fancied I heard someone quietly call my name.

I jerked my head up and looked around, but there were no other customers besides me. The owner was idly keeping one eye on the old CRT behind the counter, which was displaying the rain forecast for the Kinki region.

Suddenly the sugar bowl on my table quivered slightly and whispered, “Hey, dumbass!”

I didn’t remember ever having picked a fight with a sugar bowl before. “What’d you say to me?” I hissed, going to prod it.

“Hands off, doofus!” squeaked the sugar bowl.

“What’re you doing here?”

“I can be wherever I want, whenever I want!” As always, Kaisei was raring for a fight. “What’s it to ya, anyways?”

“We’re in Arima!”

“Yeah, you don’t say!?”

After Ebisugawa Sōun absconded from Kyoto, the management of the Faux Denki Bran distillery had fallen to Kaisei, who found her new responsibilities quite difficult to manage. Filled with worry seeing how her once proudly immaculate fur was now constantly bedraggled, Kinkaku and Ginkaku racked their nonexistent brains and settled on renting lodgings in Arima in order for her to take a break. It was really their uselessness that was causing Kaisei so much trouble in the first place, but their unexpected display of concern almost moved her to tears. So, for the first time in a long time, Kaisei got to take a breather, and came with her brothers to Arima. Kinkaku and Ginkaku had been imbibing in a hot spring and soon drank themselves under the table, so Kaisei was left to wander the streets by herself.

“Unlike some people, I don’t get to treat every day like it’s a vacation!”

“I’m not here to mess around, either! I came to stop the Friday Fellows and their evil plan!”

“Well it sure _sounds _like you’re here to mess around,” she said rudely. “So you came all the way out here to Arima to throw yourself in a stewpot, is that it?”

“I know the difference between stewpots and hot springs!”

“I mean, it’s going to happen sooner or later, I bet. You’re gonna be like, ‘Oh wow, this hot spring is great!’ And then next thing you know you’re swimming in a bunch of cabbage, because you’re so dumb!”

“C’mon, that’s messed up, even for you.”

“I bet you’re just here to ogle that half-baked tengu, anyways,” snorted Kaisei. “I can’t believe you’re here making googly eyes at someone who eats tanuki stew. There’s gotta be something wrong with you upstairs. Ugh, I’m so annoyed. If only the Heir had finished her off, it would have saved everyone so much trouble…”

“Watch your mouth. Benten’s here in Arima, too.”

Ever since the night of the Gozan no Okuribi, Benten had avoided contact with the Heir. She was clearly fascinated by him, but even I wasn’t so foolish as to point that out to her face. With Benten, there were two types of anger—one that you could poke at and manage to get away with, and one that you absolutely, positively did not want to get anywhere near—and as a tanuki who frequented her acquaintance, knowing the difference between them was life and death. Her issue with the Heir was most definitely one of the latter.

Continuing to brood over the town, I eventually spotted Benten loitering in the streets. She was perusing the old souvenir shops on the other side of the road like a beautiful butterfly flitting between flowers. Looking at her in her yukata drinking mouthfuls of _Teppō-sui _cider directly from a bottle, I could almost smell the steamy water rising from her exposed neckline. She was just so perfect. It wasn’t only the surrounding Friday Fellows whom she knocked dead with her insolent beauty; all the passersby in the streets stopped and stared, and everywhere she went she left a pile of bodies in her wake.

I stood up with force. “I’m going. Don’t follow me.”

“How about you don’t tell me what to do!” Kaisei snapped back.

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I went down the stairs into the streets, and began to tail the Friday Fellows.

They seemed to be going wherever Benten’s fancy led them, following her even when she meandered into some residential back alley for no apparent reason, laughing all the while. I followed them along a stone wall with crape myrtles peeking over the top, peered at the scowling demon-faced roof tiles at Onsen-dera, traipsed up and down golden-hued mineral encrusted stone steps until I lost all sense of where I was.

The Arima hot springs are nestled within the mountains, and crisscrossed by narrow winding paths like a labyrinth. The little alleys that threaded the houses were already enshrouded in darkness, and it felt like even a single block in this tiny village contained countless trails threading into the mountains. Pools of silver and gold were hidden all over this maze, sending up lazy clouds of steam into the autumn afternoon.

The Friday Fellows entered a narrow street lined with wooden two-story houses, where they looked at tansan-senbei and bamboo knick-knacks. I was looking on from my hiding spot by a shop that sold tsukudani, when Kaisei whispered from within the red postbox in front of me, “These guys sure are taking their time.”

“You just go back to your inn already!”

“In a little bit.”

Four men milled around Benten as she picked out some tansen-senbei. The macho one who wouldn’t have looked out of a place riding a horse on the steppes was Bishamon, the hotelier; the droopy-faced one was Ebisu, who was on the board of a bank in Osaka; the young one squinting into the streets was Daikoku, the proprietor of a traditional ​ryōtei​ called Chitoseya in Pontochō; and the one who kept excitedly recommending crackers to Benten was Fukurokuju, the president of a health foods company.

“I don’t see Jurōjin anywhere.”

“Who’s that?”

“He’s the head honcho of the Friday Fellows, and if you cross him, you’ll find yourself going to hell in a handbasket. Even Benten defers to him, so you can bet he’s not your average schmo.”

“Jealous much?” Kaisei smirked.

After purchasing a considerable amount of tansan-senbei, the Friday Fellows resumed their walkabout around town. It was the men who carried all the souvenirs, while Benten strode along in front.

The party made their way up a plateau deeper in the village, where the bustle of the hot springs receded. I looked down at the intricate network of tiled roofs and drying racks of the houses below, and beyond that I saw the line of concrete hotels along the Arima River, their illuminations flickering on in the falling dusk like the lights of a distant town.

The Friday Fellows arrived at their destination, a complex that resembled an abandoned sanatorium. Through the large gate was a three-story building that sort of looked like a city hall. Yet the grass grew freely all over the path, and the bushes around the entrance had been abandoned to their own devices. All was darkness beyond the glass doors, and not a single light glimmered anywhere in the building.

Chatting happily amongst themselves, the Friday Fellows passed through the doorway.

“Don’t tell me you’re actually thinking about going in there?” Kaisei objected from behind me.

“You go back to your inn, warm your butt up and take it easy,” I told her.

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I hid in the thicket in front of the entrance and made sure the coast was clear before opening the door and slipping inside.

Faded green slippers were scattered throughout the lobby, and the dim space smelled strongly of dust and mold. On my right was a ruined reception desk, and on my left were a couple of discolored sofas facing a CRT television. It was all such a desolate sight.

Going to the end of the lobby and turning right I found a long hallway. I followed it all the way down to a slightly ajar door that said Banquet Hall, light oozing through the crack.

I shapeshifted into a small mouse and ever so cautiously squeezed inside.

The room was so huge it could have accommodated a whale turning over in its sleep. The window at the other end was covered with a dark maroon curtain. In the middle of that slick, immense floor was a dark folding screen, in front of which a single candle on a stand was burning. A large man wearing a yukata was sitting on the ground, his back turned to me, drinking wine from a gourd.

The man suddenly turned, and looking directly at me called, “Yasaburō? Come, come.”

The moment I saw his face I felt a horrible wrench in my stomach, for you see, that man looked exactly like the human form my father had used to take. Forgetting that I was a mouse, I stood up on my hind legs, frozen to the spot.

“How long it has been!” laughed the man, waving the gourd.

I turned back into a human and studied the man’s face closely in the flickering light.

“…Who are you?”

“Your very own father, of course. Surely you have not forgotten my face?”

What was strange was that I couldn’t detect the faintest whiff of Father’s scent. I suddenly recalled what had happened after Yasaka Heitarō and the other tanuki had come back from his long stay at Arima. Having soaked in these hot springs for such a long time, their fur was so slick and so shiny that they had completely lost their tanuki scent. For a tanuki, losing your scent is like losing your ID card. The other tanuki shunned them, finding their ghostly lack of scent unnerving, and so until their scents returned Yasaka and the rest found life rather mortifying.

There was only one tanuki in the world who had been soaking in hot springs long enough to lose his scent and had also known Father well enough in life to imitate his shape. I glared at my father’s impostor and growled, “So this is where you’ve been hiding, Sōun!”

“Seen through it, have you? Well done!” The impostor chuckled waspishly, pouring wine from the gourd into a sake cup and offering it to me. “Have a drink.”

I approached and took the glass, then dumped it on the floor in front of him.

Sōun sneered, then turned back to face the folding screen.

In the flickering light of the candle, I could see without a doubt that the folding screen was the same diptych of hell I had observed in Ayameike’s house. From a distance the surface looked entirely black, but if I squinted I could make out the crimson hellfires in that abyss, which I could have sworn seemed to be moving, and if I listened close I could make out the agonizing cries of the damned and the whistling blades of the demons who pursued them.

“Leave it to Jurōjin to have such a ghastly picture in his collection,” drawled Sōun. “You can almost feel the hot winds of hell on your face, can you not?”

As Sōun gazed at the diptych, I stood behind him, waiting for an opportunity to pounce.

This was the villain, the tanuki who had teamed up with the Kurama tengu and Benten to push Father into the Friday Fellows’ stewpot. I’d heard rumors that he was frittering away his Faux Denki Bran fortune on a grand tour of hot spring towns, and it was a stroke of luck that I’d found him here. I’d drag him back to Kyoto and force him to sit for three days and nights before Father’s grave, before shaving the fur from his tail and tossing him in the Kamo River.

But Sōun didn’t particularly seem to notice my anger. He poured himself another drink from the gourd, murmured, “A toast!” and downed a large gulp.

“The traitor Hotei has been expelled, and a seat has opened up in the Friday Fellows. Tonight, a new member will be welcomed into their number. Do you know who that member is?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

Sōun glanced at me and sniggered. “No? Why, it is me, Ebisugawa Sōun.”

I was aghast. Somewhere a foul wind began to blow.

“So you’re a tanuki who wants to eat tanuki? That’s got to be the worst joke I’ve ever heard!”

“What is it to me? I have cast aside my tanuki identity,” Sōun spat. “And as for who drove me to this decision—why, surely you are aware.”

Without warning he reached out and snuffed out the candle.

The vast banquet hall was plunged into darkness, and I jumped back to gain some space. I strained every one of my senses to try and feel him out, but the hot springs of Arima had erased his scent, and making use of that he melted completely into the darkness. I could hear his voice in the stifling darkness; one moment it would sound far away only to swoop right up beside me in the next. A ghastly dread swept over me.

“My illustrious brother spent his entire life closing off paths to me, bullying me around, pushing me out of the tanuki world. And now, I do what I must to survive in this terra incognita.”

“Enough with your crap. You’re the one who killed Father!”

“One day you will understand, Yasaburō,” Ebisugawa Sōun chuckled in the darkness. “You are all headed down the same path as me.”

I pounced towards his voice, but my fingers grasped only empty air.

That foul wind continued to blow in the darkness, and the next thing I knew I was face to face with the diptych of hell. The candle was extinguished, yet I could still see those red tongues of flame licking on the paper, and even hear their low roar. The wind that rushed out from that world of heat and iron almost took my breath away.

“Shall I give you a taste of hell?” Sōun suddenly whispered right next to my ear, giving me a shove in the back.

I put out my arms to brace myself against the diptych, but my hands felt nothing, and in fact went right through into the darkness. Before I had a chance to even register my surprise, I found myself falling into the screen. The last thing I saw as I began to tumble were the red flames of hell rising to swallow me up.