Chapter 1 — The Heir Returns (Part 3)

It was in mid-May, about two weeks after the Heir’s return, that Master Akadama finally found out what was going on.

Given that he had been cooped up in his apartment this whole time, it could only have been one of his old tengu friends who had clued him in. When I heard that Konkobu of Iwayasan had been seen leaving the Demachi shopping arcade carrying a large bottle with a mizuhiki indicating gratitude wrapped around the neck, I knew that the time had finally come. Fearing the worst I ventured to the Master’s apartment, but when I got there he was already gone.

Following this the Master disappeared from Kyoto. “‘e’s done a runner!” some of the more excitable tanuki claimed. “Didn’t have the guts to square up to his son, no doubt!” But his former students, myself included, countered that Master Akadama would never do such a thing.

Our former teacher, having lost the ability to soar the skies as he pleased some years back, no longer retained any of his old tengu strength. What he had retained was selfishness, lechery, and his domineering arrogance: in short, all the worst traits of a tengu. In spite of that, he had still hung onto his tengu pride, and that in spades; he’d rather be crushed to death by a giant block of freeze-dried tofu than let some tanuki upstarts snigger about him behind his back.

“The Master’ll be back!” his disciples insisted.

Not more than a few days had passed when a tanuki appeared claiming he had seen the Master skulking around Kumogahata. Kumogahata, in the north of Kyoto, lies upstream on the Kamo River, deep in the cedars of Kitayamasugi far from the city streets, and has been the domain of Konkobu of Iwayasan since antiquity. It is far removed from the earthly affairs of man and tanuki, and seeing that he had chosen such a lofty place in which to seclude himself we disciples believed that we were about to see the Master get serious. There was no doubt in our minds that our great teacher was shaking off the dust that had accumulated over his years of seclusion, and sharpening mind and body once more in preparation to meet the Heir head on.

“That’s Master Akadama for you. Even in his old age, he’s still Yakushibō of Nyoigadake!”

It was looking as if the Master’s name might finally be on the up-and-up again in the tanuki world.

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To show my support I decided to bring some mamemochi to the Master up there in his training camp. But Kumogahata was a long way away. I thought about borrowing Yaichirō’s automaton rickshaw, but my stingy elder brother was leery of lending it out. He was especially afraid that the Master, in one of his fits of pique, might carelessly blow it to smithereens. I resigned myself to laboriously pedaling my bike up the long, tortuous route, but it was so far that I soon grew weary. Countless times I considered turning back and eating all the mochi by myself.

Gritting my teeth, I finally reached the end of the winding mountain road. Given that it was a tengu training site, I had been expecting the valley to echo with the din of battle, but the hamlet of Kumogahata was the very picture of tranquility. Bright greenery enveloped the village; blinding summer sunshine fell upon the stone walls and the old primary school. The only sound was the rush of water through the irrigation canals. Here it felt like time slowly oozed by like molasses.

I stopped in front of the local ward office to sit and rest in the shade of a tree.

Without warning someone said from above me, “Well, if it isn’t Yasaburō of the Shimogamo clan?”

Startled, I looked up to see perched on the concrete overhang of the ward office an older gentleman wearing a white button-up shirt with a bolo tie, leisurely sipping a Fanta Grape. It was Konkobu of Iwayasan, one of the few Master Akadama could call a friend.

“What a pleasant surprise, Konkobu, sir.”

“You’re here to see Yakushibō, I expect?”

“I had nothing better to do.”

“Ha! Ha! As kind-hearted as ever, I see. Allow an old man to accompany you? The tengu training ground is just up there.”

I followed Konkobu up the steep stone steps leading to Kōunji. Rather than entering the temple grounds, Konkobu followed a small rivulet that flowed leftward deeper into the mountains. Passing beneath the bright sparkling greenery, further on the rivulet entered a chilly copse of cedar trees, their dark trunks towering up all around me. The serenity of the mountain village faded, replaced with overpowering tengu presence.

A small, sienna-coloured gourd hung at Konkobu’s waist, emitting a light sloshing sound.

“There’s dragonwater in here,” he explained.

The region around Iwayasan Shimyōin is well known as the source of the Kamo River, but in those mountains a number of dragonstones are also embedded in the earth. The water that trickles from these stones is known as dragonwater, and is prized by tengu as an energy supplement. Konkobu was taking some to the Master as a pick-me-up. It would seem that Konkobu wasn’t the slightest bit interested in stopping the looming father-son conflict.

“Tengu aren’t very good at wrapping things up nicely in a bow, you see.”

“If there’s a more stubborn father-son duo out there, I haven’t met them!”

“I do appreciate your concern, I do, but there’s no need for you to wear yourself out trying to patch up their dispute. Just let them be.”

After following a canal along for fifteen minutes, we came to a great number of toppled cedar trees blocking the path: obviously the work of a tengu. Konkobu formed his hands in a sign and muttered an incantation. Immediately the trees rose up and moved aside one after another, like interlocked fingers separating themselves, and opened up a path.

The trail led us to the tengu training ground.

There in the midst of the trees was a field of grass, shaped like a giant’s footprint, and right around where the arch of the foot would be was a massive lone cedar thrusting up into the sky. At the foot of that tree was a familiar looking futon, carried all the way here from that apartment behind the Demachi shopping arcade, and sitting on it was Master Akadama, clutching a daruma to his knees and puffing away at a tengu cigar. If it wasn’t for the trees this scene could have been taking place right there in his apartment.

Taking the gourd of dragonwater from Konkobu, the Master scowled at me. “And what might you be doing here, Yasaburō?”

“I was chasing after a tsuchinoko when I lost my way. Please accept these mamemochi as a gift.”

“Tramping about again…” He must already have been aware that I had been playing dumb in regards to the Heir, but seemed disinterested at this point in venting his spleen on me. “Very well. And how is he?”

“He’s staying at a hotel in Kawaramachi Oike.”

“No doubt thinking of a way to wring my neck while I sleep. Pah, I’d like to see him try!” Master Akadama uncorked the gourd and guzzled down the dragonwater, then wiped his mouth. “Damned fool. I see that he still has not changed, still concerning himself over trifles and straying from the path of wickedness. Yakushibō of Nyoigadake will not run or hide! Cry, havoc! Let slip the dogs of war!”

“He is not the same as he was, Yakushibō,” Konkobu said gently.

Hearing that the Master snorted but said nothing.

When I was a young furball, Master Akadama used to dump all of his disciples in a handbasket and fly up to this training ground, in what he called “extracurricular lessons”. While all of us were frolicking around in the grass, the Master would be up at the tip-top of the cedar smoking a tengu cigar, delighting us by sending smoke rings of all shapes and sizes soaring into the pale blue sky.

It was a real blast from the past seeing that giant cedar again, and I walked a slow circuit around it. It was so tall that I couldn’t see the top. Here and there senjafuda were stuck to the enormous trunk, and in the branches I could see forgotten liquor bottles, ornamented roof tiles, and faded handkerchiefs fluttering in the spring breeze.

On one occasion during my youth, I aroused the Master’s ire to the point that he bound me to the top of the tree as punishment. But at some point he forgot I was there, leaving me to stew up there until Yaichirō came and took me down.

When I brought this memory up to him he claimed that he didn’t remember.

“What do you mean, you don’t remember!? That’s awful!”

“I did the same to your father, and his father before him. I can hardly be expected to remember every time I’ve disciplined a tanuki.”

Eventually Master Akadama got up, shook the gourd, and approached the roots of the cedar. Turning the gourd upside down he poured what remained of the dragonwater into the ground.

“What’s that for, then?” inquired Konkobu.

“This cedar has known me longer than most. What is it to you whether I give it a sip?”

His visage was permeated with the tengu majesty of Yakushibō of Nyoigadake, then, as he poured the dragonwater on the roots. I remembered him as he had been, the lord of Nyoigadake, raining contempt and spittle wheresoever he pleased.

Master Akadama thrust the empty gourd back into Konkobu’s hands, then took out a sealed envelope from his pocket. I immediately assumed that it was a love letter, until I saw it was addressed as a letter of challenge.

“Bring this letter to him. Swear you will fulfill this duty, on your sacred honor.”

I knelt before him. “I, Shimogamo Yasaburō, swear on my honor.”

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I delivered Master Akadama’s challenge to the Heir in the lobby of the hotel in Kawaramachi Oike. Though his father had poured out his heart and soul into this letter, the Heir received it as indifferently as if he was taking a pamphlet on the street, not the slightest hint of emotion showing on his face.

“Perhaps I shall go. Perhaps I shan’t,” he said. “I would rather not have to disappoint anyone.”

In contrast to the Heir’s lack of enthusiasm, the entire tanuki world was fired up at the prospect of a clash of tengu. Would Master Akadama repeat his victory of a hundred years prior and banish his son from Kyoto once more, or would the Heir triumph and usher in a new age? The tanuki world waited with bated breath for the day to arrive.

Tengu are those who look down on all creation from atop the pinnacle of arrogance. They are great because they are tengu, tengu because they are great. From this viewpoint of this unassailable logic, tanuki are mere furballs, humans are unwashed apes, and even other tengu are nothing but paper tigers.

‘Twixt heaven and earth none is worthy but I—such is the tengu way.

That meant both that the father was greater than the son, and that the son was greater than the father.

There was no way this was going to end well.

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The night of the duel, Master Akadama crawled unsteadily up to the roof of the Minami-za. Wearing a headband with his sleeves tied up, he had clearly come intent on doing battle, but given that he was crawling on all fours with his rear end wobbling in the air, he didn’t exactly cut much of a tengu-ish figure. Choosing to hold the duel at the site where he had defeated his son a hundred years earlier had obviously been an ill-advised decision. But persist the Master did, pulling himself up with indomitable fighting spirit until at last he made it to the top.

“To soar the skies as you please, that is the mark of a tengu—oof.” The Master sat himself down and wiped away his sweat, before lighting up a tengu cigar.

Thick plumes of smoke were borne away by the agreeable nighttime breeze. To the east sparkled the festival-like lights of Gion Shijō, and to the west Shijō Bridge and the rest of the city glittered and shined.

From the rooftop of the Kikusui restaurant on the other side of Shijō Avenue, the scrumptious aroma of sizzling meat wafted through the air. The lantern-festooned beer garden on the roof had been reserved in its entirety by the Kurama tengu, who seemed to have declared today “Heckle Yakushibō Day” and were holding festivities to mark the occasion. More likely than not it was just an excuse for them to watch the scuffle between Master Akadama and the Heir from box seats, beer steins in hand. As far as tengu are concerned, battles and bloodshed are nothing more than hors d’oeuvres to go along with drinks.

The Kurama tengu lined up along the guardrail and leaned out over Shijō Avenue, waving fans and megaphones, shouting encouragement.

“Give it your best, Yakushibō!”

“Don’t you worry, we’ll pick up your bones once it’s finished!”

“Yeah, and toss ‘em in the Kamo River so’s you can swim with the fishies!”

Pint glasses smashed, sending foaming beer flying through the air, as the Kurama tengu hooted and jeered.

The Master ground his teeth. “Accursed mountain acorns. I’ll drown them in Lake Biwa one day, mark my words.”

It wasn’t just the Kurama tengu who were dying to see the fight. Hordes of tanuki disguised as human drunkards massed around the Shijō Bridge, eager to see how the confrontation would go down. Even the Trick Magister Yasaka Heitarō was spectating alongside my brother Yaichirō at the end of the bridge. Across the river, Konkobu of Iwayasan was seated alone on the lantern-lit rooftop of the Tōka Saikan, supping on aged rice wine as he waited for his old friend’s fight to conclude.

A dark blob detached itself from the night sky like a drop of ink dripping from a fountain pen. It was the Heir, descending through the air dressed in black from top to toe. He greeted the Master with a frosty tip of his top hat, and then addressed him as stiffly as though he was speaking to a stranger on the street.

“Good evening, sir. What business brings you up here?”

“I am waiting for someone.”

“Indeed? I have a rendezvous here as well.”

“...Who is it that you are waiting for?”

“He is a most disagreeable fellow, hardly worth describing.”

“Humph, quite a coincidence there. The fellow I am waiting for is also most disagreeable.” Master Akadama stubbed out his tengu cigar and wobbled to his feet, his back bent as he glowered at his son for the first time in one hundred years. “He was once my son, and my disciple, but now he is neither. He was but halfway through his training when he was blinded by lust, and turned against me. To think, that rather than choosing to one day follow in my great footsteps, he allowed some strumpet to toy with him and lead him astray from the path of wickedness. For many moons now he has been on the lam, and never popping in for so much as a how-d’ye-do. But now he has come back, and as he is too much a coward to show his face I took the liberty of sending him a challenge. I am of a mind to teach him another lesson when he arrives.”

In the face of Master Akadama’s provocations, the Heir remained calm and collected, and said nothing. Father and son glared at one other, neither moving a muscle.

After a while the Kurama tengu on the opposite rooftop grew impatient and started to jeer.

“Would you hurry it up?”

“Quit wastin’ our time ‘ere!”

“Is youse here to fight, or kiss and make up?”

“Aw, that’s so sweet!”

The Heir raised a leather-gloved hand and doffed his shiny black top hat. He pressed it to his breast, almost as if in prayer, before turning his cold stare on the Kurama tengu, and without the slightest warning he whipped the hat at the beer garden where they were having their leisurely party. Apparently his top hat had been made from a melted down artillery shell from World War I, because the instant it struck a table it pulverized it with an almighty crash, leaving the Kurama tengu speechless.

The Heir faced the Master once more, meticulously primping his hair. “Teach him another lesson, you say. Why, I’d like to see you try.”

“Have at you then, you whippersnapper!”

Master Akadama reached into the folds of his robe, and when he pulled his hand out again he was holding the Fūjin Raijin fan.

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The Fūjin Raijin fan is an incomparably powerful artifact; wave it facing the one side and it stirs up a powerful whirlwind; wave it facing the other and it will call up a thunderstorm. It was once counted among the Seven Treasures of Yakushibō of Nyoigadake, and yet was treated so very carelessly. Tengu and tanuki alike tutted with disapproval when he presented it to Benten as a “token of love”, but last year after a series of twists and turns it had finally made its way back into his possession.

In his current state the Master did not have the strength to call up a tengu gale. At best he might be able to muster a breeze that lightly ruffled the Heir’s hair like a zephyr passing over a field of lotus flowers. But with the Fūjin Raijin fan, even in his twilight the Master was capable of blowing the Minami-za off its foundations.

“Behold!” the Master thundered, raising the fan high above his head.

But as his hand was on its way up the fan slipped out of his grasp and went spiraling through the air towards the Kamo River. It may have been powerful, but unless someone waved it it wasn’t a lick of use. Reaching for the fan, Master Akadama’s hand closed on air, and losing his balance he went tumbling head first onto the tiles, as the fan rolled away from him.

Both the Fūjin Raijin fan as well as my mentor were on the brink of peril. I sprang forth from the shadows across the rooftop, catching the fan and stuffing it into my pocket before stopping Master Akadama from rolling any further.

Without a word Master Akadama rose to his feet, then sat down with his legs crossed beside me. He’d hit his nose quite hard, and he applied pressure to it with tears in his eyes, but otherwise he seemed unharmed.

The Heir’s voice rang out sternly from above us. “Is that Yasaburō down there?”

Out at the edge of the roof I knelt to the floor. “Shimogamo Yasaburō, at your service.”

“And what might Shimogamo Yasaburō be doing here?”

“...You might call it my fool’s blood talking.”

“Riding to the rescue, then,” the Heir sighed. “How foolish you tanuki are. Charming little creatures, I will grant, but foolish nonetheless.”

“If you will permit me, that is a very tengu-like thing to say.”

“I am not a tengu. What is a tengu? A miserable little pile of feathers!” He indicated the Master with his chin. “Look how he prides himself on his powers, how he struts and gives himself airs. Yet where were those powers when the Kurama took his domain, when he was banished to a muck-strewn human domicile? He may think himself great, as I am sure he does, but he is naught but an emperor without clothes. He cannot call up a tengu gale, he cannot fly, what is he capable of doing? His is a truly meaningless, farcical fate. But that is what it means to be a tengu, and this is a tengu’s end. Truly, I say, this is pathetic to witness. To cling to life, relying on the charity of a tanuki, of all things…”

The Heir’s handsome countenance became stony, and his eyes coldly regarded Master Akadama below.

“For shame, sir. For shame.”

The Heir’s words seemed to have struck a nerve, for Master Akadama staggered to his feet and thrust me aside, attempting to crawl up to the top of the roof. Each time his strength faltered and he slipped down a little ways, he would somehow manage to regain his footing and resume his advance back up towards the Heir.

The Master shook his white mane wildly, his breath coming in ragged gasps. “You just wait. I’ll hurl you...down...again!”

His father struggling to climb up the roof; me, looking on in apprehension; the great unwashed masses writhing in the city below: the Heir looked haughtily over it all. His icy gaze spoke volumes, and what it said was this: ‘Twixt heaven and earth none is worthy but I. The Heir claimed that he was not a tengu, and yet I was mesmerized by that glimpse of his brilliant tengu inner light.

A thin smile came to his pallid cheeks. “Still you cling to life, father?”

Through gritted teeth Master Akadama choked out, “Come kill me yourself, if you wish it so!”

The Heir snorted. “That would hardly be worth the effort. You may die in whatever manner you see fit.”

Without waiting for the Master to crawl all the way up, the Heir sprang from the roof. Soaring easily over the Kamo River, he paused at the roof of the Tōka Saikan to give a polite nod to Konkobu of Iwayasan who sat there sipping his rice wine, before he floated off into the twinkling lights of the city and was gone.

Master Akadama silently watched him go, his mouth agape.

And thus did the curtain fall on the tengu duel.

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“Running away again, the pathetic cur.”

Master Akadama sat cross-legged at the midpoint of the roof, serenely smoking a cigar like he had just put in a good day’s work. I sat down beside him, toying with the Fūjin Raijin fan and looking out at the bright lights into which the Heir had made his exit.

After a long time the Master muttered incredulously, “By thunder, you do make the most unexpected appearances.”

“I do like to take people by surprise.”

“Well?” the Master asked, poking me in the side. “A glorious victory, was it not?”

“...Er, how do you figure that one?”

“Pah, I can see there’s no sense in speaking of it to you.”

The Master took a pleasurable draw on his cigar and gazed down at the Kamo River flowing southward. The wooden riverside terraces were already being set up in anticipation of the summer, and lights shimmered dreamily on the river’s surface. It was exactly the kind of opulent nightscape where you’d expect to see Benten living it up.

The Master seemed to have had that exact same thought. Looking down at the river, he murmured, “Where is Benten now, and what might she be doing?”

“Once she returns—I’m sure there’ll be no shortage of excitement.”

“She should have been here, this night.” The Master looked up at the moon hanging in the sky, and murmured, his voice hardly louder than a sigh, “How I long for Benten. Oh, how I long for her so.”