Chapter 5 — Father's Final Farewell (Part 1)

As long as one draws breath, there is no escaping farewells.

This is true for humans as it is true for tengu and tanuki.

There are many types of farewells. Sometimes farewells are sad, and sometimes they are joyful, felicitous affairs. Some say farewell with great fanfares and feasting, and some say farewell alone, having no one to see them off. There are long farewells, and short farewells. It is quite common to see someone say farewell, only to slink back shortly after, looking thoroughly chagrined. On the other hand, some say farewell professing that they will only be gone a short while, and do not return for a long, long time. And lastly, there is the type of farewell from which there is no return at all, the kind that happens only once in a person’s life.

When I was a newborn trundling around the Tadasu Forest, Father said short farewells. Shimogamo Sōichirō was a great tanuki, the leader of the tanuki world, and he was exceedingly busy. He frequently made trips, saying goodbye to the forest where we all waited for his return. Because of this, it was very difficult for us to come to terms with the fact that the farewell that winter when he went into the stew at that year-end party was a final farewell.

When our father said farewell to this world, his great bloodline was split into four.

Yaichirō inherited only the sense of responsibility, Yajirō inherited only the lightheartedness, Yashirō inherited only the innocence, and I inherited only the foolishness. The only things that held us wholly dissimilar brothers together were Mother’s love, deeper and more boundless than the sea, and the farewell of our great Father.

Sometimes a single, enormous farewell can bring together those left behind.

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With the entrance of December the last leaves fell from the roadside trees.

Even tanuki shiver their butts off in the Kyōto winter, and there’s no point whatsoever in teasing us just because we happen to have fur. Seeking to escape the cold that was creeping up into the rest of my body, I took refuge in a café on Shimogamo Boulevard, dozing off cosily by the side of a daruma stove. I was, of course, in the form of the Unkempt Undergrad. Every so often I opened my eyes and looked out the broad glass window at the winter sunshine, as the mood struck me. Though the days only continued to get more frigid, I counted my blessings for being able to welcome in the winter months with my family here in Kyōto.

After the Gozan no Okuribi I had left Kyōto and made my living in Ōsaka for a time, on account of having incurred the wrath of Benten. While in hiding I had snuck into Kyōto on several occasions, though it took three months for the residual heat to finally die down. At the end of November, I accompanied Benten to Arashiyama at dawn to view the autumn leaves. Cackling wildly, she sent the leaves whirling and scattering, while I dutifully did what I was told and gathered them up into a cloth wrapping. Thanks to Benten’s handiwork, all the leaves in Arashiyama fell in a single night. Perhaps because of this great act of mischief, she seemed to have shaken her autumn blues. Because of that I was able to move out of my hideout at the used camera store in Ōsaka and make my triumphant return to Kyōto.

The tanuki I met on the street offered words of congratulations severally, and no matter where I went I was greeted with bouquets and tears of joy. The news of the return of “Yasaburō the Fleet” spread quickly through the tanuki world. When I went to say hello at the Scarlet Pane on Teramachi Street, the bartender said, “And here I thought you’d been made into stew and etten long since!” Then he added, “Not that there’s much difference, mind you, as I expect you’ll be et sooner or later.”

“That’s not a very nice thing to say…”

“Drink up while you can, then, and think on how good it is to be alive.”

Back in the café, I fell fast asleep.

I was hardly just whiling away the days, though. I was set on finding the Fūjin Raijin fan I had lost during the Okuribi and presenting it back to Benten. Every day I prowled the west bank of the Kamo River, burrowing into empty houses, crawling through thickets, wandering the grounds of Goryō Shrine, and devoting all my time to the search, with nothing to show for it. Having spent the entire day in this manner, I was now in the café doing a post-mortem.

As I listened to the soft crackling of the stove, the glass door opened, and a small boy entered the café. His countenance was sparkling, like Kobayashi¹ of the Boy Detectives Club. I attempted to shrink down into my seat, but his sharp gaze found me, and at once he ran up.

“Yasaburō!” sobbed Yashirō. “Help me!”

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All of us brothers studied under the tutelage of Master Akadama. “Master Akadama” is only a nickname; his real name is Yakushibō of Nyoigatake. Having hurt his back, he was chased out from his stronghold of Nyoigatake by the Kurama tengu, and withdrawing even from his tanuki lectures he holed up in the Masugata Court Apartments behind the Demachi arcade: a thoroughly sulky, ill-tempered tengu from beginning to end.

To be sure, Master Akadama had more than his share of mortification.

His once-mighty powers had allowed him to soar the skies, but now they had diminished to the point that it was all he could manage to float a few centimeters above the tatami. His prowess in the field of love had declined just as precipitously, and though his grey-haired desires were still as strong as ever, no matter how ardently he pursued Benten she wouldn’t give him the time of day. The only ones who called on him now were foolish tanuki, and door-to-door missionaries. What could you call this, if not mortification? The Master’s face was perennially furrowed with fury at his own impotence, and his now-baseless arrogance raged throughout the cramped confines of his 4½ tatami room.

I felt responsible for Master Akadama’s downfall, having had a hand in it myself. This was the reason I stayed by his side, always poking my nose into his affairs, though there are few creatures on this earth as difficult to manage as a fallen tengu. Absconding to Ōsaka had been an excellent pretext to rid myself of his custodianship, and I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t thinking about washing my hands of it once and for all when I entrusted Yashirō with his care.

But the Master’s wilfulness proved too much for my skittish little brother to handle.

Together we exited the café and crossed Izumoji Bridge. As we walked along the bank of the Kamo River, over which a cold wind was blowing, my dear little brother related his woes of how the Master refused to take a bath.

Master Akadama loathed baths extremely.

How much did he dislike bathing? Well, he had destroyed the filthy bathtub in his residence, so that it would never be used again. In this day and age, even the tanuki who lived in the forest of Shimogamo Shrine used product in order to avoid split hairs, yet the Master refused even the idea of wiping himself off with a dampened towel, contenting himself merely with dabbing a bit of his favorite cologne on the back of his neck. He would beg off if you invited him to the bathhouse, complaining that the weather was poor, or that his rump itched, or that his back was sore, or that he didn’t like your face. And if you attempted to drag him by force, you would soon find a heavy daruma flying in your direction.

If you let things go on long enough, the room would become clouded with a piquant funk, as if something were fermenting inside, but even then the Master would only sprinkle more cologne everywhere. Merely sitting there was enough to make your eyes water unceasingly, and at that point, with no further postponement possible, a battle would ensue. I had managed to take Master Akadama to the bathhouse several times before, but on each occasion I had to be ready to pay a price of blood and fur.

Yashirō was on the verge of tears as he walked beside me. “I’m so useless, Yasaburō. I c-couldn’t even get the Master into a bath…”

“Don’t cry, Yashirō. That’s not a skill you need to be ashamed of not having. There are plenty of other things you should learn.”

“The Master blew up a tengu g-gale.”

“What! I never knew he still had it in him.”

“And he made my hair all frizzy. If this keeps happening, I bet it’s gonna turn into an afro!”

“Using up his last few powers on a little kid, what an embarrassment of a tengu! I’ll knock him into the steaming water myself!”

“Don’t be too hard on him, though.”

“I know that.” I patted Yashirō’s head. “I just wanted to see how it sounded out loud.”

We worked our way through the crowds of shoppers and entered the little alleyway off the Demachi shopping arcade.

I went up the stairs and rapped at the door, calling, “It’s Yasaburō!” No sooner had I stepped over the threshold than I was enveloped by a thick mist of cologne. Tears sprang to my eyes. Yashirō coughed, and his tail immediately sprouted out. “Your tail! Your tail!” I hissed. Yashirō grunted, doing his best, but his fluffy tail didn’t seem to want to cooperate, and his butt wiggled continuously.

Pushing our way through the mountains of bento boxes and bottles of Akadama port wine, we went into the inner room and found Master Akadama squatting on the tatami beneath the rays of sun streaming in through the window. He was wearing a brand new quilted coat, spraying water on the cactus perched on his low writing desk.

I turned on the vent fan and threw open the window, letting cold air inside. “Yasaburō?” the Master said without looking up, sounding put out. “I haven’t seen you since the Okuribi. Frittering your days away in idle amusement, I have no doubt. Unfilial wretch. You think of nothing but enjoying yourself.”

“I most certainly was not enjoying myself, but it has certainly been a long time since I last contacted you.”

“Contact from you is quite unnecessary. In fact I was glad indeed to be rid of it.”

“Now, there’s no need for that. If you were lonely, you can just say so.”

“Impertinent brat!”

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The initial exchange of insults quickly bogged down in a bout of haggling over going to the bathhouse. We spent over an hour engaged in this pointless struggle. I used my sharp wit to attack the Master’s filthy existence; my opponent allowed anger to dictate his words, letting out explosions of flatulence in between loud outbursts of pedantry; and Yashirō cowered in the corner of the kitchen, paralyzed in terror. While all this was going on the sun went down outside the window, and the temperature dropped even further.

“And just why should I allow myself to be chaperoned by the likes of tanuki for a bath!” he bellowed, veins bulging in his head. “Utterly preposterous!”

“You refuse to go with us, eh? I see, I see. Then would you go if it was with Benten?”

“Don’t ask silly questions. I would like nothing better!”

“You dirty old tengu! Why don’t I just transform into Benten, hey? I could give you something to really be aroused about!”

“Just you try it, I’d break you with my pinky, I would!”

“Go ahead and do it then, you stubborn old coot!”

The Master stripped off his puffy coat, glowering openly at me. His eyes opened wide, and lit by a single bloody ray of sunlight amidst the mountains of trash, his visage resembled that of a demon. His white eyebrows were raised high on his brow, and his eyes blazed with a fiery light.

“Now you’ve done it,” he growled like a wild animal. “You’ll not last a moment against my tengu gale!”

“Go on then!”

I backed off to the kitchen sink and transformed into a black bull, ensuring that no matter how strong a wind the Master drew up, he wouldn’t be able to blow me away. Yashirō’s transformation had lifted completely, and he rolled around deliriously, clinging to my hind legs.

“Ha!” shouted the Master, like a monk upbraiding a novice, and hearing this we braced ourselves and shut our eyes. Watch out, any second now we’ll be hit head on by a tengu gale! It’ll probably hurt, and we’ll probably lose chunks of fur, it’s coming, any second now… We held our breaths and prepared ourselves for the worst, only to be met with...nothing.

At last we felt what seemed to be a gentle spring breeze caress our faces. We timidly opened our eyes to find Master Akadama with his knees pulled up to his chest, staring blankly into a corner of the room. Dust was swirling around and around. Mutely we watched as a roll of toilet paper reluctantly rose into the air and unspooled itself, a long white sheet spiraling through the air. It was fascinating to watch, but hardly threatening, and it appeared that the Master’s ability to vent his rage amounted to no more than a gentle untidying of his room.

The roll finished unwinding itself, smothering the room in blankets of white. The Master’s shoulders slumped, draped by toilet paper. After a moment he snorted, reached out and tore off a scrap of toilet paper, folded it carefully, and blew his nose loudly.

I shuffled my hooves in the kitchen uncomfortably, feeling oddly self-conscious that our heated exchange had somehow ended in such an anticlimactic fashion. The Master continued to blow his nose to hide his embarrassment, and I lowed experimentally to hide my own. In the corner, Yashirō idly nuzzled the scented toilet paper and sniffed.

“What are you doing in the corner there, Yasaburō?” said the Master. He had finished blowing his nose and was now staring out the window at the darkened landscape. “That’s quite enough mooing.”

“Master, you seem to have worked up a sweat in your anger.”

“Hmm.”

“Occasionally, taking a bath can be splendid.”

“Hmm.”

At last the Master assented to leave his room.

There were no bathhouses nearby, so to bathe the Master we needed to go up Teramachi Street all the way north of Goryō Shrine. The Master refused to walk that long journey on his own feet, and therefore I had to borrow Yaichirō’s automaton-powered rickshaw.

A quick phone call by Yashirō revealed that Yaichirō had been dragged by Mother to the billiards hall to the west of the Kamo Bridge. Days of political maneuvering had left him irritable and on edge, and so Mother had taken him there as a diversion. On the phone, Yaichirō seemed unhappy about using Father’s treasured keepsake to transport around some stubborn old git, but he was a student of Master Akadama’s too. His sense of duty wouldn’t allow him to be stingy about lending out the rickshaw.

By the by he came trundling up wearing the robes of a young esquire, stopping in front of the Masugata Court Apartments. He hopped down looking glum, and the Master clambered up in his place. Yashirō and I pushed him up as he struggled to climb up, cramming in beside him.

“An honor to see you again, Master,” said Yaichirō, bowing his head respectfully.

“A chilly day,” muttered Master Akadama, glowering and pulling his coat tightly to his chest. “Yaichirō!”

“Yes, Master.”

“You must think me a burden.”

“By no means is that the case.”

“Speak the truth, man!”

“I am speaking truthfully, I assure you.”

Master Akadama sniffed and smiled. “Very well,” he said. “Stop dawdling there, let us be on our way!”

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The rickshaw clattered onto Teramachi Street and headed north. Cotton candy clouds stretched along the pale pink sky. Along the long temple wall we proceeded, and presently a brown smokestack came into view, thrusting up into the sky. The closer to the bathhouse we came, the more the Master fidgeted, saying, “Tiresome, tiresome indeed.”

Hastily catching the Master at the threshold of the women’s bath, we thrust him into the men’s dressing room. We’d come this far, yet the Master still stared at wanted posters and the TVs placed above the lockers and sat in the massage chairs and tried to barricade himself inside the toilet. By the time we managed to cajole him out into the steam room, both Yaichirō and I were completely worn out. The other customers glanced at us curiously as we dragged the Master along.

Yaichirō and I and the Master lined up in the bath. Yashirō looked around in delight, immersing himself in the bath and jumping into the sauna and finally yelping “Uhya!” as he dipped his toes into the cold bath. “This bath is freezing, Yasaburō!”

“What did you expect? It’s water.”

In stark contrast to my excitable brother, the Master pouted and sulked.

“How is it that I have come to bathe with the likes of you furballs?”

“Never fear; we’re transformed into humans, so there’s little fur to go around,” said Yaichirō, moving his hands vigorously. The Master couldn’t be bothered to soap himself up, so he ordered Yaichirō to do so instead.

“If only it was Benten scrubbing my back,” the Master groused petulantly. “How I long to bathe with Benten. Ah, how I long to bathe with Benten!”

“Master!” Yaichirō hissed, stifling his voice. “Such overt salaciousness! Please, I implore you to think of your reputation!”

“As your disciple I’m ashamed,” I tutted. “Even if Benten came with you, you could hardly go into the ladies’ bath anyhow.”

“Enough quibbling!” The Master swung a towel, slapping the side of my face. It hurt quite a lot.

“Yasaburō. Were you not with Benten and the Friday Fellows recently? You seem to have a tendency to follow her around recklessly. A mere furball would not come to have feelings for her, surely?”

“Of course not. What kind of tanuki would fall in love with a human? That kind of love must be against some kind of rule!”

“You would just as soon break wind upon a rule as follow it. One never knows what a perverse fellow like you is scheming.”

“Once again, you flatter me in the strangest ways…”

“Far be it for me to be concerned for your wellbeing. However, treat that human girl lightly and you will be eaten. With a little more devotion and a little less straying from the path of wickedness, she will become a great tengu. One day she will follow in my footsteps, and become the second to take the mantle of Yakushibō of Nyoigatake.”

Finishing our scrubbing, we entered the bath and stared up lethargically. The ceiling was painted with strange green shapes and in its center was a depressed skylight. Dim light shone in, faintly piercing through the thick haze of steam.

The Master seemed to be feeling much better after scraping off the months of dirt that had accumulated since late summer. Lounging in the bubbles that issued forth in the jet massage bath, he mused, “Benten could blow away those damned Kurama tengu in an instant.” A wide smile came to his face.

“Our father played quite a trick on them, too,” said Yaichirō.

“Sōichirō? Yes, I suppose he did,” Master Akadama said, lying back comfortably in the bath and staring at the light from the window. “That tanuki always did show great promise.”

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Here’s a story from long ago.

Struggling with his younger brother Ebisugawa Sōun for dominion over the tanuki world, Father prevailed and attained the title of Trick Magister. Thenceforth, until he was made into a stew at the hands of the capricious Friday Fellows, Father held sway at the top of the tanuki world in Kyōto. The crowning moment of that long, glorious period was the False Nyoigatake Incident. Never before or since has a tanuki outwitted the tengu with such a tremendous feat.

The genesis of the incident lies in the feud between the Kurama tengu and Master Akadama.

Tengu are knaves and ruffians, and it is rare that they get along. Rarer still was the acrimony between Master Akadama and the Kurama tengu. Even the mediation of the gentle Konkobu of Iwayasan failed to bring any change to the situation. During the yearly gathering at Mount Atago, the Master picked a fight with the black-clad ranks of Kurama tengu, sneering, “Nothing but a bunch of mountain acorns stuffed into three-piece suits!” The banquet was blown asunder by the competing tengu gales of the two factions, Kurama and Nyoigatake, and with it went any hopes of repairing the rift. Both the Kurama tengu and Master Akadama were given a severe tongue lashing by Tarōbō of Atagoyama.

Shortly afterwards, the Kurama tengu snuck onto the mountain to avenge the affront, and, taking advantage of their numbers, harassed the Master in turns, seeking to utterly humiliate him. Day and night they would drink and sing loud, bawdy parodies insulting the Master. Master Akadama was so agitated he hardly slept, and ground his teeth all day, forgetting even that he was standing at the podium in the classroom. Yaichirō, still a student then, was greatly perturbed; on the other hand, Yajirō would take the opportunity to sneak out of class and go to the movie theater in Shinkyōgoku.

It was Father who took action, unable to look upon the Master’s suffering with indifference. He came up with the magnificent idea of transforming into the totality of Nyoigatake, and it is from this that the incident takes its name.

Lured onto a perfect replica of Nyoigatake, the Kurama tengu carried on their feasting in blissful ignorance, but when they attempted to leave, they noticed that they were unable to get off the mountain. They tried to take to the skies, but the thickly tangled overgrowth bore down on them, forcing them back down to earth. They walked on and on, only to realize that they were going in circles. As they went around and around, they were attacked by all manner of strange creatures: a flood of daruma pouring out of the hollows of the trees; a singing, dancing troupe of chickens called “The Gorgeous Chickens”; a white elephant crossing the fog between the trees. Utterly discombobulated, they dashed all over the false Nyoigatake, and after a week of this, looking like nothing so much as a ragged band of cavemen, they fell prostrate before Master Akadama and begged for his forgiveness.

For the moment, the feud between Master Akadama and the Kurama tengu was over.

The incredible, once-in-a-lifetime feat of transforming into an entire mountain for over a week left Father just as exhausted as the Kurama tengu, and for a full month afterwards, he slept in the Tadasu Forest. Master Akadama, who had never so much as given a tanuki the time of day, even visited the forest, bringing with him a box of confections. He nearly trampled a little furball rolling around the dry leaves beside my slumbering father. That furball was me.

The first thing out of Master Akadama’s mouth was, “How simple it must be to be a tanuki, sleeping blithely all day long.”

Sitting up on his bed of dry leaves, Father grinned and said, “‘Twas a foolish thing to do. I enjoyed it very much, though I may have let myself get carried away.”

“Control, control, you must learn control. Have a care for yourself.”

“Your concern is very much appreciated.”

Master Akadama was most thankful, though he did not put it in words. Father understood that, and instead of demanding gratitude for risking his hide to protect the Master’s honor, he said nothing at all.

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Master Akadama despised baths, but once he went in, he stayed in for a long time.

“I think it’s about time we head out,” I ventured, to which the Master angrily replied, “You drag me all the way here to take a bath, and now you tell me to get out. Haven’t you the decency to let me wash in peace?”

But Yashirō was no longer frolicking and was in fact beginning to pant and get dizzy from the heat of the bath. Fearing that his tail might come shooting out in public any second now, I left Yaichirō to look after the Master and hastily marched Yashirō to the dressing room.

Sitting on wicker chairs, we sipped coffee milk and watched TV.

“Mm, this is sweet, Yasaburo!”

“Sweet it is!”

“How come coffee and milk are gross, but coffee milk tastes so good?”

“That’s the power of synergy.”

“What’s sin-ur-jee?”

“It’s what happens when two things come together by destiny. Anything can be sweet when they’ve got synergy.”

Yashirō thought about it deeply, and took a swig of coffee milk.

“Master Akadama says mean things, but I think he likes you.”

“Heh, and don’t I know it.”

“And you like the Master too, don’t you?”

“Shh, not so loud! I could never show my face in public again if word got out.”

“The Master was always saying stuff when you were in Ōsaka. ‘How is Yasaburō? Has he been eaten by Benten?’”

“How thoughtful of him.”

We shot the breeze for a while, and Yashirō let out a tiny belch.

Yajirō, the frog in the well, had once asked me, “Do you remember the last thing Father said to you?” He had floated there at the bottom of the well, mortified at his own inability to remember.

What had I been doing that day?

I thought back to that winter morning.

I followed behind Father through the Tadasu Forest, over to the brook. Father sniffed, so I did the same, sniffing and taking in the scents of our surroundings. The air hanging over the forest had a new scent. It was the smell of the winter that was slowly creeping into every corner of Kyōto. We waddled down the deserted bank, sniffing as we went. That was the last morning I spent with Father.

It was a day just like any other.

Father took Yaichirō and went out; Yajirō rolled around pretending to be a daruma before aimlessly departing to parts unknown; Yashirō clung tightly to Mother; and I went to attend Master Akadama’s lessons. I had been warned to be careful now that the Friday Fellows’ year-end party was approaching, but that didn’t frighten me at all. The day was ending, and Yaichirō came back without Father, but no one thought anything of it. After finishing their business in Gion, Father mentioned that he had an important rendezvous to attend, and they went their separate ways. Being the head of tanuki society, it was hardly unusual for important business to suddenly come up and keep him. Yajirō returned to the forest later that night. He had been out enjoying himself, and came back extremely drunk. Ignoring Yaichirō’s attempts at lecturing him, he smiled beatifically like Hotei, and eventually dropped off to sleep mid-lecture. Mother went to bed too, still holding Yashirō in her arms.

But instead of going to sleep, I went dashing through the forest.

I approached the shrine road and watched the lanterns smolder faintly at the shrine. After a while Yaichirō came to tell me to go to bed. I wasn’t listening to a word he said, so he sat down beside me. We stared at those warm lights, Yaichirō and I, but I don’t recall feeling particularly uneasy at the time. I was just sitting there spacing out. I don’t remember if I was thinking about Father.

Father never came home that night.

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Yashirō and I were watching TV, enjoying the breeze from the large wall-mounted fan, when we heard a loud commotion from the entrance onto Kuramaguchi Street and in rushed a drove of men.

Rather creepily, they all had nearly identical faces with the same stout belly, and they all wore nothing but loincloths and white happi coats. I heard the lady at the front desk shriek, but the men deposited the fee in front of her one by one and continued to surge in, like a stream of daifuku mochi rolling down a conveyor belt. For all their numbers, all that could be heard was the sound of them breathing through their noses, for not one of them said a word. At the onset of this bizarre phenomenon, the other customers in the dressing room quickly dried themselves, put on their clothes, and fled the scene.

Before long the strange cohort had packed the room to the gills, all of them staring up silently at the coffered ceiling, mouths pressed down and bellies pressing up against each other. Yashirō and I were bounced back into the baths, while the men glared malevolently at us through the glass doors.

“What’s that commotion?” the Master cried from his bathtub. “What foolishness are you tanuki up to now?”

“The Ebisugawa Guard Corps?” said Yaichirō, emerging from the sauna swinging a towel.

The Ebisugawa Guard Corps is a gang of hoodlums lured by the promise of all the Faux Denki Bran they can drink, led by Ebisugawa Sōun’s two idiot sons, Kinkaku and Ginkaku. As those mochi-bellied men-cum-tanuki glared at me, I could only sigh dejectedly. It had been hard enough getting Master Akadama into the bath, and now I had to face Kinkaku and Ginkaku as well. This was synergy at its finest.

“What did you do this time, Yaichirō?”

“Uncle must have ordered them here to tell me to withdraw. The next Trick Magister will be chosen this month. It’s between Uncle and myself, and no one knows how things will turn out…” Suddenly he flew into a rage. “I run around all day doing everything by myself, and not one of you ever helps out! What a useless lot my brothers are, every one…”

“There you go again.”

“While I was struggling with all these burdens, you just ran off to Ōsaka!”

“You could hardly blame me for that, considering that my life was in peril.”

“This is all your fault in the first place, because you—”

“Hold on, Yaichirō. Look!”

Two even more corpulent men had pushed their way through the sea of mochi. They were wearing strange silver underpants, on which were written the phrases, “False or Deceptive Advertising” and “Do Not Tilt Package”. Advertising their own stupidity by wearing four-character phrases they didn’t understand—it could only be those two.

“It’s Kinkaku!” “It’s Ginkaku!” cried the two silver underwear-clad men, standing there proudly.

“We don’t need you to tell us that,” spat Yaichirō.

Kinkaku’s belly wobbled. “If you understand that, then you must also understand why we are here.”

“You think I’m going to just withdraw quietly?”

“I knew you would say that, but according to my cool-as-a-cucumber calculations, your chances of winning are just about nil. Perhaps you haven’t heard? Mount Yoshida has come over to the Ebisugawas, and, er, Takaragaike is on our side too. Support from Yase is streaming over as well!”

“Gosho, the imperial palace, has already declared for me, and Nanzenji would never side with you. And what’s true for Nanzenji is true of Ginkakuji. It’s only a matter of time before Kōdaiji and Rokuhara also give me their support!”

“That may be so, that may be so,” said Kinkaku, his words faltering. “...Is that true? All of those? That’s not what I was told. Topsy-turvy higgledy-piggledy!”

“Don’t give up, Kinkaku!” Ginkaku chattered. “Give it to them! We still have our secret weapon!”

“That’s right! Secret weapon, secret weapon!” smirked Kinkaku.

“What are you talking about?”

“We can’t just give away our secret weapon so easily, because it’s secret. So I’m not going to tell you. But you’d better give up! The only one who can hold together tanuki society is our father, and after him it’ll be me. We have no more business to discuss with the small fry from the Shimogamo family! Indubitably!”

“Indubitably!”

Hearing these insults Yaichirō lost control and turned into a tiger, baring his teeth.

For a moment Kinkaku and Ginkaku flinched, and the Ebisugawa Guard Corps all jiggled with fear behind the glass doors. But the duo soon regained their composure, haughtily flaunting their glittering metallic underpants.

“Don’t think you can scare us by threatening to bite our butts again! We bullied a master blacksmith in Nagahama into making these iron underpants. Try biting us again, and all your teeth will fall out!”

“What do you think about that! Kinkaku is so clever!”

“And don’t think you can take them off so easily, either! After all, I have a hard time getting out of them myself.”

“It makes our bellies pretty cold too. Kinkaku and I have it pretty hard!”

“Indubitably!”

Here, Ginkaku suddenly made a face, like he had just realized he had an upset stomach. “Kinkaku, I feel like I just had a really close call. I’m a tiny bit nervous!”

”Actually, I did too,” Kinkaku confessed. He turned back to us and hurriedly said, “Now, say you won’t be the Trick Magister! If you don’t hurry and say it, things will get very ugly!”

“That’s all right, thanks,” we replied.

Kinkaku and Ginkaku dithered on how to proceed. Racking their nonexistent brains for a clever plan that inevitably self-imploded on their own heads had been their specialty since they were kids.

Irate, Yaichirō let out a great howl, sending Kinkaku and Ginkaku scrambling to protect their buttocks. They were so concentrated that their transformations came completely off, we were left staring at two cowering tanuki trying to burrow themselves into two large sets of iron underpants.

“Scoundrels!” Yaichirō leaped forward. Kinkaku and Ginkaku dashed madly out of the underpants, slipping and sliding over the slick tiles in their haste to escape. Yaichirō went for Kinkaku first, nipping at his butt and picking him up. A toss of his head, and Kinkaku went soaring through the air with a “Hyaaa!” before splashing down into a bathtub. A column of water came down all over Master Akadama, who bellowed, “Be silent!”

Staring dumbfoundedly, Ginkaku was next on the chopping block, and he went sailing through the air just like his brother. It was a sight I seemed to have seen before.

Having finished off two tanuki, Yaichirō fixed his glare on the dressing room. In a twinkle, the large men filling the room deflated into tiny little rats and disappeared like a receding tide. The Ebisugawa Guard Corps were that only in name.

Yaichirō turned back into his human form and dragged Kinkaku out of the foaming bath.

“Goodness, Kinkaku. Don’t you know how to use a bathhouse? First, you can’t go into the tub with a towel on. Second, you’re not allowed to do laundry here. And third, you have to rinse yourself before you go into the bathtub. You can’t just jump in headfirst. Now, how could a fool who doesn’t even know how to use a bathhouse properly ever hope to become the head of the tanuki in Kyōto?”

“That’s because you threw me in there! I wouldn’t jump in there myself!”

“Well, let’s put that aside. So what’s this secret weapon of yours?”

“...I‘m not going to say.”

“Ah, I see. So you’re not going to talk.”

Yaichirō picked up Kinkaku and held him over his head, squirming and yelping, before walking over to the cold bath next to the sauna. “If you don’t talk, then I’ll toss you in here and put on the lid. Do you know to know what it’s really like to have a cold belly!”

Covering his belly, Kinkaku soon capitulated. “All right, all right! I’ll talk!” he screeched. “My stomach hurts!”

He sat down in front of the tub. “It’s about your old man. Do you know how he died?”

“What’s this, now? Father was made into stew,” Yaichirō answered.

Kinkaku smirked unpleasantly and shook his head. “Don’t you think that’s funny? How could such a great tanuki be caught so easily by the humans? I am wise beyond my years, and I thought it was funny. So Ginkaku and I investigated, see? And we found out the truth. If it was exposed, I can assure you the Shimogamo clan would never recover.”

“What do you mean?”

“On the night Uncle was captured, he was out drinking with someone late into the night. He was so drunk that he got careless. Drinking was deadly for him. And yet the person who was drinking with him that night has kept mum to this day. I think that’s just unforgivable. Shouldn’t he take responsibility and apologize to everyone, as a fellow tanuki? Especially because Uncle was the Trick Magister!”

Yaichirō stood up suddenly. The blood had drained from his face.

“Who was he drinking with? Spit it out!”

Kinkaku looked up at him and cackled shrilly.

“He’s at the bottom of the well in Chinnōji. It was your own useless brother, Yajirō!”