Mistress Oriku. Matsutaro Kawaguchi

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      “I hear next month he’ll be at the Hakubai in Kanda.”

      “Oh no! It’s quite a way from here to Kanda.”

      “It is not! By rickshaw you can be there in an hour, and if you go seven days in a row, you can hear the whole thing.”

      “But I can’t do that, just to suit myself! I can’t be away for a whole seven days!”

      “Of course you can. It’s all right. You work so well, you deserve a rest. Enchō’s sentimental stories aren’t just fun; they can teach you something, too. You’ve been with me since your teens, and there’s a lot about the world you don’t know. You’ll learn all sorts of things.”

      So, at the proprietor’s insistence, Oriku traveled daily, for seven days, from the Yoshiwara to Renjakuchō in Kanda to hear Enchō do Shiobara Tasuke.

      The star of the Hakubai Theater was then Enchō’s disciple, Enshō, and Enchō appeared there as a guest artist. This was about 1896. Kanda was indeed a long way from the Yoshiwara, but Oriku refused to give up. It meant something to Enchō, too, to be doing Shiobara by special request from a fan, and he put his heart into it more than ever. Each day’s performance was a masterpiece. Oriku assumed at first that three days would do her, but once she began, she could not bear to miss the rest. Enchō’s heyday was past, and physically he had visibly weakened. The beautiful voice that had once filled the hall was uncertain now, and sometimes difficult to make out. However, its defects only deepened its appeal, and it communicated poor Tasuke’s suffering directly to the heart. Evening after evening Oriku forgot herself under its spell.

      When Oriku was in her late twenties, having not long before become the mistress of the Silver Flower, Renjakuchō was Kanda’s liveliest quarter and boasted no fewer than three music halls. The Tachibana Theater, near Sudachō, offered performances by such masters of the Yanagi school as Ryūshi, Kosan, Bunji, Bunraku, Tamasuke, and Shinshō; while at the rival Hakubai Theater you could hear Enchō and other San’yū-school stars like Enshō, Enkyō, Enkitsu, Enba, En’u, or Ensa. The competition was intense. However, the Yanagi artists eschewed any instrumental accompaniment, while the San’yū side offered, in addition to Enchō and his disciples, the colorful En’yū, who started the suteteko dance craze, the belly-laughing Mankitsu, Entarō with his horse cart, and other such madcap players, with the result that the Hakubai Theater was always far ahead. The ever-serious Ryūshi, who was the mainstay of the Yanagi side, clove to the straight-and-narrow in his art and accepted no one who deviated from it. The Tachibana Theater performances were as a result quite somber, and despite all this loyalty to the highest principles of the storyteller’s art they could not compare in popularity with those at the bustling Hakubai. On top of that, the fact that Enchō was appearing at the Hakubai as guest artist meant that the theater was sold out every day, with the audience overflowing into the lobby and even a row of people standing all the way at the back.

      Oriku had her seat reserved, of course, complete with a cushion and an ashtray, just to the right of the storyteller’s dais. She entered through the greenroom before Enchō came on. All the San’yū artists knew who she was, and those who had warmed up the audience for the master would greet her politely. She tipped all the attendants and artists and was honored accordingly. Leaving the Yoshiwara at sunset, she reached Kanda about seven. Enchō mounted the dais only at eight, and after a bumpy hour in the rickshaw she was hungry. Except for one vegetable market, behind the Hakubai it was all restaurants: Kinsei, Miyoshi, Iroha, Hinode—one after another, offering everything from sea bream to chicken stew at Botan, or soba at Yabu. Soba being a favorite of hers, Oriku alighted daily just before the theater and went straight around the corner to the Yabu soba restaurant. She had filled out since coming to the Yoshiwara, and in her striped kimono and black haori jacket she looked older than her years. All heads turned her way when she came in alone. A flagstone path led straight in from the entrance, with a long, narrow tatami-floored space on either side for the patrons—the effect was quite elegant. Since she was by herself she sat down in a corner, and almost every day she ordered tempura soba. In flavor, the Yabu soba was a cut above that served elsewhere, and it was correspondingly expensive. Around town, plain soba generally cost two sen, but at the Yabu it cost three, and the tempura soba eight. The bowl of soba was served with a great big kuruma prawn, and the dish left a pleasant aftertaste. Once you had finished, you poured the hot liquid from the soba pot into your bowl and drank that too. Oriku was doing just that when two boys came in and sat down beside her. One was about ten, the other perhaps thirteen. They had on striped cotton with simple Kokura obi, and they had taken off their aprons, to carry them instead. With their pale, youthful faces they did not look like shop boys from some merchant establishment. Side by side they sat, right next to Oriku. Oriku still had plenty of time, so she took out her tobacco pouch and had a smoke.

      “I’ll have one tempura and one plain.” The elder of the two placed his order. Oriku thought it quite extravagant, for a boy.

      “Just plain for me,” the younger added in a low voice, hunching his shoulders forlornly. The two might have come in together, but they did not order in at all the same way. The bigger called for two whole servings; the smaller for just one. The bigger boy spoke confidently; the smaller boy with embarrassment.

      Smiling, Oriku continued to enjoy her smoke. Her pipe was fine bamboo from Laos, with silver fittings, and her tobacco pouch was gilded Dutch leather.

      The place was crowded, and the soba the boys had ordered never seemed to come. They did not talk. The small one sat there in gloomy silence, while the big one looked sharply around him. At last their orders arrived. The big one ate his tempura soba with gusto, while the small one picked forlornly at his plain soba.

      Oriku began to feel quite sorry for him. Clearly, his pocket money would not cover tempura soba; plain was the best he could do. She could bear it no longer.

      “Young fellow!” she abruptly addressed him. He looked at her in surprise.

      “I see your friend is eating tempura soba. What’s the matter, then? Don’t you have the money for it? I’ll treat you if you don’t. You must have some, too.” She called the waitress over and ordered him tempura soba before he could regain his composure, then paid for his and hers together.

      Eyes wide with astonishment at receiving so unexpected a treat from a lady he had never met, the boy placed his hands on his knees and artlessly bowed his head. “Thank you very much,” he said. “You are very kind.”

      The bigger boy looked the other way and kept eating, ignoring the whole thing. The way he had ordered tempura soba just for himself, without a thought for his younger friend, despite their both coming in together, had made Oriku angry. That was why she did it.

      “Who can those two be?” she wondered as she left. Respectable shop boys would not have been going out to eat soba at that time, and besides, there was something a little too casual about their dress. An odd pair! However, she soon forgot all about them. Enchō had already mounted the dais when she entered the theater, through the back. Shiobara Tasuke ended that night. The master’s daughter fell in love with Tasuke, the two were married, and the scene in which she cut off a long, trailing sleeve to demonstrate the depth of her feeling provoked merry laughter. It all ended very happily. Oriku, who had come from the Yoshiwara seven days in a row to hear the great Enchō in his declining years, felt glad and fully satisfied.

      “Now I have at last reached my sixtieth milestone,” Enchō said after concluding the piece. “This is the year when I must bid farewell to the Tasuke you have loved so long. I am extremely grateful to all of you for coming to hear me, and particularly to a certain lady who has come from afar every day for seven days. To her, from the storyteller’s dais, I offer my special thanks.”

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