Uchouten Kazoku: Nidaime No Kichou

This was chapter 1 out of 7 in total. As should be clear, the anime did make some changes; they’re not plot-impacting, but the novel definitely feels ‘fuller‘ and clearer, if you will. And yeah, I’m absolutely loving this novel, the writing style, the characters, everything.

Chapter 1 (part 3/3)

〇

I set my mind on visiting Akadamsensei, currently working hard at his training, and delivering him some mamemochi [*1] as a sign of support.

That said, k.u.mogahata was awfully far away.

I planned to borrow my eldest brother’s automated rickshaw for the trip, but my stingy brother just wouldn’t give his permission. His reasoning was that Akadamsensei in his seclusion was bound to be in a rotten mood, and it would be too late to cry if his precious rickshaw was to be accidentally smashed to smithereens in a misdirected explosion of sensei’s anger. With no other choice, I went by bicycle, forced to pedal all the way, but the road was so long that soon I got fed up with it almost to death. I had lost count to how many times I had wanted to just wolf down the gift mamemochi and turn back as if nothing had happened.

Still, clenching my teeth and following the winding mountain trail, at long last I had arrived at my destination.

Since there was a tengu secluding himself in the mountains specifically to train, I was prepared for some great rumbling and shaking in the region, but k.u.mogahata’s settlement looked peaceful as ever. Rays of the early summer sun shone through fresh verdure that the mountain hamlet was buried in and illuminated the vicinity, the old building of an elementary school and stone walls included, with the only loud sound coming from the water flowing in the irrigation channels leading to the plots of cultivated land. Time flowed sluggishly, like syrup.

I came as far as the branch office of the k.u.mogahata ward office and, slumping in the shade of a tree, took some rest.

Suddenly, a voice came from overhead.

“My, my, if it isn’t Shimogamo Yasaburou.”

I looked up in surprise and found a genteel elderly man in a white shirt coupled with a bolo tie sitting on the small concrete overhang of the branch office and slowly drinking grape-flavored Fanta. He was one of Akadamsensei’s few friends, Iwayasan Kinkoubou, running a used camera shop in the Nipponbashi neighborhood in Osaka after retirement.

“Oh, Kinkoubou-sama.” I rose and bowed my head to him.
“Did you come to see how Yakushibou’s doing?”
“Yes, sir. Seeing as I’ve found myself with a lot of free time on my hands.”
“Hahaha. Such a kind-hearted pupil, as always. Then let’s go visit him together. We can climb to the tengu training ground from here.”

In front of me were the steep stone steps leading to the Kouunnji temple.

Following Kinkoubou, I started climbing them.

Rather than entering the temple’s grounds, Kinkoubou proceeding along a small waterway on the left, setting foot in the mountains. Pa.s.sing through a grove of trees glistening with new green, the waterway soon dived into the chilly cedar forest. Wherever you looked, all you would see were towering deep black cedar trees tearing into the very sky itself. The more the tranquil atmosphere of the small mountain hamlet weakened, the more the solemn tengu presence grew.

A small gourd, dark brown in color, that hang at Iwayasan Kinkoubou’s waist produced adorable little splish-splash sounds.

“It contains dragon water.”

I knew that the area around the Iwayasan-Shimyouin temple was the source of the Kamogawa river, but the fact that a few dragon stones were buried in the surrounding mountains was new to me. The liquid that seeped out of those stones was called dragon water and it was beloved by tengu and habitually used as an energy and vitality booster. What was in the gourd was collected for Akadamsensei who intended to challenge the Nidaime to a battle. It appeared that Kinkoubou had no slightest intention to try and stop this ongoing fight between Yakushibou Sr. and Yakushibou Jr.

“Tengu are creatures who know not how to settle things peacefully.”
“Good grief, both the father and the son are so equally difficult and ill-natured that I’m just stumped.”
“I’m thankful that you’re worried about your mentor, but there is no need for tanuki to go as far as rack their brains on how to settle the fight between those two. Just let them do as they please.”

We walked for about 15 minutes along the waterway until numerous fallen cedar trees, quite big at that, blocked our way on both sides. It was clearly a tengu’s doing. Kinkoubou drew a seal in the air with his fingers and chanted some incantation, then made a gesture as if to open his linked hands, and the fallen trees rose one by one, clearing the path in front of us.

On the other end of the opened path was the tengu training ground.

On the clearing shaped like a footprint of a giant, in the part where the arch of the foot would be, there towered a lone enormous cedar with its top stabbing the sky. Beneath it was laid out the stale bedding specially brought here from the apartment behind the Demachi shopping arcade. Akadamsensei, hugging a daruma in his lap, puffed on his tengu tobacco. For someone who had taken pains to seclude himself deep in the mountains, this sight hardly bespoke of any changes for the better.

Accepting the gourd with dragon water from Kinkoubou, sensei glanced at me.

“Yasaburou, what are you doing here?”
“I was searching for tsuchinoko and got lost. This is mamemochi, a small present for you.”
“All you ever do is play without a care in the world, huh.”

At this point, sensei must have been aware that I, while knowing perfectly well about the Nidaime’s return, had feigned ignorance. But with all the time that’d pa.s.sed, he didn’t throw a fit about it now.

“So… what is he up to?”
“He keeps to himself at a hotel in Kawaramachi-oike.”
“Probably devising schemes upon schemes on how to cut off my head while I sleep. Mickle fails that fools think [*2].”

Akadamsensei uncorked the gourd, gulped down the dragon water and wiped his mouth.

“That acursed fool. I see his bad habit of worrying about trifling things and straying off the path of sorcery is incurable. Nyoigadake Yakushibou neither hides nor runs! Time to do battle has cometh! Hi-hoo!”
“He is not the same anymore, Yakushibou.”

When Kinkoubou said that quietly, Akadamsensei snorted and fell silent.

Back when I was a tiny little furball, Akadamsensei would announce a so called extracurricular lesson, round up his tanuki pupils, toss them in a handbasket and fly to this tengu training ground. While the tanuki played in the gra.s.s-covered clearing, sensei smoked his tengu tobacco on the top of the ma.s.sive cedar and amused the little tanuki by setting weirdly-shaped cloud afloat in the sky.

Seeing this cedar after such a long time made me feel nostalgic, and I slowly circled it. Because of its ma.s.siveness, the top was well out of sight. On its thick branches senjafuda [*3] were pasted here and there, as well as various other things lost or forgotten by tengu, such as sake bottles and onigawara tiles [*4] probably collected as a joke, with a discolored hand towel caught on a branch fluttering in the spring breeze.

When I was little, once, Akadamsensei lost his temper and tied me to the top of this cedar as punishment. Forgetting all about me, sensei left, and I was left behind to sulk silently at the top of the cedar until my eldest brother came to get me.

When I narrated these memories, Akadamsensei said, “Oh, I forgot that, I completely forgot that.”
“How awful of you to forget, sir.”
“Well, I used to tie up your father and before him his father, too, so how can I remember every one of you little critters?”

After a few moments, Akadamsensei got up from his stale futon, gave the gourd a shake and approached the base of the cedar. Turning the gourd upside down, he let the dragon water flow until the gourd was empty.

“Are you sure?” asked Kinkoubou.
“I’ve known this cedar for many years, so why not give it what’s still left,” sensei replied.

Sensei’s profile as he poured the dragon water onto the roots of the cedar was full of dignity befitting a tengu by the name of Nyoigadake Yakushibou. It vividly reminded me of what sensei looked like in the past when he still reigned over Nyoigadake and spat on the world below in its entirety.

Pushing the now empty gourd back to Kinkoubou, Akadamsensei took out a letter from his breast pocket. At first I mistook it for a love letter, but only until I saw the words ‘letter of challenge’ on it.

“Take this to him. Know that this is a honorable task.”

I accepted the sealed envelop and prostrated myself.

“I, Shimogamo Yasaburou, am honored.”

〇

I handed over Akadamsensei’s letter of challenge to the Nidaime in the lobby of the hotel in Kawaramachi-oike. Even as he accepted such a disturbing thing as the letter of challenge to an all-out duel from his own father, the Nidaime didn’t so much as bat an eye, his face calm and indifferent as if what he’d just received was a routine mail order.

“I might go. I might not,” the Nidaime said. “ I would prefer for you not to a.s.sume I will.”

In contrast to the Nidaime’s apparent lack of motivation, the tanuki world met the news of a tengu duel with wild enthusiasm. Would Akadamsensei win, like those hundred years ago, and kick the Nidaime out of Kyoto? Or would the Nidaime emerge victorious, carving a path to the new era open for tengu? Tanuki waited for the day of the duel with batted breath.

To begin with, tengu had always been creatures that peered down at the whole of creation from the pinnacle of haughtiness.

They were great because they were tengu, and tengu because they were great. According to the logic of tengu who carried all before them, the likes of tanuki were but furb.a.l.l.s, the likes of humans but naked monkeys, and even all the other tengu but oneself were but paper tigers.

The only being of any importance between Heaven and Earth was oneself - that was what tengu were.

Consequently, a father was greater than his son, and a son greater than his father.

There was just no way this conflict could ever be settled peacefully.

〇

On the night of the duel, Akadamsensei crawled with wobbling steps up and onto the main roof of the Minamiza theater.

From his wearing a hachimaki headband and a tasuki sash, it was evident that he was br.i.m.m.i.n.g with fighting spirit, but his swaying form crawling up the roof on all fours had not a drop of anything that made tengu tengu. To put it mildly, choosing the main roof of the Minamiza theater from which he had kicked down his son a hundred years prior as the location for the duel was a rush decision on his part. Still, sensei kept crawling on with indomitable drive, finally making it to the rooftop somehow.

“Freely flying through the sky is what defines a tengu, but… good grief.”

Akadamsensei sat down cross-legged and wiped the sweat, then lit up his tengu tobacco.

The night wind, cool and pleasant, dissipated the tendrils of the thick smoke.

From that spot, if you looked to the east, you would see the lights of Gion-Shijou stretching in a line like some sort of a night festival, and if you looked to the west, the radiance of Shijouoohashi and the downtown high-rise area would come into view.

From the rooftop of "restaurant Kik.u.mi’, located on the other side across Shijou-doori street, the night wind brought the delicious smell of cheerfully sizzling roasted meat. Its beer garden, illuminated with paper lanterns, was reserved exclusively for the Kurama tengu tonight, and it looked like the conference they were holding themed "How to thoroughly mock and make fun of Yakushibou’ had already opened and was well underway. They obviously planned to enjoy the show that was the duel between Akadamsensei and the Nidaime from their box seats with a beer mug in hand. For to tengu, strife and duels were the best snack to go with their beer.

The Kurama tengu, bending over the railing of the beer garden and leaning far out into the s.p.a.ce over Shijou-doori street, brandished folding fans and even a megaphone. “Yakushibou, fight without reserve!” “Leave it to us, we’ll pick up your bones for you!” “Yeah, pick them up and throw them into the Kamogawa river after!” As they shouted these cheers no one asked for, the Kurama tengu clanged their beer mugs together, scattering beer foam and jeering loudly.

“You stupid little mountains acorns… Just you wait, one of these days, I’ll drown you in Lake Biwa,” sensei cursed through clenched teeth.

As a matter of fact, the Kurama tengu weren’t the only ones burning with curiosity.

The area around the Shijouoohashi bridge was teeming with innumerable tanuki who, shapeshifting into regular drunkards, gathered to watch how the duel would unfold. Even the Nise-emon Yasaka Heitarou accompanied by my brother Yaichirou were standing by somewhere in the vicinity of the bridge. Worth of mention was also the roof of "Touka Saikan’ on the opposite sh.o.r.e of Kamogawa shining bright with hanging lanterns, where Iwayasan Kinkoubou  waited for his old friend’s duel to end while drinking some aged Lao Jiu wine [*5] all by himself.

In due time, black from head to toe, the Nidaime descended down from the dark night sky, as if a drop of ink from a fountain pen. Putting a hand to the brim of his silk hat, he gave a shameless slight bow to Akadamsensei in greeting. And then spoke up in a manner of a total stranger just pa.s.sing by.

“Good evening, elderly gentleman. What might you be doing in a place like this?”
“I’m expecting some company.”
“What a coincidence. I am also expecting some company here.”
“…Who might you be waiting for?”
“Someone quite worthless. I’d rather not speak of him.”
“Oh? Isn’t that quite the coincidence. I’m waiting for someone equally worthless myself.”

Akadamsensei put out his tengu tobacco and stood up, wobbling precariously. Back still bent, he glowered at his son, laying eyes on him for the first time in a hundred years.

“That fool was my son and my student, but now he is neither. Barely halfway through his training, he did something as stupid as wasting time on a love affair and even defying me. How utterly deplorable for the man who was to eventually succeed someone as grand as myself and hold the world in his grasp, to be played by some little la.s.s and stray from the path of sorcery. Since then he had disappeared without a word from him for all those years, and now, after all this time, he’s suddenly back. Figuring he won’t even have enough courage to show his face at my place, I took the initiative and sent him a letter of challenge. Thinking I might kick him down from here again,” Akadama said provoked, but the Nidaime said nothing, remaining unfazed.

The tengu father and son didn’t move, only kept glaring at one another.

Soon, however, the Kurama tengu in the beer garden got tired of waiting. “Come on, come on!” “Hey, get to it already!” “Don’t tell me you’ve made up!” “What friendly father and son!” they jeered and mocked.

The Nidaime raised a hand in a leather glove and took off his glamorously glittering silk hat.

Holding it to his chest, he made a quick motion that took only a moment, like praying to Heaven; without skipping a beat, he turned with a cold expression, facing the beer garden where the Kurama tengu were partying, and hurled his silk hat with ferocity. Apparently, that silk hat, being a tool of self-defense, was fashioned out of a sh.e.l.l for a cannon used in World War I. The silk hat smashed into the tables with deafening rumbling in its wake, silencing the Kurama tengu in one blow.

The Nidaime turned back around, tilting his head a little and fixing his hair with a theatrical gesture.

“If you think you can kick me down, by all means, try.”
“Rest a.s.sured, I shall. Prepare yourself.”

What Akadamsensei took out from his breast pocket then was the Fuujin-Raijin folding fan [*6].

〇

The Fuujin-Raijin folding fan was such a peerless fan that if you waved with one side of it, you could summon a gale, and if you waved with the other, you could produce a thunderstorm. Formerly, it was one of the seven tools of Nyoigadake Yakushibou, but in defiance of its value, sensei treated roughly. When he presented it to Benten as what he called a "commemoration of love’ gift, he seriously p.i.s.sed off both the tengu and the tanuki worlds, but last year, after much ado, the fan had returned to his possession.

As Akadamsensei was at the present, he had no power to summon tengu winds. Even if he tried, pouring all of his might in it at that, it would be something like a spring breeze streaming across a field of blooming lotus flowers, capable of only gently fluttering the Nidaime’s bangs at best. However, as long as he had the Fuujin-Raijin fan with him, even sensei would be able to blow off Minamiza without much trouble despite his old age.

“Say your prayers!” Akadamsensei let out a thuderous shout and raised the fan overhead.

Only, the fan suddenly slipped out of sensei’s fingers and flapped through the air toward the Kamogawa river. No matter how powerful a fan it was, it was completely useless unless you waved it. Akadamsensei, panicking and trying to catch the fan that was being swept away, grabbed only at the empty air, losing his balance, falling with a thud and slipping off head first. The fan kept rolling down nimbly.

At this rate, the Fuujin-Raijin fan and our former mentor’s life both would be in danger.

Appearing out of the dark, I dashed along the roof and, catching the fan, shoved in a pocket, then took a firm hold of sensei and checked his slide.

Akadamsensei got up silently and sat down next to me, crossing his legs.

There were tears in his eyes as he held his nose that he’d hit hard, but he didn’t seem to have suffered any other injuries.

From above us the Nidaime’s stern voice rained down.

“Is that you there, Yasaburou-kun?”

I immediately prostrated myself on the edge of the roof. “Shimogamo Yasaburou, at your service.”

“What are you doing in a place like this?”
“…Following the call of my idiot blood, I’m afraid.”
“So you rushed to the rescue, huh,” the Nidaime sighed. “Good grief, how truly foolish creatures tanuki are. I will admit that they are charming. But the fact that they are fools still stands irrefutably.”
“That is a rather tengu-like thing of you to say, Nidaime, sir.”
“I am not a tengu. What is a tengu? It’s that senile old fool right there.”

The Nidaime pointed to Akadamsensei with his chin.

“After all his big talk, throwing his weight about and bragging about his magical powers, in the end, unable to even defend his own territory, he had been run out by the Kurama lot and forced to seclude himself in a filthy apartment for the likes of humans to live in. I’m sure even now he thinks of himself as great, when in reality he’s but a laughable naked emperor. Incapable of making a single tengu whirlwind do his bidding, he can’t even fly through the sky properly. What is he even capable of anymore? What truly meaningless and risible last days. This, however, what a tengu is. What a tengu’s ruin is. ….Aah, even knowing that, what a positively pathetic sight this is. To think you would still choose to live reliant on the pity of creatures such as tanuki.”

The Nidaime knitted his beautiful brows, gazing down at Akadamsensei with cold eyes.

“You should be ashamed. For shame!”

Probably unable to stomach the Nidaime’s words, Akadamsensei wobbled to his feet, pushed me aside and tried to crawl up the roof. Although slipping and sliding, after a few tries he managed to hold on feebly, then made another attempt to climb to the high place where the Nidaime stood.

With his white hair disheveled and out of breath, he groaned out, “Don’t you run away, wait right there. I’ll kick you down once again.”

What the Nidaime haughtily peered down at in those moments from his high vantage point was not only his father frantically crawling up the roof, but also myself watching with batted breath, the city below and the ma.s.ses wriggling and squirming in it - overlooking all of that at once. The only being of any importance between Heaven and Earth is I alone, his cold eyes were eloquently expressing. And I was enchanted with those glimpses of a dazzlingly blazing tengu beneath the veneer in the Nidaime who insisted he was "not a tengu’.

Letting those white cheeks stretch in a derisive smile, the Nidaime said, “Oh, are you still alive, father?”

Akadamsensei replied through grinding teeth, “…If you want me dead, then try and kill me.”

The Nidaime snorted with laughter at his words.

“You’re not even worth killing. You can die in some ditch on your own, for all I care.”

Not waiting for sensei to finish crawling up, the Nidaime jumped off the roof.

Easily leaping over Kamogawa, he gave a slight bow to Iwayasan Kinkoubou sipping wine on the roof of "Touka Saikan’, then flew off into the sparkling night city.

Akadamsensei could only watch him go with a gaping mouth.

And that was how the curtain fell on the tengu duel.

〇

“Good grief, he ran away again. What a pathetic fellow.”

Akadamsensei sat cross-legged in the middle of the roof and smoked his tengu tobacco, pleased expression on his face as if he’d just successfully finished a difficult task. I sank down beside sensei, gazing absentmindedly at the brilliant radiance of the night city where the Nidaime flew off to and playing with the Fuujin-Raijin fan.

In due time, Akadamsensei opened his mouth to say in an exasperated manner, “My goodness, what a tanuki you are, you seem to be everywhere.”
“I take the duty of being elusive and unpredictable close to heart.”

Out of the blue, sensei asked, “Well?” and nudged my flank. “It’s my victory, isn’t it?”
“…E-Erm, how did you come to the conclusion that you won, sir?”
“If you can’t understand, then there’s no point talking to you.”

Sensei watched the Kamogawa river beneath as it carried its waters from the south to the north, while puffing on his tobacco with satisfaction.

By the river, the noryouyuka cool-floor [*7] began working, its night illumination casting phantasmagorical lights on the black surface of the water. It was a scene of a nighttime amus.e.m.e.nt that would suit Benten’s taste perfectly.

My and sensei’s thoughts seemed to coincide at that moment.

Looking toward Kamogawa, sensei murmured suddenly, “I wonder where Benten is and what she’s doing.”
“When she gets back - things will be fun, for sure.”
“… Now, of all times, is really the time when that beauty should be here more than ever.”

Sensei stared at the moon glittering in the night sky and said on a sigh, “How I want to see Benten. Oh how I long to see Benten.”

T/N:

[*1] Mamemochi (豆餅): a rice cake with beans. Why did Yasaburou choose to bring mamemochi? Apparently, there is an old and popular wagashi shop (that is, specializing in traditional j.a.panese sweets), Demachi Futuba, located in the Demachi neighborhood which, in turn, is not far away from the Shimogamo shrine.
[*2] Mickle fails that fools think (下手な考え休むに似たり): this translation is not a widely used one, so just to elaborate a little if this is your first time seeing this proverb: basically, the sense here is along the lines of "They to whom only bad ideas come might as well be asleep’ and "Inadequate ideas are worse than none at all’.
[*3] Senjafuda (千社札) lit. thousand shrine tag: a name tag originally posted on shrine pillars by pilgrims (wiki)
[*4] Onigawara tile (鬼瓦) lit. demon tile: ornamental roof tiles with oni/demons (wiki)
[*5] Lao Jiu 老酒: a variety of rice-fermented traditional Chinese wines, a subtype of Shaoxing wine (wiki)
[*6] Fuujin-Raijin (風神雷神): fuujin is lit. wind G.o.d and raijin is lit. thunder G.o.d
[*7] Noryouyuka (納涼床): a wooden platform, a type of restaurant balcony overlooking the river for enjoying cool breezes, mainly in the evenings, laid out in summer (jp wiki)