Uchouten Kazoku: Nidaime No Kichou

Not a word on the Nidaime or tengu in this whole chapter… but lots of tanuki and shogi.

Chapter 2 (part ¼)
Gyokuran of Nanzenji Temple

When a male and a female tanuki fall in love, it’s said that they’re tied with the red fur of fate.

There was no end to tanuki whose hearts were set aflutter by that fishy myth prompting them to search every nook and cranny of the body in an attempt to pick out the precious single red hair. While they were busy with that, in the shade of trees in Yoshidamayama, on the premises of Koujin-sama[*1], and in the greenhouses of the Kyoto Prefectural Botanical Gardens, a discreet furry friendship between tanuki gentlemen and tanuki ladies was steadily deepening. ‘There is only one tanuki like you in the whole world,’ he says. "No other tanuki is like you in the whole world,’ she says. Lovey-dovey on display!

On that note, there was one particular deep and furry love story.

Once upon a time, in the Tanukidani-Fudou forest, located in the Ichijouji district of Sakyou-ku ward, there lived a certain tanuki girl named Tousen, as juicy and fresh as a peach and as agile as an enlightened mountain sage [*2]. From morning to night, she played on the stairway that counted 250 steps leading to the shrine. A single shout of "Drop dead’ was enough for her to repel any halfwit that dared make light of her. The little tanuki in the neighborhood called her "Tousen the Stairs-wanderer’ out of respect and reverence.

One day, a group of unfamiliar tanuki kids appeared in Tanukidani-Fudou. Inspired by the tsuchinoko boom of the time that was taking the tanuki world by the storm, they were the self-proclaimed Tsuchinoko Expedition Team, a bunch of mischievous boys who wrought havoc on many nearby mountains. The brats started climbing the stairs, singing as they did, and met Tousen on the way; unaware of her fame and courage, they took the high-and-mighty att.i.tude with her.

“Hey, you shortie over there.”
“What did you say, you jerk?!”

Tousen flew into fury and beat the mischievous invaders to within an inch of their life. “Drop dead!”

That was the start of a battle between the little tanuki of Tanukidani-Fudou and the Tsuchinoko Expedition Team with the long stairs to the temple on the line. Tousen fought bravely and protected their turf.

Time pa.s.sed, and Tousen descended down the long stairs counting 250 steps that she’d defended in the past in a white kimono. Leaving Tanukidani-Fudou behind after her marriage, she set out to her new home in the Tadasu forest.

What she was remembering with fondness at the time were the mischievous boys of the Tsuchinoko Expedition Team, singing at the top of their lungs as they climbed the stairs, and herself as she stood in their way. The leader of the Tsuchinoko Expedition Team that called her shortie on that day was Shimogamo Souichirou, that is, our father. Needless to say, the tomboy who responded with a "what did you say, you jerk’ was none other than our mother. Were it not for furry love in this world, not a single tuft of fur would have existed of the Shimogamo brothers.

What preceded the birth of the round, little furb.a.l.l.s was a furry love story.

〇

In the beginning of June when the rainy season had started, I sat in a cage in Kyoto City Zoo.

Kyoto zoo was located near Heian-jingu shrine in Okazaki, and the premises surrounded by a brick wall were lively with cries of birds and wild animals. Between the cages with such dignified creatures as elephans, lions, giraffes and hippopotami, there was a cage with tanuki, too.

That said, for tanuki being put in a cage was their greatest fear. And that was because our specialty, that is, shapeshifting, had a close connection with the idea of freedom; if thrown into a cage and robbed of their freedom, tanuki wouldn’t be able to shapeshift. You won’t find a tanuki who would like to be confined and rendered unable to shapeshift.

For that reason, from long ago, it was customary for the role of captive tanuki in the zoo to be played in shifts by the Okazaki tanuki who were professionals at that. When they needed to go out on an incentive trip, there was no choice but for other tanuki to stand in for them, but it went without saying that this job was not popular. The reason why I had accepted it was because the pay was high.

When I signed up for it, first of all, I was given a thorough crash course by the chief of the Okazaki tanuki on the correct way to conduct myself as a proper zoo tanuki. The Okazaki tanuki took pride in the activities of enlightening ladies and gentlemen of Kyoto on the subject of what a proper tanuki was.

“What’s most important is charm. However, do not b.u.t.ter up to anyone.” The Okazaki tanuki chief narrated their philosophy. “We play tanuki with pride. That’s the trick to it. You can’t just spring the raw realism on visitors. If you do that, all our efforts will be for naught. You’ve got to catch the moment when you become more tanuki-like than a tanuki without exposing the truth. This const.i.tutes one of shapeshifting techniques, too.”

naturally, being locked up in a cage felt very eerie, so I spent my first day in restlessness. To a tanuki not accustomed to having your shapeshifting powers sealed, denied the very possibility to go out to play mindlessly with someone staring at you around the clock, it was an extremely exhausting ordeal.

Worried about how I was doing in a cage all alone, my mother dropped by in the evening to see how I was faring. As was in her habit, mother a.s.sumed the form of a handsome young man, Takarazuka Revue-style, which was already conspicuous, and an emerald frog riding on her shoulder didn’t help to alleviate that at all. Said frog crawled into my cage through a crack.

“You won’t feel lonely if you’re with Yajirou,” mother said.

And so, from my second day on, I had the company of my second elder brother, which made me feel at lot better. When I paced to and fro in my cage with a frog on my furry head, children that gathered in front of it were flabbergasted, “A frog is driving a tanuki!”

“You sure have your finger in many pies, huh. I’m so impressed,” my brother confessed.
“I just have nothing better to do.”
“Speaking of which, have you caught tsuchinoko, after all?”
“Oh, come on, nii-san, as if I’d be idling in a place like this if I’d caught it. I’d be busy with press conferences and celebration parties and stuff right about now.”

Later that night, my brother sat motionlessly in a corner of the cage, apparently thinking about something deep and hard.

“What are you up to?” When I peered closer, I found that he was solving shogi problems.

The tanuki shogi tournament, sponsored by Nanzenji temple, was scheduled to take place in the middle of June, and apparently, my brother was going to partic.i.p.ate in the preliminaries.

“A bad bush is better than the open field,” my brother said. “Not many tanuki like shogi, and I would feel bad for the Nanzenji family if it ended up being an empty tournament.”
“What a strange event our father came up with, I gotta say.”

Our father, Shimogamo Souichirou, was an ardent shogi fan. As his love for shogi grew in intensity, he collaborated with the previous head of Nanzenji family to start the Tanuki Shogi Tournament, but tanuki were reluctant to even memorize the shogi pieces, and having to sit still before the shogi board made the fur on their b.u.t.ts itch. Our father’s wish for shogi to stick in the tanuki worlds was fruitless, and then he fell into a tanuki hot pot, so the tournament had to be discontinued for the time being. It occurred to me that our eldest brother must be very proud of himself since it was him who brought it back to life.

That reminded me of something else, and I asked, “Come to think of it, father had a shogi room, didn’t he?”
“Ah, yes, yes, he did. Father’s secret base, a fun room, indeed.”
“What became of it?”
“It has to be somewhere in the Tadasu forest, but I don’t know where.”

Hiding away in the shogi room whenever there was a break in his bustling activity as the head of the tanuki world was father’s cherished relaxation time. The room in question was a four and a half tatami mat chamber, filled with a collection of old shogi boards and shogi instruction books, and sometimes he taught shogi to us siblings there.

I recalled what that nostalgic room was like.

Surrounded by ma.s.sive shogi pieces, almost as big as one whole tatami mat, that I had no idea what could be used for and shogi boards of curious shape, father looked happy, sitting there cross-legs on a zabuton. The room had a large skylight. Beyond it, the blue sky, clear and high, stretched, and overhanging branches bearing ripe persimmon fruit were visible. I remembered father’s unease when I said I wanted those persimmons.

Oddly enough, father always made us wear blindfolds whenever he brought us to that room.

What I remembered with clarity was the sensation of jumping off to the bottom of a hole where wind whistled.

“Our eldest doesn’t know where that chamber is, either?”
“No, apparently not,” my brother replied. “It appears he searched the forest high and low but found no hole resembling it. Father hid it really well.” And then my brother added in a murmur, “I’d like to go back there some day.”

〇

An unusual guest appeared on my last day of zoo life.

On that day, it was somewhat cloudy since the morning and from time to time it rained, so the zoo was mostly deserted. The choo-choo train with a red chimney running with clangity-clang and the small Ferris wheel both looked dreary drenched in the ashen rain. On such days, no matter how great my acting performance of playing a tanuki-like tanuki might be, very few people paused in front of my cage. As such, it wasn’t worth it to try hard.

I was yawning, bored out of my mind, when a little girl came. Her stature was small, like a kindergartner’s, and the red of her umbrella and rubber boots was vibrant. Not showing the slightest bit of interest in the choo-choo train or the Ferris wheel, she headed toward the tanuki cage in a straight line while spinning her red umbrella and stopped in front of it. She must have loved tanuki a lot. Her red umbrella pressed against the cage, she watched me pace exultantly to and fro in my cage with big eyes. Soon, though, she started giggling.

“You give a marvelous tanuki performance, Yasaburou-chan.”

Startled, I stopped dead in my tracks.

My brother, sitting on my head, said, “Oh, it’s you, Gyokuran. What brings you here?”

“I heard Yasaburou-chan was standing in here, so I thought I’d show my support.”
“Hmph. I play the role splendidly, don’t I, Gyokuran-sensei?” I said, to which Gyokuran smiled wryly, “Drop the sensei t.i.tle, would you.”

The tanuki known as Nanzenji Gyokuran was the younger sister of the head of the Nanzenji clan by the name of Shoujirou.

In the past, when I was one of the Akadama tanuki pupils, Gyokuran already had both wisdom and good sense and was Akadamsensei’s favorite. A few honor roll tanuki from among those who studied under sensei were tasked with helping sensei. Nanzenji Gyokuran, along with our brother Yaichirou, served as Akadamsensei’s a.s.sistant, herding and controlling the furry bad boy bustling beneath the teacher’s platform like a dog at a sheep farm. That’s why I called her "Gyokuran-sensei’.

Standing in front of my cage, Gyokuran was telling me about how much she looked forward to the Tanuki Shogi Tournament. Apparently, she dropped by on her way back from inspecting the preliminary tournament venue with her brother Shoujirou.

“You’re coming to watch, right, Yasaburou-chan?”
“I’m not sure. I have no interest in shogi, you see,” yawned I.
“Yaichirou-san worked so hard to bring the tournament back, but you’re not coming? You shouldn’t say such cold things. If you come, you’ll find it fun, I’m sure.”
“Well, it’s fun to you, Gyokuran.”

Gyokuran was a known shogi enthusiast even as a child.

To begin with, the Nanzenji clan were always a family of shogi fans, but Gyokuran’s love for the game stood out even among the rest of them, and numerous tales such as her never stopping solving shogi problems even when she fell into the Biwako Ca.n.a.l, or her loving shogi so much that she would even eat shogi pieces, or her sleeping every night with a shogi board, circulated about her as if they were true. According to Gyokuran herself, all of them were nonsense, but I knew for a fact that back when she was one of Akadamsensei’s pupils she did force innocent little tanuki to play shogi, and I was among those who ran around trying to escape from her as she chased us with a shogi board in hand yelling, “It’s fun! It’s really fun, you’ll see!” Because of her excessive love for shogi, Gyokuran was unsuitable for shogi promotion activities. The numerous legends about Gyokuran circulating in the tanuki world were spread by the annoyed tanuki kids she had chased in the past.

Suddenly, Gyokuran said, “Yaichirou-san still won’t get back to playing shogi, huh?”
“Our big brother doesn’t play shogi,” my second elder brother said in a soft voice. “And you know better that than anyone else, don’t you, Gyokuran?”
“For how much longer does he plan to let it bother him? Even though he’s turned into a fine capable furball already.”
“Did you tell him that?”
“I can’t. …I’m not sure why, but I just can’t.”

In the Tadasu forest, there was a certain shogi board left by our father, and our eldest brother cherished it as much as he did the automated rickshaw. Although that shogi board was carefully stored in a box of empress tree, its surface was covered with deep teeth impressions. Those marks were left on it by our eldest brother who turned into a tiger in a fit of anger and bit into it. When he was little, he had a bad tendency to shapeshift into a tiger whenever he got angry because of finding himself at a disavantage in shogi. The reason why he quit playing shogi was because he started deeply hating losing control of himself like that. Playing against a girl his own age, bursting into tears from frustration and then biting into the shogi board were memories hurting his honor, no doubt.

Eventually, Gyokuran said, “See at the shogi tournament” by way of goodbye and went back to the Nanzenji forest hazy with the rain. As she walked, she was spinning her umbrella like a real child. Seated on my head, my brother murmured, “Were it not for furry love in this world…”
“What is it, nii-san?”
“…No, it’s nothing.”
“Being a tease, huh.”
“Even a frog at the bottom of the well has an obligation to keep a secret.”

〇

On a certain evening in the middle of June when it was getting quite late, our whole family went out, heading to Nanzenji.

The sky was concealed behind bulky clouds, and not a single star was visible, with only moist night wind blowing. My little brother Yashirou took the point, his face lighting up in pride and elation as he hoisted a paper lantern with our family crest on it, looking like the leader of a drum and fife band. Pa.s.sing through the dark town with its endless line of fences surrounding big mansions, we entered Nanzenji-keidai that was crawling with Kyoto’s tanuki holding paper lanterns.

The reason was simple: tonight was the day when the Tanuki Shogi Tournament organized by the Nanzenji family was to be held.

Mother was impressed as she looked around. “Look at that crowd.”
“That’s because this tournament was on a hiatus for a long time ever since father’s death,” our eldest brother sounded boastful. “It was worth every effort I’ve invested. I’m sure father would be pleased, too.”
“If nii-san wins today, father would be even more elated,” I said.

My second elder brother riding on my shoulder stirred. “I don’t know. Don’t get your hopes up too much.”
“Don’t say such fainthearted things, Yajirou. Protect the honor of the Shimogamo family,” our eldest instructed.
“Hold it, hold it, nii-san, I don’t play shogi for the sake of protecting our honor.”
“I know you’re capable of giving Gyokuran a run for her money.”
“I don’t know about that,” replied our second elder.
“I’m sure you can win,” joined in mother. “Though winning and losing are both down to luck.”

Majority of the the tanuki a.s.sembled on the premises were hopeless at shougi, unable to tell a rook from a bishop, they only came for the chance to gamble and party. Beneath the black towering gate of Nanzenji temple surrounded by pine trees, the owner of a bar "Akegarasu’ on Teramachi-doori street was consulting with his friends on the matter of betting. For betting on all and every kind of compet.i.tion was their raison d"être.

I walked up and called out to him.

“Hey. I can’t believe you bothered to come when you know squat about shogi.”
“Do your worst for us, Yasaburou, because we’re counting on seeing some fighting outside the shogi board, too.” That was scandalizing of him to say. “Out of the ring action is your forte, yeah?”

When I was about to retort, my kid brother waved the paper lantern with our family crest.

“Yasaksan is here!”

The Yasaka tanuki sounded their trumpets shortly in a modest fashion and set foot on the Nanzenji temple grounds. Nise-emon Yasaka Heitarou expectedly wore an aloha shirt.

Noticing us, he pa.s.sed under the temple’s triple gate and clapped my eldest brother on the shoulder in good humor.

“Oh, Yaichirou-kun. It makes me so happy to see tanuki shogi revived.”

Since spring, Yasaka Heitarou had been steadily advancing his preparations to retire, little by little transferring his Nise-emon work to my eldest brother. Despite my brother grumbling about how he had time to even sleep, he didn’t at all look dissatisfied, swimming energetically all around Kyoto like a furry fish that had found water after making a show of downing a dodgy energy drink procured in the Shinkyougoku shopping district.

Yasaka Heitarou chatted up my second elder brother squatting on my shoulder. “I gotta say, I was surprised that you survived the preliminaries, Yajirou. I had no idea you were so good at shogi.”
“Father taught me well. Besides, there is hardly anything else to do at the bottom of a well.”
“You, too, learned all the dubious entertainments from Sou-san, eh. I’m the same. When we were little, it was tsuchinoko hunting, and when we grew up, it was shogi, sake and Hawaii. All the good-for-nothing things that earn you no squat but are most fun in the world. That said, Sou-san was always good at everything he did.”

Mother snickered at that. “And you, Heitarou-san, was always so clumsy.”
“Okay, wait, that’s quite the comment to make, you know.”
“Oh? Well, even if you’re clumsy, being able to always have fun no matter what is an admirable quality and what really counts.”
“You just say whatever you want, huh. I’m no match for you,” said the Nise-emon in his aloha shirt and laughed.

T/N:

[*1] Koujin-sama 荒神様: a G.o.d of fire, the hearth and the kitchen (wiki); in Kyoto, Koujin charms and talismans are often put up in the kitchen. In this particular context, however, "Koujin-sama’ is a pet nickname for Gojoin temple (same as Kiyoshikojin temple jp wiki), used by locals ().
[*2] Tousen 桃仙: this name consists of the kanji for peach (桃) and the kanji for what is known as sennin (仙) or xian in Taoism (wiki), that is, a mystical enlightened mountain sage.