I had none and had to borrow. The thing was long and thin in my hand. It was not heavy or strong but very sharp.
“This is a
feebul
weapon.”
“You think?” Shino said.
The first thing she taught us was how to pull out our hairpins swiftly and subtly. You did this crosswise, the right hand pulling the pin from the left side of the head and the left hand pulling the pin from the right side of the head. You did it simply, with no extra movement, quickly removing the pin from the hair and sliding it up the sleeve, turning the wrist; you swept it across your face with conviction. This could be mistaken for a gesture of vanity. That was the point.
We practiced. Shino showed us how to keep strong but flexible fingers. She moved her pins in circles. It was easy to imagine them as small knives, for instance.
“We could do a dance with them,” she said.
She held one in each hand. She walked around in a circle, dipped, went backward. “Always keep them up close around your faces,” she instructed.
Fumi was laughing.
“Close to your face. It’s no good out there.”
“We shuddn cover our faces. Our arms should only be a frame to them. Remember what Kana says? ‘The face is a picture to be seen and enjoyed.’ ”
“Just so. But if you don’t protect it, you’ll get hurt!”
That made sense to them. “Remember when that yobbo broke Takao’s nose?”
“An’ after, it didn’ heal straight? An’ she hadda go home?”
“He said he was sleeping when he did it. Just rolled over and cracked her on the bridge of her nose.”
“I never believed that,” said Shino softly.
She showed each of us how to hold a hairpin so it lay inside the palm of our hand and extended underneath a finger, almost invisible. She showed us each how to walk slowly around in a circle, preparing our weapon, sliding it into our palm. To cross our arms and shoot a fist each way—a block. To strike a balance on one foot with the other tucked behind the knee. This was called the Crane.
“This my father taught me. He never imagined where I’d find those lessons useful,” she said sadly. She showed us how to lunge forward with our hands out front and jab the hairpins into an ear, or both ears, one on either side. “It is not necessary that we ever turn our skills on anyone. Only to save your own life. Just to have them makes us feel stronger, izn it?” she said.
The women loved it when she used their talk.
We were all together making circles with our hands, circling, dipping, rising from our knees and sinking down again, gracefully, we hoped.
Kana came in.
“
Whatz
going on here?”
Shino did not lose a step or a breath. She expertly slid her hairpin inside the palm of her hand and up her sleeve.
Fumi slid the pins back into her hair and smoothed it.
I found that my obi was coming loose and was suddenly involved in the knot.
“I am just teaching the girls a little dance my mother taught me. It is what the noble girls do on festival days.”
Kana loved to hear about what the nobles did. And if the girls at the Corner Tamaya knew a certain dance, it meant they could raise the fees. “It’s about time you came around,” she told Shino, patting her shoulder. “I am so pleezed,” she said emphatically, and she walked back downstairs.
Officially sanctioned, we began to practice in earnest, stepping quietly, neatly, one foot just a little way in front of the other, in a tight circle, the way Shino showed us.
“We should do that three times a week. That way we can improve,” Shino said, remembering her sensei.
I continued walking like a tiger on delicate feet but placing each one firmly down so I could not be pushed off balance. We all began to do this and there was excitement in the room. The very idea of defending themselves made the girls dizzy.
Shino could remove her hairpins in a swift gesture, turn her head so the elegant nape of her neck showed to her opponent, who was no doubt so captivated by her grace that he did not know a weapon was being pulled on him, and turn again, wielding the pins at eye level.
“Practice hiding your pins in the folds of your kimono, with the sharp tip braced under your middle finger. When you’ve got that, I’ll show you how to shift the hairpin along so its end protrudes just so”—she put it out a lethal four inches—“beyond your fingertip.”
When we could do that, we practiced moving our hands in circles at our chests, our sleeves falling back from the wrist. It appeared to be a dance, but it was a block; firm arms protected our chests, and the sharp tips of the hairpins were ready to shoot for an eye socket.
“Yu c’n do
sum
damage with theez,” said Yuko approvingly.
Shino watched us, a sad pride on her face. “As a girl, I excelled at this. My father wanted me to protect my honor. Then he let me be sentenced for damage to his own.”
Her hair was in damp wisps beside her temples. Our laughter stopped.
“Perhaps the lesson has gone on long enough.”
Later, as we stepped out onto the veranda, Shino got the nod from Kana. “Helping the other girls develop grace is good.”
“Oh, yes,” said Shino. “I can do it often if it pleases you,” she murmured in her best submissive voice.
As I left, I heard Kana tell the younger girls: “If you learn to move gracefully, as Shino does, you will be so alluring to your customers that I’m sure you can pay your debt more quickly.”
I
T WAS THE
new year’s publishing party in the
ageya.
The walls were hung with red and yellow banners announcing the new titles in big black characters. Everyone was there—booksellers, artists, publishers, courtesans, and clients—in clouds of smoke. The sleek brothel owners stood at the back. The massive blind man was there, his head above the crowd. I pushed past prostitutes whining for drinks, coming up against strands of conversation. I was lost in chests and waists, pushing people away so I could stay near my father.
“He’s a straw man and he will get his throat cut!”
“What are the numbers? Don’t tell me stories—”
Onstage, Utamaro was showing his Big Heads. Here was one of a famous beauty. She could not be named; it was forbidden by Sadanobu’s new edict. But Utamaro had found a way around that. Her father had a company that made rice crackers. On the ground beside her sad oval face, as white as the side of the moon, lay a sack with the words “Famous Rice Crackers” on it.
“Each woman is a type. Her character is evident from the shape of her face and the way her features sit in it. This one is a flirt. This one is a quiet type.” He pointed to his works along the walls. “Now the edicts say they are ‘too conspicuous.’ What does that mean? Are the
bakufu
art critics now? Too conspicuous for what?”
“For your own good, Utamaro!” jibed an onlooker.
“I take it as a compliment that my Big Heads are conspicuous.” Utamaro held his hand in a fist with the thumb sticking up. He jabbed this thumb into his breastbone.
A voice came from a bearded man in the back. “Do you think this beauty is a person of note?” Spies haunted every gathering.
“Yes,” said Utamaro.
“She is not. She is evil. She is temptation. Whether she is a courtesan or not. She is a walking cadaver. Beauties should be permitted in pictures merely to show how a man can lose his way and die.”
“We are all dying!” shouted Utamaro. “That is the sadness of existence. I have shown it in my—”
The bearded man pushed his table away and left.
I reached my father’s side. The
ageya
manager, Etako, pushed her dog face into mine. “You brought the little girl to an evening of drinking and coarse humor? Shame on you!” she said to Hokusai.
But Hokusai had no shame. “I am a family man, you know that.” He grinned. Then he disappeared again.
Here, instead, was one of his friends. He had been at the Mad Poets picnic. It was Sanba, the playwright who supported his work through the cosmetics shop. He bent to my level.
“Good evening, young lady.”
I turned my head quickly to acknowledge him and then looked away. I was concerned about my father. Everyone was laughing now; Hokusai had climbed onstage and was capering around.
“Will he get in trouble?” I said.
“Not if he behaves himself,” he said.
I hissed. He never did, especially not when he ought to.
Sanba pushed me to the front so I could see.
My father was showing off his new book, called
The Tactics of General Firebox.
He had made the pictures and written the words. “In the far province of the west there is a great lord named Big Heart, having a revenue of a million tons of rice. His name is Lord Disorder. He loves all those things that give pleasure . . .”
Here he drew his hands in a curving manner, like a river flowing downstream alongside his body. He turned himself to face the back wall so he was visible in profile. He drew the curve out in front of himself, a sad bulge below the waist, a wide, flat chest, and a hard, dull profile.
I recognized the shape. It was Sad-and-Noble, the fat daimyo who had passed by us with his retinue as we sat by the Sumida. The room grew quiet. People shifted away from their neighbors. The men with little beards began to look extremely interested.
“And he loved sake,” Hokusai read on. “Not content with the pleasure of hunting in the mountains or fishing in the sea, he amused himself by making men swim with heavy stones attached to their bodies or making them run with naked feet on ice.”
I could feel the tension in the room.
“That’s enough, Hokusai,” said Sanba. But that only encouraged my father.
Timid Waki inched up to the stage and took him by the arm. Hokusai shrugged him off and kept reading.
“Lord Disorder dressed his entourage in hot clothes in summer and thin fabric in winter.” He shouted now. “Silver and gold were in his hands, like water in a river . . .”
Waki looked for help. He found it in the big blind man. The masseur stepped up and, reaching in his general direction, caught my father by the scruff of the neck. My father kept reading.
Sometimes a child can do things a man cannot. “Hokusai!” I said, in my best
yakko
voice. “What a shame it would be if you gave away the ending.”
Hokusai turned sharply to me—I think I fooled him with my voices, for once—and the break was enough for the blind man to bundle him out of the light.
Waki returned to speak to the crowd. “Hokusai cannot read anymore. I am so very sorry. His words don’t make any sense; no one would understand.”
My father had vanished. I sat outside, swinging my feet and looking at the moon.
“It is late,” said Sanba, coming up behind me. “Are you tired?”
“No.”
“Is there someone who can take you home?” he said.
“Shino will come if she can.”
“Shino? And take you where?”
“Back to the Corner Tamaya.”
Sanba whistled. “You are very sophisticated for a ten-year-old.”
“I am twelve now.” I said it scornfully, but I was pleased. No one had called me sophisticated before.
“Do you go to school?”
“My sisters go to the temple, where the priests teach them. But I—” I looked down in a show of modesty.
“You don’t go with them?”
“I already know a lot of characters. And Shino teaches me.”
“Impressive,” he said. He was staring.
I know why he was curious: my frame was small and undeveloped; I had no softness. I was still taken for a child, though I felt quite old.
“And if Shino cannot come?”
“She will come.” It must have been the Hour of the Ox by then. “Unless she is engaged.”
“Something may have come up,” he said. He smirked.
I scowled. These jokes were so tiresome. I knew her work. It was no laughing matter. He looked repentant.
“Shall I wait with you until your father comes?” said Sanba.
“No.” I stood disdainfully and went back inside the
ageya.
In the back rows, the artists were talking about my father.
“Hokusai is pushing his luck. What has he done this for?”
“He’s not usually so brave.”
“He’s a copycat. He copies Utamaro.”
“He copies anyone and anything.”
“He has a flair, that’s it.”
“Simply a flair. People notice him.”
“Yes, except for the
bakufu.
They don’t notice him.”
“That’s what he wants. To be noticed.”
“He will be. And not in a good way. You wait. The worst is that he sells his prints outside the country.”