The Street of a Thousand Blossoms Read Online Free PDF Page A

Mariko’s music provided a spirited accompaniment.
    “But what if Takeminakata had won?” Hiroshi asked. “Would everything have been different?”
    “I suppose so,” he answered. “As much as each of us would see and do things differently.”
    “Can we visit the shrine one day?” Kenji asked.
    “Of course.” Yoshio smiled at the rare request from Kenji. “Can you imagine,” he continued, “that our fate was determined by just the two gods?” He shook his head and sucked hard on his pipe. “If only the outcome of wars could be so easily determined now,” he added.
    “Why can’t they be?” Hiroshi asked. “Why can’t we have a greatmatch between two men now to determine the winner of this war? Like with the grand champion Yokozuna Futabayama?”
    Yes, why not? Yoshio thought. His own memories of the Russian-Japanese war in Mukden, some thirty-five years ago, were reduced to the blood-soaked earth littered with body parts, the now faded cries of men, the easy madness of pulling a trigger that could end a life, and the death of his older brother, Toshiro. And though Yoshio had been told he was fighting for his country, he really fought only to survive, to return to Fumiko, who was waiting for him. Yet he could never reconcile that he had returned home unscathed, while Toshiro and so many others perished. He had suffered only a terrible bout of dysentery and a badly dislocated shoulder—the shoulder still a silent reminder that pulsated with a dull ache when the weather changed.
    In the end, Yoshio knew that what wars really destroyed were families. His parents had never gotten over the loss of Toshiro in Mukden. And for what? Were all the lost lives worth a faraway port? A piece of land? Sometimes, in his dreams, Toshiro still came to him, as young and vital as the day they stepped onto the train together to leave for Tokyo. Their parents, and Fumiko, along with so many others, stood on the platform in the shimmering heat, waving frantically at bodies half-hanging out of open windows of the train, Toshiro’s included. Yoshio had stepped back to let his brother get a clearer view of their vanishing parents. He didn’t know it would be Toshiro’s last. Two days later, they boarded the boat and sailed across the waters to a foreign land, whence so many would never return.
    Yoshio swallowed his sorrow.
    “It can’t be, Hiro-chan, because great powers always want more,” he answered. “Unlike the gods, mankind may never be able to settle on just two men and just one conquest.”
    The boys nodded. Yoshio knew Fumiko would be calling them in at any moment.
    “I’d fight,” Hiroshi added.
    “Me, too,” Kenji echoed, less certain.
    Yoshio didn’t doubt Hiroshi’s idealism, nor that he would fight for Japan. Single-handedly. He was happy that his grandsons weretoo young to go to war. Not that he didn’t love Japan and wasn’t loyal to the emperor. He was just so weary of war, knowing that whoever won, too many lives would be lost. Yoshio put an arm around each of his grandsons. “Let’s hope it never has to be.”
    But more and more, the war news screamed from the radio, how this war was
seisen
, a sacred war led by the divine emperor. Yoshio worried about what the conflict would lead to, and how it would affect his grandsons if it were to rage on for years. He was never quite happy to hear the broadcasts that boasted of the Japanese army’s successes, of their advancing troops spreading through China, where victories came fast and furious—the capture of Nanking, then Shanghai, then Canton. And what next, the Imperial Army’s push toward Hong Kong, then Singapore, the Philippines—faraway places that had nothing to do with their lives? More often than not, Yoshio snapped off the radio when a report came on.
    Now, when he looked at his grandsons, he saw his gentle daughter, Misako, his son-in-law, Kazuo, and even Toshiro. He saw past and future before him in the fading light. And just as