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By Root 717 0

father was born was called Toyokawa Village and lies in the Senboku-gun district of Akita Prefecture. You used to be able to get within about eight kilometers of it by train and then walk the rest of the way. I remember that there were two oddly named stations along the line, one called Gosannen (“Three Years Later”) and one called Zenkunen (“Nine Years Earlier”). The latter station no longer exists. Apparently these two localities were named for famous battles of the Hachiman Taro clan, relatives of the medieval Genji warriors. Looking out of the lefthand side of the train, you could see a range of mountains where, according to legend, Hachiman Taro Yoshiie himself had his battle encampment. I later learned that these remote events actually had a connection to me.

In my entire lifetime I have been to my father’s native village only six times. Two of those excursions took place during my middle-school years. Once was when I was a third-year student, and I can’t for the life of me remember when the other time was. Nor can I remember what happened on the second trip—it has all become inextricably tangled in my mind with the first one.

As I ponder it, it occurs to me that the reason for this is that the village had not changed at all in the interval between my two trips. The houses, streets, brooks and trees, even the stones, grasses and flowers were so much the same from one trip to the next that I have no means of distinguishing between what should be two separate memories. It was as if time stood still even for the people in that village, for they, too, remained completely unchanged, left behind by the world. Many people there had never eaten “foreign” foods like breaded pork cutlets or rice curry. No caramels or cookies were sold in Toyokawa either, because there were no houses that doubled as shops. Even the primary-school teacher had never seen Tokyo. He asked me what people there say as a greeting when they go visiting—as if Tokyoites surely spoke some odd, incomprehensible dialect.

Carrying a letter from my father, I went to visit one of the homes in the village. The old man who came to the entry to ask what my business was listened to me a moment and then rushed back into the interior of the house. In his place an old woman came out and with the utmost courtesy conducted me to the formal room with a tatami-mat floor, where she seated me in the honored guest’s position with my back to the art alcove. Then she disappeared.

Finally the old man re-emerged, in his formal black cloak with the family crest on the shoulders, and formal black hakama trousers. He made a forehead-to-floor kneeling bow to me, raised my father’s letter reverently to his head and began reading.

That same evening I was again seated with my back to the pillar of the art alcove. With me as the guest of honor in the highest position, and all of the elders and adults of the village seated around the room, a drinking party began. Each of the villagers held out his saké cup before him to the village daughters, all decked out in their finery to serve at this occasion. “To Tokyo,” said the first, proffering his cup. “Tokyo,” said the second. “Tokyo,” the third.

As I was trying to understand what this was all about, the girls all started toward me one by one with the saké cups. Arriving at my place, the first girl held out the cup to me. When I took it in my hands, she poured it full of saké. Never having drunk saké before, I stared at the cup in discomfort. As I did so, the second girl urged her cup on me and poured. And then a third. I gave up and drank.

After a while my eyes glazed over and the voices saying, “Tokyo,” “Tokyo,” became softer and softer like an echo. My heart began to pound furiously. I could no longer sit still, so I stood up and wobbled outside, where I fell into a rice paddy.

Later I understood that “Tokyo” meant “for the guest from Tokyo,” and I was being honored. They certainly hadn’t meant to do wrong by making a mere child drink saké; here they gave saké to babies. (Of course, they must get used to it.)

Near the main thoroughfare