Here's something I've been meaning to write for a while. one section of it came to me rather vividly month back, and I wrote it down, but I'd been procrastinating on fleshing out the greater story it was meant to sit in. I think this is a good start, and due to concerns of time and of preventing it from lying idle for so long that it dies, here it is in its current state. It's not perfect yet, though, and I have a lot of love for what it could be, so I hope I can expand upon it some day. The fantastic illustrations have been provided by my buddy Nicholas Small over in Teine. I'll include his original Tanuki sketch as well for I think it says things on its own that are very different from what my photoshoppery hath wrought.
When you lived in a fishing town of scarce more than three thousand souls, it was common for young women to just up and leave in the night, eloping with secret lovers or turning to the city, which held the promise of work and a life with a forward momentum. Thus, when Yume disappeared that year, the event was barely a blip on the town’s social radar. The gossips would suck their teeth and whisper about how selfish it was to leave your family and your furosato for the city, but other than their excited and snide comments, the event went undiscussed.
If pressed, her mother would have told you that she blamed her own mother, Yume’s grandmother, for filling the child’s head with wild stories in her youth—tales of adventure and secrets and fantastic creatures that were far beyond the concerns of an honest family in a small town.
While Yume’s parents worked, she would often be sent to stay with her ‘bachan and ‘jichan on their farm just outside of town during the languid summer holidays. Her ‘jichan would be out working the hot fields, while Yume and her ‘bachan would sit in the shaded cool of the house, with the screens slid wide to let the wind breathe through, bringing with it some relief from the humid Hokkaido summers. Together they would prepare onigiri and miso for her ‘jichan’s lunch, and her ‘bachan would tell her fables of the wondrous creatures that hid in the woods on the surrounding hills: of the Tengu and the Kappa and the Tanuki.
Her ‘bachan would tell of how their island was the last home of a great many mystical beings who had once lived all along the sweep of their archipelago nation. However, like the Ainu, they had all been displaced: pushed further and further north by the modern minds who built the great cities and were so clever as to dream that these beings of story had never been. The creatures had been forced into the dark mountain forests at the heart of Hokkaido as the river spirits had their beds paved, and the mountain giants were pierced through by tunnel after tunnel.
She would tell Yume of the Tanuki: wise old cousins of the common raccoon dogs that people came across in the mountain forests. However, unlike their smaller brothers, the Tanuki could walk upright, and they were clever enough to speak the languages of men. They could hide from their foes by turning themselves into statues, and in the silent hours of the night, they would steal into towns from the woods under the cover of darkness to lure away virgins, carrying them off into their mountain forest homes. The only way to dissuade the Tanuki was to bribe them with sake and rice cakes, and so did her ‘bachan put out offerings to the Tanuki on nights when the moon was full.
When Yume had been a child, her ‘bachan’s stories of the Tanuki had frightened her. When the full moon would shine brightly through her curtains and keep her from sleep, she would summon up all the courage she had and crawl to the window. She’d peek only her eyes over the sill, parting the curtains only slightly, and staring out into the night, watching for the Tanuki with a mix of terror and delight.
As she grew into her teenage years, she’d soon forget her ‘bachans stories as her mind filled with concern for school and boys. However, as she neared the end of her schooling, and her wild ambitions for her life were more and more boxed in by the depressing realities of life in a tiny coastal town, there were nights when those stories from her childhood would come back to her, unbidden. She’d dream of being carried off by the Tanuki as even that fantasy escape from the dull, long days in her town seemed more and more welcome.
When she finally graduated from her town’s tiny high school, she had been pressed into service at her mother and father’s tiny shop that sat along the main road that ran through the town and onwards to more interesting, omiyage-worthy locales. It was expected that, like her sisters, she would work at the shop for her parents until she found herself a suitable husband and she could switch careers to that of a full-time mother.
And in the drudgery of that day-to-day, her ‘bachans stories would come back ever stronger, causing her to spend the long days with no customers only half conscious of the world around her. She’d wander through ancient dreamscapes from the country’s feudal past, consorting with dragons and ogres and goblins alike. When she was dismissed at the end of her fruitless days, she would visit her town’s tiny, rickety jinja, and she would drop coin after coin into the strangely angled wooden collection box, hearing them clatter emptily inside. She would perform the actions by rote: clapping her hands, jangling the tinny bell, and praying for only one thing with all her heart: that she be granted an escape from this slowly dying town.
The Tanuki came to her in the night, not long after her twentieth birthday. She’d been spending so much of her time in her daydreams of late that she wasn’t surprised to see him, out at the edge of the treed hill behind her parents’ house. She fell into the rhythm of the dream and did not question it, but a part of her that was burning low held out faint hopes for those half-remembered stories from childhood.
She went to him across the slightly damp grass, under the full moon. And, without her having to say a word in greeting, he spoke.
His name was Inazuma, and it meant lightning. He spoke to her of how he would be the Tanuki and she would be the Fox, and they would run free under the stars. Her eyes shimmered like morning snow, he said, and the white of her skin could cause the moon to blush red with envy. Together they would fashion thunder on the mountaintops and channel the steams of the hotsprings into clouds and rain. He knew of vast networks of tunnels that glowed with the low light of algae and were heated by multi-coloured natural onsen. He’d show her how to bottle the sweet, heady nihonshu that flowed freely from secret rocky streams, and he’d teach her the rhythm of the seasons by playing it for her across his taught belly. In the dark depths of the valley forests, back where the peaks of the Shakotan range kept out all but the wildest of men, they would make love on carpets of evergreen boughs, and their children would be thought and memory and dream.
Under the full moon, in the dark of the yard, his grey fur shone silver, a bright contrast to the dark pools in which his eyes sat.
She could feel his eyes stare out at her from those dark pools more than she could see them. He asked her “will you come with me?”
The man came to her only a few days later, in her parents’ shop. As it sat along the main road through their town, every so often people from the city would wander in, look around distractedly, before wandering back out to their cars. When he came in, she scarcely moved her eyes to look at him, assuming that he would soon be back upon his way. She nearly slipped from her stool when he addressed her in the empty shop.
His name was Kaneko, and it meant Child of Wealth. He spoke to her of how he would be the proprietor and she would be the chief hostess of his private izakaiya just outside of Susukino. Her curves were that of an idol, he said, and her wit could hoodwink the cleverest of Sararimen. Together, they would make hundreds of thousands a night. He knew the business well, and he could show her fleeting glances that would have patrons following her all night long, looking only to buy more drinks for the pleasure of her company. He’d show her tricks to make those patrons pay twice for one drink, and he’d teach her how to read the needs of wanton men in their veiled eyes. In the low light of their izakaiya, any man she wanted would be hers, and any woman she loathed would envy her.
In the late afternoon heat, he had to remove his black suit jacket in her family’s tiny oven of a shop. Under the translucent white of his shirt, she swore she caught a glimpse of livid black lines snaking on his skin.
From under a standing mane of sharp hair, he starred at her with sharp, dark eyes. He asked her “will you come with me?”
She was just one more woman to disappear in the night, more resented than in any way mourned by her mother and her sisters, who’d assumed she had run to the city like so many others. Her ‘bachan, however, thought differently. On the night after Yume’s disappearance, she bent down slowly and carefully placed a bowl of nihoshu and a rice cake at the top of the back steps that faced her family’s fields and the mountain forests beyond. She looked out over the fields and then up at the slightly waning moon, smiling vaguely before turning back inside and putting out the light.
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