The One-Yen Shop: A Short Essay

It was a Saturday afternoon on a sunny day.

As an elementary school student, I was wandering into the mountains with a stick in my hand as usual, when I suddenly thought, 'That's it, today I'll go straight to the other side of the mountain until I reach the road.'

I followed a wild boar trail, crossed a ridge that used to be a carriage road, and descended through a well-maintained cedar forest until I came out onto a narrow path with tire tracks in the dirt.

After passing through a graveyard, I came out to a rice field, and after passing through the rice field, I reached a village.

There were more houses than in the village where my parents lived, and the land was flat with spacious fields.


As I walked along the road, a small shop appeared.

When I peeked inside, an old woman with completely white hair was tending the shop.

Looking at it, the candy shelves were sparse, everything worth having was sold out, and only gum with a black cat logo remained.

Then, the old woman called out to me, as I looked around with curiosity.

'It's one yen. Everything is one yen.'


Everything?
I wondered about this and looked around at the items on the shelves.

Whetstones, detergent, notebooks, school indoor shoes...

'That's one yen, too.'

While tidying up, the old woman seemed to be keeping track of me with eyes in the back of her head.

Gum is one yen, detergent is one yen, indoor shoes are one yen...???

If gum is one yen, it's many times cheaper than usual. I want it.


But, I didn't have any money.

All I had in my pockets were a pickled plum, a pencil, and a Japanese grass lizard.

Reluctantly, I trudged away from the shop.




When I got home and told my father about it, he dismissed it, saying, 'That can't be true.'

When I told my classmates at school, they said, 'You're lying.'

As someone who liked occult books, I thought I must have wandered into another world, and well, I went to sleep carefree, thinking such things happen.




When I was in high school, I happened to be riding in my father's car to the other side of the mountain, and I saw a building along the paved road that looked like it had once been a shop, but now had its curtains drawn and was being used as a storage shed.

At that moment, my old memories came back, and I was suddenly convinced.



The old woman had been closing up shop.

That was why the shelves were so sparse.

Everything being one yen was the old woman's clearance sale because she wanted to clear out the shop as soon as possible.


It wasn't another world.


But, that kind of easygoing Showa-era scenery might indeed be another world from the perspective of today's society.

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