An Unforgettable Love Story of a Sailor - Episode 0

The other day, I wrote an essay titled "An Unforgettable Love Story of a Sailor."

It was a chronicle of a youthful romance entrusted to me by a senior who was once a sailor.

In fact, there was an episode in this story that I had to cut with a heavy heart.
It was a romance with a beautiful hostess he met at a dive bar in Toyama.
Since that alone would have taken up a considerable amount of space, I cut it last time, but I would like to write about it now.

In the summer of 1967, he was working on a foreign-going ship and docked in Toyama.
One night, when he went out drinking with his shipmates, the moment he opened the door to a certain bar, his feet stopped.

Standing there was a beautiful woman around 30 years old, wearing a kimono and resembling the actress Shiho Fujimura.
He said he wondered why someone like that would be in such a run-down place.
During the one-week stay, he visited every day and she agreed to go on a date with him just once.
The location was not Toyama, but Kanazawa in the neighboring prefecture.
They enjoyed strolling through Kenrokuen Garden.
He called her "Mama," even though she was older than him.
When he told the taxi driver "To Kanazawa Station" on the way back, the driver asked, "Are you sure you want to go to Kanazawa Station?"
He recalls with a laugh that the driver must have assumed they were going to a hotel.

Even after the ship set sail, he sent her an airmail letter from New Zealand.

After returning to Japan, he took a night train, a steam locomotive, and headed straight for Toyama with the blizzard of the Sea of Japan on his right.
He said he felt like the protagonist of a movie while gazing at the magnificent scenery of Echigo, famous from Tsutomu Minakami's novels.
She was surprised but welcomed him warmly.

After that, his longing for her only grew, and during his next vacation, he made up his mind to travel from his hometown in Kyushu to Toyama.
He says that this was the first time they became intimate.
He wrote that he felt like he was ascending to heaven.

Even after that, every time he docked in Japan, she would come to the ship to see him.
A deckhand asked him, "Who is that beautiful woman in the kimono?"
When he replied, "She's my sister," he was teased with, "Your sister is going to stay overnight on the ship!?"

However, that relationship did not last long.

One day, she said,
"Having a woman like me around isn't good for your future."
After that, she stopped coming to see him.
He left the ship in despair.

Time passed, and he was ordered to take delivery of a new ship being built in Toyama.
Having recently broken up with a woman named M-ko, he visited her shop near the shipyard.
When he mustered the courage to open the door, the "Welcome" greeting stopped mid-sentence.
It was their first reunion in three and a half years.

He told her he had broken up with M-ko and tore up the photo of M-ko he was holding right in front of her.
When the new ship departed, she came to the port to see him off.
That was the last time they ever met.

As more time passed, while he was working at the head office in Tokyo, he received a phone call at the company.

"I am finally free. I am now working as a maid at a hotel in Awara Onsen. If you have the chance, I would like to see you."

It was her nostalgic voice.
He told her he was already married and quietly hung up the receiver.

"She must have needed a lot of courage to make that call..." he thought.

At the end of this story, he writes:
"I feel sorry that I couldn't be her last man."

A clumsy sailor and a clumsy hostess.
If they had lived their lives a little more skillfully, perhaps their subsequent lives would have been different.

It is a sad and beautiful love story woven by two clumsy people.